Dame Lili
At my blog today I wrote about how deciding not to engage can save one’s life. Here, because I am feeling both introspective and ambitious, I want to talk about writing saving one’s life. Really, any art can save you, but writing’s what I know. So here goes.
I got my first intimation of the power of art while I was a teenager. I was dating a man seven years my senior, who had a taste for very young girls and using his fists on the same. Yes, I was stupid–but what fourteen-year-old isn’t? I had no means of measuring the threat this predator represented, and I had no other benchmark for affection other than abuse. As a matter of fact, the kid my own age I dated before that was so nice I got nervous and broke it off with him, because he didn’t hit me. It just didn’t feel right if someone wasn’t whaling on me.
So there I was, getting it from both ends, and I discovered alcohol. I’m sure I was drunk through most of my junior-high and high-school. I still pulled a respectable GPA–academics were, at that point, still a fun game for me and I have never lost my taste for learning. But I was desperate. There was literally nowhere I could turn. I had grown used to keeping secrets by then, and staying on top of this pile of things I couldn’t talk about was wearying, to say the least.
This was also the time I was reading (please don’t laugh) Uncanny X-Men. A LOT. Especially when Claremont was writing and Lee was drawing. The idea of being a mutant, with these fantastical powers and loneliness, was very appealing.
So I did what any redblooded junior writer would.
I started writing fanfic in spiral notebooks. Obsessively. I even cut back on the drinking so I had more time to write. It started out so innocently, a story about Wolverine and a mysterious assassin who seemed to heal just as fast as he did. Then there was the Colossus-Storm mix, because I thought Forge was a wimp and Ororo deserved someone nice. Then I started interjecting my own characters–Mary Sues and Gary Stus, to be sure, but they felt good at the time.
Things crept into my writing. Descriptions of punches I’d recorded in my diary, things I noticed about the world, snippets of conversation I’d heard. I cut back on the drinking even more to have more time to write. I wrote in the bathroom in the middle of the night, my heart in my mouth, sneaking out of my boyfriend’s parties to write on the porch, hiding my notebooks in my locker because my mother went through my diaries at home once or twice and administered a whuppin’ because of what she found.
The writing was always there. I could take almost anything because I was thinking, when I get by myself I’ll write about this. Fixing my attention on that was a disassociative trick to be sure, but it worked. It gave me a future to look forward to.
Eventually, the fanfic stories grew thin. I wanted other characters, I wanted other settings. I had this idea for a book…a fantasy book. And with my heart in my mouth, I tried writing it. Took me years. And I started not writing the X-Men stuff so much, and started writing other little slushy snippets of things. Here and there. Bit by bit.
I moved away from home and in with another boyfriend. That didn’t work out so well. I bounced around different homes, different relationships, writing all the while. An old friend died and I cried with my notebook in my lap, struggling to put the hurt into words so I could get some sort of handle on it–any handle would do, I just needed one.
I found it in the first few paragraphs of another novel–the infamous vampire novel, of course. Which, like the First Fantasy, will never see publication because it’s so sloppy and uneven. But my God, it felt good to write, and it felt good to bleed off some of the pressure of guilt and grief into the structure of a story.
I’ve gone through a marriage and a half since then, and the birth of two children. And several other life events. Writing has been there all the time–the friend that gives me strength to go on when I don’t think I can. The way of transforming the world to make it reasonable, or at least a little less scary.
A few Decembers ago I was in a bad car accident. (Twisty road, nighttime, a deer on its way home and me trying not to kill Bambi.) Hanging upside-down in the truck’s cab, one part of me was screaming in hysterical fear. The largest, Mommy-based part of me was calmly saying, first let’s get this seatbelt off and kick out a window.
Another part of me, the writer, was considering all of this and taking notes. So that’s what this feels like. Damn, it’s good material.
I was fairly calm, all things considered.
It all started with me and a notebook, the pen in my hand and my heart in my mouth, daring to do that most subversive of acts–tell my own story. To honestly and simply tell any story is an act of magic, an act of liberation. It is a lifering when you’re drowning, a way to scramble for higher ground when the water rises. It is sorcery, a way of remaking the world. I felt like a mutant when I was scribbling in those spiral-bound notebooks. Dangerous, lonely, and socially sneered-at–but with a secret power, a talent I could use for good or for evil, something I could do.
And each one of those words saved my life, over and over again. Each was a step up out of the abyss of believing myself worthless, a waste of skin and breath. Even today, each word, over and over, saves my life. It is a net when I’m falling, a rope when I’m drowning, a reminder to be calm when I’m in the middle of smashed metal and glass, smelling gasoline and being so scared I can barely breathe.
I once received a fan letter from a woman who rescues elderly cocker spaniels. She said that some of my books had given her hope, that sometimes when she was feeling down about the plight of these poor dogs abandoned by their owners she could read them and forget, or read them and get a little bit of hope. Just a tiny sprinkle.
I cried.
Because if writing can save my own life, and if it can give someone else a little bit of hope, then I consider it one of the greatest acts of magic I’m capable of. Getting paid for it is nice, sure–I have kids to feed, after all. But if something that saved my life can also give someone else a little bit of hope…that’s damn precious. If even one person feels the world is a better place because of this story I’ve told as well as I’m able, I consider my time on earth well-spent.
And that’s really all this writer asks for.
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Tags: Lilith Saintcrow, writing
Dame Lili,
While reading through this post I noted several similarities in my life, including the way I used writing to get out feelings I would never tell a soul. It all started when I opened up a word doc and began typing (and crying). It flowed that way for months then it stopped. After surviving my own abusive relationship with an older man and losing a once best friend, eventually I picked up a pen again, instead of drugs or a bottle, and felt alive for the first time in years. I haven’t put that pen down yet.
So thank you for the courage to tell your story (I know how hard it can be to open yourself up like that). It reminded me of where I have been and where I am now, so far away from that sad teen. Not to mention how my passion for writing has kept me afloat. Even now in the middle of a current family tragedy, I’m NaNo-ing.
So, really, what I’m trying to say is that writing saved my life too.
Words. Paint. Music. Balm for the soul. Bitter, sweet, healing. Thank you for this, Lili.
I cried after I read this. Writing was always there through the physcho step-father, the recent problems with drugs and drinking.
As long as you have your imagination, you are not alone.
It’s amazing. The power of word. I had a traumatic childhood. But I wrote. Until I got serious a year and a half ago, I never really understood. As a kid, I wrote short stories I’d tell my siblings on trips. As an adult, I walked around with notebooks never far from my hands and started stories I never finished. At the time, I hadn’t realized how much of a catharsis simply writing the words down was for me, until I stopped.
A few years ago, I discovered art -oil paints, pastels, charcoals – and fell in love. I realized it gave me the same outlet my writing did. Now I do both as much as I can.
Reading your story full of honest emotion reminds me why I’m whole. Reminds me that I have come a long way and made it through things that most people I know couldn’t have survived. Thank you for reminding me of my strength and the power of writing.
I started like you did, but escaped into army instead of alcohol. Dad was the drinker and made it easy to see what it did to him. Ever have a grown man pee when he hugs you and you get very careful about the stuff — or at least I did, since I was 13 at the time and he was too drunk to care. But I always understood the lure of it.
For the longest time I thought all writers had stories like this. Why else would they be writers. Apparently that’s not the case, though I still imagine this profession has more than its share.
I found this site recognizing Keri Arthur and Devon Monk and haven’t yet searched out the books by the other Dames (I will, I promise), so I wondered… Can you write it? Do you write it? (I know, I’ll have to buy a book and check.)
But those people it still hurts to think about… do you even have trouble writing them even when that type of person needs to go in a story? Or did writing it down the whole time make it easier. (I was strong on avoidance, writing happy stories set in fantasy worlds where nothing bad happened ever — they were a little boring, I think, but never got me into trouble.) It leaves me struggling while I’m working on the current story though because this family was never happy.
I can relate but on the flipside: reading saves my life all the time. When you have a book, you’re never alone. You can escape for a little bit and put your mind in another place so you can deal with real life again later. I don’t know how many times a book has made my life more bearable when things I couldn’t control were happening. And then I could deal and do what I had to do.
Beautiful. Inspiring.
Thank you for sharing Dame Lili. I’ve used writing to escape for years and while my experience is not as extreme as yours, the writing has helped keep me marginally sane.
Julie
That is certainly courageous what you did with this post and I agree whole heartedly that writing can save your life completely. I note distinct similarities between your story and mine. I started with fan fiction as well and it really did save me from giving up completely in life, mentally and physically discontinuing it. So yes, writing is a powerful life line. Any art form is.
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