01.07.05

I remember one time we were listening to the radio in the car while driving with his roommate. The song �Freshman� by the Verve Pipe came on. In the middle of the song, he said to me in the most casual way, without even turning around (I was in the backseat), that they had been talking the other day about how the song reminded him of me.

�The song is about a girl who falls in love with a boy, gets pregnant, gets an abortion at his request, and then kills herself when he leaves her�

It was so offhanded and out of nowhere, I don�t think he gave it a second thought or even realized the full implications. Who knows, maybe in his mind he was talking about the band, or the genre, or the tempo. But for me it was palpable slap in the face. I guess that was one of the few times that I was honest with myself and spoke the words aloud in my head: �He�s not in love with you and never will be. You know this.�

I spent the majority of that last year with him with a familiar cold, sad shiver in the pit of my stomach.

I can't be held responsible
She was touching her face
I won't be held responsible
She fell in love in the first place.
--Verve Pipe - The Freshmen

:::

There is a conundrum that exists in my life.

All that I am and all of the joy and pain I have felt at various stages in my life often rattles around in my brain and in my heart and I long to make sense of it; to have it count for something. I have a writer�s heart. I can�t help it. I just do. I feel the same way about words as I do when I sit down at a grand piano. There is a part of me that aches to be able to just start playing a beautiful concerto, but when I touch the keys, what comes out is awkward and unharmonious. My writing is the same way. I can feel--tangibly in my chest--the things that I would like to convey through my writing. But I just feel so impotent to express that.

I admit I haven�t ever really tried. Part of the reason for that is the same reason that I can�t play that concerto; I lack the skills or the practice. But there is another reason that holds me back from writing.

Mostly it is this: if I wrote, I would want to write a memoir-esque type of work, but I�m afraid that I wouldn�t be able to do that without being as honest as possible. Honesty can hurt those you love. Therefore, it is probably best to let things stay buried. There are things that I want to write about that have happened in my life and opinions and views that I hold that would shock and sadden certain members of my family. Even my own husband hasn�t been allowed into some of those places. This creates in me a sense of responsibility and forced restraint that stifles my writing.

Even here, I can�t always be brutally honest.

And yet, that is the kind of writing that speaks to me; brutal honesty about life, about pain, and about overcoming. So either I just say screw it, let the chips fall where they may; try to learn how to weave my experiences into fiction; or just not write at all.

Well, we�ll see. I usually push all this to the back, with everything else going on. But every now and then, I�ll take it out and turn it over and over in my mind. One of these times, I believe something will click and I�ll know.

before ~ after