Writing A Wrong

As I was sitting down to write with a large cup of coffee to my left, my bifocals perched on my nose and my noise reduction head phones on, I was discovering the difficulty of having to figure out what my voice was going to be in my second book. Just how far could a very neurotic, anxiety driven, with a hint of paranoia go in order to achieve the perfect combination of truth, authenticity and composure. On one hand, to speak freely about some the more horrific events in my life is something I am able to talk about without hesitation to nearly any audience who would listen, but to put it all in writing was something I struggled to do. I have made jokes about some of the more awful things that have happened to me and my kids and my husbands. Just now writing the word "husbands", specifically the "s" on the end makes me wince a little as I type out the reality of what being me is truly like. I had been completely unconvinced that having one husband was a good idea for someone like me with all my nervous energy, my tapping toes, and my never ending supply of compulsions. I have defended my status as having multiple husbands as if I were sitting on a witness stand explaining to a judge, jury and executioner that "Yes, Your Honor, I did get married more than once even after I knew for certain I was hardly marriage material, but I felt saying no would be unnecessarily rude. Besides, Michael doesn't count, he knows how silly and ridiculous I am. He made an informed decision to take on my bag of crazy. I should be held harmless for any and all transactions that may or may not transpire after that."
I have several incidents in my life that although I joke about them, they were quite serious and telling the story, even joking about it, may inadvertently hurt some of the precious few who know and love me. Had I just had me to consider, everything would go into the stories I plan to write. There are very few things I am not able to laugh about, simply because there is always something funny that has happened within the confines of the story. It is the reason I have never considered myself a victim in the story of my own life. I simply cannot reconcile laughter and martyrdom. The minute I can find the funny, any kind of overtly dramatic, heinous crime is reduced to a morality story of sorts with a punchline.
I had done stand up comedy briefly in the 1990's in order to shake up my life in an extreme way. I suffered from stage fright so bad I would literally find myself going to the bathroom 12 times in ten minutes trying to squeeze out the last drop of pee because I was certain I would wet my pants on stage. I wrote on index cards the outline of my jokes in order to stay on topic, and dropped them every time I went to stand in line at whatever dump had an open mic night. I did lots of jokes about divorce, kids and being single with stretch marks that could be used as AAA trip tic.
While Danny and I had several laughs about his cancer, putting that material in my comedy was less than a stellar idea. I knew there would be those in the audience who find it distasteful to talk about the silent killer that had taken so many lives. Even our children managed in all their fear and unresolved curiosity, to make jokes about amputation, cancer and their father's disease. You see, we had to laugh, to make it human, to make it personal without allowing it to control our every day existence. That and sometimes things were just funny. Tom, only six years old at the time of Danny's cancer asked if his "new" leg, the prosthesis he was scheduled to get, would have hair on it. Danny promised to let the kids draw hair on his leg the second it arrived. Danny would walk through furniture since he had no leg to prevent it, he jumped around laughing about being the best in a three legged race, and made jokes about how his right shoes would last forever.
During the time Danny drank his heaviest, when he was his most violent, I still cannot find a way to write without feeling as though I am betraying my children. I have spoken and written about the idea that Danny's addiction was not the sum total of who he was. I have pushed hard for years to allow my children the benefit of knowing their father as an entire entity not some soulless monster with a penchant for beer, or a sainted martyr who died perfect in sack cloth and ashes. He was neither of those things and in some ways both of those things. I had originally written the more violent stories in my notebooks, reliving the pain, the sociopathic strain of addiction, trying to get it all out of me, as if putting it on paper would release the memories from the tightly bound place in my heart. I wanted all of it to just go, as if my frantic writing, scribbling in ink on paper would be able to push the pain out and I would never have to feel it again. By the by, that is not really how it works, but it sounded good at the time. The continued problem I have is putting it in ink in front of my children, because it is not just my story, it is their story too.
There are times in my life which I now find ironic, allowing for me to laugh at criminal and volatile events, which had I not learned to laugh, I am not completely certain I would be in tact as a human being.
My coffee is almost gone and I have to catch a nap so I can go to the Museum of Fine Art downtown to see a "found objects" artist. He is giving a lecture and Mike, Christine and I are planning to go and see what makes him so interesting. There is another exhibit at the same time showing for a brief period we are going to look at, but I couldn't tell you what it is. I let Christine handle all the details, so my mind is left vacant for other pressing problems, like remembering to buy toilet paper by the ream due to the amount of butts in our house. The book is coming to me in snippets on some days and lengthy dream like movie versions on others. I have writers block, but continue to put stuff out on the blog hoping that if enough words are written it will disguise the lack of content. As far as what I will write about, if the tragedy/comedy conundrum can be conquered...well, I will have to have a conversation with my family.
I learned one of the most valuable lessons from my favorite writer, David Sedaris, who has a story about his sister he wanted to use for a book. It was story that was horrifying to her, one that made her wince and open wounds like a stigmatic. His idea was to write story because, hey, it's not like she was using it. The story he eventually wrote told about how insensitive he had been and how sorry he was for taking something personal and trying to turn into entertainment his sister's expense.
My intention is always to connect, but not at the expense of those I love, so I have to plod my course carefully, without my usual foot slapping, blinded, thoughtless stumbling , bumbling schtick. Even though the book is about me, I cannot afford to be selfish either to the reader or especially to those who had no choice being related to me and in my life.
My daughter used to yell at me in frustration, "I didn't ask to be born!" to which I would reply, "Yeah? Well,I didn't want your opinion, either!"
But this time, I do, I really do.