What I don't want to write about
18 August 2011 06:10 AM Categories: Writing prompts
It seems I spend half of these appointments in tears or pressing my fingernails together or taking tissues (the preliminary step is to place the box near me on the leather-cushioned couch as I sit down) and forming them into shapes, compressing them, combining them into one huge ball that I lob at the trashcan as we leave.
I can’t write about it. I can barely talk about it. And I don’t even know what “it” is, except this amorphous and yet specific feeling. After the appointment, I traveled the wormholes of the Internet, looking for verification, for clues from the outside that once or twice or more a long time ago, something made me this way, made me angry at touch, at being robbed of something, of having my body be out of my control.
It’s a relief, actually, to just go with my hunch and see how it has played out in my life, in my history and present. Having a name for something, trusting in myself, makes a huge difference. It’s all part of the same journey that I’ve been on for a few years now, and suddenly I could see another source of the self-blame, of the anger turned inward, of the unspoken belief that I was responsible for every bad thing that happened to me or to the people I love.
I still struggle with the beliefs of a child, that I am the center of other people’s reactions to me, that the world somehow revolves around me in a negative way. My mother once told me that she thought her mailman was angry at her because her Netflix movies weren't arriving on time, a ridiculous thought, but I understood it, this frozen feeling of being important, the negative focus. It’s both egotistical and withered and part of the same game, the child alone in the room, while her parents fight outside of it, the girl who thinks her thoughts can be read, that everyone knows how bad she is, and there he was in the room with her, in the dark, in the light, when no one else was around, to prove it.
From the prompt "What I don't want to write about." For some reason, it makes me think of a song. Belle and Sebastian, Fox in the Snow.
I'm posting every messy Round Robin prompt, a prompt a day until the RR ends. Unless I tell you otherwise, this is the original 12-minute prompt edited only for clarity and typos.
Image by renee.hawk.
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