READING ALOUD - CONTINUED

This is for Diane who commented that she couldn't wait ...

From Reading Aloud posted on February 25, 2010 - I've only cut and pasted the last part of the post.

He started with the prompt, what I don’t remember is . . .

When I wrote what I don’t remember in my journal, I held on to the pen so tight that my fingers started to cramp. Oh God, please don’t take me there. A memory from my troubled family home had surfaced. I fought it. I wrote out what I don’t remember is . . . at least five times.

For the last five years, I’d been writing morning pages (The Artist Way by Julia Cameron) and I’d become accustomed to going where the pen took me. I knew if I didn’t go with “flow” that I’d experience writer’s block. So I wrote the dreaded memory.I’d listened to the others read their writing. Most of it contained phrases like what I don’t remember is what I went upstairs for …”

“Nancy,” Ed said. “Would you like to read your piece?”

My voice shook. “I didn’t what to write what I wrote because I knew that I’d have to read it. But I went where the pen took me.”

This is the piece that I wrote on October 25, 2001. I've changed a few words but have left it in its raw state.

WRITING PRACTICE – ED WILDMAN – OCTOBER 25, 2001

What I don’t remember is any love or affection in my family and I don’t know if love ever resided in our home. The violence started when my mother became pregnant with me. My mother told my father that she wanted an abortion, as life had become difficult with two small children and living in a single bedroom upstairs in my grandmother’s house. She couldn’t cope with the idea of another child.

My father flew into a rage and made his first accusation. “THIS BABY ISN’T MINE,” he said.

My mother’s life and mine were doomed. As luck would have it, my mother suffered through three days of labour with a breech birth. My blue eyes condemned me.

“She can’t be mine, my father said. “Those blue eyes don’t come from me.”

The battle lines were drawn.

My parents fighting in the kitchen created my earliest memories. My father is yelling at my mother.

“You and damn bastard child,” he said.

I sit alone in my highchair watching in despair. What kind of insanity is this? Unloved, unwanted cursed with blue eyes. I am the reason my father became a drunk.

My father continues yelling. “You whore. You’re nothing but a whore.

I am my father’s excuse to abuse my mother.

________________________

What I remember is my wedding day. The fight the night before had exhausted me. I definitely couldn’t wait to leave my parent’s home. After my mother’s vicious attack, I lay on the floor crying for six hours. I never cried and they wanted to take me to the hospital but I refused.

I remember that the sun shone across the windowpane when I looked up at the thermometer it registered 80 degrees. It felt like a scene from a movie. It seemed like somebody else had taken my place and went through the motions. I observed and smiled.

The happiest day of my life—ruined by my mother’s temper tantrum. My parents’ gifts to me never included happiness.

It felt surreal standing on the lawn of the house that held many secrets. My father had been drinking, what a surprise. They loved the drama.

I sat in a daze in the back of the car that took me to the church. The shock of my mother’s attack still drained me and I continued to observe. I stood at the altar beside my husband to be and watched as a part of me felt locked away. I knew the priest spoke but I couldn’t make out the words.

My husband nudged me and I arrived at a particular scene but exactly where? To this day, my husband kids me that the priest had to ask me twice before I said I do. I never explained that fear and anxiety held me prisoner and I’d left.

Ed just said one more minute to write. Why is this stuff showing up a writing course when I have to read it aloud?

I married on my birthday yet nobody in my family wished me happy birthday but my new husband.

_____________________________


Later, Ed would say, "When Nancy read her writing, she freed the rest of the writers to write."

I've acquired gems from my journal and my writing practice.

Why not try it?