When story fails

Writing the hard thing or not writing the hard thing

There’s this thing or set of things I’ve been trying to write about for the last, I don’t know, six months or so. It’s a heavy thing or things. It involves family and trauma and skeletons in the closet. I have started thirteen different essays about this thing, a good or a bad number all depending on your point of view. I haven’t finished a single one of those essays. Some of those “essays” are really one sentence. Some of them aren’t even a sentence. They are the merest suggestion of an idea. They are ghosts whispering.

I remember reading Melissa Febos’s book, Body Work, and she talked about the idea that in memoir, we are telling a story about a different person. There is the person we are now, telling the story. And then there’s the person in the past, to whom the things happened. The person in the present who is writing the story knows what happened. They know how it all turned out. The person in the past does not.

Probably I’m not saying it right and I don’t have a copy of the book to look it up, but I think what she’s saying is that you need some distance in order to write about your life. If you’re too close to it, you can’t see anything. I’m wondering if that’s the problem. If the problem is that I am still the person in the past. I don’t know how it will all turn out. We never know how it will all turn out.

Photo by Hadija on Unsplash

Or maybe the problem is that I can’t imagine an audience for this thing or things. I mean, I can. I am the audience. And other people who have been through this sort of thing are the audience. I know I’m not the only one. I see that and it’s part of what makes me want to write it. I want to connect to that secret army of people. I want us all to feel a little less alone.

But I don’t feel brave enough to write about the people who hurt me. I hate that I even wrote that sentence. I hate that sentence. I said to my therapist once, “I don’t want to be a victim.” “But you are,” she said. I hated her a little bit in that moment. I still hate her a little bit. I hate myself, too.

I tell stories about myself all the time. I tell stories about myself in this newsletter. In my fiction. I have started, in the last couple of years, to tell my friends the stories of this thing or things. I hate that, too. I sound like an asshole. I need to talk about this thing or things and I also hate that I need to talk about it.

I’ve read some people who write about their trauma with humor and that is what I think I would like to do. I’d like to make it funny. I like writing that walks that tightrope between humor and sadness. That’s my jam. I’d like to make it funny, but it doesn’t feel funny to me now. I want to fast forward to funny.

When I try to write about this thing or things, I end up sounding like a robot. Every bit of my voice disappears. The topic annihilates me. I can only speak from a place where I no longer exist. I don’t understand what’s happening.

You read a lot of writing advice that tells you to write the hard thing. In a workshop with Elizabeth Strout, she said she couldn’t really write until she knew who she was. Until all her illusions about who she was were stripped away and she realized, I’m a white woman from Maine. That’s who I am.

Is this that hard thing for me? That stripping away? Sometimes I feel like everything else has been a lie if I can’t tell this truth. But, still, I can’t write this thing or things. Language keeps failing me. I can’t wrap the words around it. The stubborn part of me wants to keep on trying, like shoving the round peg over and over again into the square hole. Another part of me thinks I should give up. I don’t know who’s right.

Is it fear? Is the answer as simple as that? Am I afraid of how people might look at me differently? Am I afraid of destroying relationships? Am I afraid I’ll be hurt all over again?

Here is a quote from Febos’ book I did keep.

“The only predictable lesson I’ve gleaned is that when people are upset by what you’ve written about them, or even about yourself, they will respond as usual. If they tend to denial, rage, self-pity, withdrawal, or acceptance, then that is what you should expect. The act of writing a book is likely to change only one person: you.”

Am I afraid of being changed?

Memoir writers out there, all advice welcome. How do you write through the things you’re afraid to write?