I'm almost not ready

Morning darklings,

On an episode of Girls, someone reads the main character Hannah’s diary. Well, she corrects them and tells them it’s a journal she’s keeping records for her memoir. It’s scathing, what she’s written. That’s not to say it isn’t true. But it’s one of those things she would have surely workshopped before she released it to the world.

But how much?

Would a word or two have changed? The names and relationships to her? Would she have left it all out entirely?

Initial thoughts aren’t much. Just gut reactions, immediate responses to something that was said or something that happened around us. The introspection is what makes a great memoir. Whether it’s to figure out why or have compassion for a moment or just to share it without judgement. That takes time, processing, and sitting with those moments before giving them to others.

Personal essays are more immediate. They speak to what’s happening to the author right now or so recently, it reads as now. That’s not a rule, of course. Nothing truly is in writing. Still, it’s something I’ve noticed.

So what then do I do with something that no longer belongs in a diary, is ready to be a personal essay, but may be so brutal (even if softened) it belongs in a memoir? Does one just share with friends, tell their therapist?

As I finish the research on my non-fiction book, I’m finding the tone of it. It’s clear a lot of me will be in the book, as the books that have resonated with me most have included the author a lot.

More importantly, I want it to be an approachable look at mental and physical health, at our haunted bodies, how they get that way, what that means, how to cope, what we can do with the general thisness of life. I want to discuss big issues without trauma dumping, without recounting stories so dark they live in the reader’s head rent free as nightmare fodder. In order to do that, I see a lot of my own story coming out in notes. I see me talking to you, dear darklings. I see me actually microdosing my memoir as one of the beams to hold up the story-house I’m building.

The brutal moments I want to share won’t be visceral on the page, they won’t read as horror, or suck you in my life. They aren’t meant to make you feel for me. I want them there because you, darklings, are not alone. Neither is the person beside you or beside them. Stories hovering at my fingertips are truths—hard ones—but they aren’t meant to be painful or read as devastating. And if I do it right, they won’t be.

Still, while writing about trauma, is it too much to talk about things that affect people today? That are active and raw and bleeding? Do I need to wait for the wound to become a scab or scar or become nearly invisible? Or can I just change names, change the colors of shirts, and the age I was or who was there? Do I need permission to tell my truth? As I discuss neuroscience and the physical ramifications of how my life has changed me, must I pull punches for others’ sake?

I don’t know.

It’s hard to find the line.

I will. Or I won’t, and I’ll just jump into the water without knowing how deep it goes.

question of the week

Did you have a journal or diary when you were a kid?

Until next time, harness the Little darknesses and embrace the Little things.