Write and Rewrite

I have written, and rewritten, this post several times now and I am consistently unhappy with it. I initially began writing about a friend at Dean's weekly gym class who just put her house on the market. Which turned into my anxieties of having an unknown moving date, which led into how I hope we don't move until the first week of January due to the holidays. Which led into how I want to spend Christmas with Ryan, Dean, and myself in our own house, which made me feel like I began to sound like a selfish brat that both of our families would be annoyed with. So I deleted it.  

And here I am.

I have always enjoyed writing, but never truly loved it until college. My first semester of my junior year, I took ENG 304 with Mary Fuller. Anyone who has had the pleasure of knowing, or taken a class by Mary knows how special she is.

Our entire semester with her would be finalized by a portfolio as our final exam. We could write about anything. I was instantly frustrated as I had no idea what to write about. I had just come off of the worst summer of my life where I had read 16 books, ate a pint of ice cream every night for two months, and dealt with the death of my Mom.

I hope you know where this is going.

My Dad and I had just argued a week before my first class with Mary about my Mom's clothes, and I was, to say the least, a bit on edge. I had serious anxiety going back to Miami and being around the people that I had abruptly left at the end of my sophomore year, who knew what I had been through, but whom I hadn't yet faced. I was a ball of serious emotion.

And then I instantly knew what to write about. As obvious as it seems, it took me quite a while to figure it out - my Mom. I would use this class to write a tribute to my Mom who had passed away less than four months before.

This is where I began to love writing. I would sit down at my computer in my apartment and stare blankly at the screen and think. I could sit there for a long time, just not knowing what to say, but knowing that I had something to say. And then I began to write.

And what I ended up compiling in that one semester is some of my best, most truthful, raw, emotion filled, and honest writing. I couldn't be more proud of what I wrote.

I have always been quite wary to share my writing with others, always wondering if it is any "good." On one of the last days of class with Mary, we each had to read a piece of our portfolio to the class. I chose to read a two voice poem about my Mom and mine's last conversation. My amazingly strong friend Kristin read it with me. This was the first time that I publicly acknowledged that my Mom had recently passed away. I was shaking before I read it - and to note, it makes me just as nervous to this day as I have some serious butterflies in my stomach right now. Kristin read her part of my poem with her head down and her hands on the sides of her face, and I sat with my hands squished between my legs.

And we read.

And when we finished and I looked up, my writing was finally validated. I am a good writer.

Because when I looked up, I saw tears falling from each and every one of my peers' faces. The three boys that were in our class were wiping the tears from their faces, others sniffling, some looking down, some staring at me. And I smiled.

My writing did that. My writing caused this raw emotion in people that I had only known in class for 16 weeks. My writing made people feel.

Kristin held my hand as we read it one more time.

I suppose the purpose of this story is to remind myself that I should not be afraid to write what I feel in my heart. Whether it "feels" good or not, I have something to say. I cannot guarantee a happy outcome for my readers, but I can always guarantee that I will feel good about what I have to say.

So here's to not feeling ashamed about writing what I want to write. I will always be my worst critic, and I will always have a reader that does not like what I have to say. But the only way to know if I am a good writer or not, is to actually write.

So next time, when I'm afraid to write what I'm feeling because I'm afraid that I will offend someone, or hurt someones feelings, I will remember how free I felt that day during my junior year in Mary's class. How free I felt once I finally voiced what I had been feeling for so many months.

Here's to always remembering that you have a voice and knowing how to use it. Because the only misfortune that you can cause by your writing, is by not writing at all.

-Beth