Well, I’m Standing Here, Aren’t I?
I do a lot of writing about my past, as nonfiction writers often do, and I thought the fact that I’d lived to tell the tale was enough. That the fact of my having arrived somewhere with the intent of writing about things that once hurt but no longer hurt in the same way was enough. But I don’t exactly think that’s true.
For one thing, it allows me to attribute to luck the fact that I’m standing here. It creates a kind of alchemical aura around me that would let readers think that I’m a special person, the mythic artist, who made it. It also allows me to buy into the idea of the suffering creative, to purchase access to cultural cache, even though the myth (in my case and, I suspect, in many others) doesn’t hold up in the light. In any case, it’s dishonest of me to let my story end at the moments of its worst tension without admitting the distance between “there” (loosely defined) and here.
The truth is, I’m able to make art about my past because I am comfortable, and because I have healed. I am enjoying a cup of coffee at the writing desk on my balcony, whose rent I can mostly afford. There are people supporting me every step of the way. I have a great relationship with my mom, who brings me groceries I didn’t ask for on a frustratingly regular basis. I’ve got friends who never miss an opportunity to tell me how much potential there is in me. I’ve got a job where I took an actual sick day yesterday, and only mildly panicked about it.
The reason that I’m able to go and revisit the parts of my life that’ve met with struggle are because I now live in relative ease. I do not constantly live with the churn of things being difficult — although I’m sensitive to the varieties of human misery we visit on each other. But I see them on the news, and not out my back door. Don’t get me started on how much incredible art we lose to poverty, war, and unchecked capitalism.
I think it’s worth mentioning how I got here. There was a therapist, of course, although I didn’t stay with her long and her office smelled like Jolly Ranchers. There was travel, a lot of it, something that began as an escape but became a way of being and moving through the world. There was mostly-stable work which I could mostly tolerate. I have autonomy and a regular paycheck — a combination denied to many would-be artists. I spent a lot of time in church in those early years, needing the structure and routine. Though I don’t darken the doorstep as often anymore, my sense of faith has gotten stronger. I’m well aware that I am in the hands of a chaotic universe, and that there is so much that’s out of my control. That faith has shifted in language and practice, but it’s as strong as ever. There’s been a lot of reading and writing. The writing itself is healing — that’s why so many of us start doing it. The chance to reframe my own story is a powerful opportunity, and I don’t take for granted the opportunity to decide how to talk about my own coming up. Having the chance to choose who to include, who to leave out, and how to frame my own story is more powerful than I gave it credit for being. Seeing myself on the page as an actor, as a person making choices rather than just reacting all the time, allowed me to find that agency in my own life.
It isn’t lost on me that I’m able to write now not just because “time heals all wounds”, but because my life is markedly different than when I was experiencing many of the things I’m now writing about. The fact of the matter is that I am able to write about my life, and spend the time and resources getting better at being a writer, because my life has gotten better. Because I am taken care of. I am no longer caught up in the rat race of survival, and that’s given me space to process. I thought it was obvious — that it should be obvious — but it isn’t. As it turns out, artists don’t have to suffer — they have to stop suffering. And it’s unfair of me, and anybody else, to present our work otherwise.
