Do you write

When I was younger people always asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I had no clue, and sometimes I still don’t. I am not even sure when I will be grown up since it seems there is always someone older who thinks I am still too young to be taken seriously. Since I had no idea what I wanted to be my answer changed almost daily. First like every child I would select notable jobs that I knew ‘girls did’. I wanted to be a teacher most of my elementary life since it was one of the few acceptable girl jobs I knew about and being a nurse never appealed to me. As I got older and the more people kept insisting girls could do anything a guy could do the more I thought I was supposed to want to do a ‘boy job’. I wanted then to be a scientist or a lawyer. After my short lived enthusiasm for science passed I became enamored with words. I decided I wanted to be a writer, ignoring completely my inability to spell.

I wrote stories and poems even a play. Of course I was very proud of my work so I showed it to people I knew… big mistake. See I didn’t realize at the time how much writing showed people about you. I didn’t know that my emotions, insecurities, and real opinions could be so plain in my writing. This caused several problems. When my work was read by my family they asked questions. “So is George in this story supposed to be your brother?” they wanted to know this because well George died in the story. Now once the question was asked I knew immediately what the problem was. They thought I wanted my brother to die; George was based on my brother but he still was only a character and differed from him in significant ways but they didn’t see that. All they saw was a literary representation of my brothers death. Ok so I won’t let them read it anymore. And then there were my friends. They liked me because they saw the parts of me that I showed them- the good parts. When they read my poetry they got to see the bad parts too and though they were still my friends I felt somehow violated and I had caused it.

They all said I was good, they got me published, and people asked questions. I am an extremely shy person. I don’t like questions. They published this one poem that absolutely SUCKED I am ashamed to have my name below it in black and white now. I didn’t want people to know I had written it so it horrified me when I got my church news letter and there on the announcements was my poem and a statement about how it was published and yadda yadda.

It is horrible how this sticks in my mind. One Saturday there was a knock at the door and there was Grace and her son Tony from my church they had come to congratulate me on my success. At the time I didn’t know why it traumatized me so. I didn’t particularly like or dislike them they were just there. But the fact that they took the time out of their life to come to my house and mention the poem from hell… it is forever burned on my brain.

After that I stopped writing. It only brought attention- I didn’t like attention. I did a little writing for catharsis and kept a sporadic diary, but those were under lock and key, literally. Seven years later, I had made friends with different people than I had in middle school, a completely new crowd. One of the newest friends was good ol’ Tony. I hadn’t thought of his visit in years until one night at a get together he asks “So, do you still write?” This wave of fear swept over me like he was going to know he and his mother were the last straw for my ‘writing career’. I just laughed and said “God no” as though it was a ridiculous notion. Holy Crap- I do write but if I say I write people will want to read it and I don’t want people to read it so how do you say to a person without being rude that there is no way in Dante’s Inferno that they will ever read your stuff?