My
way to hold onto sanity in a crazy world? Writing. My thoughts flow across the
page, whether with pen to paper or fingers flying across the keyboard. Pages fill
with my life observations, a narrow slice of my reality as I share bits and
pieces of myself to some unknown audience. Sometimes a poem evolves, sometimes
a story surfaces. Often, my thoughts and feelings, displayed over a once blank
page, leave me puzzled
.
Did
I think that?
Did
I write that?
Even
when I didn’t think I had something to say, words would scatter across the
page.
For
more than a year, the thought of writing, and sharing those words, burdened me.
I realized recently that the January 6 United States Capitol attack silenced
me, not immediately, but slowly as the stages of grief tangled up in
relationships with family and friends. What do I take away from the friend who
waved her hands skyward, praying for my soul to be saved, while she still
supports a malevolent tyrant? Did I do mental bargaining with myself that this bond,
now more than thirty years strong, could survive my disillusionment? Where do I
go with the family members who scorn science and turn away from facts? My wallowing
in anger at them changes nothing. They now reveal who and what they’ve been all
along: selfish, mean, clannish, narcissists.
Regaining
my voice has happened slowly. The first step came with a public library card.
Each visit, I select a favorite author, a totally “new-to-me” writer, and two
pieces of non-fiction. My non-fiction tethers me back to my roots of in
Psychology, enlarges my knowledge of physics or economics, and provides a new,
better understandings of how we got to this point in history. I took another
step by making certain those places I loved visiting before my years of
caregiving became destinations again, like our local museums and the zoo. During
the lockdown, my camera opened a view to the small details of life, and I
continue focusing on my need to link photography with words.
My
voice comes out now because I have to write again.
Copyright 2024 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman
