Writing Your Way Out

She picked up the journal on the clearance aisle at Walmart. It was black, had dotted grids instead of lines and it was cheap. Turns out it was the best thing she’d purchase that year. It was November and things weren’t going well. I mean, she had a job and a house, and a husband and a dog…but she was miserable every day. Nothing felt right. She was on meds for anxiety and some for depression and one for ADHD. Her day began by hitting the snooze button repeatedly, it ended by sighing loudly and often using food to self soothe. She realized that she had stayed in a relationship for a long time because she had been satisfied with being chosen. Someone liked her, so why throw that away? Increasingly, they had grown apart. Everything felt forced, they argued so much. She began to wonder if this was all there was? Is this life? She had never left the county she had grown up in, and her world felt incredibly small.

So that night, she sat cross legged on her bed, and began to write. It’s weird, journaling. It’s like talking to yourself, except you don’t respond, unless its by writing the next line. And if you’re like her, you’re afraid that someone may read it and think you’re a weirdo. She hid the journal in the bottom drawer of her nightstand, under a large hardcover edition of Stephen King’s The Stand. If they were going to snoop, make ‘em work for it. Anyway, she wrote. Not paying any attention to the dots, in and out of spaces, wildly off center.

Every day (ok, almost every day) she wrote more. She wrote about her day, she wrote about what wasn’t working, she expressed her determination that there was no way out, it just couldn’t be changed. She expressed her wishes for what “could be” in the future, assuming a miracle happened and she was given permission to change.

She started meditating. Have you ever tried to meditate with ADHD? It’s…a lot. But she did it. And little by little, every day, she felt a tiny bit more of something added in there with the hopelessness. Actual hope? Possibility? Desire?

She started writing about the past. It’s such a cliché, to talk about “fixing your inner child” and all that, but when she started writing, that’s what happened. A lot of writing in all caps on THOSE pages. A lot of realizations that she had been left to deal with some things that were not hers to have to handle. She imagined herself a little girl with someone piling bags, boxes, trinkets, some old stuff from the basement, heavy packages, all in her open child sized hands. She didn’t break under the pressure but something in her was bent, possibly forever. Each one of those pieces got glued back together a little bit, on those pages.

She tried to catch these feelings, these doubts that rose up, and feel them, examine them, and set them free like a spider that got into her house. But they were wriggly and they brought friends

She cried a lot. Hugging a pillow close, to dampen the sound. So many emotions stuck inside, trying to find their way out. Have you ever seen flocks of bats leave a cave at dusk? Imagine each bat having an emotion pinned to its wing. There was one for “fear”, one for “unworthiness”, several for “guilt”. Those bats of survival emotions came flooding out nightly.

There were days that she couldn’t wait to go upstairs, stretching her arms at 7p, “oh wow, really tired, huh, weird I know…” and sitting again with the journal. She envisioned her brain with a zipper on it, and just holding the book under her head to catch the fallout. She wished it were that easy.

The smog in her head was clearing now. Where before she couldn’t see any way out, she began to notice steps, faint ones, leading away. Whether they would lead to a cave of bestial horror, or something wonderful ,she couldn’t tell yet. And it was beginning not to matter. Like, how bad was the horror? Would she have a sword?

It was obvious to her that her life needed changing. Painful conversations needed to be had. Overused phrases from tv & movies like “it’s not you, honestly, it’s all me” were said with no irony. Hurting someone else while trying to improve yourself really sucks. But staying in a place where neither of you are happy may be worse. When you’ve spent your life being the rescuer, the fixer, well…you eventually come to the conclusion that it’s not your job anymore. It was never your job. Imagine a world where you didn’t have to repair someone to make them love you? What would that world feel like? Can you even imagine it?

She received a bonus check from her job, unexpectedly. It went into a new bank account, all her own. She didn’t yet know where she would even go, but the money would help.

Sometimes she couldn’t wait until she got home, and would type something up at work and staple the page into the journal later. Sometimes she would be reading a book and make notes in the journal. For especially important sentences she would break out the highlighter.

She found some apartments online, and quietly made appointments to look at them. The first was old, worn out, dark. Not an improvement. Then she viewed one that was bright, freshly painted, with a bathtub and built in bookshelves. She asked what needed to happen next, and was told that she was actually the first to view it, so if she wanted it, she could put down a deposit to hold it. She had the money, and before she knew it, it was hers. She took a photo of the key. She had done it.

Just like that.

Splitting your life up is messy. It’s uncomfortable, and it hurts and confuses people. None of those are reasons to not to do it anyway. Instead of feeling judgement from others, what she actually received was encouragement. Private messages from people (some who always seemed so stable and put together) saying “hey, I’m proud of you. I need to do this too, but I don’t know how. Tell me how you did it”

The idea of giving anyone advice when she didn’t know what she was doing was weird. Did the caterpillar have an idea how to turn into a butterfly, or did it just happen? She was feeling better but there were still setbacks. Her default setting was insecure, for so very long.

She know that those pathways in her brain were built a long time ago, highways constructed out of trauma and guilt and shame. So even though she built a new, strong modern overpass, she can still look over to that deteriorating road and feel the bumps. She knew where each pothole is located and when to swerve.

She keeps trying to swerve on the new overpass. What would she say to people, if they saw her steer around some object that is clearly NOT THERE? And to sheepishly try to explain , um, well, it WAS.

Stop swerving, chick, she’d remind herself. It’s gonna be ok. Look how far you’ve come.

She started to paint again. To write for fun. To draw and create and feel. She entered contests online and lost, repeatedly. She posted the artwork to Instagram to hold herself accountable. “Show the world and stop hiding” was the new motto. She felt like it was important to tell her story to other people. That everyone should know that it’s possible to change, even when all you can see is the smog around you.

She didn’t know that if she took steps, there would be anyone there to catch her, but there was. And more importantly, she found that she could actually land on two feet.

Weekends were spent painting at the kitchen table, headphones on, in the flow. More challenges entered, more rejections. She kept going.

One morning, her life changed again. She had won a contest. One that she almost hadn’t entered. (It was still back there, that old way of thinking, telling her “it’s ok if you don’t, you’re not going to win anyway”)

$20,000. She had never had that much money in her life. There was a long span of time where she sat, eyes wide, staring at her phone. “Was this…wait, what?” It looked legitimate. She thought of all the bills, the debt that hung over her still, and realized this wasn’t just money, it was freedom. Someone gave her the gift of freedom, after she had tried so hard to give it to herself. The gratitude was immense.

Sometimes you can start with a blank book and end up with a fortune. You just have to believe it’s possible.