Why I could write

Yesterday Pere asked me what made me finally decide to write my book. I have been thinking of it and developing it in my head for at least eight years.

I decided I could write when I stopped talking to my mother and went to therapy.

See, I've wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember thinking about things like that. Actually, most of the time I was a storyteller rather than a writer. It is hard to write when you are riding your bicycle or wandering through the woods. I made up stories all the time, for far longer than most people do.

I wanted to be Kurt Vonnegut or Jack Kerouac. I even smoked unfiltered Pall Malls. But before that I was a little girl with a prodigious vocabulary who wanted to be a writer. And I would read my stories to my ever loving (yeah, right) mother. I still remember what she said because she sliced each letter of each word was into my heart with a razor. I still have the scars.

I know it wont sound like much. But I thought my mom loved me and I thought she was right. So when she read one of my little handwritten stories and she said "You should learn to type so you have something to fall back on when this writing thing doesn't work out." I was devastated.

Think about that. Who says that to a young person? And she wasn't joking. She wasn't being playful. She took my childhood dream and she told me that it wasn't going to work out. And not only that, she told me that I should set my sights lower, like being a secretary.

Some of you who read this might not be parents, but you might have interacted with children. If young child said they wanted to be an artist and showed you their drawing, would you just say "Oh! What a lovely drawing!" Any normal person could at least muster fake support.

If the drawing really was quite nice for the child's age you might say something more specific like, "Wow! That is a very realistic looking cat. My, my, you are going to be artist someday." If the picture was just some terrible scribbling you are still obliged to say, "Very nice!"

Parents are supposed to be biased towards their children. Parents are supposed to think their children are pretty darn great and possibly the best child ever. Some parents don't, of course. But does the child ever think it is the parent who is wrong? No. Children who are burdened with a parent who doesn't see them as extra special or worse, doesn't even love them end up thinking that they are nothing special and not lovable.

None of the praise I got at school, from friends, and from strangers who read my writing ever kissed away the hurt my mother caused me by telling me that I wasn't good enough and that I needed to set my sights much MUCH lower.

I had so many other scars that said I was not pretty, too skinny, and later too fat, that I was a mean horrible person, that I was a fool, that I was laughable, forgettable, and unlovable. And every time I went to her with my heart in my hand and asked 'Am I good enough now, Mom?" and she say "Of course not" those old wounds would reopen and bleed.

Then, when my own daughter was eight and a half, I realized that no mother, no normal mother would tell their child, who dreamed of being a writer, that their childish storytelling was so bad that they should give up now and set their sights on being a secretary.

I had to stop taking my heart to my mother and allowing her to stomp on it to be able to write. I had to see what a crazy f'ed up bitch she is to write.

It is a daily struggle to write. All the scars are still there and I can't tell you if they will ever go away. But, by not subjecting myself to her special brand of evil, I am at least giving myself a chance to heal.

Some days I am happy with my writing. Some days I reread what I wrote and I can just hear my mother's voice in my head laughing at me and telling me I am a fool to even try this.

But mostly I want to try. I don't want to be an old woman and look back on my life and say "I didn't even try to fulfill my life long dream because my mother told me I wasn't good enough." She doesn't get to have that. I am not listening to her anymore.