The worst thing in my diary was the fact that I had called my aunt a bitch, but I was only ten years old, and it was my private diary. Perhaps it wasn't the most elequent entry I have ever made, but she had no right to search for it OR read it, and she certainly didn't have the right to read it to my other aunts and uncles who had come over that following weekend. . . .but it happened.
It wasn't until my poetry classes as an adult at UCR that I began to understand what kind of impact that series of events had on me, and through some wonderful dialogs with a professor who hated my poems, I came to understand that my poetry was written so abstractly that it functioned as if it were written in a secret code. . . .anyone could read the poem, but it was so dry and symbolic that no one could ever know what I was actually writing about or trying to say (unless, of course, I "decoded" the poem and explained the veiled truth so cleverly hidden behind the word mask). I have gone back and reread some of this early poetry, and it actually hurts my brain to do so. But it was that class--and, more specifically, the dialogs with the professor about my coded poems--that first started to change the way I write.
So here I am, all of these years later, writing openly and honestly about the struggle for wholeness in my life and posting them publicly on my Facebook page. I may embed them within posts upon my wall (rather than post directly on Facebook), but it's still posted publicly. And I have no idea who reads them. . . .perhaps they are people who are simply curious, or people who genuinely care about me and my journey, or maybe those who don't know any better and stumble upon it to unsuspectingly find what I've written. In any case, my struggle and my journey is transparent and posted for viewing by people who don't really know me otherwise.
You've come a long way, baby!
This book that I'm reading about the twelve archetypes has been so very helpful, and the information about The Innocent has been amazingly well timed, because the ultimate journey of the Innocent is the "fall" from innocence through some kind of life experience that disillusions, disappoints, betrays, or any other number of ways causes our innocence to be lost. But at the end of that process, the goal is to return to Innocence, although in an experience, more wisened form.
So I'm just finding it wonderfully interesting how I have spiraled through the layers of healing from the stolen diary and the resultant encripted abstract poems to posting about my journey with a transparency and honesty that would most assuredly surprise anyone who had the mispleasure of having to read those early poems. And what I realized this morning is that writing and posting my blog in this transparent way is the journey of my return as the Wisened Innocent, because I am transparent in direct opposition to life experience that has taught me that people can not be trusted with my personal information. . . .and yet I post.
My therapist tells me that I continue to have night mares because I don't have a place to talk about "the stuff." So if the writing of my blog helps me to eventually be able to sleep at night, then the writing of my blog is precisely what I'm going to do, because I want to sleep and dream without being awakened in panic by the nightmares. And if other people don't understand my need to blog, then that is just part of the complexity of human nature. And, yes, it is true that there are a lot of ways that people could hurt me with the information they read about my journey (especially the people I live with and work with here at the canyon), but that is between them and their relationship with God, and (quite honestly) is simply none of my business.
My business is with God, and my blog is so much more than an ironic transformation from a top-secret-coded abstract poet into a writer blogging what's painfully real and genuine as she journeys in search of her self in such a public and transparent way. My blog is also the every day living evidence that I am not defined by my past or the traumatic events that may have changed the course and nature of my journey. So whether anyone else can ever understand my need to write and post my blog, I know that God does. . . . and this is the only truth that really and truly matters.
As for me. . . .I need to speak my truth, and so I write. . . .and I also need to trust and have faith again in people. . . .and so I post.