On Writing and Self Doubt

As a child I wasn't praised much. Mostly we were always doing something wrong. Always getting on someone's nerves.

If we weren't having fun too loud, we were being too, you know... kid-like. Not enough adult-like. We had to be trained in so many areas, and who the fuck had time for that in the 70's and 80's, right?

I don't ever recall a time when I was told I was smart or funny. We were not allowed to think of ourselves as pretty or desire others to think us so. I was raised in a Pentecostal home. That is to say, the grandmother who put in most of the effort in raising my sister and I, was Pentecostal. My father was both religious and morally bankrupt at the same time. 

How does one grow a belief in their own talents when one is taught that the only value they have as a child, is that which does not burden the egos and rigid belief systems, of their caregivers? My grandmother lived in fear of anything inherently human, and therefore sinful, and my father lived in fear of his children surpassing his own talents and intellect. My father's ego was so fragile that you never knew what kind of reaction you might get from the most basic human interaction.

My sister and I were severely abused and neglected by my father growing up. By the time we had become wards of the state we lived in, I was already fifteen. Our social worker said we were one of the worst cases she had ever worked on, but that in no way felt validating. Because by that point I was already so far removed from my ability to process validation, that it didn't even touch me.

Nothing did. I can't even remember when I first heard the words "You are beautiful". Not that anyone should. I mean, you should hear it so much in your lifetime, that your memory of it cannot go back far enough to the first time. But because I didn't hear those things growing up, you'd think the first time would have really meant something to me. 

There are some things your DNA does not provide you with. You aren't born fully developed in your belief of your own worth. This is taught to you. Self doubt is not something that happens to you because it's just your personality or because you're genetically inferior. I remember telling my grandmother when I was twelve that I was going to write a book some day. I didn't even know I was good at writing when I told her that. The idea sprang from me reading a short story about a black kid who wanted to swim in a public pool that only white children were allowed in, and was very moved by it. It blew my mind that such amazing books existed! I wanted to be in on that. To write a story that would stir something profoundly good in people.

My grandmother was not impressed. She told me not to get my hopes up and expect that anyone will ever read it. This was coming from a woman who wrote manuscripts of western romance, and hid them under her bed. I didn't know that until she died though. She never told me she loved to write. There were several things about our lives that ran parallel, but she was gone before I ever knew them. It devastated me even more than her death. She was already in her nineties when she died and after a major stroke, hadn't been able to talk for seven years. She was a prisoner to a now useless body, and lived out her last days in a nursing home with no means of having a say about how she wanted things to be. No control over any aspect of her life. When I would visit her, she had to speak to me with her eyes and smile. The only thing she had use of was her hands, which she used to draw me closer to her, with a vice grip, so she could give me kisses, or wipe away my tears. As I write this now, I am crying.

My grandmother lived her whole life in service of everyone else. She gave everything she knew how to give, and asked nothing back in return. I was devastated to know she had a dream that she never nurtured because she didn't believe she had the right to. It woke something up in me. I needed to fulfill my dream of becoming a writer. Not just for me, but for her as well. And as I sit here thumping this out, allowing my heart to reopen to the overwhelming sorrow I felt as I watched her slowly wither away... I am reminded once more of just how important it is to stop listening to that inner voice that haunts you from your fragile childhood upbringing. And I hope she's leaning over my shoulder right now reading these words: You are beautiful.

This blog is dedicated to her memory, and to @Jupiter3Ni of the #WritingCommunity, whose suggestion inspired it.