My Body is Not a Road

Okay so super busy today. Preparing for my parents who are on their way back from Florida, and stopping here for the night. Hopefully I’ll be able to get my three pages in tomorrow, too. Might be another Evening Edition. 

I read a version of my story – How To Stay Sober as a Twenty-Five Year Old Female Living in NYC at a Writers Group this week, and they loved it. I cleaned it up a bunch, and I’ll post it’s current state below. I was so nervous to read it, to get feedback, some of the participants are published authors, one a publisher herself – all small beans stuff, but it still felt great to have positive feedback from folks who are in the space. 

I wrote a follow up, which is what I posted yesterday, I think where I’m struggling is how I take what really happened and turn it into something engaging, how to I move from truth to fiction, and how far do I want to stray? At what point do I slip from memoir to creative non-fiction to full-blown fiction?  

I feel more confident than I have in many years about my writing, and about my ability to stick to something. I did one of those therapy-GPT sessions recently and realized how much my parents approval affects whether or not I stick to something. For example, I’ve shared my writing with them before, but that activity never got as much as attention as my dating life. I’ve shared aspirations to complete a triathlon, marathon, etc. They’re not athletic people, though, so they look at me see some version of themselves and assume that I can’t do it either, or shouldn’t do it. Now they don’t outright say “You can’t do that and you shouldn’t try” it’s more covert than that. Maybe they don’t realize they’re doing it themselves, but the sly “Maybe you can try a race that’s not so serious?” or “That’s a very nice story.” with no follow up, makes it clear. 

Why does it seem that if they aren’t stoked about, I shouldn’t continue with it? Why does their affection, interest, or admiration contribute so much to the gas gauge? It shouldn’t, and I’m working on it. Hence, this project. 

They say to write what you know, and I always do. My writing is born out of my life experience directly, I admire those who can create worlds all their own, but my writing is based in emotional truth and right now the only way I know to convey that is telling it as it was, while taking some creative liberties to make myself look good make the story more engaging. In visiting these inspiring, but darker, chapters of my life, I’ve been faced with a hefty emotional fare. I try to write about that, too, but it’s something different. 

Here’s some of what came out yesterday: 

My Body Is Not a Road

My body isn’t a road for you to travel.

I am not a freeway, some thoroughfare.

I am the destination.

My body is not your vacation.

My body is a temple,

the sacred space I live.

God, you should be so lucky 

I ever let you in.

But no—you stand on pedestals and ride high horses,

and it’s awful easy to look down from there, isn’t it?

It’s much scarier to admit

that you can’t control it.

That you can’t control this.

You cannot control me.

Your answer to that?

Erase me from memory.

I’m not worth it.

I don’t exist.

I was a manipulator, an abuser.

I lied, I cheated—

all of which are untrue,

all of which, conveniently,

 are reflections of you.

Years have passed.

You’ve gone silent.

But the wounds?

They’re still in me—

and I promise they’re in someone else, too.

I take accountability for the truth you refused, 

I still throw out the fruit you bruised,

rotting years later.

I’ll write more later if I can, but my daughter is screaming and I am out of energy for now.