In the aftermath of the Damn Bad Thing, I walked up to a group of disaster volunteers. They stood in a semi-circle in what was left of a neighbor's yard. One woman held an open notebook, a filthy, waterlogged composition book, and she read a poem aloud to the others. I recognized it.
“That's mine.” I reached out to take my private thoughts, and the volunteer's hands- the very helping hands that I had been so grateful for minutes before- pulled my own words away from me, with a sharp “I'm not finished with it.” “It's mine and it's private,” I snarled as I snatched the pages, my pages, from her hands. “I was just sharing it.” She gestured to the women taking part in a survivor's poetry reading, sans the survivor's permission. “We're using our own free time to help people like you. It was out in public, after all. ” I looked around. They were mad at me. I wanted to say “It was only in public because my house was literally turned inside out and ripped apart, you bitches. You don't get to read someone's damned diary just because you found it lying in the road after a tornado.” I said none of that. I walked away. And after dark, when the volunteers had all gone to their nice, safe, completely intact homes and lives, I broke curfew and brought my journal back to the torn up, temporarily banned, land that belonged to who I used to be. I also brought a lighter. On the barren ground that had once been my crawlspace and now was All That Was Left of Home, I ripped every sheet out of that journal. I burned each page and then I stomped the ashes into the wound that my home, my haven, had become. To make doubly sure the fire was out, I watered the ground with my tears. Safety first, you know. And I prayed. I prayed that every word I had ever written, every secret agony I transformed into letters and sentences in an attempt to heal, had been destroyed by the wind. But, I already knew they all hadn't. I had just burned the proof. My secrets had been scattered across my neighborhood, and further, by that one terrible wind. My privacy, my words, could be in the hands of strangers. I knew they had been. I had written so many things just because I didn't want to tell someone. And now it was all in the hands of everyone. Mister Twister was a shitty PR man. It was over three years before I could begin to write again, and longer before I could make words without panic attacks. It was a process, and it was hard, and I still have to do the work in my own healing, a decade later. I'm not saying that those particular “helpers,” were the sole cause of my PTSD but those women certainly played a part in that aspect of my trauma. I wrote a book, but I couldn't journal. I knew, from experience, how quickly my private thoughts could be publicized. You can't be honest when you are always writing for a potential audience of strangers who are invading your privacy. And that sucked because words are how I figure out what I think about things. It keeps me honest. It's how I work. It's who I am. A co-worker who didn't even like me much, accidentally introduced me to a solution. Rocketbook. An erasable notebook. I can write whatever the hell I please. With a bit of water, I can just wipe it away. And if a tornado invades my life again, generally rain comes along with it. My words are safe, again, for the first time in way too long. And if my words happen to be worth sharing, I can easily scan it in their app, shoot it to the Cloud of my choice, and save my thoughts for those I choose to share them with. This little notebook, that turned out to be a healing tool, gave this tornado survivor a choice, again. A sense of safety. A bit of freedom. Maybe you are a little like me. Maybe you need your words to belong to only you. Maybe you need them to disappear once they've served their purpose. If so, check out this out: Rocketbook | Best Smart Notebook | Cloud Notebook | Reusable Notebook (getrocketbook.com) This notebook might work in your life, as well as it has in My Life, the Sequel. If not, I pray you find what works for you. You deserve that. You really, truly, deserve that. Don't stop until you find it. Love, Me
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AuthorI am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with laughter, good intentions, and the grace of God. Archives
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