I know that I abandoned you for a time.
I’m not sure why. I could use the usual excuses. I was busy with work. I was busy with family. I was busy with household chores. Someone once told me those were good excuses, but excuses nevertheless.
It’s funny to look back now and realize that one of my most productive periods with you was during the busiest time of my life. How did I find the time? If you want something done, they say, ask a busy person.
Now, it seems I have time to spare, time that drags on, hours and days and weeks, counting the time until I can be busy and fill my calendar again. So I’ve returned to you. Because you’ve always been there in good times and bad, in difficult moments, and in cherished ones, to bring me solace, to help me understand, to express what I cannot otherwise articulate.
When I was a child, I found my voice through you. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that I needed you as much as I needed food and water. Uprooted and moved from Birmingham to Dallas to Kansas City to Atlanta to San Rafael, back to Birmingham, to La Jolla to Houston, to Palos Verdes and back to San Diego (and I have lost track even now of some of the stops), I found solace in my Dear Diary, my steadfast companion. I wanted normalcy and stability and you heard me, loud and clear, in words I screamed out to the pages within.
While separated by some of these moves, my best friend and I kept our friendship intact by creating magazines for each other. I looked forward to receiving hers in the mail, and even more so, to writing and creating one for her. They extended a necessary lifeline in a chaotic storm.
Through junior high heartbreaks and mean girls and friendships and crushes, I confided in you. Teachers along the way encouraged and praised, so I began to write stories, but just for me. In high school, I joined the newspaper and for the first time tested the experience of writing for my peers’ eyes to read. It was the most frightening chasm to cross – allowing others to view my words, letting them stand bare on a page for all to judge and critique, but, perhaps, also to enjoy and empathize. Either way, I couldn’t quit you. To write was as natural as breathing by then.
Though there were essays upon essays about English literature in college, I still found time for you, logging pages about the highs and lows, the adventures, the sadness, the heady moments of joy. I still wrote stories, though for no one’s eyes but my own.
Then, a long period of time went by without you. I don’t know how it happened. I married. I had children. I had a thriving business. I was happy. You seemed unnecessary or at least, for a time, unimportant. Days were filled with children’s laughter and crying, work deadlines, and so many activities, and most nights consisted of falling into bed, exhausted, barely able to read a few pages in a book, much less put my own words onto a page.
And then I suddenly needed you – desperately – but I didn’t know it.
Traveling often for work, I suddenly became terrified of flying. Anxiety rocked me weeks before a trip. Terror filled me the night before, so I could not sleep. I would sit on a flight, head leaning against the window on take-off, hiding my face so no one could see my discomfort and tears. Even while on land or in a car, the sight of a plane overhead could elicit panic. It was exhausting and painful both physically and mentally and I didn’t know what to do. The lack of control over my phobia – especially for an admitted control freak – was overwhelming at times.
A family member convinced me to see a hypnotherapist. I was skeptical, of course. But I went. It was entirely different from what I’d expected. The first half hour was an ordinary therapy discussion, followed by a half hour of actual hypnosis. During the first half hour, the therapist asked about my life, my job, and more importantly this:
What have you not done in your life that you’ve always wanted to do?
I had to think long and hard. I acknowledged that I’d always thought I’d be a writer. And that I’d write novels. And clearly, I hadn’t done that.
Why haven’t you done that?
I don’t know.
Are you writing now?
No, not really. (Truth was, not at all, except for work)
And why not?
Because, I explained, I have two young kids, and I’m juggling my family with my business, and my kids’ activities, and I write for work and that takes so much out of me, and oh, I teach aerobics three times a week on top of that, and I just can’t fit anything else into my schedule.
Those are all good excuses. But excuses nevertheless.
After he allowed me to ponder this, he told me that when he put me under hypnosis, he wanted to give me a suggestion to begin writing again. To come back to you. I didn’t understand, but I said that was fine. I didn’t believe him. Even after he successfully hypnotized me, even after I came out of his office feeling as though I’d had the best sleep of my life, I didn’t understand how this could have anything to do with overcoming my fear of flying.
I never went back to hypnotherapy, but over the next three months, something startling happened. I returned to you. I signed up for creative writing extension classes at my alma mater. I wrote short stories – one of which was published. I wrote a novel (still unpublished, but completed, nevertheless). I journaled. I blogged. And something even more amazing happened over the next year – my fear of flying dissipated.
It may be dramatic to say that, at times, you saved my life, but you’ve certainly helped in times of crisis, in times of despair and confusion. And so, I have returned to you.
The words may not be perfect. They may be awkwardly strung together and not form the most cohesive and beautiful sentences. But they are here on the page. Those writing muscles are rusty and soft and altogether underutilized, but they are still here.
Thank you for coming back to me now, in this scary and anxious time, when it’s so hard to make sense of what’s happening in this world. Thank you for, once again, being my companion in fear, anger, sadness, joy, and belief. It’s true, I abandoned you. Yet you have never once abandoned me.