Writing to Deal with Problems

Ralph Waldo Emerson said that the more you travel, the more it becomes apparent you can’t escape yourself. I think when I was growing up, I really wanted to escape where I was, my family of origin and their craziness. Then because the insanity was with me in my mind, I walked right into more it when I established my own family. It took a lot of work on dealing with my inner demons to finally escape so that when I traveled, I did not take the twisted monsters of my family with me.

For the most part, I did most of the inner self work through writing. There was the journal writing, but there was other kinds of writing such as novels, poetry and short stories. I tried therapy at different places and with the exception of one hypnotherapist, I never found as much relief and self knowledge as I found in writing.

I always found words to be miracles in that one could put legitimacy to what was being felt and experienced especially when told repeatedly that it was not happening. It was. The words and sentences were the proof. I gathered all of the facts and put them down and I saw how what I was told was unreal was real. Writing saved my life. Other writers with similar backgrounds have said the same.

It isn’t just people like me with dysfunctional families but members of populations who have lived with the knowledge they are told they are not as good as the main population or that what they are feeling is not right or they should discount their own feelings of worth. I think that is why certain groups of people suddenly burst forth with great writers who express a counter opinion of worth from the mainstream or writers who write in secret in an oppressive government who tells them they are happy and free when they know they are not. Examples are the gay and lesbian populations of many countries including the United States. Women in many countries around the world write in journals . In China, women evolved their own special language so men would not read what they were writing about.

I am not writing here that expressing oneself on paper or on the computer screen is a cure all for depression or for other mental problems because it is not. It certainly did not lift Ernest Hemingway out of his depression. I remember where I was, walking the streets of Imperial Beach in California, when I heard on my small Japanese transistor radio when it was announced that he had died from a self-inflicted gunshot. Many writers could not write themselves out of their mental problems. I just know it helped me stay ahead of mine. Sometimes even writing can’t help. Still, it helps tremendously.

When I moved here to Portland, I did not take my problems with me or for the most part. Maybe I will find out next week I did. Who knows? If I did, I will write about it. What I do know is that I will have a new batch of them here. I will be starting my classes soon and have to deal with the impossible to ignore rejected manuscripts all writers get and the Battle of the Bulge that I have fought all of my life and the battles yet to manifest on the horizon.