Writing Saves Me

I sat with the keyboard all day.  My fingers tried to make sense out of Minneapolis and Portland and ICE agents making up the rules as they went along.

I finished three different posts, intending to make my initial stab at publishing on Substack .  I lurk there every day.  I began to comment last month; I am tickled when the algorithm tells me that someone liked what I wrote.  I thought that the confluence of the murders of Renee Good and Christina-Taylor Green would be an easy segue into the forum.  

People who didn't know my story could hear it from me, first hand, if they clicked through from my comment to my post.  I thought that the similarities and the differences might make a difference for someone.  I thought I had something worthy to share.

I liked the first one I finished.  It had my voice and CTG's voice and the voices of all of us who are still reeling from January 8th.

I left it on the computer and ran some errands and left a stone on the memorial outside the Safeway where it all happened.  I came home to televised images of people leaving flowers in the snow by the tree where it all ended for Renee Good.  I held back my tears, reread the post, and watched, stupefied, as the interwebs gathered it up and lost it forever.

I tried to post it and notify those who follow me (all six of them) and Substack ate it.

I groaned.  I laughed.  I sighed.  I railed against the universe.  I sat down to write it again.

This one was tighter, less emotional, more concrete.  I didn't like it as much, so I left it alone while I made dinner.  I changed a few sentences, added a quote or two, and, once again, watched it disappear.

My aggravation was obvious to TBG.  As always, he tried to fix it.  There was no fix.  The post went from preview to nowhere.  He suggested I try again.  Agreeing that the site would not win this battle, my fingers flew over the keyboard.  The result was drier, less reflective, more outrage than anguish.  

I wasn't thrilled, but I didn't hate it.  Besides, third times the charm, right?  

Obviously not, because that one was lost, too.  It seemed that my attempt to join the Substack community was doomed from the outset.  I'm not looking to get paid for my writing.  I was looking for a wider, perhaps more diverse, audience.  Perhaps it's not meant to be.

In the end, it's become a funny story: Ashleigh Burroughs vs The Internet.  I can't let it aggravate me; there's no more room inside for that.  Instead, I'm taking it as the world intervening in my recovery. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote all day, and when I stopped writing I realized that my head wasn't pounding quite as hard.

My fingers let the anguish out, one tap at a time.  I was forced to think about and examine events and thoughts which were crazy-making and turn them into intelligible verbiage.  In doing so, I found that I had soothed my soul.

I'm still raw, just not as raw.

I'm still furious, but without the white hot anger that fueled my first attempt.

I'm terrified and sorrowful and wondering about the next steps.  But I am also reminded that I have an outlet, right here at my desk.  When all of that becomes too much, my fingers seem to pave the road to salvation.  I didn't need an Ativan.  I just needed to write.

Thank you, denizens, for being here to read it all.