Dear Friend, Cringing at How I Used to Be
9.10.2023
Amed, Bali
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Dear Friend,
Three hours of writing each morning this week and I’m sweeping through the early pages of the novel with a broom and a needle, cleaning it up and tying loose ends together. I cringe a lot when I’m reading what I wrote so many months ago. I write differently now, better. My mindset has drastically improved. My outlook on my relationships has dramatically evolved….dramatically, through the act of writing drama I have somehow, miraculously though not surprisingly, moved through my own drama and trauma.
When I wrote these pages earlier this year I was so charged with violent emotions, parts of me demanding my attention, whining, screaming, distracting, avoiding. I longed to tell this story. I needed to get it off my chest. I needed to get it out of me and out there into the world. I wanted to be seen and understood and over it already.
When I read them now, I feel like I’m reading an old diary from a younger woman. I am I suppose. A younger version of me wrote a story that an even younger version of me lived. Reading it, I feel so intimate and personal, vulnerable and real and yet it’s also distant, foreign and almost silly to me now. I can measure my own growth and evolution on the pages I’ve filled over time.
As I edit I try not to think about my family reading this book. A writer friend told me to pretend my parents are dead…when I’m at the writing desk. If I try to protect people or hide from them, the truth can’t come out into the page and the truth needs to be touched by the light. We can edit it thoughtfully later.
The pages I’m reviewing this week are recounting the way I met and fell in love with my second husband. It’s a scandalous escapade wrought with anxiety, insecurity, lust, and break throughs. The summer of 2015 was a turning point in my life. I decided to taste life as a bad girl. I took off my clothes, swam naked, kissed strangers, sang on stage, told lies, broke hearts, turned my back on my family, found a new one, and flew head first into a wild fantasy.
I’m chomping at the bit to write the stories of my most recently lived experiences, stories inspired by sailboats and Balinese culture, stories of my life in Asia and stories about my relationship with art as it is now, more healthy and peaceful. I am writing down these new stories and someday all the stories old and new will weave together neatly…somehow. I’ll find a way to tie what happened before to what is happening now and what I am imagining is happening in a different realm.
My playtime is writing from imagination. My discipline is writing down these old stories that feel the weight of reality. I’m excited to play with words in clever ways that lighten the burdens of reality and ground the fantasy in truth.
My heart still sings and new songs are eager to burst to life through me. I’m writing my songs into the novel as I write my way back to the stage. I’ve grown accustomed to writing pages and pages of fiction everyday that now writing a simple song seems challenging again. I remember when I began this novel project that it was easier to write a song than a long format story. The tables have turned.
Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde
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