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Writing Through Broken Circumstances


Zox Tomana

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In the summer between my 9th and 10th grade years, I became acquainted with a young lady best known as "Allison." Not long after I discovered that Allison's parents were divorced and she was being abused by stepfather, that she had taken to cutting herself and it wasn't long after that she attempted suicide.

 

Thanks for cheering us up Zox, great start there.

 

She aborted her suicide because I sent a text asking how she was doing. That minuscule, caring human contact was enough to convince her that life still had a point.

 

Yay! Wait, what's with that look?

 

And so began a long period of time where she became dependent on me to be emotionally stable. That is, before she tried to kill herself again, not long after which her mother found her phone and our exchanged messages. She called me and let me know that she was sending Allison to a psychiatric hospital for both the attempted suicide and *compulsive lying*. I was informed I shouldn't believe a word of what Allison had to say about her stepfather, but thanks for trying to help.

 

Let's skip a few years, and over the eventual involvement of CPS (Allison gave into my and her youth pastor's urging to talk to one of the school counsellors), the stepfather's death (due to a heart attack), and the distance that grew between Allison and I after she began to stand up on her own. Sophomore year, fall. I join the Ambage--

 

Ewww!!!

 

Oh shush. I join the Ambage, and I write Allison, one of the most depressing pieces in my collection. With that piece in my mind, I send Alli a text, asking how she is. Cue huge apology texts from her and her mother, bringing me up to speed about them being finally reconciled. Her mom had found pieces of writing from Allison's childhood that had changed her mind about what her daughter was saying. Apparently she wasn't lying.

 

Now, I say that was one of the most depressing because it wasn't long after that, in the early spring semester, I write a piece called "Dear Shea" where I write a fictionalized account of my history with Allison and about my continued confusion and inability to know fully what to believe. I took a chance and published it in X:15, our first anthology, feeling a bit of catharsis from having both written it and put it out in the world to some small degree. I sent Allison a text, pointing her to X:15, asking her to read Dear Shea.

 

Skip a few years, and her mother is getting remarried, and I hear from Allison again. I don't have her permission to say what she told me about, but suffice to say...trouble.

 

Torn by my new knowledge and continued questioning over what I can believe, I end up writing a piece for my Creative Non-Fiction class that wholly left out the curtain of fiction.

 

And I feel better. Less confused about this than I have since that week in that summer so long ago. I still have doubts about what to believe, but I'm okay with that. Trouble still looms in the shadows, but writing it all out and allowing my prof to read it gave me some rest, and the ability to smile a little. I think this is why I dearly love telling stories and writing when I can: it helps me work through the clouds and fogs in my life. I became less scared of a particular someone by writing stories about a character named David. I learned to be okay with ambivalence by writing about Allison. Few people, if anyone, will read these stories, but they helped, and I think that's enough.

 

 

 

Bonus, I broke my prof's heart with my Allison essay and got a good grade for it.

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I think it goes without saying that sometimes writing, like any tool, can heal and open one's mind to understanding. Sometimes it helps to let the mind talk itself out. 

 

I hope that your friend manages to get out of the prison cell she's in. I'm murmuring a silent prayer for her just reading that. I hope you get the chance to let her speak out what she's saying and that she can find her own writing voice once again. Doing that was part of how I healed myself up after my own storms, though none are as bad as what is going on with your friend. 

 

In the end though, only she can heal the divisions and the fractures and find the strength to bear up under what's going on. I hope that you can help her with a listening ear and kind words, though, and this story will end well.  

 

Go on, and speak life. :)

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