It’s been about a year since I started letting the world read my daily journals or significant parts of them. I began writing them forty-five years ago, or more, then one day, when I was still too weak to sit up in bed, I thought, “I really should let people know I”m alive,” and started posting extensive excerpts from my journal on Facebook.
It’s been a fascinating process. The response has been truly overwhelming. Having kept all this hidden for so long, I had no idea I could get anyone to read me unless I wrote about big things like dinosaurs and spaceships, like some of my idols.
Earlier today, the question arose about what the women in my life thought of my writing. The answer is pretty simple: they didn’t know anything about it. Some knew I was doing it, but since I said it was my journal, and none of them knew how to find things on my computer, none were ever read.
I’d only ever planned for there to be one woman in my life. Instead, there were like twelve. I think part of the problem was that I was never very honest with them, not nearly as honest as I am with the people who read my blogs. I think that was a vital mistake. Even if being more honest wouldn’t have kept any of them in my life, it was still the moral thing to do.
I always tried to project that I was a counter to whatever challenges were in their life. No matter how storm-ravaged their existence, I was indomitable and immutable, and I could form an impenetrable barrier between them and whatever was hurting them. That’s a lie, of course. I could keep it up for a while, but not forever, and let’s be honest, once the storm passed, it made me obsolete. Maybe, if I’d shown them the things I write in the hours when the sun struggles over the horizon, it would have opened up a new era of understanding. Maybe I would have proved more valuable in the long run.
There was one woman; her name means “honey” in an ancient tongue. She was the only woman I ever courted who knew me from work. Not from Missco or the ABoyd Company, but from my real work, in this instance, theater and painting. We played chess and drank coffee and discussed many things. I don’t know that giving her access to my journals would have changed the trajectory of our lives, but I would have deeply valued her perspective on what I wrote. I’m really a bit angry with myself, now that I think of it.
She had the voice of an angel. Her hands were tender, and her eyes shown brighter than the moon, but I missed having such a brilliant critic and soundboard available before the ink dried on my copy. We were so horribly star-crossed, I don’t think anything could have made us end up together, but imagine what a difference learning that other people wanted to read my words would have made if I had trusted her to read them.
There’s another woman. I write about her often. She had a gigantic smile and bushels of blonde hair, and the world would have thought she was the most cheerful person in it while she was flaying the skin from her own bones in secret and doing whatever she could to numb the pain from it.
That was almost forty years ago, but even now, I feel genuine pangs of guilt for not clearing a path out of the tangled morass of rose thorns she surrounded herself in. Saving her wasn’t my job, but it was the only thing I wanted to do, and it’s still the one thing I wish I had accomplished that I didn’t. People tell me all the time that this wasn’t my responsibility and what happened to her wasn’t my fault, but no, that’s a scar that I’ll carry on my back until the day they close my eyes for good.
My plan was to show her that I was stronger than anything that happened to her, stronger than anything she might do to herself, and all she had to do was be calm and let me pull her out of the cutting weeds that grew around her. That failed. It failed utterly.
Maybe, if I’d shown her my words, maybe if I’d let her see that I saw and felt the same darkness, the same cold and isolation that she felt, that maybe we could have made a connection there, and maybe somehow knowing she wasn’t alone in what she was feeling might have made her hold on to herself long enough to climb out of the hole she was in.
I’m aware that I’m describing a scenario where I might have found a way to succeed at something I failed at, and not a scenario where someone from my past would have wanted to stick around and be someone in my present, but it’s really hard to twist my mind to thoughts of what I need. I don’t think that’s going to change. At least, in this one instance, the world would have been just a little better if I’d won this battle I fought for somebody other than myself.
Although I’ve had all these other people playing that role in my life, there’s just the one woman I ever really loved. We met as children, young enough that we got to see each other’s body change and grow tall.
Her hands were slender and strong. Her eyes were the deepest brown, like staring into your coffee and seeing the world reflected in it. She took my arm many times and escorted me whenever there was a fine thing I had to attend, but I never once tried to express to her how special she was to me. Asking her might mean she’d reject me, and as long as I didn’t ask, I could always tell myself, “It might have.” Fifty years later, “it might have” means nothing to anyone but me.
The funny thing is, she studied literature. While it’s not what she ended up doing for a living, it’s something that was dear to her and important to her. Imagine what might have happened if I had said, “Hi, these are my words. I’d really like to know what you think of them.” Imagine the impact of arranging a meeting between the thing I loved the most and the girl I loved the most. It was impossible, of course. I wasn’t willing to show my words to those who didn’t matter; showing them to someone who did matter would have been such a huge risk. I would have fainted from the anticipation.
Some of my former dance partners read my words here. Sometimes they ask questions and clarifications of a point. I haven’t yet gotten into trouble for revealing something I shouldn’t have. I try to be sensitive. I have been scolded for not saying this or that twenty years ago. That’s to be expected. I do choose my words differently, knowing someone might read them. That’s also to be expected, but I try to retain the candor I had when I was writing for myself.
If I could tell a younger version of me something, I’d tell him to be honest. Trust that people want to see the truth. You can’t be strong enough to heal the world. Its enemies are stronger than your arms, no matter how strong you make them. You hide this precious thing every day, thinking the world has no interest in it. You’re wrong; your words are what the world made you for.
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