hi.
i’ve had this substack account for a while, but i’ve been really hesitant to actually post on it. i don’t know what is special about today but here we go:
my hands are shaking a little bit. i write so much, but it’s for me, or for my wonderful creative writing professor who has learned to accept my in-class writing submissions about my Deeply Personal Familial Trauma, or for my journalism class, where everything i write is so structured and planned out.
i love that kind of writing, and it’s what i’m used to, but how often am i able to just write what i want for myself (and for you i guess)? this is my solution. i have a journal, of course, but i need to become more comfortable sharing, and i want to combine some of my more personal thoughts with a more free-flowing, unstructured, welcome-to-my-mind style.
i’m sitting in the back of my class, the same seat i always occupy, in the back row. it’s next to a window, and i can look out and watch people walk back and forth. sometime’s i find myself lost in this mind-numbing activity. back and forth. my brain shuts off for a second, or i start to daydream. back and forth. here i go again. i’m thinking about the book i’m currently reading (i who have never known men), what i will make for dinner (probably some kind of pasta), and how uncomfortable my jeans are.
the classroom is quiet. my professor is standing in the front, giving us time to think of an answer to her question. does she know that rather than think of how i would answer, think of the perfect words, i’m writing this? maybe. something about this class makes my mind wander, and i start to find myself in a headspace where the only thing i can do is write. i have pages and pages of anecdotes and jumbled thoughts i’ve scribbled down during this class, just waiting for me to come back to. maybe someday i will, but revisiting all of my writing is so unfamiliar to me.
i never re-read a journal entry. everyone tells me that if i do i’ll be inspired to write from it, or that i can work through those feelings. in theory, that sounds lovely, i’m sure my barely coherent ramblings and pages with tear smudges would make for a wonderful piece, maybe a character study of a Girl Who’s Parents are Divorcing, or a Girl Who is Seriously Depressed, but it just feels so painful for me to look back on those moments in time. i have two journals. one is where i write about my day-to-day feelings. it is purple, hardcover, with flowers. it's the prettiest journal i’ve ever seen and it was a gift from my mother. the other one is my “feelings journal.” i find myself reaching for that when i feel like everything is too much, when emotions (happy, sad, frustrated, etc.) are spilling out of me and i just need to write them down. that notebook is white, with little tiny strawberries on it. my best friend sophie gave it to me as a gift during our freshman year of college. the pages don’t even have lines. there’s a sense of chaos every time i pick it up.
part of me feels like there’s a sense of chaos most of the time when i write. i always feel a bit frantic, like the words are physically pouring out of my body and i have to close the floodgates in order to stop. it’s only like that when i write about myself or my family or have such a deep idea of a story. this past summer, i was sitting on the front porch at my dad’s house. it still feels so alien to call it that. but i was sitting there, wearing a too-small pink bikini and laying out on a sun-bleached beach towel. i was listening to the new harry styles album out of my phone’s awful speaker and reading an elif batuman book. my mom called me. we had a simple conversation, something about how she missed me and how there was a hike she was going on later in the day. the only parts of that conversation that i can remember are the beginning, where she told me about her day, and the end, where we fought about nothing, yelling at each other over something that was probably so stupid, but at the time it was everything. i felt sick to my stomach. it was late may and i was home alone. and it hit me how alone i actually was. my dad was at work, my sister was at school, and my mom wasn’t there. she moved out six months ago while i was still away in DC.
in that moment i was so overwhelmed. i abruptly hung up the phone and dragged myself into the house. tears were already running down my face and my stomach hurt so much as i sat down on the rug in the foyer. i felt such a visceral sadness, and the absence of my mom hit me so hard. i knew that a year ago, my mom and i wouldn’t be catching up over the phone. i would’ve skipped down the steps and walked onto the porch and sat down with my mom. we would’ve talked about everything and nothing like we always would do, like i was longing to do at that moment.
i cried and i cried and i was so aware of the tears on my cheeks and my bathing suit too tight on my boobs and the absence of my mom. there was no one in the house to hear me sob except for my dog, who came over and laid down next to me. i wanted to call my mom back and talk to her and have her comfort me but i couldn’t. there was no one for me to talk to so i reached for my phone, which was laying right next to me, discarded once i stumbled onto the rug. without even realizing, i opened my notes app and wrote something of a poem, because it was the only way i could express how i felt. all of the different emotions and sensations flying all throughout me spilled out onto the page and this was the result:
sunscreen and tears mixing together and running down my cheeks. there’s a slight burn, an urge to wipe them away but somewhere in my mind, a little voice says leave them, let them burn. it only makes sense to feel some physical representation of the pain tearing through my mind.
empty house with the sound of ceiling fans whirring, circulating air. i’m gasping for breath, choking on tears, fighting with no one but myself. i’m calling out for my mother, who i don’t want to see but i know i need, but i seem to have forgotten she’s miles away in a new, unbroken home.
yellow paperback novel in the entryway of my house that no longer feels like home, cutting against the browns and beiges that seem to swallow me up. i dropped it on the rug when i stumbled inside, tears already running down my face while i listened to the tiny voice in my head, in my phone, everywhere.
pink bathing suit that doesn’t fit me the way it did two years ago, when my body, my mind, my life, everything felt different, it fit right. i put it on to lie in the sun, to absorb warmth and happiness and pretend it was a golden, bright iv, filling my body and mind with a tiny, hopeful second of peace.
a white towel on the other side of the door, waiting for me, beckoning me back out, out of my thoughts, my tears, my memories, trying to pull me back to that warmth, to that girl who puts her hair into two braids, pulls on that swimsuit that doesn’t fit quite right and sits outside in the sun.
i’ve never shared that piece with anyone. i don’t know or care if it’s good, because, for me, the action of putting pen to paper (or in this case fingers to keyboard) was a huge emotional release to me. and that is what writing is to me. after i wrote that, i wiped my slowly subsiding tears off of my face and i dragged myself back onto the porch. i listened to the new harry styles album and i read my book. i was sad, but i felt like i dealt with it. i talked about it in therapy that week but i knew that talking about it wouldn’t get across the rawness of how i felt in the same way that my writing did.
by the time i’m finishing this, i’m home. my class got out early and i walked back from campus and i called my mom. i told her that i was publishing something and that i finally felt comfortable enough to share my writing. she was proud of me and we talked about how for both of us, writing is a release. and it really, truly is.
Thank you for sharing this, Sarah! It’s the first time I’ve read a piece about divorce from a daughter’s perspective. You really captured the pain of the absence of your mom in that moment. Keep writing; your words matter!
Beautiful words, thanks for putting them out in the world. You are correct, writing is the ultimate freedom :)