My Affair With Writing

Starting this blog and taking the time to write regularly has been such a good thing for me.  I love being a mom but it's nice to spend some time doing something for me, something that uses a part of my brain that lately has been pretty dormant.  For as long as I can remember, writing has been important to me.  I'm a pretty expressive person.  It doesn't work for me to hold in my feelings or thoughts.  Writing has always provided me a safe, objective, nonjudgmental outlet, especially during times when I felt alone or without a confidant.  

My love affair with writing started very early on.  I thought myself to be a poet even before I could read or write.  Starting around three years old I would say, "Mommy, I have poetry", which meant my mother was suppose to find writing material asap, as I dictated my little rhymes and verses.  Eventually, my mom stared buying cute little journals for my poems with spaces for me to draw corresponding pictures.  My mother really encouraged my writing and even submitted a lovely poem entitled "Watch the Bunny" to the local newspaper, where it was of course promptly published and hung on every refrigerator my parents could get their hands on.  

Don't get confused here, I am not at all claiming to have been an advanced child, academically or otherwise.  I have a future blog entry in the works all about my early school struggles (and there were a lot of them).  But I loved books, rhymes, and songs- both reading them and creating them.  I think I was just born with a love of language and verbal expression.  To this day a really great line in a book or a song lyric can make me ball like a baby.     

When I was early school aged I started work on a pretty lengthy series of books about the dynamic characters KC and Brian.  I settled on these names for my lead characters because they were the only two names I could spell (to this day my phonemic awareness sucks).  KC and Brian solved a variety of mysteries that plagued their otherwise quiet neighborhood such as; finding a missing cat, locating a stolen teddy bear, and making friends with a new neighbor.  I can remember many hours spent at my parents kitchen table working diligently on my complex and gripping works of fiction, proudly presenting them to family members upon completion. 

Fast forward a few years to junior high, without a doubt the hardest years of my life as of yet.  I truly believe, not even using my flare for the dramatic, that I might not be here today if it hadn't have been for my ability to process through writing.  Many difficult and confusing things happened to me and those around me those couple of years.  It was all far too much for my undeveloped brain and my immature little self to take.  I won't get into the gory details, mostly because they're just sad and it doesn't make me feel good, but writing poetry and journaling about what I was experiencing pulled me through those difficult days that seemed to flow endlessly one after the other. 

I still have a lot of the writing I did back in those early teenage years.  Those poems and other pieces of writing bring me back to the little, scared, lonely girl I was then.  I thank whatever god or higher power there is out there that I brought pen to paper and let out all that poison inside me.  Because if it hadn't have been poetry , I'm sure I would have turned to something else far less therapeutic and a lot less forgiving.  

Fortunately, high school was an overall lighter time in the life of Bri.  In high school I wrote mostly on napkins at the Dunkin Dounuts close to my school, where the guy I liked "happened" to work.  I have bins and bins of napkins, receipts and bits of paper with random lines and poems scribbled with my chicken-scratch handwriting (it really is pretty awful looking), sometimes on every inch of surface.  For many years I couldn't throw away anything without looking carefully at all sides first to make sure there wasn't anything of significance written somewhere.  I think in those days I enjoyed attempting to look mysterious and complicated.  I'm not sure how I actually came across but I do remember how full of life I felt sitting at that orange booth, sipping on luke warm coffee out of a styrofoam cup, thinking about how original, jaded, and overall just awesome I was (funny how much can change in just a few years, junior high me would have loved one shred of that confidence).  

In college I continued my coffee writing escapades but moved up in the world to places called Java Joes and Casco Bay Books, cool local coffee shops, places that would now shock me with their prices and lack of decent parking (oh what my bank account would look like today if I could have back all the money I spent on lattes and beer in my youth).  I also upgraded to journals with insightful, thought-provoking quotes on the front, always in black and white because color wasn't interesting enough.  I wrote mostly about old boyfriends or affairs I was having with men far too old for me, or occasionally about the vastness of the universe and what my place might be in it.  I thought myself to be very deep, worldly, and damaged (in a cool, hip way).  Again, writing made me feel alive and powerful and in touch with myself in a way that usually eluded me.  

Not surprisingly, I started to write with less frequency after college and especially after I got married and started my family.  My husband and I estimated that I must have set the goal to write daily, or at least regularly, at least 20 times since we've been together but lack of time and other responsibilities always seemed to get in the way.  

Enter this blog.  Being able to write about my life and the things that shape it has been so freeing and has made me remember how much I love and enjoy giving my inner voice a stage.  Knowing that others are actually reading what I put out there into internet land, keeps me honest and motivated.  The butterflies in my stomach multiply rapidly every time I push "publish" and allow the world (well, at least my little corner of it) to see my latest thoughts in print.  

So, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to read about the latest developments in the mind of Bri (don't worry, I promise not to make a habit of talking about myself in third person) and helping to encourage me to keep sanity in my grasp.  I'm hoping I can keep the momentum going.  Feel free to berate me if I haven't come up with anything in awhile.  I respond well to torment and after-all, it will be for my own good.