Outing the writer in me

I have never blogged (about anything) before, but I have to say that I am finding the experience of creating this blog not only tremendously liberating, but also stimulating.  It is liberating in that I am describing events and giving voice to thoughts and emotions that, for the most part, I have never shared with anyone else, and  that have been repressed and a source of secret shame and self-loathing for most of my life. I have finally given myself permission to express these thoughts, to relive these emotions, to describe these experiences, and I find this process not only liberating, but also affirming.

It is also stimulating, in that I am writing about these things for the first time in my life.  I feel that to write something is to affirm and give form, shape and texture to a memory, a feeling, a thought, then hold these up to the light and analyze and perhaps even admire them.  This process stimulates the creative juices in me and makes me feel like I am getting in touch with an integral part of who I am – not just my gay identity, but also that part of me that is a writer.

Once upon a time, I wanted to be a writer.  I remember writing my first book – a mystery inspired by The Hardy Boys – when I was in third grade.  A couple of years later, I wrote a collection of short stories for a “gifted” class I was in.  (Thrown away years ago.)  But it was when I was in high school that I did most of my writing and seriously considered majoring in creative writing once I went off to college.  (How I wish I still had the journals that I kept when I was 14-15-16 years old!  They would have offered such a window of understanding into the youth I was.)

But this passion for writing died within me as I advanced in my teenage years.  Like other aspects of what I assume to be my true self, this interest in self-expression was too closely intertwined with that other aspect of my real self that I wanted desperately to deny and repress – my gay self.  In repressing my homosexuality, I feel I also repressed other parts of my true self that might have affirmed or risked exposure of my sexual identity.

I guess this is what I have tried to express in other posts:  This journey for me right now is not just about my SSA.  It is also – particularly because of the added trauma of child abuse – an effort to recover my lost self that I believe retreated deep inside me when I was a small child in order to protect itself from abuse, then was further repressed during what is often a great awakening in a boy’s life:  puberty and its aftermath. 

So now, I am outing the writer in me.  He may not be a very good writer, but he is a part of me – the authentic, real me, and I welcome his coming.  I am also finding, parenthetically, that as I have begun to seriously engage in releasing and giving voice to repressed memories and feelings, that other doors to the chambers of my memory are opening, and I am remembering more from my childhood.  This is tremendously comforting to me.

So stay tuned everybody.  There are a LOT more posts to come!

We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end,

we become disguised to ourselves.

-- Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld, (1613-1680)