Locked Up

I identify as a writer, but I could just as easily identify as a bricklayer. No one ever asks for evidence. There is this blog, of course, and a couple of essays published in good places, a prize or two, and a series of essays read on public radio. But I’m not much into publishing, the wait is too long for me, especially at this stage of my life, when almost always the answer will be, “this is nice but not quite right for us.”

Lately, I’ve been writing essays that I’ve only shared with members of my writing group. Increasingly, this feels like therapy more than writing, but still there is art in it, an effort to tell a complicated or difficult story well. These are essays that will, as they say, ‘never see the light of day,’ but by reading them to the group of seven other writers, those pieces are published, or at least they are aired. It’s like Snapchat. Here for five minutes and then Poof!

There is some good work in this growing pile of unmentionables.

Last week, I wrote an essay about a long-term difficult situation with a friend. I wrote it on a dare – could I describe the friendship, the conflict, and the context in a deliberate, unadorned, but impactful way. I could and I did. The essay is on my hard drive which makes it safe for eternity since, should I die, my husband will never decipher my passwords, nor would he think to look. He figures if I didn’t actually publish it, it probably isn’t any of his business. He’s sensible that way.

A few years ago, the husband of a friend of mine died after a long illness. My friend and her husband had been very close. They had worked together for a long time, raised a family, had many grandchildren, and were regarded as spiritual and moral leaders by many. They were a matched set, adhered to each other.

Anyway, after her husband died, my friend unearthed boxes and boxes of his writings, as she called them. Most of the pieces were stories, complicated stories that he’d written but never shared with her. She was astonished at this discovery and wondered aloud more than once why he had written so much without her knowing. “I had no idea he was such a writer.” And I pictured him getting up at night to secret himself away in a garret to write.

He left the stories for her to puzzle over. And puzzle she did until she herself died just a few months later. But her telling me about her husband’s secret stories made me wonder – are you a writer if you never share what you’ve written? Or did he intentionally share his work by leaving it where it could be found after he died? Maybe that was his plan all along, to leave a trove of stories for her as a diversion from her enormous grief?

I’m not that wise. I take my secret essays to my writing group, and they bless them in the way writing groups do and I am happy. It feels like putting these little offerings in a vault where they’re safe and will be well taken care of. It’s a sweet secret.

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Photo by Jason Dent on Unsplash