An open letter (of thanks).
It has been a little over a year since the attack.
I no longer feel the whiplash when I close my eyes, but that day still haunts me.
Huddled in the corner under the harsh florescent lights of my bare apartment, I slowly self-destructed. I was all alone in an unknown city, too afraid to leave my building. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat. My body recoiled to the slightest touch.
In desperation I called my ex-girlfriend. She was incredibly kind to take my phone call, but weeks later, for whatever reason, she decided we should no longer speak and abandoned me.
I had nowhere else to turn.
My parents would never rest again if they knew the truth. My first and last psychiatrist was a tool. My new friends in Chicago found the whole incident curiously amusing. I was too ashamed to call my other friends. How could I possibly tell them of what happened? How could I burden them with the wanton cruelty of it all?
So I huddled in my corner, alienated from everyone.
Mark once asked if stories can change anything, whether they can help.
I don't have a good answer for that.
What I do know, however, is that having an outlet for those stories, a venue to construct and share narratives with an audience, imagined or not, can change everything.
You may not have read my first posting. Like most of my writing, it is infuriatingly obscure and indirect (and, as Mark loves to remind me, pointless wordy -- circumlocutory even).
Reading it over again, I can see how a random reader would probably never infer that on my first day in Chicago, while walking to my apartment building after signing my lease, I was beat-up by a gang of high school students.
But clarity was never the point. Catharsis was.
And although I was embarrassed by the posting (you can tell because I posted something else immediately afterwards), a terrible weight had finally lifted.
This is an overly dramatic way (I am 40 percent emo after all) of thanking Mark for opening up the blog as a space for us all to express and share our thoughts, as random and as trite as they may be.
Until I read about Scopic Fixations in his next novel, this blog will stand as a testament to his generosity of spirit.
I no longer feel the whiplash when I close my eyes, but that day still haunts me.
Huddled in the corner under the harsh florescent lights of my bare apartment, I slowly self-destructed. I was all alone in an unknown city, too afraid to leave my building. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat. My body recoiled to the slightest touch.
In desperation I called my ex-girlfriend. She was incredibly kind to take my phone call, but weeks later, for whatever reason, she decided we should no longer speak and abandoned me.
I had nowhere else to turn.
My parents would never rest again if they knew the truth. My first and last psychiatrist was a tool. My new friends in Chicago found the whole incident curiously amusing. I was too ashamed to call my other friends. How could I possibly tell them of what happened? How could I burden them with the wanton cruelty of it all?
So I huddled in my corner, alienated from everyone.
Mark once asked if stories can change anything, whether they can help.
I don't have a good answer for that.
What I do know, however, is that having an outlet for those stories, a venue to construct and share narratives with an audience, imagined or not, can change everything.
You may not have read my first posting. Like most of my writing, it is infuriatingly obscure and indirect (and, as Mark loves to remind me, pointless wordy -- circumlocutory even).
Reading it over again, I can see how a random reader would probably never infer that on my first day in Chicago, while walking to my apartment building after signing my lease, I was beat-up by a gang of high school students.
But clarity was never the point. Catharsis was.
And although I was embarrassed by the posting (you can tell because I posted something else immediately afterwards), a terrible weight had finally lifted.
This is an overly dramatic way (I am 40 percent emo after all) of thanking Mark for opening up the blog as a space for us all to express and share our thoughts, as random and as trite as they may be.
Until I read about Scopic Fixations in his next novel, this blog will stand as a testament to his generosity of spirit.
posted by d l wright at 9/13/2006 10:37:00 PM
5 Comments:
I read that post (and the subsequent post about the psychiatrist) and thought that you were just writing symbolic, creative pieces about things that hadn't actually happened. (After all, I have TB.)
I had no idea that you were literally mugged in Chicago.
Also... what is a scopic fixation? The Internet is seriously lacking in giving me a definition of your Foucoultian BS.
I'm still here with you. Now, then, and always. Like Julie and Ian, but different/better.
Check out StoryCorps
There needs to be some sort of 'rly' html tag for the internet (especially since every popular blogger and youtube individual seems to be some sort of marketing ploy).
e.g. [rly] I never actually attended the U of C, it was just symbolism for the loss of a loved one [/rly]
And a scopic fixation is the ocular equivalent of an oral fixation.
Word, Sam. I know it. But at the time I was in a really irrational head space -- where everything I thought I knew was turned upside-down.
e.g. [no rly] Lik that summer you kept trying to hook up with Daphna [/no rly]
The whole world should know about the summer I spent trying to hook up with Daphna
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