About Me — Linda Sharp
The writer who has to write in order to stay alive — I am not kidding.
My name is Linda Sharp. I didn’t use a picture of myself when I initially penned this because I felt safe, secure, and comfortable being knowingly unknown.
My words didn’t need a face because I felt my words can stand on their own, without me. That veil of privacy allowed me to be as honest as possible with my words.
But these are my words and I stand on them. And it came time for me to stand by them, so I’ve finally placed a picture here. So… this is me.
I appreciate you being as understanding, and as gentle with me as you possibly can. I have a lot of truths to tell.
I am an only child and I live with my mom in Queens, New York. I know most kids want to move out but my mom is my best friend and I only get one life with her.
We have all the time in the world to be apart when the inevitable happens. I want my time with her while I have the opportunity. So I stay home, and I stay close.
My mom is also battling a chronic illness that forces me to watch the brutal process of losing her. I will be writing about how painful the process of ambiguous grief is through the eyes of my intimate experience with it.
She is all I have and losing her is my greatest and deepest fear. It’s what hurts me to the core and what haunts me every single day. It’s the one reality I cannot cope with and have found unbearable to face if I’m being totally honest with you.
Too painful to previously write about,
until now.
I Was A Hermit Before The Pandemic
But it still hit me hard
I graduated from Hunter College with my BA in Childhood Education and my BA in Creative Writing in 2017. The plan was to take a couple of years off and then start working.
We got hit with a global pandemic that broke out in Queens the same day as my first two interviews. The next week all schools were closed and suddenly the world was joining me in this very interesting hideout.
And I’ve watched the climate of social change and I feel as though we, as a collective, are heading off a cliff and I do not know where we will stand after the fall.
Humans are getting scary, and too vicious to interact with beyond a certain point, so I stay to myself and observe the world like a stranger to it.
I do feel like a living ghost
But my disposition allows me to catch the tiny details of existence that busy people miss. I used to be busy too.
I used to strive for success and wasted precious time chasing these big dreams until I reached them and realized it didn’t mean anything.
Success didn’t make me happy.
Being a big deal means nothing to me, what matters most is making the most of the time I’ve got here on this planet.
And loving the people I love while we still have the time to love. Love is going extinct and I wanna bask in whatever’s left of it for as long as humanly possible.
I Actually Write Because I Have To
I’ve learned the hard way that writing is the only way I can heal.
When I have nothing left to offer, I have my words.
When my psychosomatic symptoms seemingly have no medical diagnosis or cure available, I have my words. I have to write because I’ll get sick if I don’t — very sick. And this is what makes me a writer.
I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder (I also have ADHD, but that’s a story for another time). I was diagnosed in 2012, at 19 (I’m 28 now) after a series of panic attacks that made it difficult to breathe.
I was constantly at the doctor’s office and on one occasion I collapsed, unable to breathe and they thought I was on the verge of having a heart attack.
My pressure was through the roof and my heart rate was dangerously rapid. One doctor realized what was really going on, even though I didn’t, and prevented them from calling an ambulance for me.
Instead, he took me to his office and made casual conversation before casually taking my vitals a second time, with drastically different results.
He then asked me one question that would change the course of my entire life—
Okay.. what’s wrong?
Truthfully — I’d lost two of three kittens a week prior
One of them died in my arms after I spent a week trying (and failing) to fight for her life.
I was also well into my first year of college and at the end of a very abusive relationship with an older man who had been raping me. The pressure was too much.
The question stood out because it was the moment I realized I hadn’t written in a while up to that point. I had bottled it up and been holding it in until finally, my body couldn’t be “strong” anymore.
I’d had episodes like this when I was being bullied in elementary school, specifically in 4th grade, but it was ten years later when I got a diagnosis. After I got my diagnosis, I felt prepared (and calm enough) to write again.
That day marked a turning for me as a writer and the relationship I realized my writing had with the state of my mental, emotional, and ultimately physical health.
Whether I liked it or not.
I’m Writing To Save My Own Life Now
The panic attacks are back — with a vengeance.
I am again at another one of these points in my life where the words have been held in for too long and I’m once again having panic attacks daily.
It’s been three weeks and they’ve been crippling. Yet, it was only when I started writing this article tonight that they subsided altogether.
See what I mean?
I am a writer by design and by default.
It’s the only way I can survive.
Essentially I’m writing to save my own life. And I’m sharing my words because I’m aware that we’re all human. And someone somewhere out there, one of you, will find comfort in knowing you’re not the only one.
And because of that, I won’t live in vain.
Instead, I’ll be telling you about the intimate ways life has broken my heart and what it’s like to touch death and sleep with your own enemies.
I’ll give you the truth because I trust you enough to let you witness my human experience. I’m brave enough to choose exposure to save my health. I want to live, so I have to write.
I can’t carry this with me anymore.
Take my load off and I’ll tell you the truth. As ugly as it gets, as raw as it can be. The topics will be heavy and I’m not holding back.
You will feel uncomfortably human, but you will also feel seen. And I will too. Because sometimes the greatest thing we can do as humans is just be human, together.
What Brings Me Here Now?
Someone tried to kill me last month.
I was hit by a car on February 3rd of this year, around 4:44 p.m. The driver of the car appeared out of nowhere as I was crossing the street, drove up to me at a moderate speed and once their car was touching my leg they hit the gas.
I was thrown into the air, over the car, and tossed a few feet from where I was walking. The intent was to take my life but I believe going over the car and not under it is one reason why I didn’t die.
I landed on my left side and after a moment or two, I slowly got up and was able to walk away from the impact with contusions and road rash. With nothing broken and my life still miraculously intact.
I chalk even more of that miracle up to the fact that I was actually hit right in front of a church. I’m not a religious person but someone somewhere (up there) had a different plan for me that day.
Despite camera footage, the driver got away with it
Because I didn’t get a license plate number and I never saw their face. My inability to identify the person behind the wheel or describe the model of the car left the police with their hands tied.
So I did the only thing I could do, I found a reason for it.
I realized that if I had died that day I wouldn’t have been happy with the way I’d been living what could have been my last days. I left nothing for the world behind.
I didn’t appreciate what I did have, I was too focused on all that I felt I was losing (namely, my mom). I was in a depression so deep I did not see that everything I was depressed about losing was still actively present in my life.
I was mourning the future while being stuck in the past. I would not have considered my life lived to the fullest if I had died that day, and that haunts me.
I believe it was a wake-up call for me, personally, to stop wasting my precious time and my natural gift and get back to doing what it is I do best — writing. While there’s still time. So, here I am.
Hi.
© Linda Sharp 2022. All Rights Reserved.
