Writing and Relationships
How is yours?
It began in the fields surrounding a home where love wasn’t so much talked about as it was untouched, perfect. The kind of love that existed beside fields, without paved sidewalks that stretched forever through woodland and wetland, lined by dry stone walls, and inside which I lived in a world of my own.
So, how does a child knowing such wonders grow up to be an alcoholic, a depressed writer, a raging bull neglected by publishers, a sulking mess of a man?
Well, I never did learn about honest civility, content to exist in an inner world, with a young but deep appreciation for the sumptuous luxury of solitude.
I grew to be a man so loved, a dutiful husband. My words were softly spoken, honest, but those were the words she didn’t want to hear. She leapt at me from the sofa’s edge, arms flailing, fists clenched, raining blows down my head and shoulders. “I hate you… I hate you… no, there’s no way…” she screamed.
Those blows struck at my heart like hailstones from a thunderous sky, bruising the core of my being until sheer exhaustion took over, and she was unable to throw another punch and fell against me, head and fists on my chest… “Please don’t leave… I didn’t mean it… I’ll kill myself.”
Instinctively, I held onto her. Blood trickled from a small cut at the corner of my eye, quickly swelling, and seeped to the corner of my lip. A waft of heated perfume filled my nostrils.
“I just want to be alone with you. Is that so awful? Is it?” She’d become hysterical, pushing herself hard into my chest, clutching at my arms to hold her tighter.
Agonized, the angry glacier of selfishness inside me melted. I whispered comforting sounds while trying to quiet her, stroking her sweat-matted hair… but what she did was unforgivable. A tyrannical honesty replaced the once super-human promise of such romantic feelings when she said, “Why must you write for others, share what we have, the love, the writing, the intimacy? It’s so private, yet you open up for all the world to see?”
Gently, I allow the limpness of her body to collapse backwards onto the settee. “Please don’t leave me,” she begs, “I’ll be better. What can I do… tell me? I’ll do anything. I won’t question your reasons again. I understand.”
Understand, I thought, no. Put up with, yes.
Tears streamed down her face, mingling with the snot that ran from her nose, cuffed away on the sleeve of a cashmere-covered wrist. “You love me. I know you do. Can we talk? We can talk, right? Just don’t tell me you’re leaving.” Desperately spoken, that plea trembled on her lips.
I came awake in a sweat; the dream’s aggression felt disturbing, frightening enough that I could not simply lie there waiting for the freedom of morning’s arrival.
Throwing back the covers, I swung my legs out of the bed. Arms outstretched, groping in the dark toward the bathroom and the pulled cord. The injection of light hurt my eyes, and squinting in the mirror, I can see the whiteness of my beard, my eyes sunken, beads of sweat on my forehead.
I take a piss, forgetting to raise the seat. Fuck, how long must I stand here? I feel my lip and eye; everything feels fine, no hurt, damage, swelling, or sense of anything.
I’m not a recluse, just someone who enjoys the freedom of being alone. My friends indulge me, forgive me, or drift away.
I look again in the mirror and ask myself, can a writing need do this kind of damage to a relationship? Can the child in my heart, still running through woodland and wetland, cause such a destruction of love? I run the tap, cup my palms, and splash water on my face.
Creativity; what is it? Is it true?
So many questions are heard in my head. Is it in something we say, a way of putting a spin on the truth, coloured and tempered by some unique life experience? I have never found a friend ready to join me, willing to climb out on the precarious, swaying limb that writing creatively requires.
I leave the bathroom, feeling droplets of piss run down the inside of my thigh. Fuck!
I believe I have perfected the simultaneous existences of being me… and him. He’s the one with the issues; I have none. I’m amiable and agreeable with friends. He doesn’t have to be anything.
The life I have in my study, the early mornings when I ask myself what I’m doing, and never have an answer. I have no complaints. There’s a side of writing no one can help me with. If I choose to write my heart, it is a writer’s heart. What about me? What about the man? Has everything I write got to be that of a writer?
I want to write to someone and say, ‘Look, this is me. It’s me. Take these words and place them in your heart for keeps. Let no one see them or have them. It’s just me. You cannot buy them or file them into a category. They are just me talking to you.’
It’s tough sometimes. I’m a man first, a husband second, a writer before everything else. I still have a very personal nature and deep sensitivity.
Sometimes, well, I wish I could say precisely how I feel. Of course, it’s impossible because, by definition, it is a feeling, an emotion, a heartbeat, and as such cannot be described.
It’s a long way back to the starting point, where I have yet to return. Pride is the worst and best of all things about me. But pride is an ancient treasure, a bloody revolution in the body. Even after everything, the cruel bereavements, the hostility, the loneliness, the terrible consequences, I could never give in. No matter how often I stumbled and fell, I had to return to the most tranquil place, the most beautiful, the home of creativity.
Dear God, I have been relegated to that of an imaginary person. My destruction is complete.
I must leave immediately. I have a new story.
Harry Hogg: English writer raised in Scotland, living between California, Missouri, Colorado, and Scotland.
More from Harry:
Adrienne Beaumont | Autistic Widower (“AJ”) | Brett Jenae Tomlin | The Sturg | Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles | Trisha Faye | Karen Schwartz | NancyO | Katie Michaelson | Bernie Pullen | Michelle Jimerson Morris | Amy Frances | Julia A. Keirns | Pamela Oglesby | Toni the Talker | Tina | Pat Romito LaPointe | Ruby Noir | K. Joseph | Brandon Ellrich | Misty Rae | Karen Hoffman | Deb Palmer | Susie Winfield | Vincent Pisano
Paari | Marlene Samuels | Ray Day | Randy Pulley | Michael Rhodes | Lu Skerdoo | Pluto Wolnosci | Paula Shablo | Bruce Coulter | Ellen Baker | Kelley Murphy | Leigh-Anne Dennison | Jennifer Marla Pike | Carmen Ballesteros | Marlana, MSW| Patricia Timmermans | Keeley Schroder |Jan Sebastian
If you do NOT wish to be included in the above list, my apologies. Please let me know in the comments.
