On Medium as in Life, Why I’m Here
Dedicated to my Quad Squad: Roy, Harper Thorpe, Mark Starlin, & Jack Herlocker
Two major events occurred simultaneously in March 2018 that radically changed the direction of my life. One: my best friend of over 10 years moved away to another part of the country leaving us both rootless. Two: one of my children suggested I look at Medium as a place to publish my writing. Writing which had sat for years hidden in uncountable legal pads and word-processor xerox-copied sheets, within innumerable cardboard boxes. In August last year, I wrote this essay recounting the first 6 months of my journey on Medium. This sentence is key. Feel free to read this piece from a year ago or not. **
I was not on Medium to showcase my writing, only to let it out of the caged heart it had sat in for decades.
I came to Medium to be seen, to be visible, to be witnessed.
What I found, as you will if you have time to read this play-within-a-play, was a virtual community that I had not known in my previous life. It is no secret if you have read me that I was mighty isolated for a very long time, and am daily learning the joys of creating community. I have a lovely chosen family in the other world (saying The Real World seems quite persnickety, as if the Medium world is illusory) that is comprised of…let me count them now…12 people. These are the people who have seen me through a decade of recovery from unearthing repressed childhood memories, dissociative personas in crisis, a terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad divorce, and an untimely (almost) death. But, and this is a BIG butt…
The people who read me consistently & interact with me lovingly, shape the way I continue to grow and heal.
What I first published when I joined Medium last year was decades old poetry, at which a sweet well-meaning writer/reader/friend mentioned how quickly my “voice” was growing and changing. What was happening in reality was that once I had the old poetry written during pain out of the way, new pain was exposed. But the new writing came from pain already processed, so it came from a place of strength and empowerment instead of victimhood and lack of agency. I hope to continue the evolution of both my writing practice and my psyche on Medium for the foreseeable future.
I have integrated what I believe are the last two dissociative personae in the presence of my readers, one in July 2018, and one in February of this year. Out of these integrations have come changes in my personal and professional life: the publishing of a poem in a mental health paper anthology, an invitation to co-edit the next anthology, the very real probability of publishing my own poetry in print sooner than later (perhaps more than one). But the biggest change that happened in my work was that I began to write humor, egged on and encouraged by my Quad Squad (a name I have given them in my own head, without their consent!) of the subtitle of this essay. I find I’m not half bad at it, unencumbered by tragedy.
A special mention: Harper left me my first private note on Medium in September 2018, so I guess this is our anniversary of sorts. With his consent, I am sharing some of his messages, to share how welcomed I felt by someone who had not met me but had read my words. I’ve reread your story multiple times, and while it wasn’t your intention to leave me in awe, I am in awe of you. I am also humbled because (while I have endured some setbacks and real pain) I have been so blessed in my life I’m almost embarrassed. It was so full of generosity of spirit, and complimentary AF!. That communication with him was my first indication that good men existed in the world, men my own age (hah…he’s older!) who were decent and not dips**ts. All my other 3 men friends are much younger than me, so I had incorrectly assumed this was a generational quality.
Huge changes continue to evolve in the ways I function. For the first time in my life I have no landline phone, no fax machine, and as of this week I will have no cable tv. For someone who has used television as an anesthetic for decades and as a respite during the strong internal work required for creating healing and recovery, I know the impact of this decision. Now I’ll be just like the young ‘uns who stream everything on a hundred platforms: Netflox, HiLo, Amazun PrimeRib, MyTube, CrabAppleTV and so many more. The only difference will be that I will continue to watch on my wall mounted television instead of on my laptop or the iddy biddy screen of some eYephone. My heart may be young, but my eyes are my chronological age (although for reasons that opticians refuse to believe, they continue to improve in diopters as the healing continues in my body and psyche). Which brings me to why I thought about this series. Let me state unequivocally: I did not think about this as a series! It did not start out as a series, just a query I presented to Roy when I met him 2 weeks ago. What I wanted to explore was why I am here.
Why I Am Here,
in the existential sense, but exploring it via Medium has also become a more focused task. I am here to be as healed as possible before I die, to meet others and make connections with people on their own journeys of self-awareness, to be part of a world I did not have access to as a child or for the greater part of my adulthood. I am here to humbly pay it forward by creating spaces for others to be heard, to be seen, to be loved and supported, to be who they are. In the realm of the Real World as on Medium.
I am here to be fully and completely ME.
**Many of my fellow writers are tagged in the included essay, not in this one.
©JkMansi Juhi Kalra 2019. All rights reserved.
Why I Write on Medium: The Series. With gratitude to the Participants. More will continue to be added as they publish on Good News Daily.
