Writing Trouble

One reason we write is to connect with others. When you tell your story, in person or on the page—to an appropriate audience—you will find others who share your difficulties. You are not alone.  As Gail Caldwell wrote, in writing about alcoholism, “I used to think this was an awful story—shameful and dramatic and sad.  I don’t think that anymore.  Now I just think it’s human, which is why I decided to tell it.” (Let’s Take the Long Way Home).

And one reason we write about trouble is that the experience can feel so lonely. One of the first and most painful ways people feel during a tough time is alone. No one can understand what is happening to you—they’re all going about their business while you have been hit by a truck. Sometimes you are literally alone, or set apart from ordinary life. 

Aleksandar Hemon, writing about his infant daughter’s illness and death, compared the experience to being in an aquarium. “One early morning, driving to the hospital, I saw a number of able-bodied, energetic runners progressing along Fullerton Avenue toward the sunny lakefront, and I had a strong physical sensation of being in an aquarium: I could see out, the people outside could see me (if they chose to pay attention), but we were living and breathing in entirely different environments.” (“The Aquarium,” first published in The New Yorker.)                    

Writing allows us to construct a whole story, to stumble through making sense of things through words. Talking about our experiences connects us to other people, a phenomenon Jessica Handler and I called “the whispering tribe.” You would never know certain things about others’ lives without sharing your own stories. For me, confiding in moms at my kids’ elementary school let me hear that a surprising number of third children had been unplanned–a shocking or unwelcome surprise in some cases. I was no longer alone. I wrote two essays, one short and one long, about my predicament. Writing helped me articulate to myself what I was feeling, and why.

Publishing helped me connect to a larger audience than the local, and to tell my story in a more contextualized, complex way than a conversation could. I hoped my essays would keep other women company, the way essays and memoirs always helped me.

As Rebecca Solnit puts it, “Writing is saying to no one and to everyone the things it is not possible to say to someone. Or rather writing is saying to the no one who may eventually be the reader those things one has no one to whom to say them.” (Solnit, The Faraway Nearby, 64, in “Flight”)

After reading Hemon’s piece in The New Yorker, I was struck by one of the reader responses. (Actually I love readers’ responses and letters, and often find them more interesting than, say, the published opinion pieces in The New York Times.) “Hemon’s piece was excruciating to read, but, until now, I’ve assumed that nobody understood what my husband and I have been through. We spent months on what we called ‘the island’ after our three-year-old son’s brain-tumor diagnosis.  We were separated from the real world in so many ways that it hurt just to think about it. While reading this piece was difficult for us, I think both my husband and I were comforted by the fact that someone else understands.”   –Dina Dodd, in a letter to The New Yorker, July 25, 2011