Spiral Notebooks

My writing has saved me since I was a young girl, my writing and my friends. My writing kept me going at home, where no one saw me, where everyone else was in constant survival mode and I was lost in the haze of mom watching t.v., dad was rarely home, my teenage siblings were either off with friends or getting ready to go out, I’d beg them to take me and they’d just smile and tell me I was too young. 

I kept spiral notebooks under my bed and I’d write to myself in these notebooks, notes and words of encouragement, like “you’ll be ok.” Seriously. I’d draw mod girls in fun clothes, unlike anything I’d actually wear, especially since I went to Catholic school, and had to wear a uniform. Sometimes I’d share my drawings, and the kids at school would say, “You’re a good artist.” That’s what they’d say. My notebooks of poems and words to keep me going stayed under my bed. 

In religion class one day, we learned about infinity, or forever, as in the concept of heaven and hell, that when this life was over, we lived forever, forever being a concept my mind simply could not grasp. I lay in my bed that night sobbing, terrified of heaven, of hell, of forever. My mom heard my sobs and asked what’s wrong, but she had no answers and really, no comfort, telling me to stop thinking about it and to go to sleep. I couldn’t do either, so I just quieted myself, and lay there, terrified in the dark. 

My mom didn’t know how to talk to us about scary stuff, about hard stuff. She didn’t know how to just climb into bed next to us and hold us, and smile, and wipe our faces and say, hey, “let’s go shopping tomorrow.” You know, just give us something to take our minds off of the crazy stuff that kids worry about. So, eventually, I learned to mother myself, through my piles of spiral bound three ring binders. Maybe that was the beginning of my obsession with reading, with writing, with believing we can connect through words on a page.