I wrote my first angry poem.
I'm not going to post it here because, while it shared my truth of a situation and a scenario, it doesn't share the whole picture, and since there are other, wonderful people who are in the "whole picture" and who might stumble upon this blog someday, I'm going to let my angry poem sit in my 'saved' folder.
But writing it was really, really healthy for me. It also showed me for the first time that for me, writing is a form of art and creative expression. My poem began one night after discovering that someone we served overseas with had deleted me as a friend on facebook. The action bothered me, as it always does, but it was deeper than just an indignant "hey! What the heck!". It actually, well, hurt.
So I went to bed that night and for the first time in my life I couldn't fall asleep because my brain was writing. My brain was writing a poem to try to put into words the feelings that I was feeling. It was trying to make sense of what was flowing through my veins in an artistic way. Hurt. Sadness. Fear of judgement. Fear of what others must think of us, of me, of our time in Baku. The shame of leaving early. The guilt of leaving early.
Really, it opened a lot of emotions that I wasn't aware still existed inside of me.
I finally fell asleep and when I woke up I realized what had happened. I was using art to process pain. My own art. Not music or painting or anything else, but my words. For some reason, it gave me ownership of what I do here... of what I do when I sit down at my computer to process my life in words.
and I'm actually proud of the poem. It ends in a really cutting and - I think - beautiful way that would never come out of my actual mouth. It is sharp and it isn't kind and it isn't the normal Leslie, but it must be some version of me. Reading it out loud to Joshua was therapeutic in a way. I didn't need to read it with all of the caveats of, "I know there was more to the story" (which there are, and I know know them) or "I could see their point of view in that scenario." (I can) He knows all sides of it, the explanations weren't necessary, and they weren't the reason for the poem. The poem was for the pain, and in a way, it healed a piece of it.
I'm not going to post it here because, while it shared my truth of a situation and a scenario, it doesn't share the whole picture, and since there are other, wonderful people who are in the "whole picture" and who might stumble upon this blog someday, I'm going to let my angry poem sit in my 'saved' folder.
But writing it was really, really healthy for me. It also showed me for the first time that for me, writing is a form of art and creative expression. My poem began one night after discovering that someone we served overseas with had deleted me as a friend on facebook. The action bothered me, as it always does, but it was deeper than just an indignant "hey! What the heck!". It actually, well, hurt.
So I went to bed that night and for the first time in my life I couldn't fall asleep because my brain was writing. My brain was writing a poem to try to put into words the feelings that I was feeling. It was trying to make sense of what was flowing through my veins in an artistic way. Hurt. Sadness. Fear of judgement. Fear of what others must think of us, of me, of our time in Baku. The shame of leaving early. The guilt of leaving early.
Really, it opened a lot of emotions that I wasn't aware still existed inside of me.
I finally fell asleep and when I woke up I realized what had happened. I was using art to process pain. My own art. Not music or painting or anything else, but my words. For some reason, it gave me ownership of what I do here... of what I do when I sit down at my computer to process my life in words.
and I'm actually proud of the poem. It ends in a really cutting and - I think - beautiful way that would never come out of my actual mouth. It is sharp and it isn't kind and it isn't the normal Leslie, but it must be some version of me. Reading it out loud to Joshua was therapeutic in a way. I didn't need to read it with all of the caveats of, "I know there was more to the story" (which there are, and I know know them) or "I could see their point of view in that scenario." (I can) He knows all sides of it, the explanations weren't necessary, and they weren't the reason for the poem. The poem was for the pain, and in a way, it healed a piece of it.
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