Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
So…I have to write for five minutes without stopping, but I don’t know where to start.
I have always written in times of stress and times of angst…perhaps it’s a form of praying. And it’s never meant for anybody else.
And right now there is so much stuff inside me and swirling around me that deciding where to start is impossible. I think that I could write so much stuff about so many things…things that are massively important to me and that I find all-consuming…but in the end maybe it is all pretty run-of-the-mill stuff. Everyone else here today seems so confident and experienced and know what they want to write and in what form. They know why they are here…I’m not sure why I am.
I feel like I’d like to write …what? A novel, a blog, a short story? I want to tell my story…but is it that interesting? I want other women to hear me…there are some things that I want to shout from the rooftops. But I don’t want my children to read this stuff…or if they do, I don’t want them to know it is me. Yet, my children are the people that would learn the most…my children are the ones I most need to hear me. But I am scared of their reactions, scared of how it would affect them, scared of how their father would use it to influence them…and like every other area of my life, my children and their well-being dominate my actions.
I could write about being married to an emotional and verbal bully. I could write about how this bullying and manipulation is so insidious, so cunning, that you don’t even know you’re suffering. I could write about how this marriage, this life, seemed perfect…but was so not! I could write about how my life over the last four years has changed into something completely unrecognisable from the previous so-called perfect life.
I could write about my beautiful first-born child – my son – that blonde-haired, blue-eyed cherub who is a man now, and is ashamed of me and barely speaks to me. I could write about how that has broken my heart, but I cannot fix it.
I could write about the pain of watching my children suffer from their father’s bullying and manipulative words, but being powerless to stop it, and unable to protect them any more. I could write about the tears I shed every second week when they leave me to be with him. I could write about how even though I have found the courage to leave this man, two years later he still dominates my life, and I live in constant fear. Not fear of violence, but fear of losing my children because of his influence and indoctrination of them. Everything I do, everything I say is something to be used against me.
I could write about how I don’t know where I fit in, who I want to be, how I have changed my identity in a way…yet I am not sure what that new identity even is.
I want to warn other women about being emotionally blackmailed, financially controlled, and verbally bullied…so much is said at the moment about domestic violence, but there’s a whole range of other behaviour that women need to save themselves from…that they need to recognise.
I could write about how totally lost and demoralised I feel without a career, without an income, unable to support myself. I could write about how angry I am with the system for not being able to protect me financially, and with my former husband for being a liar, a cheat, and a fraud and leaving me, the mother of his five children, with debt that is not mine, and with no house to live in or money to live on.
I could write about how much I hate living two lives…my kids’ week, and my partner’s week…and never the twain do meet. Two years of this, and I can’t see it ending.
I could write about shame and guilt and letting down your children, and feeling as though you have tricked everybody. I could write about trying to let go of 25 years of thinking one way, and how long that is taking me. I could write about the overwhelming desire to just live how I want to…without my actions or way of life impacting on ANYBODY.
OR…I could write about love – real, perfect, beautiful, forever, can’t-live-without love – that I never knew existed. I could write about the joy that I didn’t think was possible. I could write about the trust that I have never given or received. I could write about feeling cherished, and safe, and respected and protected. I could write about how that love and joy and trust has turned my life upside down. I could write about how a kind, GOOD man has changed my world. I could write about how despite all the pain, I don’t regret finally choosing respect and kindness over control and criticism. I could write about how, above all, I don’t regret choosing love over fear.
But the five minutes is up and I don’t know where to start.