SAY IT. OUT LOUD. How to fess up and get a load off your mind.

I was in a creative writing class one time, in graduate school, listening to a 24-year-old girl read her story to the class about what it had been like to lose her virginity in the back seat of her boyfriend’s Buick. Well, actually she wasn’t a girl anymore. She was pregnant, but she was 20 years younger than I was. I felt like some dad, listening to his daughter tell me something I definitely didn’t want to know.  

Let me back up for a minute. I was in San Diego State University’s graduate school, studying for a master of science in business, specializing in AI and robotics. The admissions office had nicely told me my Oklahoma University degree was worthless since it was over ten years old and I'd have to take a bunch more beginner classes than I’d expected. Here I was in my one elective.

 I told people I thought my one elective, this creative writing class, would help me write a decent thesis. The truth was, it was more entertaining and mostly; I was glad I didn’t have to do a bunch of statistics homework all the time.
What does this have to do with fessing up? In that writing class, from that young woman, I got an intense lesson on the power of saying things that I normally wouldn’t even say to our cat. I’d been an infantry company commander in Vietnam. Issuing commands was something I could do all day long but persuading people to read my words? Private words?That was a whole new deal for me.
The first assignment the prof had given us was, obviously, to see if we had the chops to open a vein and write something “you normally wouldn’t tell a soul” and then read those words to the entire class. My story was so pedestrian I don’t even remember it. The contributions from the rest of the class were no better. But that young pregnant woman showed the entire class what it meant to say it out loud.
She described every detail. Exactly. Step by step. It wasn’t pornographic; it was a sweet description of a young man and woman exploring each other for the first time. She described the guy driving them in his parents' car out to the country, the uncomfortable laughter, the sound of every unzipping, the unfamiliarity and giggling at the foreplay and his search for the condom, the careful penetration, all of it. 

Including the surprise she felt after it was done, that after all the years of anticipation, of having other girls describe it in other-worldly terms, her reaction was, “Really, this is it?” Everybody laughed at that. She had the room in her hand.
She was looking at her truth and owning it, in public. Tell me that didn’t take ovarijones.
And I saw she’d done something else: she was not only saying it out loud for everyone to hear. She was explaining not only what had happened, but what it meant to her. And how she’d refined that meaning over the years to a point where she could now see its wisdom. She was ready, she said, ready to explain those affairs to the daughter who was growing in her womb.
What I learned that day is something that, we men have to admit, we have a problem with. It’s not too difficult to tell each other our war stories, or the rambunctious use of a fast car. But, it’s often impossible to muster the courage to describe our flaws, our shortcomings and, especially, those private things, our fears.
Here’s what she did: first, she wrote it down. It was the writing of it that forced her to put those actions into words that others could understand. That same process can make things more clear for us, in our own minds. And, if we can say it to someone else, we unload it. Huge relief.

Maybe all we can do at first is to write it down on a number-10 envelope, and when it’s all finished, when the words are all out, we take the envelope out to the garage floor and set those words on fire. That works, too. The idea is to take the problem, wrap it with words, say it, get it out. And, if we can, find the humor. If we can find a way to laugh at it, we can depower any problem. Go ahead. Laugh at yourself. I want to think we've got the cojones to do that.
Interested in more? Check out our books on Amazon:

(For what it's worth, I'm not a professional therapist. These are my thoughts alone. Regards, Ron)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Assassination of John F Kennedy. Why It Matters...

Image
JFK's Gravesite and Eternal Flame, Arlington November 22, 1963 Where was I? I was in math class, a junior in high school, waiting for the teacher to assign us homework so we could leave. A student with a fist full of notes walked in, gave one to the teacher and left. That was odd. He read it in silence, as we watched him, curious. He looked shocked. He adjusted his glasses and read the note to us: "President Kennedy has been shot today in Dallas. He has been pronounced dead. School is canceled for the rest of the day." For decades after that, it was a common question, "Where were you when JFK died?" It was a question, like this one, "Where were you on 9-11?" What usually ensued was a dialogue centered on another, bigger question: "How are we supposed to deal with the fact that no one can breathe?" There was life before that day and life after. America had had a firm grasp on its successful reality, then a single event destroyed t
Read more

BEHIND ENEMY LINES ON GUADALCANAL. THEN IWO...

Image
Shutterstock Marble 75 years ago, five Marines and a sailor hoisted a flagpole atop Mt. Suribachi. Several of them would die within weeks, there on Iwo Jima. Three of them now rest in Arlington under marble headstones. Near the Continental Divide in Colorado, a tiny town sits at the base of a marble mountain. A century ago, from its quarries men cut great blocks of purest whiteness for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Lincoln Memorial.  David Gould @ Pexels Steam locomotives pulled flatcars piled high with impure pieces of it alongside the  Crystal River, as men shoved them into the river to stabilize its banks.  The town built a schoolhouse atop blocks of it. Dad made the back step of our house out of it.   Of course, t he town's name is Marble. The Poet Wikimedia Commons In 1994, my wife Michelle and I returned to Colorado to live in Redstone, a tiny town downriver from Marble. Michelle was a teacher at the Marble school and, one day at the local i
Read more

MY WIFE HAS DEMENTIA. Now what?

Image
Pixabay What Do I Do? My wife and I heard that diagnosis six years ago. It was the worst news of her life. And mine. So, here's what I know: your immediate future will illuminate for you, and her, what kind of husband you are. I’m not a doctor or therapist of any kind. But I’ve trod this path and maybe I can provide you some helpful insight. Here goes... One day in 2013, my wife was her usual, lovely self. The next day she was in the ICU, being asked every hour if she knew what year it was. A week later we were home. There was lots of hope for rehab and how “this diagnosis affects everyone differently.”  The fact is, your future will be what it’ll be. You won’t know how it’ll turn out until it’s all over. For now, the only thing you’ll have is your conviction that you’re going to help her deal with it, no matter what .  Mauricio Graiko @ Shutterstock “I Do?” You don’t have that conviction? Then these next words are especially for you.  Pardon my bluntness here.
Read more