Exposed.

Memoire writing is one way to purge your psyche from all the memories one’s acquired over a lifetime, be it a life that’s 23 years or 53 years. I’ve spent the past two years or so (with the help of Lorraine Ash’s terrific memoire writing workshops and weekends http://www.lorraineash.com) just painting what’s been sluicing around in my head directly onto the page. Sometimes these tales are vignettes, sometimes they’re full blown stories and other times they are just somewhat traumatic memories spilling out of where they’ve lived for so long, with no rhyme or reason.

My first group of postings over the last week have all been innocuous and relatively harmless, just dipping my toe in the water. Sure, I’ve written about my father, but he’s dead. I’ve also written about my brother – but maybe he’ll see this and maybe he won’t. I have pieces I’ve written that I’d like to post about family members I love, but I fear that they’ll roll their eyes and just be annoyed by me going on about them so. I also have pieces of written about happenings that took place that were traumatic to me or pieces that tell tales of some really serious shit.

At a friends and family gathering a few days ago, someone I know casually walked up to me and told me he had read my blog. He mentioned that he read all of it and particularly liked the piece I wrote about my grandson and Christmas (https://genkaufmanwrites.com/2018/12/24/its-christmas-eve-again/). I thanked him, and I told him I was happy he liked it, and he made a point to say he had liked the entire blog and had read all of the entries, not just the one he mentioned.

His comment stopped me in my tracks. I felt a little panicked. What had I written? I remembered that some of it dealt with family and some difficult topics. I realized in that moment that if my goal of writing this blog and a memoire was to have people read it, than people are going to be reading about me. And its not always pretty and it doesn’t always have a smile. And it sometimes involves people that are in my life in positive and meaningful ways and it might reflect on the relationships I have with them and the events I experience with them and the way I experienced those events. Part of me finds it terrifying. Part of me finds it exhilarating. Thinking about a particular piece I want to post today gives me the stomach flutters in the same way that thinking about jumping into a pool that you know is a bit too cool to immediately find enjoyable on a hot day. Once you’re in there, you’re in there and there’s no taking it back. Let’s change that scenario to skinny dipping in a lake. And stripping down and jumping right into the cold water to cool off. Not only is the discomfort factor there – but in the end, you’re left exposed.