There
is no doubt that it’s always hard to write about the moments painful for you,
moments, when you felt hurt. Your mother slapped you in the face and your left
cheek is still burning with a deep resentment and a consciousness of injustice.
It was ten long years ago but your anger is rather
strong both then and now and you give vent to your indignation and pain on the
paper.
In her memoirs Swallow the Ocean Laura Flynn describes
her childhood with a mother who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. It seems
to be a hard time for all her family members, for her sisters and especially
for her father who ends up with leaving the family and trying to get custody
upon his daughters. Laura has enough reasons to be mad at her father who left
them and their mother who they, little kids, loved anyway because she was their
mother. Laura as well has enough reasons to fear and even hate her mother who
was trying to hurt them by bumping into their father’s car while Laura, her
father and her sister were inside it. Nevertheless, her book is full of light
feeling, nostalgia for walks and evenings with her mother, for going out and
conversations with her father. The main tone of the story telling is sadness, pity for her mother, regret at not being able
to defend her mother from her illness, to keep their family happy and united.
One of the most important things in writing about the
past is an ability to forgive. After all, just anger isn’t that interesting for
readers because everyone knows what is anger about and everyone has something
or someone to be mad at. What is interesting is how you reflect on your past,
on your pain, on reasons of your anger. If you are suffused with emotions,
especially negative ones, you can’t see clearly what was happening, why it was
happening and what was so painful about it for you. It will be just a clutter
of harsh colors instead of a situation that a reader can imagine, can construct
in his mind. You need to forgive to discover the outlet for your resentment on
the paper.
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