There are writers who say writing is not therapy; that it may express but it will not change you. For me, that has been entirely untrue. Writing has cut a path through depressions and creative drought, spurred insights, and promoted struggles which led to solving real and pressing problems.
Some people meditate for similar reasons, but I have never gotten much out of traditional meditation. For me, writing does a better job. Writing is a place where I go to think alone, where petty concerns fall away, where routine loses its hold over me.
In personal journals, I even forget about being “good.” Their purpose is to help me “discover” what I really think, and sometimes I find that my thoughts, reflected back to me in print, are irrational. Writing is a mirror that exposes when I am not being honest with myself, when I am distorting details to support my anger, or when I am guilty of wishful thinking.
Though my writing may be technically correct, sometimes something seems “off,” a glitch, a sort of mental hiccup. When I ask myself what is wrong, I realize that I am not thinking clearly. When I adjust my writing to correct my prejudices or unclear thinking, not only does my writing change; I change with it.
Writing is more than an expression of existing ideas; it is a conversation, a process of discovery. For that reason, writing sometimes alters how I perceive my memories and myself.
A few years ago I wrote for the first time the story of my sixth grade bullying experience. In writing it, in my effort to think clearly about it, I moved beyond the sense of having been a passive victim.
For too many years my memory had focused only on the details that supported my initial anger. Writing about it many years later altered my perspective, pushed me to realize what the experience was really like. For my story to be cohesive, for it to have context, for it to be honest, I had to probe my memories and when I did, I dug up lost details.
I could see that there was a lot that was good about that year. My writing, for example, had flourished that year, perhaps because I needed so much to escape, to make sense of what was happening.
As I wrote about bullying, I remembered that, despite all the humiliation, I had had a friend at the end of the year, a new girl who was shy like me but that, at the time, I had taken for granted. I also realized that even though I was shocked into paralysis at the time, I learned from the experience and applied my insights later in ways that were far from passive.
Anyone can look back to a former time and reinterpret their memories, but for me writing focused the activity, and I was not exactly the same person after writing about bullying as I had been before I began.
While writing supports my tendency to look inward, at other times it pushes me beyond my comfort zone. It has led me to make friends with people who are different from me, encouraged me to do things I was afraid to do, such as riding a Segway in the Bahamas down a rocky dirt path, or sharing my agnosticism, or telling what it feels like to be manic.
But no matter how far writing pushes me into the outside world, I always come back home again to to the writing itself.
Beyond learning from the act of writing, I also learn from what I have already written. In 2002 when I had my second manic episode, I wrote through the whole experience and I still have my journals. They are hard for me to read. They reflect someone who is broken, who cannot compose a clear thought yet thinks she is being articulate.
The journals are still fascinating to read. I remember something of what I felt when I was writing them and my inflated view of myself. But from a more sober perspective, I can see how I must have seemed to others.
After my mania ended, I fell into a depression, which I have mentioned many times in my blog and chronicled in my book, A Trail of Crumbs to Creative Freedom. During that time, writing seemed like my worst enemy and I desperately wanted to make friends with it again. Writing seemed punishing, remote, inaccessible.
But in my struggle to reach it despite the emotional barriers, I reconnected with my creativity, found my perspective, and discovered a writing process that worked well for me.
Against my inclination, writing has also motivated me to look outside myself and observe people. When I started keeping a character observation notebook, I began to notice loud hats, unusual postures, facial tics, and styles of dress.
I learned that people were stranger than I had ever realized.
Writing also pushed me to do work on freelancing websites like Elance. At first I was terrified to communicate with clients on-line, but in the end I emerged with greater confidence in my writing.
Writing is not, as some people may imagine, a passive, sedate, or safe endeavor. It has challenged and pushed me, even when I pushed back. And in my effort to find meaning in it all, writing is always there, providing a way to frame and re-frame my experiences.
Writing has changed me. And as long as I accept its challenges and never sink into a complacent rut, I cannot assume that it has finished changing me or that it will ever end as long as I am alive. If it ever does, I will stop doing it.
And that is not an option.