I cannot go off quietly into the night...
However, there is also a temptation to publish my blog. There seems to be a growing movement towards people like me sharing their stories, and giving hope and direction to others who are similarly struggling. Chantale is strongly encouraging me in this direction. I have needed to tell her and myself that me writing my blog at this time has nothing to do with publishing it one day. The two need to be very separate. I am writing for myself right now, not for anyone else in the world to read. However, I am not opposed to publishing it one day.
Naturally, these two paths are completely opposite.
I am also frustrated by two different things. Jordan Peterson says: “listen to your discontentment. It will tell you what you need to change.”
On the one hand, I feel an intense frustration with being silenced. I feel like I have been silenced my entire life. Now, I see that it comes from the household in which I was raised. My upbringing caused me to feel silenced even when others would not have necessarily minded me speaking. When I felt silenced in seminary, in church, on the mission field, these really were a reflection of how I was raised. We were not allowed to have an opinion. We were disciplined for having an opinion other than dad’s, and there was a holy terror surrounding the our very notion of telling our family secrets: that we were spanked, that dad got angry, etc. And so I feel this intense pressure. It drives me mad sometimes. I really really hate that there is a distance growing between my private blog, and my public social media. Even between my private blog and my friends. I have a friend that wants to get together to talk about life. How can we even hang out? I am not good at being superficial. I would like to share everything that is going on, but I tell this point I have not decided to share my blog with him. That frustrates me.
On the other hand, I feel very frustrated that not enough people are speaking. There is far too much silence in the church. We are all far too afraid of gossiping, and we would like to smooth things over and make them neat and clean when they are not neat or clean. What about the wives of narcissistic husband’s? What about the children raised in spiritual abuse? Will we just smile and move along? Live our lives, and let those people suffer? There is a friend I am thinking of right now who feels the need to leave her childhood home, uprooting her entire sense of identity because she married a narcissist. She found the courage to divorce him, but she doesn’t believe that enough people will understand her side. That is shocking and tragic.
What this is bringing me around to is realizing that I need to go through this. As the children’s book says, “can’t go over it, can’t go around it oh… We have to go through it!“
This is not just a great book opportunity – although it will be a great book. It is not just to launch my writing career – although it may do that just that.
There is a certain holy calling about this. I feel as though it is what I am destined to do. That is the right language. I’m not being dramatic. This is the course I was always meant to take.
And I could not do otherwise. Other people may have the luxury of fading off into the night. I do not. My parents are too crazy for that. They would find me. Perhaps, fewer people have this luxury than one would think.
But also, fading off into the night would be a kind of death for me. I would lose my hometown, I would lose my podcast, I would lose my following, I would lose my voice. I would lose my future ability to write authentic books. I would just lose everything that makes me me.
I do not want to do this. I hate conflict. It is a hell of a thing for a pacifist to think about taking their parents to court. (Or rather, being taken to court by them)
But as I consider these two roads, only one seems viable at this point. I need to face this head-on. That doesn’t mean I need to provoke them and make it worse than it needs to be. But I need to take this rapids full force. Engage fully. Be prepared for the worst. And I will publish this book. And it will start my writing career.
And the worst that my parents can do will only propel me further.
So help me God, I’m going in.
***
Note of clarification for the reader: I’m not meaning now or anytime soon. The absolute soonest I could think of publishing a book would be one year. But likely it will be more like two or three years until I feel enough closure, and feel like I am ready to face the natural pushback sand interactions that such a book would evoke. Not to mention my parents. It’s not going to happen soon.
But it will happen someday. Perhaps sooner than I think.
I am being silent now, but I will not always be silenced. I will not go off quietly into the night.
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