Feb 1

Written by: michaela renee
2/1/2010 9:02 PM

Inside here there is a girl, and on the outside there is a writer. I absolutely, positively can not compare myself to other well known authors, because that would be considered egotistical, especially given the lack of international status.

Until my book appears on the shelf of an airport Hudson Newsstand, I’m simply “aspiring.”

Inside is a girl, who is living every day life, and has an ability to see every situation as if I were living life in the third person. And when I sit down to type what I’ve witnessed, the words spill from my brain faster than the keys can type them.

But on the outside is a woman, who is a writer, and struggles with what everyone else around her thinks.

And so, as if two dogs are fighting for each arm of the squeaky toy, I find myself constantly deliberating between the life I live, and the life I tell. Or rather, the life I share.

I have this beautiful wrought iron clock hanging on the wall above my nightstand. When the moon sleeps, and the sun is awake you would never even know the clock exists. Unless of course you go in search of what it blatantly tells you, the time.

But at night, when the noises of day break at sunset and the world starts to simmer, the clock begins to speak.

Right then, as you lie in bed attempting to silence the thoughts of the day you hear it, the obnoxiously repetitive tick-tock.

Our voices are made up of that which sits in the forefront of our minds, but our thoughts are comprised of that which stirs below the surface. Much like the fuel in your car, that which keeps your engine running is not what you put in it every day, but the fast moving parts it uses to process that petrol and make the motor run.

And yet somehow we believe that which others say is more important than that which runs our thoughts. Most of us never hear the internal chatter, because we’re too busy listening to what we’ve been told.

This clock is completely annoying, but the tick is soothing, so soothing in fact that I almost go into meditation, or a trance, like counting sheep…but better, because I’m not distracted with the visual of the little Serta sheep bouncing on a trampoline to launch themselves over the little wood fence I created in my head, which becomes more like a Mario Brothers game than a method to help me doze.

So as the clock becomes the only sound of the night, much like the clear black sky on a frigid winter night, I gain clarity. Because the ticking of the clock, represents the feelings of my heart, all that which stirs in the bottom.

The tick inside my gut says, “tell the story, it’s what great writers are made of.” But the ringing in my hears says, “maybe that’s not entirely your story to tell.”

Because in each story, is another perspective, someone else‘s point of view, and more importantly, someone else‘s heart. And mostly, I tell my side because I know someone out there can relate to it, someone will gain greater clarity on a similar situation they were struggling with. But more often than not, the person on the other side of that story is someone that I love. And more than once a blog I’ve written has hurt someone.

My Dad will probably be upset when he reads this, because it was my Dad who called me the other day when I hurt my Mom…

“Michaela,” he said. “The pen is mightier than the sword. You have a gift to write, I wanted to sit down and write back to that last blog you posted, but I couldn’t even figure out what to say. And so I guess what I ask is…for you to ask yourself how it would feel, and consider keeping those written thoughts in a personal diary…one that sits on a shelf in your heart, not for everyone to see.”

I don’t like to hurt anyone I love, I especially don’t want to hurt my Mom. And as long as I’ve been living, there’s nothing worse than having Dad upset at me, because I’ve always been a Daddy’s girl.

So I began to wonder, how do I tell the story without hurting those around me? Because even if it’s fictionalized, and they read it, the truth resounds and they are hurt. And inevitably, every time I’ve shared my writing with the other person in advance, it ends up going from a 4,000 heartfelt account of a strong emotion and experience to three sentences:

Yesterday I went for a walk. It was fun. The end.

This nation was built by risk takers, and some of the most powerful words ever written have been true life accounts of an experience, riddled with emotion and spilling out from the soul, words being ripped from the heart of the speaker to land on the ears of those who close their eyes to avoid witness.

An example of one writer’s words that offended many, and empowered many others:

“But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination…I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

Even as I digest a speech that still profoundly affects our lives today, I realize…

Inside here is a girl who believes in the story, and outside is a writer, who is afraid of what everyone else thinks.

Copyright ©2010 Michaela Renee

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