Cringing, Crying, Celebrating — Brevity Blog
By Morgan Baker
I recently reread my memoir-in-progress, about my oldest daughter leaving for college and my subsequent collapse in despair. My daughter is now 11 years out of college and has been married for four. I am older too, and have recovered from that depression. But as I read it, I squirmed in my chair with anxiety.
I have restructured, revised, and refined this manuscript more times than I can count. I’ve worked on the focus/purpose of the story, and added more details. I started this project almost ten years ago, then after much frustration and a futile attempt at getting an agent, took a 4-year hiatus, sticking it under my desk while I worked on other projects. The memoir just couldn’t come together. Now, however, I’m in a completely different place—and my vision for the memoir has changed as well.
In one of my previous drafts, the reader learned I got depressed, a key turning point in the memoir, but truthfully, I glossed over it. Drove around the speed bump. I didn’t want to slow down and remember, and I didn’t want to share the gory details.
In a later draft, my editor encouraged me to go deep. I revised with more honesty and vulnerability. When I sent the memoir off to my father to read, he said he had a hard time reading about my depression. He thought the chapter was well written, he just never had known I could get so low, low enough that when I drove, I looked at guardrails and wondered what it would be like to go crashing through one. I never did, but sometimes I still wonder.
My husband avoided reading that section of the memoir as well, because he says, “I lived it.”
I didn’t enjoy writing that segment, either. My spine tingled when I recalled times I sobbed and sobbed, didn’t eat, screamed at my family, berated myself. I don’t share a lot about my depression outside my writing. I’m embarrassed by it, and no one really understands unless they’ve been there. Being depressed, as I described to a friend recently, is an out-of-body experience. I have no control over my emotions, or my behavior. I am not rational. Trust me when I tell you it’s not the same as being sad. You cannot pull yourself up by the bootstraps or get on with the program, as my mother used to suggest. If I could prevent myself, or anyone, for that matter, from feeling this way, I would. It’s horrible.
Just as I surprised myself by cringing at my portrayal of my own depression, I stunned myself by crying during a section where one of our dogs dies. Ezzie was four and we were about to breed her, but suddenly she developed a virulent cancer. She was dead the following Tuesday. I had to stop working on the manuscript section. It’s been six years since that dog died. Why did reading about it make me cry?
Robert Frost famously said, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” I didn’t really know what that meant until now.
Will I be the only one to cringe and cry?
I didn’t write the memoir to upset readers. I wrote it for myself first, to try and understand what happened to me and why. But I hid from myself and my reader. If I didn’t put it all on the page, then maybe it really wasn’t that bad. I didn’t want to share myself the way I think I have in the latest draft. I can’t hide anymore. I can’t pretend my sense of humor isn’t masking my depression, although it’s a fun challenge.
Luckily, medicine, friends, family, dogs, and therapy have kept me from sinking again into that quicksand of depression. It does, however, suck me in occasionally, reminding me not to get too comfortable. I work out, write, visit with friends, and rely on my husband and daughters to keep me in check.
But my memoir isn’t just about depression and death. It’s also about love, life and moving forward. I smile as I read scenes I wrote about watching another of our dogs give birth or my daughter as a field hockey goalie. I’m able to enjoy my family, dogs and quilting—a way to be kind to myself—as well. Now I celebrate watching my daughters move forward in their lives, standing tall as they walk away.
Rereading sections of my memoir, I am surprised at how emotional I get. I lived it, I knew it first hand. Why did reading about it elicit such reactions from me? Perhaps because, finally, I slowed down over the speed bump.