Jellyfish Motherfucker

I’m trying something different today.  I’m writing a blog entry while listening to Cheryl Strayed’s “Write like a Motherfucker,” section of “Tiny, Beautiful Things.”   We’ll see how that goes, I guess...  Here's what I'm hearing right now,  plus some jellyfish dancing around.

 

 Whenever I’ve shared anything from this book with friends, their response has almost invariably been, “It’s like the author has been following me around for the last year of my life.”    In this audiobook excerpt, Strayed narrates her response (originally from an online advice column called “Dear Sugar” at therumpus.net) to a young, aspiring writer too afraid to write… anything but eloquent advice column inquiries.  As with every letter, Strayed responds with a perfect combination of empathy accompanied by loving, but bluntly-stated truths. The advice is rooted in the author's own life experiences, and is always personal and warm.  I think that's why people relate to what she writes so strongly. For me, Strayed's response spoke to the last ten years of my life and she must have been following me around.

I spent years running from the words floating around in my head.  I set aside my longing to express myself in order to avoid feeling depleted, depressed.  I love to write, and there are few things I find more satisfying. But during the times in my life that I’ve written the most prolifically I have often been the most sad.  It’s kind of a chicken and egg thing: do I write when I’m depressed, or does writing make me depressed?  Both are true, to an extent, but I can no more extinguish the part of my voice that wants to be expressed through my fingers and clattering keyboard than I can keep myself from giggling a little when I hear the word “shaft.”

“Write like a Motherfucker” makes me feel brave, and strong (while I hide behind my computer screen).  And you know what?  I am brave!  I am fucking strong!!  I am a MOTHERFUCKER!!!

Ok, reigning it in... life stories.  Right.

When I was in massage school, my instructor, Mrs. Boots—one of the wisest women I’ve ever met—made an observation about me during class, and I’ve held onto it, mostly because I  liked it and it made me feel special.  Boots said, “Courtney, you’re like a jellyfish that grew a steel spine for itself.  You are one of the most vulnerable people I’ve ever met, but you never crumple.”

I do crumple from time to time I guess, but I always pick myself back up, keep floating along aimlessly, gathering things up with my delicate, but sting-y tentacles, trying not to destroy my favorite things, my stories.  I’ve been absorbing them, even while I strayed from my words and my stories, and I find they’re still with me.  They never left.  They’ve been growing with each experience, each revelation.  I’ve been drafting the stories of my life by living them, and now, I’m putting ‘em out from time to time. 

Swimmers beware.  I’d hate for anyone to get peed on.