Legacy Writing 365:54

February 23 is Debby’s birthday–or in her case, as we often call it, “brithday.” Family joke.

When she was here at Thanksgiving, I mentioned to her that I have zero memories of birthdays when we were growing up. I seriously can’t remember David, Debby, or me having birthday cakes and ice cream, blowing out candles, opening presents. I know we must have done those things; she assures me we did. But all I draw is a big birthday blank–except that I know if we were together now, I’d make her a coconut cake, because that’s what my mother would bake for her. Maybe knowing that means all the birthdays float somewhere in my subconscious.

I scanned in a few photos.

I planned to write about how glad I am that this face has been a part of my life for as long as my memory stretches back. I love her brown eyes, freckles scattered over her cute nose, and her big smile. Like any sisters forced to share a bedroom, we bickered and tormented each other: the tree-climbing tomboy and the doll-loving girly girl. But no matter what, I always knew she had my back, and vice versa.

However, instead of having the energy to write a decent post, I ended up taking a break from the Internet for most of Thursday. Sometimes I get so disheartened by online behavior.

Every day, when I wake up, I feel I have a choice. I can embrace what’s positive or get mired down in what’s negative. Over the years, I’ve used blogging for many different things. To connect with readers. To keep up with friends. To talk about whatever random thing caught my attention on any given day. To reminisce. To talk about stuff that’s important to me. To be silly and play. To share photos. To share moments in my life or my friends’ lives. To celebrate dogs and books and movies and pop culture.

When I did the Magnetic Poetry stuff last year, it was to engage with words again because I felt like my writing well had run dry. After a few months, when it felt too routine, I began either to find existing photos to match the randomly-drawn word poems, or shoot new photos and try to make those random words match them.

This year, I decided to let photos from my past help me access memories or share stories from my life. Once again, this effort is mostly about retraining myself to write consistently. As in: every day. I’m not sharing all the stories of my life, or my family members’ lives, or my friends’ lives. Beyond everyone’s right to privacy, including my own, it’s also a matter of choice, just like when I wake up in the morning. I choose to celebrate as much of the good stuff as I can. Everyone I know has not led a charmed existence of joy and joyness. Among the group of people who’ve populated my life, we’ve known all the hard shit, too: death, loss, abuse, divorce, miscarriage, betrayal, deceit, cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer’s, loss of faith, despair, dementia, cruelty, suicide, disease, adultery, abandonment, unemployment, hunger, poverty, abortion, disability, molestation, addiction, mental illness, broken bones, broken hearts, broken relationships, broken lives, broken marriages, broken families, broken friendships.

In other words, we’re human, with the entire range of human behaviors and experiences and flaws. As I said to Tim earlier today, nobody gets to be born and live and grow old without experiencing pain. But I have no interest in exploiting the pain in my life, or the pain in the lives of people I know, on a public blog. Instead, writing here is most often another attempt to focus on whatever I can that’s positive. That’s who I choose to be publicly, and anyone who wants something grittier can certainly find it in abundance in about one zillion places online.

And if what you need is a support system or therapy or assistance, I urge you to use the Internet to find the phone numbers of organizations and individuals who can actually help you–but also to understand that what passes as help on the Internet is often anything but helpful. You may not have my big sister, but you can always find someone who’ll have your back and not put a figurative knife in it.

As Sgt. Phil Esterhaus always said on Hill Street Blues: Let’s be careful out there.