I did this thing. I applied for an MFA program in creative non-fiction because I needed more change and challenge in my life after quitting my job, moving across the country post-living in the same town for over 20 years, leaving close family and friends, enrolling my teens in public school for the first time, and recovering from the previous said job that shattered my soul in a way I didn’t know a job could do.
I got in. I am still not sure I believe I am really “in,” although I possess an official student I.D. and am sitting here in the student center on a physical university campus typing away as part of all our exactly the same homework assignments for every class: Write, read, write, read, write, write, write and write some more.
I needed this. I didn’t know how much until I sat in a class and emotions began bubbling up, threatening to pour onto the page and wash away all my words. I was able to hold it all in until I got back to my hotel room. Even then, I avoided the out-pour of tears by being an irresponsible student by not writing or reading, instead watching Netflix while eating microwave popcorn and Milk Duds for dinner, justified by thinking “at least I’m not drinking alone in a dark hotel room.” It’s just Milk Duds.
In another class where the teacher made us write for the entire two hours, my hand cramping, something shifted in me. I began remembering what writing has been and will always be for me.
Writing is not just a practice as all the instructors keep preaching, but it is also, for me, a spiritual practice. Writing untangles the tangled within and takes the frayed strands to weave a whole new interior landscape for me to explore.
I am a world traveller at heart, but until this week I didn’t know I never have to leave my favorite spot on our couch in front of our broken fireplace to discover new and fascinating worlds. Or that I could become an explorer of sorts sitting in a college classroom with too bright florescent lights and hard chairs, even at almost 5o years of age, a good twenty-plus years behind most of my classmates who are closer in age to my children than to me.
“To me, the spiritual resides in that tension between what we understand about ourselves and what we do not—and writing becomes the bridge, the conduit, holding these two lands together, sometimes barely.”
~Jonathan Callard *
Writing also honors the mystery of this tension between what I understand about myself and what I do not. It is in this mystery where my life’s answers lie hidden.
I thought my writing bridge had been burned down. Maybe it was. Maybe a new one is being built. It doesn’t matter because either way I am here now, even if sometimes barely.
*Jonathan Callard has been a writing teacher of mine from which I have learned a lot. See his article here on spirituality and writing: https://creativenonfiction.org/people/jonathan-callard/
