Rebecca Evans Writes

She Rises

2010-10-04T04:52:00.000-07:00

The wobbly first step appears to be the most difficult, but becomes the most exhilarating. Something unknown, yet the toddler fills with life. Her curiosity erases her fear.

She launches.

The awkward first blast from the sprinter's starting blocks looks embarrassing, but is alive with excitement and anticipation. Blinded with wind in her eyes, yet the young athlete pushes forward, overflowing with determination. She shows no shame.

She blasts.

The clumsy first dance on the eve of a social gathering seems humiliating. Experiencing young love, the girl sees only the eyes of her date; the one she hopes will be her first real kiss--the kiss that counts. She is complete in her thoughts and her dreams. She understands no judgment.

She floats.

The unstable brave step out of an abuser's prison proves a shattering event, but grows into a move based on faith. Horrified that she has found herself in this place, she slowly allows self-forgiveness. She realizes she can move on and heal. She knows no limits.

She rises.

Six Inch Squares

2010-08-29T21:07:00.000-07:00

Most mornings were peaceful. She would set her coffee pot for brew the night before and pre-pack her car with school supplies for her children. Before waking the kids, she often read her Bible at the kitchen table with only the light from the stove.

The last few months were far removed from these mornings. She had been taking different routes on her daily errands and this morning she had decided to pack clothes and medicine for her children in place of their backpacks. Her cell phone was stuffed under her left arm in her bra so her husband wouldn't take and "dismantle" it as he had been threatening. Under her right breast was a small amount of cash. Deep in the front pockets of her jeans, which she had been sleeping in for over a week, were her car keys, a pocket knife, her driver's license and a credit card. Her can of mace was at the bottom of her purse. She usually slept only a few hours a night. Now she stayed awake, lying still, afraid she would move too soon. She was preparing, getting "mission ready."

Six inch squares. This was her military training. She was folding the tiny t-shirts into six inch squares and aligning them in a small stack. "Flush and grounded" was the term the Air Force used when stacking clothes in a drawer. She automatically stowed the clothes in the duffle bag in the trunk of her car in this military fashion. The car was parked in the garage, the lights off, morning peaking through dusty blinds. The duffle bag was large enough for her to crawl into and was already packed with the nebulizer, a machine that blew air through a clear tube to a small cup of medicine, creating a mist of steroids to be inhaled, allowing her son to breathe. Tucked next to the neb machine was the pacemaker tester, a device that hooked to her other son's chest and allowed a hospital in Chicago to monitor his heart. She needed enough clothing and supplies for herself and her three sons. Enough for a week.

Her feet sounded like wet splats with each step across the concrete as she padded back and forth. She could hear her own breath, crackly and shallow as she tried to keep quiet and not stir the children. She looked over her shoulder, and shimmied against the door post, pausing to listen before entering the house. Another training technique to "check your six o'clock", searching for the enemy should he be plotting another attack.

"Part the sea, God, please," her prayer became a common request.

She had remembered to brush her teeth, but had forgotten to comb her hair.

Numbness

2010-08-10T22:34:00.000-07:00

My right arm has been numb for over a week. I thought it was a neck thing from an old Air Force-related problem, but it was really a chest thing, a muscle thing, from carrying my new baby. All right, he isn't new anymore. Almost a toddler. But the muscles in the front of my body are tightening to the point of tearing.

Like my arm, my heart and life have been numb. I thought this was from trauma, the pain in my childhood, the tragedies from long ago.

Again I was wrong.

This numbness is acute not chronic. Denial. A refusal to look at the damaging things that have happen directly in front of me. I have been witness to my own tragedies as though an audience attendant instead of a participant.

The numbness is both a safeguard and an illusion. And the damage from allowing this disability to remain once I was aware it existed is far more harmful than the original destruction incurred.

If my hand is without feeling, it can easily be burned by fire, frostbitten and destroyed without any awareness on my part.

If my heart is numb, it too can be burned, scarred and mutilated--beyond its original shape and design.

I must show up to guard my heart.

I must un-numb myself.

Staying numb served its purpose, but it disconnected me from me. It disconnected me from G-d and has inevitably destroyed me.

I now simply strive each day to feel everything and in turn, share those raw emotions with other readers, realizing we are closely linked; not far removed one from another. Realizing that when we feel instead of living in numbness, we heal.

Rejection

2010-08-04T09:22:00.000-07:00

Why do we seek that which rejects us, like the moth drawn into the deadly flame?

We feel the singe, even smell our own flesh burning, yet we reach towards that destructive fire.

Once burned, most of us will never touch that flame again. We've been melted beyond recognition, even to ourselves.

It is the yearning, the desire, the ache that splinters up the wrist bones into our jaws. It is the fact that we want that which distances itself from us.

I've experienced this more than once. When I was a little girl I sought the admiration and attention of my abuser. As I grew into my own skin, this behavior became a bit like a competition...

"Let me see if I can get THAT one to like me."

"I can change him."

It was as though I became the ALL-GREAT-AND-MIGHTY-POWERFUL Wizard of Oz.

And, in a sense, I did.

Like him, I am small, hidden behind a curtain of shame and doubt and pain and brokeness.

I am waiting for the call. You know the one--the place you set your phone--directly in front of you and pretend you are busy with the rest of your life all the while praying it will ring.

I have once again sought the Rejector and am now standing alone in a light drizzle so cold my toes curl into my shoes, cramping the arches of my feet.

I am learning to stay in this place, my teeth chattering as I seek the only one who has never rejected me--my G-d.

What would He say to me if I stopped and listened?

"Child of mine, you are leaping when you need to be still.

You are screaming when you need silence.

You are opening old wounds when you need to heal.

You are broken, but if you let go, I will cast you into a new design and you will heal whole.

I have provided for all your needs.

You need no other.

No one can do for you that which I can.

Trust in me for I am with you.

You are never alone.

Your heart has spoken to me and you have heard My answer to your question--if you were provided for, what would your life be like?

You would write.
You would paint walls.
You would create.
You would plant gardens.
You would embrace your children every waking moment.

You would not wait on another.

You would not wait for a phone call when you indeed have a much greater call.

Listen to me, my child and you will hear your call.

Watch what brings back your breath.

See what brings about your light.

Embrace these things for they are my messengers to remind you that I am here.

There is a light for you to follow. Open your eyes, turn off the phone, take a deep breath.

Do not be molded by others' desires of you and for you. Keep your eyes on me.

Go inside for a time. Focus.

Do not be willing to become most anything to be unrejected.

Instead, be willing to become what I have in mind for you."

AWOKE

2010-02-02T22:27:00.001-08:00

I awoke

still empty somewhere inside
though surrounded by men in my daily life.

I awoke

and

realized

this was no dream.

I awoke

and

realized

that I needed to abandon a hope such as this,
knowing my vision may materialize,
I cannot wish it into place.

My power alone is not strong enough.

I awoke

and

realized

this passion cannot be of my will.

So I dreamed instead

and

let go,

just so I could wake up.

There is No Escape in Writing

2009-12-05T09:14:00.000-08:00

Throughout my life, writing has been a method for me, therapy to sort through my garbage--to take it out, look at it and determine if there is anything in the rubble worth keeping and cleaning. My writing in this context always addressed my problems. Journaling, writing exercises, creative exploration, word art, dream boards--all systems to reach the core me.

In the last couple of weeks, I've been pummeled with a personal crisis. It feels as though there is no time to journal and when the time is available, I want to sleep instead of dig in my trash. Much of this trash isn't even mine, but shoveling through it will still uproot painful things about myself, things I've been unwilling to address. Up until now, any spare moment in my life, after caring for my family, has been expended finishing my current work; my book, which has healed an entirely different portion of my life from a distant time and place.

Attempting to write about pain in the now, or even write through it and despite it, has forced me to evaluate the parallels of myself--my mind, my methods, my life. I'm not trying to bury the current circumstances. I'm not stuffing the pain into a box or down my throat in the form of Krispy Kremes. I am sitting in the pain with all of my being, letting the bile rise, my hands shake and my mind crack just a bit.

But what I've begun to realize is that when faced with a personal crisis, most people can simply rise in the morning and lose themselves in their work or a project. Not a writer. A writer cannot lose himself when he works. A writer finds himself in his work.

Titles

2009-11-21T21:32:00.000-08:00

At the start of creation, man named the things surrounding him. He called a tree, tree. A frog, a frog. Like the first human, writers expend enormous mental exertion naming--trying to describe something in an extraordinarily accurate way with the least amount of words. We live a life full of labels, names, titles. I'm a mother, a sister, a wife. I love that I've become a writer, speaker and painter. But like the names of creatures and plants, these names, meager labels, do not define me. I am more than a mother or writer. Those labels are only things I do.

But the naming of a book is different. A title emerges in layers. At the start of my literary piece, I had already named my book. I called my book by this name though I hadn't even written one sentence towards the start of a first draft. God Thought I Was Atlas. I'm not even sure where the name, the inspiration for this title, came from. One day it was there.

Over the years, I've read chapter after chapter to my reading-listening-feedback friend, Lorene. And with every reading, the two of us referred to the book by its given name. Like one of my children, my book is called out when needed, referred to in dialogue, and thought about with much tenderness. Always with this name.

A few weeks ago, I realized this title limits my book. This is not a religious book. It's non-fiction literature, a memoir. My journey is not a religious journey, though it is a spiritual experience. My journey is more than this, more than this title, and so I had to un-name my work. I didn't realize how painful un-naming could be. Now my work was like a nameless child and drawing it to me, embracing it, felt awkward. I know many writers name their work when it is finished. Or the name arrives as powerful fresh language at the beginning or end of a new chapter. Maybe these writers did not know they had a void in their nameless work. They struggled through each line without the need for a label.

At first I thought I would need to comb through my manuscript. Surely the title was already there, hidden away, obscure, yet waiting to be found. But the weeks passed and...nothing. Then last week, I was working on the eighth revision on chapter 25 when the name lingered on a line right in front of me. There it stood out, stood alone--a new word, something unheard of, something more than fresh, and yet something that embraced this entire journey in only a few syllables. I stifled a small shout. Another layer in the writing journey had peeled away. My work had a name.

Writing While Living

2009-10-27T00:08:00.001-07:00

I haven't written for a week. Not a word and I feel like I can't breathe, like my skin is stretched too far across my bones. Simply uncomfortable. Maybe I feel like I'm not worthy to breathe.

I've been working on a long piece of writing, almost five years now. Literary non-fiction. The journey in writing this memoir has been the most promising part. I mean, I love the layers of piecing together sentences that matter. But the uncovering of oneself in writing--that is the best part. A week ago I sat in my closet and cried. I cried because I realized as much as I have tried to not be like my mother, I am like her. I have followed in her crusty steps down a crooked path of surface and meaningless events that I can barely recall through my life. I cried because I am thrilled that I can see this side of me as well, shameful as it may be. I cried for the chunks of my life wasted and I cried for the pieces I know I've forgotten and buried, never to resurface again.

I'll write here about this journey, the completion of a "master piece" of one's life, the final revision of non-fiction, the struggle to make each sentence sing and the story to come to life. But most importantly, the attempt to capture the truth of one's journey with abandonment and fear.