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  • that straightjacket feeling

    posted January 23, 2010 12:10 am

    My mother chanced upon the MPH book compilation of teen stories, lately.

    “I read one of those,” she said, in between stretching and cracking her fragile back, “and I read until I cry.”

    My mother is the only other person in my whole family whose spine is as old as mine. We’re both 700 years old back there.

    I pressed the lower back part, and she yelped.

    “Why don’t you write for these kind of books? I’m sure you can,” she said.

    *

    I have been thinking a lot of my writing lately.

    When I was in school I was always one of the top scorers when it came to writing. I loved fiction. I loved it so much my mother had to confiscate my storybooks because I was neglecting my studies. I sneaked Enid Blyton into the washroom and pretend to be doing big business. I wake up at 4 in the morning to read, and sometimes write. I was classified as a bookworm to my family, and a nerd to the rest of the world. (I should, also, at this point of blogging, reveal that I never had suitors/stalkers/admirers until college. More on that, later)

    Editing & writing the column for my first church’s youth newsletter (we published 3 issues and circulation was.. well let’s not go there) gave me a small window of opportunity to write from the heart. I was growing, and like boys and their raging hormones, I had ballooning emotions waiting to explode within me. I remember this one article I wrote on how I yearned to sit outside Heaven’s door, just to listen to Him breathe. I had people stop me at the church doorway to comment on how ‘God has touched me through your piece.’ Until today I am not sure if they even knew what they were talking about. I think they weren’t really sure either.

    In college I wrote a darn good piece on the issue of abortion which earned me a score high enough to grant me a credit for the subject before I even sat for my exams. I was pro-life back then.

    Monash was the starting point to where my interest in writing took a complete detour off the conventional path of ‘righteousness’. I found little enjoyment in the course of academic writing, but discovered immense satisfaction at the end of each piece. I had to take experimental/creative writing subjects as my core units. I wrote about bleeding puppies and mosques built by overstretched human skin. My degree taught me to question things. To question institutional ideologies. Religion. I was a whore to academia. I wrote against everything I once stood for. I am pro-choice now. I introduced profanity to my academic essays (and I pride in the fact that we all could). I compromised what others would call ‘integrity’ for a string of Distinctions.

    Now if you’d ask me of what stuff I wrote which I am most proud of to-date, I would show you Janet, my plot-less grotesque short story about a girl with 11 fingers who dreams of a mothball candy business, and Three Seconds And A Pinch Of Eternity, on Travis the transvestite… who’s also a serial murderer.

    *

    Today, as I pushed my thumb, sore from all the massaging, down my mother’s back, I hesitate a little.

    She asked me why I do not write for inspirational youth compilations.

    I do not have the heart to break it to her that the little child who once dreamt of being a princess, watched only Disney cartoons, and at one point had sworn to do nothing but inspire others with her writing, is now only interested in composing grim tales of despair, transvestites in straightjackets, and girls who sew their own lips with nylon.

    Perhaps one day, I’ll find enough courage to show her my pieces.

    Perhaps.

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