On Creating through Trauma in a Time of Uncertainty

This isn’t going to be the longest thing I’ve ever written. It’s not the best thing, either. What it is is honesty and intention presented directly to you.

Writing has always been an escape for me. I used to find a quiet corner to hide in and form my thoughts and feelings into bizarre pieces of weird fiction. It was a way of reflecting on the world and what happened to me in my day to day life. I’m not going into past trauma right now, but my writing was a way to cope with a lot of bad things.

If you’ve followed me long enough, you’ve seen a pattern in productivity (or lack thereof) directly connected to what I’m doing in life. One of the hardest moments for me in the last few years was when I had an employer basically tell me I could write or I could have a job. I stepped back from this kind of work that I loved due to unreasonable demands, jumped through every hoop put in front of me, and was still rejected in the end for petty reasons that connect back to much of the original trauma that pushed me into writing as a form of expression.

I’m still dealing with that rejection. I will be for a long time. It was the culmination of 11 years of an abusive workplace that I agreed to be in to satisfy other people.

That workplace was also a school. It’s where I learned how to educate and inspire a new generation of artists. Some of my theatre and music students have gone on to wonderful careers in the performing arts; most have found their own path to happiness and don’t actively practice anymore. I’m proud of all those students I used to teach. A few will reach out to me to let me know how they’re doing from time to time; most don’t, and I don’t expect them to. They have their own lives to live and can do with my lessons what they will.

The grief I felt over having to walk away from a school I gave so much to still hurts. A few of my fellow teachers remain in touch; most don’t. Some will actively avoid me if they see me; others will be pleasant enough. The very few who do keep in touch are the ones that know the truth about what happened in the end and why I was left with no choice but to go no contact and rebuild my professional reputation as an educator from the ground up.

I can actively write through trauma. I cannot safely write through grief. The infrequent posts for over a year here directly correlated to the worst of the worst in this matter. The guilt of not writing, not fulfilling my creative needs as a person, pushed me to feel embarrassed and unworthy of any audience I had built in my 16 years of media criticism and professional fiction writing going back 18 years.

That language is specific, as well; the fiction was beaten out of my by an industry that did not know what it wanted. My voice was praised but my content was always not quite what any publication wanted after, say, 2006 or so. I know my particular blend of genre fiction is not the most commercial. I also know that my own hangups about self-publishing have stopped me from sharing work for a very long time.

When COVID-19 hit, I had already started writing again. It was a perfect storm of coincidences that led to quite a few people who did not believe the minor success I had in this medium existed changing their minds. It literally took people asking about my well-being due to a sporadic writing schedule for those people who doubted me to realize that the work they dismissed for years did mean something. Somehow being invited to speak at conventions up and down the east coast, writing for dozens of digital and print publications over the years, and being able to pull out receipts of traffic and profits weren’t real, but a few personal stories from strangers to me were. To those who asked about me, thank you for inspiring me to reclaim this part of my voice.

When COVID-19 hit, I was hoping, like so many of us, that the upheaval in our day to day lives would be temporary. When I realized this would be an indefinite state of fear and anxiety, I turned back to writing. I started that weekly “On Wednesdays, We Write Fiction” segment here and on TikTok as an escape. I enjoyed the ritual of writing a new piece of flash fiction, recording it, scoring it, and editing it all with word art and effects each week. I was reclaiming my voice as a fiction writer and openly discussing the mechanics of what goes into my stories and thought process. I was free. Shoot, people started buying the few collections and stories I did publish on Amazon thanks to my new audience on social media. That’s another thank you I struggle to say. To anyone whoever picked up those stories, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Those represent my fiction in its purest form, with all of its quirks and cadences shaded by the life I’ve lived.

The stories stopped for a really good reason. One idea I had involving a possibly magical artifact of a lost civilization did not work as a one minute story. I tried to cut it down, but I was too excited to go further. That story is currently being turned into a sprawling adventure game using Twine. I’d love to finish it by the end of the month, but I imagine September or even October will be more likely once I start adding in graphics, text design, music, and voice over. Let it be known that any game I release will be as accessible as I can make it with the tools I know how to use.

However, all of my positive creative contributions and character growth that coincided with the quarantine has hit a wall that I am struggling with. I still work in education. I teach music and theatre at a children’s theatre. Obviously we can’t do live shows right now. It’s not safe. That’s its own grieving process. My industry is not doing well and there’s no guarantee that any of the existing theatre companies or commercial models will still exist by the time all of this is resolved.

No, what I’m dealing with is guilt. This will be my third school year not working full time in a traditional public school. I don’t have to risk my life every day because I’m being forced back into a traditional classroom with 20+ students and inadequate resources to maintain everyone’s safety.

This makes me feel awful. It truly does. As poorly as I was treated by the traditional K-12 education system in America throughout my life (and yes, that includes my time as a student), none of those people deserve what it happening right now. I feel so awful that I have friends who have been told they do not have a job anymore (contract be damned) if they refuse to teach in an overcrowded classroom in person with inadequate safety measures.

My writing is struggling not because of trauma but because of the grief. I don’t want the worst to happen and I hope it will be okay, but my brain forged through years of untreated mental illness will always find a way to anticipate the worst case scenario.

This is not my best piece of writing. The hope and optimism I try to stick to doesn’t have a place in this story; honesty does. I can’t just say “this will be okay” when there is so much we cannot control in our day to day lives right now. I am doing what I can right now to get by each day. Maybe I play a game and write about it later. Maybe I start drafting or revising essays for a project I’m not ready to announce yet. Maybe I scroll through TikToks until my phone is going to run out of battery. Maybe I just don’t know what to do other than breathe, be present, and keep moving forward.

I do know that, when I’m up to it, writing helps. There are more good days for this than bad, but the bad days still require me to work on something. It’s hard, but could be harder, and I struggle with that, too.

Today was not a good day. My physical pain was bad. My energy levels were low. My anxiety was high. And I sat down to work through it with this piece. It’s not my finest piece of writing, but it’s the piece I needed to write today. A final thank you for taking the time to look at it at all.