While I always hope that lots of my posts will resonate or strike people’s interest somehow, I’d say there is a relatively small handful that really does that. Usually when that’s happened, it’s been posts that I thought to myself, “That’s one of my better posts”, “I feel like I was able to express what I wanted about this or that”, “I think this is a good issue to toss into the DOC for consideration”. Sometimes you just have a feeling that people will respond to a post. Of course, not every post can be the blog version of Pulitzer Prize worthy. That would be super groovy and all, but if I could pull that off, I would be doing this for a living instead of as a hobby.

Sometimes people respond to a post though, and it takes me off guard. Take the post about the rotten orange from Wednesday, for example. By Wednesday, I had been trying to write that post for a week, the words just weren’t flowing at all, and I was feeling the heavy weight of a serious case of writer’s block. It wasn’t that I had some sense of what I wanted to say, but just couldn’t think of how to express it. I honestly didn’t really have a good sense of what I wanted to express other than the fact that I wanted to relay a story that I could only vaguely recall. Having set the thing aside plenty of times already, I was determined to complete it and get it up on the site Wednesday, so with mounting frustration, I took a break from it, made myself some lunch, and hoped I could come back with enough clarity to finish it.

Writer's Block

When I returned to the post in question, I still felt hampered by total mental constipation. Nonetheless, I tinkered with it, and managed to wrap it up enough that I thought it was adequate. I was far from happy with it, and while I am certainly my own worst critic, and quick to find the flaws in most anything I do, I’m not so critical that I’m beyond liking a nicely written post of mine. As far as I was concerned the rotten orange story didn’t qualify. There were parts I liked, but as a piece, it didn’t work for me. The memory and the feelings associated with it just didn’t translate like I had hoped. I was tired of fighting with it though, so up it went.

Wednesday night, I was reading an art therapy book I picked up at a used bookstore when I was in Texas a couple of months back, The Art Therapy Sourcebook by Cathy Malchiodi. I started reading the book in preparation for the art therapy board certification exam. I’ve been feeling a little lost and anxious about how or where to start studying for an exam on material I haven’t looked at in almost 10 years, and this particular book seemed like a good general book on art therapy to nudge my memory and at least get my head in the right place.

It was while reading this book that I made the connection about why I had so much difficulty writing the account of the orange. I was so busy mentally torturing myself about what I perceived as a poorly written piece, racking my brain about what to say and how to say it, that I lost sight of what it was about it that made it so hard to express in words.

Humans think in images. We dream in images. Sensory experience is how we first learn about the world – the way it smells, tastes, feels, sounds and looks. When someone asks me what it’s like to have diabetes, I don’t see a string of words in my head: sad, shame, pump, BG meter, determined. I see images and scenes that reflect what life with diabetes is like for me: sitting on the sofa in a dazed low drenched in sweat, fishing through my purse for peppermints, reaching for my beeping CGM monitor in the middle of sex, half a suitcase full of diabetes supplies as I pack for a trip. It’s not the written description of diabetes that stirs up our emotions, as much as the sensory experience of living it. Although, I know as a blogger, it’s the written description that serves as the next best thing to living it.

Contrary to many people’s perception that art therapy is only for children, it’s actually an effective method of treatment for people of all ages. However, it’s particularly effective with children because children have a natural propensity for art making, and children have limited vocabulary and insight. If you ask a young child to describe their birthday party, and then have them draw a picture of their party, chances are, you’re going to get a far better sense of what that party was like from the drawing. Children, especially younger children, have the visual language to convey an idea or recall an event more than they have the verbal language.

Because we have limited vocabulary and insight as children, our memories are generally grounded in our sensory experience far more than in language, and our sensory experience isn’t particularly linear. Ask me what I did last weekend, and I can tell you that Friday night we went to Sonic and I magically kept my BG’s stable despite a banana milkshake. Saturday we saw Inglourious Basterds, where I also managed to keep my BG’s more or less in range despite a large bag of popcorn. Sunday we went to a minor league baseball game, and again, with BG karma in my corner, I managed to maintain semi-decent BG’s after a sausage sandwich and way too much chocolate ice cream. Finally, we were lazy bums on Monday, a cool, dreary day during which I tried to eat way better than I had the rest of the weekend. My weekend is in a logical sequence – it’s linear.

Flowing Images

My experience of the rotten orange, however, isn’t linear because my memories are based on the sensory experience. I remember sitting in the classroom by myself day after day eating a snack while the other kids went to recess. I remember the bright, sterile hospital room, and the surprise I felt when Mrs. Patton walked through the door. I remember holding the paper napkin flower, the way it was twisted and how in awe I was that a napkin could be transformed like that. I remember the smell of that orange after it had been sitting in my pencil box for at least a couple of weeks. I remember the burning shame I felt at having been caught not eating my snack.

Despite my repeated statements that there was so much I had forgotten, which made recounting the story so hard, as Stacey observed in her comment to the post, I remembered quite a lot about all of it. I just didn’t remember it from a language-based, storytelling standpoint. I remembered how things felt, flashing images, the acrid stench. I had a lot of random pieces to the puzzle, enough that I could relay something that made sense, but it was more of the impression it left on me than a detailed account of how this happened, then that happened, and then the other thing happened.

I think that’s a big reason I wasn’t happy with the post. I think it’s the reason I could have kept working on that post for weeks, and never would have felt satisfied with it. I can’t describe what it was like to be working on an art project that I was totally into one minute, and leaving it, forever unfinished, possibly wrinkled, possibly torn from having a seizure on top of it. I can’t describe that smell. I can’t really describe the conflicted feelings I had about really wanting to do what I was told – eat the snack – but wanting to be like everyone else. I wouldn’t have had the words at the time, so 30 years later, I don’t have the words to truly convey what I felt at that time. I tried though.

Over the last couple days, I’ve watched in perplexed awe at the response. Comments from people who’ve never commented. Off-the-chart page views. Comments and emails that brought tears to my eyes. Links to it on other sites. After re-reading it, after letting the surprising response register, I’ve found it to be remarkably cathartic. I’m honored that so many parents found something about it that they could hang onto, despite my continued feeling that, at best, it’s a flawed impression of what I recollect.

All that being said, in light of this revelation that storytelling wasn’t the natural or logical means to communicate what I wanted to say, I might do what I likely should have done in the first place. I’m going to practice what I preach. I’m going to make art.