Why do we write about our lives?

Who cares and why does it matter?

I participated in an event this week called Generation Women, a monthly series where six storytellers (each one representing their age group—20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s+) share an original, true story on a theme. This month’s theme was My Biggest Secret. I’d forgotten how much I love to read my work and to hear writers read theirs. 

Photo Credit: My wife Katia Ruiz

I was also reminded of why we write about our lives. 

I’ve been struggling with imposter syndrome. Yes, it happens even to writers who are published and have a “following”. Even for writers like me who write all the time, journaling just about every day, writing in my notes app, in the margins of books and magazines, in the morning, afternoon, and in the wee hours, when my mind is swirling and I feel compelled to capture an idea, a sentence, the storm.

I got the invite two weeks ago, and said yes because I found the theme and the idea of reading live both exhilarating and terrifying. I hadn’t read in front of a live audience since before the pandemic, and I’ve never read at the iconic Joe’s Pub. (Thanks again for the invite, Sari Botton!) 

I fretted over what to share. I was overthinking it, of course. Biggest Secret? If you know me, if you’ve read my work, my blog, any of my writing, you know that I am very forthcoming. I write about shit many wouldn’t dare to tell anyone. I have an essay forthcoming in an anthology about the abortion I had at 18. I write about failed relationships, when I’ve been an asshole, when someone was an asshole to me. I write my struggle with my mental health, about shit I’m ashamed of. All this is to say, I wondered, wtf secret have I not shared? (Don’t get me wrong, even I who share so much, know that some things are sacred and aren’t for public consumption.) I wrote a list of possible topics. Wrote one that got me going for a bit–I started: I confess, I don’t know shit. I wrote a list of shit I don’t know, like where do I go from here now that my kid is off in college and I’ve broken the mother wound cycle like I set out to? (I’m working on a reflection of this but am not sharing it yet.)

Finally, I started on a piece I’ve shared before (that I was raised in a lesbian relationship) but am still reflecting on and writing about (in draft form) in my memoir: the journey of embracing my queerness. As soon as I decided on it, I took off scribbling. While I write all the time, it’s been a bit since I’ve felt this energized. 

Photo Credit: Mariana Otalora

For so long, I believed the nonsense that no one wants to read or hear about our lives; that this isn’t literature; we should reserve these kinds of stories for our therapists. That’s why my first published work was a novel. Listen, this is no disrespect to fiction. I love fiction. I’ve written two novels and a few short stories. My first love was fiction! But the truth is, creative nonfiction has my heart. I love writing personal essays and I’m hella good at it. I’ve been writing a memoir for a long ass time, and even on days that I am desperate and feel like I’m never going to finish this thing, I know I can’t abandon it. I am going to finish and publish my memoir A Dim Capacity for Wings. You watch!

Hearing the writers read about “closing the orgasm gap”, infertility, turning to 1-800-psychic for answers, going to prison for not standing up for themselves, the 80 year old confessing to having had an abortion long before it was legal and saying, with her fist up in the air, “we have to make abortions legal for everyone”, served as a reminder of how much and why I love to read and hear about people’s lives, what we endure, what pains us, what gets us going, what fills our cups, how we fight to not give up, the wild and not so wild things we’ve done in our lives when we’re lost and finding ourselves, or just because we wanted to. 

I’ve heard the snide “nazel-gazing” comments. I’ve seen how often our stories are relegated to the sidelines. I’ve heard the groans, the accusations of being narcissistic, etc etc etc. They’re bullshit. As Melissa Febos writes in “The Heart-Work: Writing About Trauma as a Subversive Act”, an essay I share with all the writers I work with:

To William Gass’s argument, “To have written an autobiography is already to have made yourself a monster,” I say that refusing to write your story can make you into a monster. Or perhaps more accurately, we are already monsters. And to deny the monstrous is to deny its beauty, its meaning, its necessary devastation.

Transforming my secrets into art has transformed me. And I believe that stories like these have the power to transform the world. That is the point of literature, or at least that’s what I tell my students. We are writing the history that we could not find in any other book. We are telling the stories that no one else can tell, and we are giving this proof of our survival to one another.

What I mean is, tell me about your navel. Tell me about your rape. Tell me about your mad love affair, how you forgot and then remembered yourself. Tell me about your hands, the things they have done and held and hit and let go of. Tell me about your drunk father and your sister who lost her mind. Give them whatever names you want.

Don’t tell me that the experiences of a vast majority of our planet’s human population are marginal, are not relevant, are not political. Don’t tell me that you think there’s not enough room for another story about sexual abuse, motherhood, or racism. The only way to make room is to drag all our stories into that room. That’s how it gets bigger.

I know this, and still, when I’m writing, sometimes (read: often) I still hear those taunts in my head: you’re so self-absorbed. I can hear my mother and see her curled lip when she spit:  Who the fuck do you think you are? It’s so hard to unlearn/unhear this shit.

Yesterday I was reminded of who I am and why I do this work. Yesterday those voices were silenced, if only for a short spell. 

And I was reminded of why I created my upcoming class: Introduction to Writing Your Life. I’ve been asked countless times over the years: How do I start writing about my life? I created this three-week class in answer to that…

So, if you’re interested in writing about your life, and need some guidance from someone who loves this work, is obsessed with personal narrative and believes with her whole heart that our stories matter and we need to write them, join us. Some info on the class:

• Class starts September 12th and is three weeks long.

• Is hosted on wet.ink (a platform for writing classes),

• Includes two 1.5 hour zoom videoconferences in weeks 1 & 3 (dates & times to be decided via doodle poll),

• Includes an opportunity to have up to 1500 words of your story read and commented on by me.

• Tuition is $180. I have a few partial, need-based scholarships (in the amount of $80) I’d love to grant to some deserving writers. Payment plans are also available. 

More info on my blog, and please don’t hesitate to email me with questions (writingourlivesworkshop@gmail.com).

While you’re deciding, read the piece I read this week. Feel free to share, comment and gush. Big love from this city turned country girl! 

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My Biggest Secret by Vanessa Mártir

I was nine and in fifth grade when I realized I was being raised by lesbians. I was in the cafeteria working as a lunch monitor when a classmate with bottle bottom glasses whispered to another girl, “Her mom’s a butch.” Her face twisted in disgust as she gestured to a second grader eating alone at the end of the table. 

“Get outta here! Her mom’s a lesbo? Yuck!” Her freckle faced friend pretended to hurl all over her lunch tray. 

I turned to them, confused. “Butch don’t mean lesbian!” I thought of my second mom Millie who’d grab the brim of her Kangol and say: “Yo soy butch.” The way she said it, it was like she was dancing salsa but just with her shoulders.

“Yes it does, stupid.” They rolled their eyes and kept talking. I stared down at the cold cafeteria pizza. I’d lost my appetite. 

A few years later I punched a girl in the face for saying: You’re dirty like your lesbian moms. I dared her to say it again. She didn’t. She knew better. 

How did I not realize this sooner? Youthful ambivalence, maybe. As a child I was instructed to refer to Millie as our “aunt.” I never questioned it. It was only after Millie died in 2005 that I started calling her what she was: my second mom. 

Millie’s every day outfit was jeans that were so worn they had the outline of her wallet on her left back pocket like someone had traced the square with chalk. She had a chipped front tooth and beads of sweat lined her lip and the bridge of her pointy, Castillian nose, no matter what season it was.

My mother was the demure femme. No make up except for a light lipstick and on the rare occasion some blush. She once told me, “Yo no soy gay. I never liked girls.” She and Millie were together for thirty years. Her shame is a deep, dark well. 

Mom and Millie were vicious to eachother when they argued. They regularly had big blow outs where mom would spit at Millie: tú lo que eres es una maricona. Millie’d shrink into herself. Her bottom lip trembled while she pounding her chest, repeating “Yo soy butch! Yo soy butch!” over and over, like she was trying to convince herself. Then she’d bounce, slamming doors behind her. I’d hear her come in in the wee hours, smelling of cigarettes and palo viejo rum. 

I was already an adult when the lump in Millie’s breast revealed cancer. She had a mastectomy and chemo but the cancer spread. 

She’d been raised in the campo town of Lares where the Pentecostal religion is as deeply rooted as the wild mango trees. Her three brothers were pastors, one who was especially self-righteous because he found God after being an alcoholic for twenty years. If he could give himself to papa Dios, anyone could. And then there was Millie’s mother, who died begging her, “Deja esa vida, hija. Te quiero ver en el cielo un día.” Leave that life, daughter. I want to see you in heaven one day. 

This all came rushing back when Millie was faced with her mortality. She died terrified of going to hell. 

My mom became a Jehovah’s Witness. 

I’ve always known I am queer. For a long time I didn’t want to know. I’d internalized so much of that homophobia and self-hatred I’d witnessed. Then my brother, my first best friend, died in 2013, and I hurled into the darkest depression of my life. He too was gay. “I’m a big ol’ faggot,” he’d say, but he too denied himself love. It was on the climb out of that abyss that I really started seeing myself and stopped denying who I am. I was right on time. 

I met Katia in August of 2015 in the woods of Michigan. I had no idea my life would change so drastically when I decided to take that hilarious road trip where my daughter and I were sardined in a car for hours. I remember seeing her from a distance. Most of all I remember her smile. I liked her right away, I think in the back of my mind I knew I could love her, but I had zero game and, if I’m honest, I was intimidated. She was so secure in who she was and how she existed in the world. She came out when she was 16, had lived as a butch for decades, and didn’t care what anyone had to say about it. How could I possibly be in her orbit when I was still unsure of so much? While I’d accepted my queerness, I didn’t yet know what that meant. Could I have a relationship with a woman? My mother’s shame still echoed in my chest: “Yo no soy gay.”

Katia and I discovered we knew many of the same people and had been in rooms together but never met until then. As Millie would say, “Dios sabe lo que hace.” God knows what he does. 

It happened one morning. If I close my eyes I can still see it: Katia in a white take top and cargo shorts, a machete hanging from her waist. She was shoveling dirt to build a fire pit for a dinner that night. I swooned. I walked over and asked how I could help. She looked at me, smiled, and said: “Just stand there and look beautiful.” I’m sure I blushed, but tried to play it off. Inside I was squealing: “Oh mah gah, she likes me!” The way she looked at me, she still looks at me like that. 

A few weeks later, she asked me to be her girlfriend under the supermoon on Coney Island Beach. For years I’d been longing for romance like that! 

When my mother found out, she sent me cruel text messages. “Les dí un mal ejemplo,” she said. I gave you a bad example.

She didn’t ask me who Katia was or if she was good to me. All that mattered was that she’s a woman. I had to block her for a while for my own peace of mind. This wasn’t the first time. Our relationship has been strained for as long as I can remember. This was just another one of those times that she punished me for not living my life the way she thinks I should: she punishes me by denying me her love. 

My wife asked me to marry her in August of 2018. We were married the following May. My daughter walked me down the aisle. My mother was not there. I didn’t invite her. She wouldn’t have come anyway. 

Yes, it’s sad, but that struggle isn’t mine to carry. 

Katia and I bought our dream home in the woods last year. We planted our first garden this spring. We even have a pond! 

These past seven years have been beautiful and hard. What I know is this: I’m so grateful I got out of my own way. When I opened myself up to love, it came flying in in the form of this butch woman who loves and supports me in ways that still surprise me. We are writing our own, proud-to-be-out love story.