"There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship-shape on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can't hear what you are saying"
Pink Floyd
Although I had been dreading leaving the rented house that had been my home for seven years and did not yet have a contract on the house I am now living in, just a promise and a prayer, I found putting everything into storage and travelling light was a curiously liberating experience. My three cats agreed unfortunately and promptly liberated themselves at the first opportunity, to be found after much heart-break and searching, back in the woodshed of my old home a few weeks later. Two are still with me now.
'Do you ever write?' he asked me one day. 'Not really', I replied. 'I dabble. I have written a bit about the break-up of my marriage'. 'Oh', he responded rather dismissively, 'is that what you write about? Female pain?'
When I first started this blog I put the question 'What do you do if it all goes horribly wrong?' As anyone who has been in this situation knows, when you have finished falling apart, you do what you have to do. You survive, you change, you grow. Yes, I can write about female pain, why wouldn't I? But I'm a woman, I can do a whole lot else besides.
Of course you can, Marianne! And that was a lovely blog.
ReplyDeleteWhere is that nice man's medieval hall house by the way? I delight in a medieval hall house, myself.
I too have posted today. Go and have a look, and tell me what you think?
How terribly bumptious of him! Is female pain somehow not worthy of being written about? Writing about pain is good for the soul be it of the female or male variety although I suspect that when we write of our pain on these blogs were do not even scratch the surface because it's just too painful! However it is theraputic and then it is easier to write about the good stuff too.
ReplyDeleteKeep going Marianne, it's good stuff.
Thank you Beatrice. There are a lot of medieval houses still standing in the countryside where I live and they are lovely, if very inconvenient to live in. I lived in one myself for three and a half years when my youngest son was a baby. But that's another story.
ReplyDeleteI do agree Isobel. It was a rather patronising remark, which is why it lodged in my mind to be repeated here. You are right, though, we don't even begin to scratch the surface.
Definitely patronising. What does he write about, anyway? Ignore him, you write very well.
ReplyDeleteMuriel Gray, who is chair of the Orange Prize judges this year, had a rant recently on the Guardian books blog about women's writing being too 'domestic'. Totally unjustified in my opinion.
Marianne, I believe they tell novelists to write about what they know.
ReplyDeleteI think you write beautifully.
Ive seen this several times in friends and family....the gathering of strength after a fall and it's fabulous to see in someone you care deeply about and have been anxious about .
ReplyDeleteI expect he was just being tactless. He is. And I was being over sensitive. I am. He is a novelist/broadcaster/producer and can also be very kind. I was briefly in love with him.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the lovely compliment Cathy & M&M. Every time I write something, I think that I've done now. I'm finished. And then something else pops up. I think we all write about what we can, about what matters to us as M&M so wisely says. I would love to be able to write stories like Beatrice and Jan. Perhaps I will one day.
It is wonderful Jan, how people fnd the strength they need to carry on after a body blow. The worse case scenario for me and, I think, for all parents would be the loss of a child. I'm sure we are all haunted by the story of little Madeleine and her lovely family.
I'm praying like mad.
So am I Marianne! Praying for little Maddy, that is!
ReplyDeleteI think my body and spirit would die altogether if that happened to my little Marina, and I wonder how those poor parents find the strength to carry on!
Please God therefore (or please Whatever, in my case), let little Maddy be found safe and well at last!
That poor baby girl Madeleine. She must be terribly confused and distressed. I can hardly bear to think of the distress for all concerned. All we can do is pray to God she is OK.
ReplyDeleteThere is just the deepest pain of all.
DM
Re little Madeleine. How do the parents get through each day?
ReplyDeleteThe desolation and pain is just imaginable enough for them to be in my daily consciousness.
Yet what I am imagining is nothing, nothing compared with what they are actually experiencing.
If there is a God... but lets not go there.
They just seem such lovely people. No-one ever deserves this and how many of us have made the odd tiny misjudgement with our children and gotten away with it? Leaving a sleeping child for a few moments in the car while collecting another child, leaving a baby with a new babysitter you're not entirely sure about?
ReplyDeleteWhen my oldest son was a baby we left him sleeping in our apartment in Barbados while we had supper in the restaurant just across the other side of the swimming pool, checking him regularly and watching the door.
It just shouldn't happen.
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ReplyDeleteYou should have kicked him in the family jewels and then when he was writhing on the floor in pain you could have told him not be such a baby.
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ReplyDeleteI have found that until I was able to truthfully write about my pain, I simply could not write. It blocked me. And I don't think that your experience can so condescendingly be called "female pain", after all. It's "human pain".
ReplyDeleteI really like your blog.
Secretary, you are a lot tougher than I am, but you make me laugh.
ReplyDeleteBabysteps, thank you for visiting and glad you like the blog. I think it is only now when I am resurfacing again that I have found I can write about things. I just wish I had more time to devote to it, instead of wasting my time, trying to earn some money!
Dear Marianne
ReplyDeleteI'm so delighted that you found my blog, because it means that I have found yours. Thank you, thank you for the link - much appreciated - and will be reciprocated, because... because there are not that many really well-written blogs, and it was clear after reading only one post that yours is one of them! Then I read on, and I would say you are are a born writer (which is why I chose to leave my comment here, under the post about the unconnected male person - he can't help it, it just sounds like he just hasn't reached joined-up emotions yet). It's rare that you find a blog where more posts than not pack a punch, make you think, bring tears or make you laugh. So hoorah, what a good start to my morning.
Livvy
Livvy, I am knocked out by your comment.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading yours too and will be back - if only there were more hours in a day. I thought your writing was exceptional and look forward to reading more.
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ReplyDeleteHello again...I have been reading some of your older post today, while I should be working. I've decided I must find some time to read all of the post under "dating after divorce". I'm so happy to have found your blog....
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