Finding Myself 1 Word At A Time
My writing has always been a source of release from the pain and pressure of the outside world. I wrote my first real story in the 1st grade, and I began writing poetry in the 3rd grade. My other refuge was, of course, reading. I was the kid who went to the public library every week to return a stack of books & leave with another stack.
Writing is as natural & necessary to me as are eating, drinking, and breathing. My work has been shaped by many factors, but the most important events were also the most tragic. I got teased a lot in grade school, so I let insecurity drive me well into my 20's. Needless to say I made a lot of mistakes.
The price I had to pay for my poor judgement was steep, but in the end it made me a stronger person. I learned that all of the things I thought were so important in life were, well for lack of a better word, stupid. I was throwing my life away over a skewed idea of who I needed to be in order to be liked. Then fate stepped in and let me have it. . .like 4 times. I'm a stubborn, hard headed Italian, and it took a lot for me to finally get with the program.
Once I did though, I found out that even with all I had lost, there was a lot of good living ahead of me. I've beaten the odds in so many ways; cheated death, survived assaults, accidents, a car-jacking in 1990 that cost me the use of my left arm & caused a severe chronic pain syndrome that it took more than 7 years for the doctors to get under control.
I have also been living with HIV for 20 years now without ever once having an opportunistic infection. I also have Hep C. Both were contracted in 1987 from unprotected sex with a violent man. The HIV from the sex and the Hep C from the beatings.
Today I am happily married, as of August of 2006, to a man that I've been with since 1999. We met right after I smashed my car into a telephone pole &, as far as I'm concerned, forever screwed up my face, but he says & acts like I'm beautiful. The pole incident was how I learned I'd developed narcolepsy from the accumulation in my body of all of the meds needed to control the pain in my paralyzed limb.
Belive it or not, this IS the abridged version of events. But this gives you some idea, although it's a bit disjointed and incomplete, of what has shaped me not only as a person but as a writer. All of these things actually taught me to look outside of myself and to look at the bigger issues in our world.
Writing is as natural & necessary to me as are eating, drinking, and breathing. My work has been shaped by many factors, but the most important events were also the most tragic. I got teased a lot in grade school, so I let insecurity drive me well into my 20's. Needless to say I made a lot of mistakes.
The price I had to pay for my poor judgement was steep, but in the end it made me a stronger person. I learned that all of the things I thought were so important in life were, well for lack of a better word, stupid. I was throwing my life away over a skewed idea of who I needed to be in order to be liked. Then fate stepped in and let me have it. . .like 4 times. I'm a stubborn, hard headed Italian, and it took a lot for me to finally get with the program.
Once I did though, I found out that even with all I had lost, there was a lot of good living ahead of me. I've beaten the odds in so many ways; cheated death, survived assaults, accidents, a car-jacking in 1990 that cost me the use of my left arm & caused a severe chronic pain syndrome that it took more than 7 years for the doctors to get under control.
I have also been living with HIV for 20 years now without ever once having an opportunistic infection. I also have Hep C. Both were contracted in 1987 from unprotected sex with a violent man. The HIV from the sex and the Hep C from the beatings.
Today I am happily married, as of August of 2006, to a man that I've been with since 1999. We met right after I smashed my car into a telephone pole &, as far as I'm concerned, forever screwed up my face, but he says & acts like I'm beautiful. The pole incident was how I learned I'd developed narcolepsy from the accumulation in my body of all of the meds needed to control the pain in my paralyzed limb.
Belive it or not, this IS the abridged version of events. But this gives you some idea, although it's a bit disjointed and incomplete, of what has shaped me not only as a person but as a writer. All of these things actually taught me to look outside of myself and to look at the bigger issues in our world.