Breathings Of My Heart

There are thoughts I’ve been thinking for a very long time, but I’ve struggled to find the words to express them. I tend to see topics from many different angles, each connected to many other thoughts, so writing something complicated can feel impossible at times. Recently, however, someone shared something on social media that reminded me of these thoughts so I decided to try again to share them. Here goes:

I love the differences of people. I think people’s differences are like a box of colored crayons; each brings a different sort of beauty. I like people’s quirks–to me, that’s what makes each person unique. Often a person’s differences help me to grow, to see something in a different way. I love learning about different countries, customs and traditions. I love that people express themselves in different creative ways.

I have friends who enjoy different forms of creativity: photography, music, painting, among others. I don’t have friends who dance, and I’m absolutely not a dancer, but for several years I enjoyed the series, “So You Think You Can Dance.” I thought it was fun learning about different forms of dance–even the ones that weren’t exactly my favorite. I still enjoy watching videos of different forms of dancing. I feel honored when people share their creativity–whether with me, personally, or on social media. When they share their creativity, I feel they are sharing a piece of themselves. They are letting me see the world through their lens, their music, their dance, their writing. They are letting me feel what they are feeling or thinking. It’s an awesome gift.

I am an INFJ personality type, which is a rare and complicated type of introvert. Briefly: We INFJs are both logical and emotional. We love people but need solitude. We are deep thinkers. We can see through many different perspectives. We love nature and animals. We are very empathetic. We hate cruelty, deception, and manipulation. We love honesty and genuineness. Most of us express ourselves through writing.

True to type, I love to write. I don’t write to get published or gain “likes.” I just like to write. In person, I can be quiet and don’t always share my deepest thoughts, especially when I don’t comfortable or safe with a person. However, my thoughts and emotions come pouring out in writing. My fingers speak when my voice doesn’t. I like painting scenes with words instead of paint. Nonwriters could sum something up in one sentence, but I prefer to tell a story of what led up to a situation, what happened, what I felt and/or how I struggled, what the result was, and what I learned through it. Or I like trying to describe a bit of beauty or joy so that another person can maybe get a sip of it.

We live in a world where many people are threatened and offended by differences and rather than learn to tolerate or celebrate them, they demand that others change to meet their approval. Some do it deliberately to abusively destroy or gain control of others. Others do it unintentionally, without awareness of what they are doing. But, in effect, if anyone tries to pressure others to meet his (or her) approval, he is actually attemping to mold them into an image of himself. He is trying to overwrite the other person with himself. I don’t like hurting people because I feel life batters people enough without me adding to it. However, there’s so many people being offended by so many things that there’s no way to get through life without stepping on someone’s toes. If you try to please everyone all the time, you will soon find yourself emptied of everything that makes you uniquely you. I’ve struggled to find the balance between compassionately caring about others and conforming to what others demand at the expense of myself.

I feel as if all my life I have had to battle to be who I am, to not let myself be erased, overwritten, remade into a replicate of someone else. My next oldest sister, for example, has always criticized anything about me that she didn’t like, which was just about everything. However, anything she liked about me, she claimed credit for. She didn’t like my sense of humor, which is different than hers. (Hers is more goofy like Lucille Ball while I enjoy word-plays and finding humor in life like Jerry Seinfeld.) However, if I joked in a way she approved, she claimed that she was rubbing off on me. If she didn’t like a thought/opinion I shared then, ugh, that was all me. But if she approved of it, she claimed my thoughts had been influenced by her. She criticized everything I said on social media. She hated my previous blog. When she discovered it, she started telling me that I should write about this and not that, that I should say something in such-and-such a way, and why do I even write a blog? I should keep my writing private and share it with no one. She made me feel as if I were a lump of ugly clay and that I gained value only when/if I was like her. Her criticism grew worse over time until I felt I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t write. In fact, I deleted that blog to get away from her. When I started this blog, I decided that I will not ever again delete my blog because someone doesn’t like it.

To be honest, when people become overly critical, I feel like asking sarcasticly: “So, should I fill out a form, in triplicate, detailing what I want to say, do, or laugh about so that you can pre-approve it?” Sometimes I want to exclaim, “Stop writing my lines for me!” I’m capable of saying what I want to say in the way that I want to say it. Even if I had a lot in common with “you,” I still am ME, not YOU. Can you imagine if someone said to others about their talents what my sister has said to me? Like this:

• “Your music is not the type I like so you shouldn’t play it. In fact, you should only play your music privately, in a sound-proof room, where no one else can hear it.”
• You don’t take photos of MY favorite things. Why are you even bothering to share your photos on social media? If you HAVE to take photos, you should keep them private. Put them in boxes in your closet or attic or something.”
• You didn’t paint in the style I prefer and aren’t using MY favorite colors. Seriously, why do you insist on painting? Why are you sharing your art with others? Keep your artwork for your own private enjoyment.”
• I don’t like your dancing. You should stop. Or do it where no one can see you.

I don’t feel that way about others’ creativity at all. I also don’t consider people’s creative expressions to be about me. People may share pieces of themselves with me, but it’s about them–what THEY see, feel, think, struggle with. They are allowing me a glimpse into their world. The belief that everything someone does has to meet with MY approval, with MY taste, is extremely self-centered. Likewise, to be told that I should not write as I do or, if I must write, that I should not share it, is very hurtful and discouraging. Although I am determined to be myself, sometimes it’s a struggle to write about deep, vulnerable things that others might find ugly or worthless. Writing is risky because a writer makes himself so vulnerable. As Patrick McManus wrote

“Writers live with fear. Some writers cannot deal with the fear, and so they quit or refuse to publish. In order to write, you must either ignore the fear or trick it into leaving you alone. The fear is very sly, though and hard to trick. The fear in writing comes from exposing your thoughts, your emotions, your experiences, your ideas, your talent, your intelligence and ultimately your self to public scrutiny and possible scorn. The fear is by no means groundless. You have opened yourself up to the possibility of public humiliations…I sometimes wonder if perhaps the greatest novel ever written isn’t gathering dust in some filing cabinet somewhere, simply because its author could not overcome the fear of having it published.”

I write with a variety of purposes: On social media I sometimes share my thoughts or opinions about what is happening in the world. I don’t share these things on my blog because I think sometimes people need a break from the chaos in the world. Also, I have some PTSD from abuse and writing about good things in my world helps me stay grounded. However, I have occasionally written about the things I struggle with–about abuse, about anxiety. Sometimes in writing about the “ugly” stuggles, I can gain understanding and clarity for myself. Sometimes I write about struggles because I hope it can help others going through similar things. I’ve tried at times to keep my writings private, safe. I even have a very private blog in which I write only for myself. But I rarely write in it because for some reason, I need to know that what I write is “out there.” It’s like I need to reach my hand out and feel there might be another hand reaching back. I think it’s an INFJ thing.

To non-writers, or to people who only share happy things, writing about the ugly struggles can appear to be…well, ugly, and unnecessary. But I’ve been comforted and strengthened by people who have risked sharing their stories of pain and struggle. And, over the years, I’ve had people say to me, “I came to you because I know you’ve had similar experiences and you would understand…” They know because I risked telling them. Once a man at church came up to me and gave me a huge hug. I was startled because I didn’t know him well. He told that he came home from work one day that week and found his wife sitting on the floor sobbing. In her hand was a printed copy of something I had written that touched her deeply, that was relevant to something she had suffered, that caused her to have an emotional break-through. He thanked me profusely. Things like that make writing worth the risk.

Here are some quotes about writing that I love because they express how and why I write:

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”
~ William Wordsworth

“Write about the emotions you fear the most.”
~ Laurie Halse Anderson

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
~ Robert Frost

“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
~ Joan Didion

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.” ~ Stephen King

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
~Maya Angelou

“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.”
~ Anne Frank

When there are too many words
inside of my head, I cannot sleep.
They rattle around making all sorts of noise
Until I pluck them out of my mind
and put them on paper.
My voice refuses to be silenced
by a downy pillow.
~Christy Ann Martine

As the Apostle Paul said in Romans 12, God has given us different abilities and gifts. One can’t say to another that their gift is bad or unnecessary. I believe that we have to be very careful that we aren’t discouraging others from using their gifts. Just because it’s not how YOU express yourself, doesn’t mean it’s not the way someone else does. Just because it doesn’t reach YOU, don’t mean it doesn’t reach someone else.

I think that relationships can’t survive where there is too much criticism. I cannot BE where there is no room to breathe.

“Do not hold your breath for anyone,
Do not wish your lungs to be still,
It may delay the cracks from spreading,
But eventually they will.
Sometimes to keep yourself together
You must allow yourself to leave,
Even if breaking your own heart
Is what it takes to let you breathe.”
~ Erin Hanson