(This Post Brought to You by the Letter B)
Crazy thought right? How in the world could trauma be good? Who would ever think that?
I do. I was blessed with trauma. It brought me to writing.
I’ll never forget the very first time I hit the “publish” button on my first post – scary. But not anywhere near as scary as what I’ve been through in the past.
I won’t bore you with the play-by-play. We all have our own unique crosses to bear. Let’s just say I’ve been bruised, beaten, belittled, beleaguered, betrayed and broken (even worse than the last month of the Eagles’ season this year. Only one word for that display – brutal.)
Hmm…that’s a lot of negative B words. Maybe on the surface they seem so. Reading all those words you’re probably like fuck, I would not want to even brush by any one of those! You’re right, at face value no one would. But let’s look outside of the box.
Hold on to your hats, we’re gonna broaden our minds here a bit. Scary I know, but I won’t steer you wrong.
First off, most of the best words in life start with the letter B – a concept a friend and I came up with 20 years ago, in a dive bar, on a cocktail napkin. Don’t all good ideas begin that way?
Our cocktail napkin list included: bars, booze, beer, bourbon, bitches, boobs, butt, babe, blonde, brunette, badass, bashes, birthdays, beach, bonfire, burgers, barbeque, bacon, buffet (we started getting hungry towards the end). You get the drift.
Trying to think of other cool B words right now aren’t you? It’s hard not to. It’s a fun game!
Anyway, while driving home from work tonight B words came to my mind and not the above-mentioned fun ones.
I felt bleary from the barrage of customers during yet another holiday season in the service industry. I felt just plain beaten down. But hey, the money is good. I also thought of the word bashful as that is a constant feeling of mine. I’m not the most outgoing server you’ll ever have wait on you.
Then I laughed as the memory of that cocktail napkin came back to me. Good times.
But besides those great cocktail napkin words and the words that described my holiday woes, my mind wandered again to those negative B words that title my past.
Are those words really all that bad? They aren’t. They were all necessary.
It’s all how you look at it.
They are all connected with one universal theme – trauma. Trauma that I was meant to endure–in childhood, as a young adult and also as a not-so-young adult–in order to bring me where I am today, writing this to you on a blustery night after work.
I probably wouldn’t have started writing at all if it weren’t for the baggage I’ve accumulated over the years. Wouldn’t have felt it necessary to start this blog and relay my own experiences, both the bright successes and bitter failures, to try and help others going through the same blight.
Pain was my education. Trauma was my blessing.
What else would I have to write about?
And it all hit me on December 15, 2019, the day I wrote my very first piece. I say things hit you like a ton of bricks sometimes, well the whole fucking wall fell on me this day. And I wrote it sober. Who knew? I even befuddle myself sometimes.
The night before I had met up with a beloved friend I hadn’t seen since high school. Weird to see someone you haven’t seen in 30 freakin years. I guess all the recounting of what’s happened in my life since we last saw each other stirred up a lot of emotions. The next day a divinely constructed wall of bricks barreled down on my brain and out of nowhere I felt the burning need to write about it.
So I sat down at work and typed out on my phone my very first writing.
And now here we are.
I can’t thank my friend enough for the inspiration he unknowingly bestowed upon me, for helping me lift the burden a bit and become more open and vulnerable. (Yeah, traits I could still use work on.) Traits a writer needs. Traits that are needed to reach out and help others.
I’ll bother you with more bits of my biography in the future. For now, if you have a lot of negative sounding B words that could describe your life, just know it’s all for a reason, even if that reason might seem blurry.
Sometimes you have to go through the bog and fight the beast to get to the blessings. One breath at a time.
Bonjour.
❤️
CM
12/13/23
Yeah, I wrote this a month ago. Go Birds next year!
