Once upon a time in another life, I interviewed Deaf-Blind writer John Lee Clark (who has a new collection of poetry, Suddenly Slow, out via Handtype Press) for an article. We chatted about his publishing work and about literature, both deaf and in general.
I've never forgotten one thing he said: that it's not about whether a book is good or bad, but whether we're ready and in a good place in our lives and in our reading history to read it.
Well, perhaps I was really ready to read this book, or maybe the book gods dropped it into my lap in a weird coincidence while I was browsing books at the library waiting to meet a friend: doesn't matter which.
Unraveled is a memoir by Maria Housden, who decides to leave her husband, giving him custody of her remaining three children (she loses one to cancer at the age of three), and go off to rediscover herself.
And hello?!
Maria totally killed me softly with her words. The way she loved her children but felt like she wasn't the mother the world expected her to be; the way she could never fit into the mold of "wife;" the way she sacrificed thinking about her own desires and values for that of her husband, friends, and family... these all resonated with me deeply.
And her book was a true gift to me... someone who is constantly asked these days why I'm doing to my family what I'm doing. How can I be so selfish? One person I talked to recently found out I was separating from my husband. Her knee-jerk reaction: "What's wrong with him?"
"Nothing!"
And then there was an awkward pause.
Like Maria, I don't think I'll ever be able to explain to anyone -- even him -- to their satisfaction. But Maria's memoir captures what I feel right now in a way that's validating and so much of a relief to read.
I was completely enjoying being on my own now, and savoring the way my thoughts could chase themselves from one point to the next, without any chance of being interrupted. I hadn't fully realized until now the way that, even as a young girl, my attention was always being diverted from what I thought was interesting or important. I had come to believe that it was my responsibility to respond with interest, even if it was feigned, to whatever my mother, father, husband, and children were interested in; my own thoughts took a backseat to everyone else's.
Honestly, it's not that great a book. One of my pet peeves is writers who can't make their "I" disappear into their story, even when narrating first person. Housden has this problem, and it has the unfortunate effect of making her seem very self-absorbed.
On top of that, her writing is, to steal a word used by a friend recently, treacly. In other words, way too sugary and void of real substance. Example: "Although I had dreamed of this moment for years, envisioned this place many times before, I hadn't ever truly believed it would happen. Looking around now, anything felt possible, as if something new was coming alive in me, a sense without form, poised to take shape." Uh... your point?
But, Goddess... something about the things she says drives a stake through my heart and stokes the embers of jealousy:
Closing my eyes, I inhaled a long, slow breath, and felt my heart soften as I inched closer to its deepest secret. What if I had gotten it all wrong, if all these years I had completely missed the point of my life? What if it didn't have anything to do with waiting, with trying to be good? My eyes flew open. There was such a sense of clarity and purity in this realization that I knew it was true. This room, this body, and these feelings right here, right now, were my life. Whether good or bad, perfect or imperfect, what mattered wasn't about what happened outside myself or whether others approved; what mattered was how fully and unapologetically I was able to be who I was.
