Is Writing Your Dirty Secret?

It was mine until I discovered Medium

With plenty of time on my hands, I decided to go through some boxes that had been stashed away on top of a wardrobe. One was full of my writing — short stories, poems, and rejection letters from years ago, together with some old magazines that I had been published in. The other was brimming with mementos: old photos, a tiny pair of pink ballerina slippers — all sorts of memorabilia. Rummaging around, I found a small bundle of airmail letters tucked at the back and I stopped when I saw them.

I was transported back in 1991 to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the mysterious and enchanting Red Sea port of Jeddah. The gold shops in the downtown souks dripping with glittering baubles, the carpet souks selling exquisite hand-woven silk rugs, the camel saddles, shisha pipes, the humidity, and the long, black abaya I wore everywhere, except inside the Western compound where we lived. The sights, sounds, and aromas all came flooding back.

Precious Memories that I can Play and Re-Play in my Mind’s Eye

Letters are tangible and they evoke a multitude of emotions as well as memories. The digital world we live in today can be fleeting, here today, gone tomorrow — each breaking news item superseded by the next influencer or click-bait headline enticing us in.

A steady trickle of ‘thank you’ letters have dropped through our letterbox since Christmas, people taking the time to thank us for the gifts that we sent them. Each one will go into my ‘special’ box and I will treasure them. Especially as this year was so different from any other and not being able to exchange gifts and hugs around the tree on Christmas morning but instead posting parcels off to our families, felt hollow and strange.

The author of those airmail letters tucked at the back of that box was my Aunt. She has dementia. When I visited her in the care home some years ago, she smiled and took my hand, a fleeting glimmer of hope that she recognized me, but she kept asking me how my Dad was (her late brother who died in 1986)…She used to love reading the poems I sent her and always encouraged me to keep writing.

The Frail Lady in the Care Home was Unrecognisable

She wrote me the most beautiful letters on that thin, blue tissue-type paper all those years ago. She referred to my life in the Middle East as my ‘Arabian adventure’ and I awaited them eagerly, devouring the contents hungrily on the minutiae of life back home. Each time I had finished reading one, I pictured her striding to the post office in a small suburb of Brighton, her two scruffy little hounds bounding beside her, sniffing and cocking their legs up against lamp-posts along the way.

More rifling in the box of memorabilia produced a series of notes in wobbly but neat handwriting. They were on post-it-sized pieces of paper which had been left on the table in our villa by our ten-year-old daughter. First, she apologized for not being able to speak to us; she had tried calling us at work but couldn’t get through. (Yes, incredible to think of life before mobile phones…) She wanted to let us know that she had gone to play with her friend over in the Al Hambra section of the compound and would be back by 6 pm.

The next scrap of paper told us that she had done her homework (except ‘Dad needs to help me with one bit’) and finally, she drew a picture for us. It still makes me giggle when I see it (even though neither she nor I can recall what it was about — a painful toe?) She was — and is — such a character and I am incredibly proud of her, now grown into a beautiful young woman working as a health care professional in the mental health sector.

The Other Bundle of Air Mail letters Should be Returned to their Rightful Owner

Tucked at the bottom of the box of paraphernalia, buried under decades of memories and some pale green copies of the Arab News was another bundle of airmail letters. These had my handwriting on them. I must return them to their rightful owner — the father of my only child. They were letters that I lovingly wrote to him during the months of our separation before my daughter and I were able to join him permanently at the start of his contract and again, at the end of it, when our Arabian adventure ended. Just like our marriage, some years after that.

Why a Dirty Secret?

I felt ashamed and embarrassed because I didn’t have an MA in writing or a string of letters after my name. I took a creative writing course and have had articles published in UK magazines. I have always been fascinated with words and working in law for most of my life, spelling and grammar have always been incredibly important. I am also the Scrabble champion in our house.

But there has been a hiatus of many years because I didn’t feel that I was worthy of having my writing taken seriously. Until I joined Medium and mustered up the courage to hit the publish button a day after joining. This brings us back to that old chestnut of what does ‘worthy’ mean. Do we measure it in monetary terms or the number of reads? Personally, the pleasure that I have gained every single day since I joined Medium is immeasurable both from a writing standpoint and from reading other writers’ work.

The dollars are racking up much faster now since my first story was published just over a month ago, but more importantly, my confidence has sky-rocketed. Medium is a wonderful platform to showcase writing and I have received some lovely comments, especially about my poetry. I am also connecting with some great writers and poets and I am sure I have only just scratched the surface in terms of just how many there are on the platform and in the wider arena.

I received two rejections yesterday and I felt a bit down in the evening, but my daughter Face-Timed me to show me her new car and her happy, smiley face put everything into perspective. Today is another day and here I am, tapping away at the keyboard writing this story. And I will go on writing and sharing it because I am having an absolute ball.

However, for the personal touch, I will reach for my fountain pen and hope that the recipients of my letters find them worthy of keeping and even putting them in a ‘special’ box somewhere. I would be flattered if they did and hope that they evoke happy memories for those reading them. That would be priceless.