Writing Walnut Street.

Walnut Street sat on a shelf for decades. When I finally read through it again, my heart started racing and I literally got sick to my stomach. It felt like a pop quiz I wasn’t prepared for.

At first, I thought maybe I had squeaked out a C-minus emotionally. Uncomfortable, but survivable. Instead, reading those stories made me realize I had completely failed to deal with some of the feelings buried inside them.

I never anticipated that words written so many years ago could still stir up that much emotion. Somewhere along the way, I convinced myself I had moved on from those experiences. What I learned was that ignoring something and healing from it are not always the same thing.

Reading Walnut Street brought up emotions I didn’t expect to still be sitting there so strongly––anger, sadness, that feeling of waiting for something bad to happen, and the triggers I didn’t even realize were still underneath it all.

The strange thing about writing is that you believe time has created distance between you and the person who originally put the words on the page. I assumed decades had dulled everything. Instead, opening the manuscript felt less like reading old work and more like reopening a door I had quietly nailed shut.

Walnut Street is not the same kind of writing as Far From Perfect a collection of essays I’m writing now. Far From Perfect lets me find the humor in life’s messiness. Walnut Street asked me to revisit parts of myself I had avoided in years. One makes me laugh while writing it. The other occasionally made me want to close the laptop and walk away for a while.

I’m realizing now that both kinds of writing are necessary for me in different ways. One helps me process what I’ve lived through. The other helps me stay present in the life I’m still living. And I think I need both.