While I was in inpatient the main group therapy guy (who looks weirdly like Mads Mikkelsen) asked me what I aimed to do with my writing and I said, “Make people suffer. Some good, cathartic suffering.” Which I’ve struggled with recently because I felt like that was a kind of malicious goal (since, like my friend Dirk said once, I always need to do the math so that I = bad). And he was very pleased with that answer. He said that it was a good thing, that I was introducing children to suffering and the ways that people process suffering in a healthy space (since it’s not real) and that makes children feel (and he pointed to the word “safe” on the whiteboard). He told me I was a suffering person who could reach out through my suffering to help others with theirs, and that was good, that was important, it was transformative, and I was protecting children.
I just sat there fighting back tears and quietly said “Oh…I never thought of it like that.”
Discussion ¬