Writing as a survival tool

Though I started being aware from my 4th grade teacher that I could write good stories that people liked I sort of wrote in fits and spurts throughout my life as needed by me or by the situations I was dealing with at the time.

Today my daughter and wife were getting rid of my daughter's private school uniforms since she is moving on in life now. I mentioned that she ought to keep some of her school stuff because one day it might be nostalgic to her. She said, "Uniforms, I always hated." So I said, "Still, there are things you might want from this time in the future."

This took me back to all the things I wish I had now that my mother threw away during the years, like stacks 2 feet high of comic books that now would be worth between 100,000 to 500,000 dollars, if she hadn't thrown them away when I was 10 or 12 or 14.

Then there was the time of my life when everything went wrong and I was suicidal for about 2 years, from age 21 to 23. All the things I wrote to cope and to stay alive she threw away when I married, had a son and moved out when I was 26. A few years later I looked for my writings and they were gone. I asked her and she told me my writings scared her and they spooked her so she threw them away. I said, "Didn't you ever think to ask me if I wanted them." Her answer was "NO!" She couldn't believe I wanted what I had written. I couldn't believe that she couldn't see why my path to physical and mental survival wouldn't be valuable to me and possibly to others.

Though my mother was the ultimate in common sense, she was definitely not a rocket scientist. This much is certain. Maybe she is right. Maybe it would have just taken me to places that I really didn't want to visit again like "excommunication" from my childhood church and the girl I planned to marry leaving me for her religion. Now, I can say "Good riddance" but then I was young and completely devastated by some people's stupidity and cruelty.

Pragmatism comes late in some people. For the people who harmed me, common sense never arrived for them ever!