Creation

I spent a good bit of time last night pondering my motivations in blogging. Do I honestly think there's anyone out there who is really reading this? Who really cares about what I have to say? No, not particularly. Am I leaving this for the benefit of my posterity? Well, since I have no posterity, the answer to that would have to be another big fat no.

I do benefit from this myself, in that I can express my thoughts and feelings on a topic and then let it go as I move on to the next thing that's on my mind.

I think, though, that there is a desire to create that is inherent in each person. There are as many different ways to create as there are different people. Denied the opportunity to be a co-creator with God, by bringing children to this earth, the best way I can find for myself to be a creator is to write. And write I do.

I have created characters who are more alive in my mind than some people I've met on this earth. I can tell you what they had for breakfast, who they went to their high school prom with, who their 3rd grade teacher was. If I'm walking through a store or looking through a catalog, I can tell you what clothes they would or would not wear.

When I was a little girl, I was firmly convinced that Anne of Green Gables was alive, and that I would get to meet her someday. When I was still in the infertility maze, I was surprised to find myself bitterly jealous of Deanna Patterson, a character in my favorite comic strip, as she easily got pregnant not long after she got married.

I care passionately about people. I think that's one of the reasons that I failed as a child welfare worker. I did not know how to put that passion aside and do the job without letting it affect every aspect of my life. I wanted to inspire that drug mother to quit cooking meth, and live up to the potential within her. I wanted to believe the liars. I couldn't understand how people could put trivialities, like cigarettes, beer, and drugs, ahead of their children. None of it made sense to me. Every child I interviewed loved his or her parents desperately, no matter how bad the abuse was. It was gut-wrenching on every level. I got to where I woke up every night between 1 and 1:30, thinking about my families, and couldn't get back to sleep until 3:30 or 4 a.m. It tormented me to realize that I couldn't give them anything. All I had the power to do was to assess whether or not abuse was taking place, and--with the permission of two supervisors--remove children from their homes when it was absolutely necessary for their safety. But even then I couldn't always do that; there is one child in particular who still haunts me, and I could not get permission to remove her despite her desperate need to be out of that home.

So I left the world of child welfare behind me, and am taking a breather in an extremely tedious, boring secretarial job, before starting teacher certification training this summer (assuming, of course, that I manage to get a job in the May job fair).

In the meantime, I write, and write, and write, and write. I put words into people's mouths. I tell lies to make truths apparent. I create worlds. Someday people will read what I've written, and perhaps someday the characters who are so real to me will be real to others, at which point I truly will be a creator.