X’s & Y’s (aka: “my bittersweet very angry woulda-been masterpiece that very few grokked & not just because of the epic run-on sentence”)

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Of all the pieces I've written to date, none has been worked more fiercely than this one. The core idea was to reduce stigmas like abusive relationships, poverty and sex work to a mathematical equation.  (In hindsight, it's probably worth noting that I've always really sucked at math... hmmmm.)

There was a short period of time in which I was blessed to have some occasional real-time meet-ups with the wonderful Maggie de Vries, who I first met in 2005 when I was hired as PACE Society's Support Coordinator.  Maggie sat on PACE's Board and had participated on my hiring panel.

In 2011, I'd just read Maggie's memoir and it became incredibly important to me that Maggie read X's & Y's. The last passage came from my heart and  it was devastating to think it might inadvertently land in any disrespectful or gratuitously painful way for victims' family members.  Maggie is the only family member I have ever personally known, so I disclaimed the content seven ways to Sunday, bit the bullet, and asked for her review. She graciously gave my words her attention and when we did meet up, she offered only her wise observation "it's just really angry."  She understood the intention of X's and Y's and where I was coming from, but wondered if the audience deserved such ire.

Raging on innocent readers wasn't at all my intent, although I noted it was written back in 2007 and I was admittedly seriously enraged at the media coverage of the onset of trial at the time.  I'd also, after two years of forced self-representation, just been rather destroyed by the courts in my own life, and by one of my own significant abusers (who unsurprisingly features prominently in this piece).

(In hindsight, not a stellar mental health year, really... hmmm.)

Maggie, ever encouraging, suggested I re-write the entire piece and see if I could come up with some more hopeful feels.  She recommended I join a writing group, which I did.  A resident of one of Metro Vancouver's smaller municipalities at the time, I cautiously joined a group that met bi-monthly in the local library.

One of my bravest achievements ever was reading this piece (in all it's ragey, original glory) to that group, which was dominated at the time by mostly white, privileged retirees (not really my tribe, if we're being honest.  I'm pretty sure the feeling was mutual).  And so, it came to be that the first bona fide audience to meet X's & Y's was fifteen unsuspecting folks who just wanted some micro-community through a shared love of and aspiration for writing.

I am neither adept nor comfortable with public speaking, so my reading was about as verbally animated as one might expect from an anxiety-ridden student giving an oral book report in junior high.  I do recall needing to take a breath mid-sentence at one point: the last passages not only have some epic run-on-sentences (à la "stream of consciousness"), but the content is quite dark.

The "just how dark" penny didn't really land for me until I heard my own voice speaking the words out loud to the group of well-meaning but unprepared strangers I'd situated myself within on that otherwise unremarkable Sunday morning.  When I was done reading, the room was silent and had otherwise become very, very uncomfortable.  It was clear no one really understood anything they'd just heard, even remotely.

A grey haired, rather humourless woman spoke first.  She specialized in writing short travel pieces for lesser-known glossy magazines (the kind I imagine move from travel agency storefronts to thrift store shelves before their colourful images of stunning faraway vacay destinations end up being cut out and glued to vision boards by optimistic dreamers and "Eat Pray Love" enthusiasts).  She often dominated the discourse in the room, I'd noticed.  It was clear she was quite confident in herself, and was both comfortable and practiced with public speaking and dialoguing about writing group profferings like the one I'd just put forth.  Her feedback, verbatim, was "what you meant to say is 'once upon a time.'"  (Note: breathlessly incorrect, but I refrained from correcting her.)

Someone else asked "Why the yin yang symbols?" I told him I'd been inspired by the the symbol placed conspicuously before each paragraph in Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, which I'd recently read.

The group facilitator suggested that I "take out the bit about the farm to, you know, keep the story more personal and anecdotal."

I repressed all my inside-skull-stabbing-rage-screams and straight-faced it with the calmness of post-enlightenment Bodhi-tree Buddha floating on a silky-blue benzodiazepine mantra.  I thanked everyone for their insights, and quietly resolved to quit the group. It was only my third time in attendance and I never went back.  (In hindsight, probably best for everyone concerned, really.)

I've reworked X's & Y's many, many times in the eight years since; but each revision left me feeling as though I was trying to make it fit into some kind of movie I didn't personally understand, for possible acceptance I wasn't sure it - or I - deserved or even needed.

In the end, it felt most honest to just stay with my original words.  Because most of all we need to write what we know and from the heart, right?

I came to conclude that X's and Y's is fucking angry and bitterly sardonic, definitely.  But the rage feels aren't aimed at the audience, per se; they're simply expressed. 

However real the grief and pain beneath the words, X's & Y's was genuinely motivated by an inspired attempt to marry linguistics and math. An intention at cleverness, at best.

But underneath all the rage feels is ultimately a lamentation honouring the enduring resilience of all who suffer pain, injustice and the deeply harmful impacts of stigmatizing exclusion and prejudice, socially and systemically.