"When you get something on the page, it leaves your body." Cynthia Bond - Author of "Ruby"
I loved this line in her interview in "O" magazine... and I loved her book, "Ruby".
When asked why she wrote...."I was just trying to stay alive, and writing was the way I could do it."
She also says, "My memories of abuse are not linear - they're like swatches of fabric I keep trying to stitch into a pattern. Often they don't make sense. I try to match colors, like piecing together a puzzle. Is that sky or water? Paint or blood? I started having such vivid memories, I couldn't move. I was afraid I would hurt myself. Finally I started writing. I got help. My mother saved my life again and again. I wrote and wrote, and started putting together a novel. I didn't mean to. And I had no idea it would end up being so long - it was originally close to 900 pages. When my agent saw how long it was, she urged me to break it into three books. This is the first."
I loved the way she writes...
"She wore gray like rain clouds."
Yet it is a book that is laced with abuse and how it is seen or more... overlooked.
Very colorful characters who interact in a way that creates the climate for abuse.
Her landscape is different than mine, her heritage not the same; the abuse in the book much more severe...and yet the outcome remains the same.
Loss of self.
Voices in your head echo the way your abuser (s) see you.
Another line...which I heard went something like this. "Until you hear the lie of your abuser, you will not see your self."
As she ends the interview, she says "No one was ever brought to justice, though everyone knew who did it. My grandfather died knowing his daughter's killers remained free. I'm glad I'm in a position to talk about these atrocities."
I see this as the flow of how humanity changes when abuse appears and its journey. Not only what it does to lives; how they change...but then the course correction that is possible.
