Does writing heal and is healing possible?  Solitary Confinement is a personal compilation of the attempt to write and heal — though the (near) final result implies so much more.

        First, the priority and results of writing itself must be explored in this context.  Three weeks before my high school graduation I fell over 100 feet from a cliff, breaking my neck and arm, as well as sustaining multiple internal injuries.  After the rehabilitation stage, my circle of community's thoughts shifted from the goal of rising from the chair to walk again to vocational goals.  What can she do now?  The stock vocational advise paralyzed people receive is: 1) Become a Social Worker; 2) Become a Lawyer; 3) Become a Psychologist; 4) Work with computers; and 5) WRITE.

        I did write before my injury, not well though.  Looking back over those texts it is obvious that healing, in the context of releasing feelings, to grapple and investigate the pain and fear, was my major intent.   After my injury the pressure to write, specifically to publish, grew intense.  It did not matter how intense the pressure was though, I wrote crap not fit to be published, let alone be read.  After beginning college and looking realistically at the job market, I realized I could do anything I wanted that did not involve physical criteria.  I had a million possibilities, though still looked at writing as something I could do, and do well once I learned grammar and continued my education.

        I hope Solitary Confinement gets published someday.  I began the text the first time I can honestly say I fell in rational love and was initially rejected because of my disability.  I wrote the initial story immediately after the rejection to feel better, to organize the feelings of inadequacy that felt illogical and unfair.  Did I succeed in feeling better; did the act of writing this piece heal my pain?  Yes and no.  I remember calling my brother's girlfriend Mary and reading her my two page achievement.  She commented that she wished she could characterize her pain in a fictitious story based on the harsh reality we cannot escape.  I never consciously thought about using life experience as an outline for a text since the lines between fiction and life are blurry and you can get yourself into difficult situations with family and friends.

        Gregg, the rejecter the story is based on, accepted my disability a short time later, and our relationship continued (we have lived together for four years now).  What was cathartic and comforting for me became a source of pain for him.  He read the draft, (which contained literal interpretations of our relationship and actual phrases, he told me he couldn't see himself with a girl in a wheelchair.)  The draft bothered him terribly, like salt in a wound because of the honest portrayal of my feelings.  To read the emotional, tangible pain he caused with no reason or basis other than the societal view that people with disabilities were broken, homebound devalued things no longer human because they were not normal.  I was fun enough to be around — but what would people think?  It would be hard work being around me and I looked different — the accepted definition of beauty totally excluded any of my physical characteristics.  He knew this was a philosophy usable against anyone, including himself, and to read of his wounding of me, to have the words exist in a speakable order, a definitive language of pain — seemed like my punishment toward him.

        I expanded the piece a few more pages, fictionalizing the overall theme but his guilt and pain still affected his reading of the text.  At the beginning of this semester I began re-writing the text specifically to heal myself and to reconcile the discriminatory stereotypes people with disabilities live under.  I told Gregg I was working on it.  "Again?"  He said.  He wants the story to go away — he wants the truth of his actions undone, forgotten, if we forget it never happened.   Memorializing this pain in written language bothers him.  I do not believe in active denial anymore.  I forgave him immediately because he could not consciously choose whether or not to begin a relationship with me because he could not see me through his perception that the world would view him as abnormal if he sustained a relationship with me.

        I do not want to punish Gregg, hurt him or retaliate.  I want to conceptualize irrational stereotypes and kill them dead.  My goal is empathic understanding between those who have, and those who do not have disabilities.  Solitary Confinement is meant to be read didactically.  Many people are afraid to ask questions and make assumptions because they have no knowledge base.  I have structured the text to teach people of a world they fear worse than death (I have been told more than once, "If that happened to me I would have killed myself.")  I wanted to incorporate major issues affecting the romantic relationships people with disabilities can face, such as loss of benefits, physical, mental and emotional assumptions — gender issues.  The blatant discrimination I see every day is extremely frustrating because it is pervasive and condoned in our culture.  The mythology surrounding disability must be challenged.  "I'm viewed as either heroic or pathetic and it aggravates me.  All I want to be is me"(Page 11) is the forceful thought I want emphasize.

        Solitary Confinement is the closest I have ever been to feeling as if there is a connection between writing and healing.  I get goose bumps when I read certain passages.  Now I would like to explore the connection between reading and healing with Solitary Confinement with the general public.