Why I Write.
Nonfiction. A word of warning: the following contains mentions of suicide, homophobic and abusive language, and child abuse. It also contains within a conquest of such.
At the age of eleven I read “The Lord of the Rings” for the first time. I still recall the scent of the pages from the 1972 pressing I was gifted (on loan, though I did buy that exact pressing twenty years later.) The scent of Middle-Earth. It became my everything. When I announced to my family that I wanted to be an author like Tolkien, my stepfather turned to the room and said: “well, one son turned out to be a faggot.”
As a child I was planted at the junction between a trinity of worlds. My biological father was completely absent, my biological mother was a drug addict who married a man that resented my existence, and my grandparents essentially raised me. I refer to the latter as my parents. They were, irrefutably. In this essay, when I refer to “mother” or “father,” that’s who I mean.
I would bounce between homes on a weekly basis. My mother and father taught me to read, took me for hikes or to the cinema, seeded a love of baseball, and encouraged the expansion of my imagination. They were not, however, my legal guardians. When I was forced to return to the “other” home, it was a swirl of drug abuse, screamed words and insults, and physical abuse. Police were called, furniture was broken by hurled bodies. I could always discern the rumble of my stepfather’s truck winding up the narrow valley where the house was situation. Once I heard it, I would turn to friends or visitors and say “I have to go to my room now, I’ll be in trouble.” Rarely had I done anything wrong, but this man twenty years my senior would unload the pain he was carrying upon me at a daily clip. He would find something. If my brother misbehaved the blame was put on me. A decade of this. I was fucking terrified of him.
Children do not often possess a keen awareness, nor the social intelligence, to identify such nuanced and complex relationships in real time. Our context is emotional. Safety and fear. We’re born to dream, to ingest the contents of the corporeal world and shift those pieces of reality within the vacuum of our imaginations. We summon magic from mud. My imagination, fueled by Tolkien, had me acknowledging the finer details of the world. The scent of purple wisteria. Laurel bay leaves raining their clamor to the earth. The sound of coyotes on the ridge at dusk. These are the memories of childhood; the indicators of a world bound in mystery. When these are marred by misery, resentful adults spring up from the roots of abused children. A revolving cycle.
I turned to books. I was a voracious reader. I would sit in math or science or history class with The Lord of the Rings (re-read every year,) Watership Down, or The Stand tucked into the textbook I was supposed to be reading from. I was a straight F student, but I had my books. They were an escape mechanism. This, of course, led to parent-teacher nights filled with wrath from my stepfather, blaming me for my poor grades and inattentive behavior. I was told I was “a retard” by a school counselor. I was given an ADHD test, which I passed, only to have the doctors insist that I receive medication for the condition anyways. I became a severely depressed 12-year-old. There’s evidence to suggest it had a long-term psychological impact on me. My parents protested this prescription but again, they were not my legal guardians, and my biological mother and stepfather insisted on “curing the retard.”
And I kept reading.
When I reached the age of 16 I’d had enough. My parents were embroiled in an ugly divorce and sold my childhood home, whereas the abuse from my stepfather was getting worse as I grew and aged. Choking, punching, screaming. Threats. I ran away. My parents died in 2008 and 2009, respectively, and what little sinew I had connecting me to the heart of family was ripped away. I wanted to kill myself. I nearly summoned the cowardice to do so, but thankfully did not. For the next eight years I bounced in and out of friend’s homes, slept on random couches, and often found myself on the street. I even slept in the woods for two weeks in 2009.
When I turned 19, my biological father appeared out of nowhere and sent me a Facebook message that simply read “die.” Restraining order filed before I turned 20.
And I kept reading.
Eventually, I figured it out. I became my own man. Worked two jobs, developed skills and experience, lived in broom closets while I built my credit and became a new guy. I started, I failed, I started, I failed, I started. Life is not easy, even now, but it is not a return to those moments or those years.
As an adult, I discovered that my stepfather and biological mother had lied to me my entire life- I did not share a last name with them, but rather was born with the last name Jones- that of my grandparents, my parents, the people of whose lineage I will always sing. My name, their name, will go on the covers of my novels. I did, however, have to convert all of my medical and school records, which was a goddamn nightmare.
The writers I worshiped saved me, time and time again. They pulled me back from the chasm of depression and doom with their worlds, their words, their hope and imagination. It was like a summons to the epicenter of purpose that I began writing as I read. Terrible, awful, very no-good writing, but writing. I copied Hemingway and London and Dostoevsky. My soul bled the length of pen to the page and back again in a cycle now burgeoning with renewal, not dread. Eventually I became my own author.
I write not for riches, or following, or subscribers; I write because there’s a chance I can save the life of one child, or distill hope from doom with the knowledge that they’re seen. Keep a heart beating, maybe. I write so that the boy who was me understands he is not alone. If you’re a young person reading this, fuck what they tell you you cannot be. You are. Be. Do not fret about subscriber count, or readers, or the haunts of your unnurtured past. You will make the climb once you start focusing on the grip, the route, and the plateau.
If a part of you relates to this and you feel lost, reach out to me.
Keep reading.
I would not have gotten far without the ceaseless love from the community where I grew up, including friends and their families, and teachers at school. People let me live with them and expected nothing in return. I would be dead without them.
I’m not looking for your pity, or kind words. I know so many of us, sadly, relate to this. And we do not speak of it enough. We dismiss each other’s pain, we ordain who gets to feel, and we bicker more than empathize. Take a moment to love your fellows today, not denounce them.
Beautiful and heavy, Cedar. Glad you pushed through. Glad you’re here. I don’t know what last name you were raised with, but Cedar Jones is a bad ass name. Hard to top.
This was such a heart wrenching, beautiful and well written piece. I loved it. I know you stick to fiction but I think you have a gift for personal essays too. Also I just re read Watership Down, and why was that book such a staple of some of the worst childhood memories?? Still love it, lotr too. Thank you for your vulnerability here Cedar. This was so good.