FREUDIAN SLIPS

It’s been a little over a year since I wrote in my journal:

Today I made a decision as I was driving back from the Plunge after me swim: that when my website—Eager Reader Press—goes up next month, I’m going to use it not just to sell the children’s books I’ve written and illustrated, but, at least occasionally, as a platform to talk about child abuse and the impact it has had on my life.

The catalyst for this decision was an insight I had the other morning when I woke up from a recurring abandonment dream. Throughout my adult life I’ve made two types of Freudian slips—not in speech, but in writing:

One is to unwittingly write “a” instead of “I,” as though I were an indefinite article rather than a definite one—an error I make whether I’m writing in longhand or typing. I also write “my” instead of “me,” again as though I were a collection of attributes but lacked a cohesive sense of self. On the infrequent occasions I’m feeling a buoyant confidence, however, I’m apt to make the opposite mistake and write “I” for “a” and “me” for “my,” which I see that I did in my first sentence—a promising sign.

The second mistake I’m liable to make is to omit “not” or the contraction “n’t” in a sentence. Why do I try to write a negative statement and find, when I re-read it, that I’ve written a positive one? I’ve wondered for years. After my dream, I think I finally understand: What I commit to the page represents the overt—the public—side of myself, the face I show to the world. I omit “not” and “n’t because they represent the negative side of myself that I try to keep hidden—the anxiety, anger, and shame that are a legacy of my childhood. And so it remains hidden on the page—an unconscious reminder of all that I’m leaving unexpressed.