The Power of the Written Word

Last summer I was in Africa with my school. I was newly married, lonely, missing home, struggling to minister to my students and to the people we met there. While in a foreign country on a trip like this, it is very common for people to journal their thoughts and experiences - for posterity, or to help them process what they're going through. Because of this, for the past 2 years on these trips, my co-leader and I have handed out journals to our students and given them chances - and sometimes assignments - to write. This summer, however, I found myself unable to write. I don't really know why to this day. Maybe because I was too emotional to write. Maybe I ran out of words to say after writing my dissertation. I don't know. I never was hugely into journaling. I process ideas better when they are said out loud than when they are written (maybe that's why I study Communication rather than English). But there have been times in my life that writing something down has been very helpful. Instead of helping me process something (which I do orally), it helps make something permanent in my mind. Once its written down, it is finished. Seeing it in black and white makes it concrete in a way that speaking it does not. Does this make any sense? So at the beginning of this year when I started blogging again, I wasn't sure how it would go. I wasn't sure I'd find the words, but since my purpose was not to discover something, but to make the things I had already processed real, it seemed to work for me.
So now I'm going to write something down and make it real. I'm going to put it down in black and white so maybe I can accept it and begin to move on. I really, really don't want to though. I want to avoid making the words real in a way that they can't be taken back, you know? I want to keep the fake smile on my face, laugh through the big problems and pretend they're little and normal. But I think we're past that now. I think reality needs to set in.
Last night, for probably the 10th time in our less than 1 year marriage, my husband told me he didn't want to be married to me. Now, he might come to me again and tell me he's sorry, like he's done in the past. He might say that he really didn't mean it and he doesn't want to lose me. He might even say he'll do counseling, just like he's said he'd do counseling before, but never did it. You see, he said it out loud, he didn't put it in writing. He thinks he can just press delete and all the issues will be gone. Don't dwell in the past, he tells me. But I think this time I'm going to have to put it in writing for him. I think this time I'm going to have to call the apartment complex to find availability, instead of just looking at it online. I think this time, I'm going to call the phone company and insurance company and separate our policies. I think this time, the words are permanent.