Natalie Goldberg Deck: Card #9

Tell me what you forgot to say.

I’m working through the Natalie Goldberg deck of writing subjects. Each card in this world-renowned author and zen teacher’s Deck contains a writing topic on one side and a short lesson on the reverse, delivered in Natalie’s honest, heartfelt urgency. “This is my wish for you:” she says. “[T]hat you take these cards, grab the topic on one side and write, write, write . . . Remember no good or bad. Just words on the page.”

I forgot to say no.
No, I don’t want to be out here in the middle of nowhere where the antelope roam. I want to be in L.A. where Epic Records has offered me a future. I was 18 and it was summertime and a man of substance, an interesting, difficult, accomplished, gifted man of substance had said,

“Stay with me,”

and that eclipsed all my own substance, interest, difficulty and accomplishment. Well, it didn’t so much eclipse it as redefine it: If he loves me, I can just copy and paste that into my life, and it will save me the hard work of me loving me.

When my children dropped hints that there was trouble in the house too big to say out loud, I forgot to say, “Tell me. We’ve got all the time in the world.”