I’ve written two nonfiction graphic novels about bad things that happened in my life: Mom’s Cancer, about my mother’s experience with metastatic cancer, and A Fire Story, about losing my home and neighborhood to a disastrous firestorm. In both cases readers often ask, “Was writing about it therapeutic for you? Was it cathartic?”
Yes and no.
Writing any sort of memoir requires you to pay attention to what happened as well as how you reacted to it. That demands some self-awareness and introspection. “Why was I angry? Why did I make those choices? What do I regret?” I suppose that’s a deeper sort of analysis than a lot of people do in those situations.
On the other hand, I still go out and talk to roomfuls of strangers about my mother’s cancer and my home’s conflagration years after they happened. I’m happy to do it—really!—but in some sense it feels like picking at scabs without ever giving them a chance to scar over. “Let me yet again relive for you folks the worst experiences of my life.”
That doesn’t seem healthy.
I especially reject the ideas of “catharsis” and “closure.” I don't think there’s any such thing. You just keep on because you have no choice. Life is forever divided into “before” and “after,” and over time you accumulate enough days in your “after” ledger, including some good and happy ones, that the pain of losing “before” slowly fades.
Art’s got nothing to do with that. Only time.
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