Why do I write?

There came a point in my life, I could no longer keep up the facade, I was the product of a near-perfect family after moving to Atlanta, Georgia from the small town in which I grew up — Warner Robins, once graduating from Mercer University in Macon where I studied art and psychology. Even though Atlanta was only ninety or so miles from Warner Robins, they may as well have been two different continents.

As well, it rose to the point, living a lie became exhausting. I thought, by telling — at least in part — some of my truth, I’d find a way to loosen the rattling and confining chains of the past. And by that telling, hopefully, in the process, help others with whom I share an unwanted kinship. As a result, I've exposed some very personal aspects of my life from words pulled from the pages of many journals I started writing in junior high school — the very pages on which I bled my soul with each stroke of the countless pens written dry. Each one of those journals, a friend I could lean on. They, the eyes and ears and even the heartbeats that fully know, in detail, the truths of those horrors of what really happened — much of which, I've yet to share. Some of the secrets carried. The tears wept. The screams that went unheard.

Like many people in my situation, I hid the truth of my childhood. A childhood void of happy moments. I kept the secrets of the horrible abuses and violence — my normal — confined within the walls and under the roof of a small house on Shirley Drive, in a low-to-middle-class neighborhood. Even today, so many years later, when I look back, I still cannot believe it was as bad as it was for that scared little boy who still lives within my being. The scared boy who attempted to save his mother and sister from a man who was supposed to be a loving husband and father but wasn't. The boy, who grew up believing he could repair the damage — including, freeing his mother from alcoholism in which she tried to drown her emotional pain and heartache in the bottom of the bottle, when medications and previous shock treatments offered her little release, and save her from the mental illness that plagued — gravely exasperated by the reign of terror rained down by a monster.

In the process, I’ve reached others who shared that similar history in varying degrees — that kinship of which I speak, in a heartfelt attempt to, hopefully, help all of us not feel so alone in a world that, at times, can be isolating and foreboding for many — many unable to tell their stories in fear of being seen as weak and other judgments, but instead curl up in a corner as I once did. In public, I too put on a good face for the benefit of others so I could feel a part of life, all the while knowing I was faking—a counterfeit. Even during the first two decades of finding success as a young man — I still lived in fear of the past.

Although it comes with a high price, sharing my stories gives my life purpose and I've been touched time and time again by readers who have reached out to share their own life's heartaches and the hope they still have managed to hold onto.

I trust in some small way, I can instill a sense of compassion and caring—and unload the heavy weight of shame that was never ours to carry. Thank you for reading mine. For seeing me as I see you. I hope you find strength while living your lives the best you can despite those long-reaching shadows from the darkness of our past. Those shadows, that lie and wait.

James Randall Chumbley 

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