A week ago, I drove to the park to watch the transit of Venus, a rarity of an event. I mentioned this in my last entry, but that was a few days after. A whole week later feels like so much further away. Yet next week feels like tomorrow. I am not sure about the whys and wherefores of this skewed perspective, only that I have it, and I doubt that it is uncommon.
I have been thinking a lot lately about memory, ones that I’ve lost, ones that I’m not altogether unsure I’d be happy to have back, ones I sometimes wish I could erase altogether. It is hard to explain to other people, though I am certain there are others who have experienced this seemingly bizarre loss. For me, there was a time when my brain thought it was an Etch-a-Sketch, and my neurologist deemed it a good course of treatment to overmedicate me into a drool-bot.
This then gets heavily tied into my writing, without my intention, even when I fight it. About 4 years ago, I wrote a character with similar issues, though I exaggerated her experience to be so much worse than mine. This character was born to a sinister purpose, one that had been hidden from her throughout her lifetime. I really love the characters that surround her, and the places she goes once she escapes from the reality that controls her. Roughly a year ago, I think it was, I realized that the only way for me to end her story was to end her narrative completely.
I fought this outcome so hard, but then last night, I finally wrote the words that ended her life. I am utterly sick about it, and I hope that comes across on the page, through the actions of the characters who were trying to protect her from her bitter fate.
Right now I am trying to reconcile fact and fiction, cope with this imagined loss, and complete the ending to this story. This character gave me such a great gift, and that is an ending to a story that has been four years running through my mind. Endings are one of my biggest writing challenges, and I am both terrified and delighted to have written one, so that now I can go back and fill in the missing pieces. I hope this task proves as rewarding as it is daunting.