My current project has had me off my blog, digging through the old photographs, old stories, old poems and writings of a kid who served six years time in church school -- at least that's how it felt. This is the hardest book I've written because it takes me to a time I have wanted to forget. Through the years I wrote some of it as short stories, which were published in Insight/Out Magazine at various times. My aunt kept urging me to compile these stories as a single work, but that would mean writing more. I tried several times, but I just didn't want to be "her" again.
And that was the thing. I didn't blame the bad teachers or the bullies. I blamed me and rejected me. Eventually I became someone I like and respect, but I still could not embrace my younger self because she thought she was a failure and I could not forgive failure. Gradually, I have become aware that I had become my own worst bully. As an adult, I would never judge and condemn another kid the way I have judged and condemned myself for more years than I want to count.
Yet, I still could not revisit her, the younger me.
This year I had a breakthrough in communication with my younger self. Maybe I have finally acquired enough years distance that I can begin to listen to her. I let her have her voice, and once she started speaking, she held me mesmerized. As she told her story, I remembered what a colorful character she was -- even as the world around her tried to fade "all the colors out of who I really am."
We (my younger self and I) have completed the first draft. We hope to have it available online by summer's end.
