Down the Rabbit Hole

Distractions and Decisions

Tonight I head home from the office, significantly heavier, weighted down by a non-descript manila envelop that contains every literary reference concerning Seth. I made a decision, one that I hope encourages me to finish what I started so long ago. In my efforts to write a memoir, I've overlooked a very important fact, that this story I'm telling, its exactly that, a good story. It has all the elements of a novel, and I think, a compelling one. I began some time ago to write a story called "Beautiful Disaster" and in essence, it is this story. Rather than turning all my letters, my blogs and poetry into a memoir, I think its more natural to let those things tell the story. I was afterall, merely a character in the drama so why not continue that way? If I treat all that emotion-soaked material as research with which to craft my characters, then this story will have all the power and humanity, all the pain and the promise of the truth behind it. I lug the envelop home with the intention of reading through it all, every scrap. I'll need it to tap into to make my characters breathe, to give the story its backbone. I have all I need to finish this book, I have the people, the places and, unlike most of what I start, the ending. I never finished Beautiful Disaster even though it was one of my favorite, and I thought, most promising pieces. I felt like I never had a handle on where it was going...but I knew all along where it was going. This was my story, this was Seth's story all along. There is a reason why I feel its some of my best work, because its the most real. So, and I cart this stuff home my field of excuses shrink. There isn't any reason why not to finish Beautiful Disaster now. Its all there.

I read through a lot of material over my lunch. I pulled relevant references from my blogs but stopped short of reading every letter I wrote Seth during his stay at Lebanon Pines. After the second letter filled with love soaked pargraphs penned in painful disillusion, I couldn't bear it. In light of what happened, these letter seem so juvenile and lilly-white as to render them insignificant. All I can gleem from them is that at one point, I was a girl hopelessly and complete in love. I think I've got that part down. In sharp contrast, and much more valuable as a reference, is the collection of diary entries I collectively called "In Your Absence". My own way of keeping sane, or at least partially sane during Seth's hospitalization, was to write a journal. I needed an outlet for all the hurt, disappointment and rage that I could not vent as he lay in a medicinal coma. Within those entries, there is a real person being forged, a real character. My own Samantha. I need it all but those things most of all. So, its with a renewed vigor that I approach my project. I hope I can finish the draft this year but with my little girl on the verge of independant mobilization, that could be optomistic. Irregardless of how long it takes me, this is the way to go and I can get it done, eventually. Finishing the novel will give me not only a great goal, but also the sense of peace and closure that I still need.