The Beauty in Writing a Memoir

        Honestly, like I said in my last post, people have been trying to get me to write a book for years, and I just thought why? You never think “Oh I’m being brave” when it’s about you. You just think, “My only choice is to go along with what they’re saying, because supposedly it’s going to make me feel better.” You learn to trust doctors, and then you sadly learn, how fast, that trust can turn to dust. Like a fire burning logs in your living room. The trust is there, but as the fire starts burning it destroys the logs, and slowly the logs turn to dust. That was what it was like to have a doctor who I thought was a God when I first met him, and the fire was burning inside me to have him be right; to fix me; and then the first and second time he was right, and then the fire slowly began to burn the insides of me, and it kept burning.

        But the point I was getting at what is the beauty in writing a memoir? In my opinion the beauty in writing a memoir about something as personal as I did was the things I learned about myself in the process. I thought I had explored everything that came with the past 13 years. All the feelings, all the sadness, all the anger, all the happiness, I thought I had felt it all. And I did. To a point. But it wasn’t until I started my memoir that I realized I still had so much more left to explore. I didn’t realize that there was so much that I still didn’t know. And I didn’t know some of the feelings that I would feel going back and reliving all of this again. Was I taking a risk? Maybe, but it’s like jumping into a pool of sharks to save your life. You have to do it to save your life, but you don’t know what you’re in for after you jump. Well I did what Robin told me to do, I jumped. I wasn’t scared, I just said, “Whatever I find out, I probably was going to find out at some point.” 

        I never knew I was capable of doing something this great. That’s why this took me so long to do. People have been telling me for years to write a memoir, and I always said, “Oh yeah that would be cool,” but never in a serious way, I just sort of childishly thought, Oh yeah if the words just flow out of me one day, I’ll just write them down and it will all be perfect.” I never knew writing a book would be this hard. I had naively thought, “Oh since I know what I’m writing about this should be easy.” Boy was I wrong. This has turned into the hardest thing I’ve probably ever done. But it has definitely been the most healing. I never knew how many wounds I still had from this entire experience. I just said, before I started this, I thought I had felt everything I was going to feel, cried about everything I was going to cry about, and was mad about everything I was going to be mad about. But I wasn’t.

        I never realized how much writing this book was going to cause me to grow up. I never realized how much writing this book was going to force me to forgive people. They say, you can forgive but you can never forget. And I think that’s true. IT’s sort of final in a way, like you’re saying “you did this and I’m forgiving you.” But at the same time, you’re saying, “yes I forgive you, but I will never forget what you did to me.” It’s like falling down and scraping your knee. The scar that it leaves, you can never forget. You may be upset, that heals, and you get over it. The wound may heal but the scar that it leaves, never lets you forget.

        So to close out this post, let me just say, I never thought of myself as a fantastic writer. I liked to write on my own time, just to be creative I guess, but I never thought, that I would write a book or so anything this extravagant. But now that I’m “done” with my part of the book I can’t wait to send it off to my friend who is going to edit it for me, so I can see what another person thinks! And a look to the future, I hope to see all of you in line to get a copy of Kimi’s book! <3