A diving board day

Morning darklings,

There are days so hard I barely remember them. I was there. I did things. I said things. I moved. I ate. I existed. I may have even laughed. But the memories are smoke.

Days like that leave a mark on the heart—notches carved like initials in a tree. They cling, even when the details dissipate.

I had one of those recently.

No, I had three—three days that I can only recall as if they are ghosts of themselves.

And somehow, they all started with words on a screen read early in the morning. Each felt like a slap. Each came with disbelief as I processed. Then, they came with tears. So many tears. Angry tears, tears of grief, indignant tears, tears of embarrassment, just tears.

The first day’s email was from a stranger. A benign thing, really. But there was that paragraph. They meant nothing from it, I know. But that doesn’t make the hurt go away, does it?

From there, I wrote a story. I decided to detach, fictionalize my feelings, turn it all into something much bigger and more interesting. Make sense of it all. And now, the original message is a nothing, insignificant. Just a blip in life that lead to something good.

The other two days have shattered me. Nothing good will come from them. Some things can be used as diving boards, others are fly traps.

So I mention the fly trap days because I am still stuck there, darklings. My shoes, my socks, my feet, my skin and muscle and bones are fused to the trap. But today I need to focus on the diving board day, because it feels healthier.

Because it is healthier.

I thought my processing of that email would be a flash fiction, at best. Maybe just a blob with no form. But it became a story with shape and main characters with whole lives.

The story detached from the already detached emotion—defiantly becoming its own thing.

I will not simply be processing, it said. I will be a strong story, standing on my own letters, my own words, my own sentences and paragraphs. And who was I to argue?

So I wrote until the characters said all they needed to. To the surprise of no one, it turned out to be psychological fiction with a thrilling conclusion.

I’m editing it now.

It was surreal. Part of me wondered if I could write fiction anymore. I worried that the novella I’m finishing now would be it for me. I’ve written so many short things lately, I’ve been bothered with questions of being able to write long things or new things at all. But then this story fell from my brain onto the page without much thought at all—as so many have.

I don’t know what that means for tomorrow or the next day. I only know that it felt good to stretch the creative muscles I felt withering over the last few months.

Until next time, harness the Little darknesses and embrace the Little things.

And before you go, I’ll drop the link to the Claw Machine Kickstarter once more. We’re so close to funding! I’m kind of blown away by the support. I don’t do social media. I don’t have a huge following. But people are still showing up to help get these authors paid. I can’t thank everyone enough! ❤️