I’ve been working diligently on the second draft of the memoir project for months now, finally getting a grip on what I want it to do, how I want my story to come across. It’s an awful lot of work, let me tell you.
This revamp of Chapter One has taken me weeks. I re-wrote it entirely, then again, thanks to the feedback from my writers’ critique group, the Zeitgeist Writers’ League.
They wanted me to explore how I got to the point of being a single mom traveling with kids. Where’s the divorce? the desperation?I’d hidden it and even as I edit this version, I still finding myself hiding behind the details unwilling to admit just how hurt I was.
Maybe it’s how hurt I still am. Writing about finding the photograph of my husband with his teenage girlfriend is gut-wrenching, and I don’t mean that nonchalantly. My stomach feels like its been turned into a Celtic knot as I struggle to put into words the feeling of that afternoon when I had the first inkling that the marriage I’d thought was just suffering through normal lack of intimacy, was actually falling apart. I find myself nauseated and I have to stop writing and thinking. I stop to get a hug from the GuyFriend or go spend a few moments basking in the glory that is my now-teen daughter.
The everyday pain of having the family I’d planned dissolve like that is long gone, but there’s a part of me that still feels the stinging slice of dishonesty, abandonment and loneliness.
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