Trigger Warning: Some aspects of this post relate to sexual violence.
For the past few years, I considered myself deep in a writing slump. I’d given up work on a novel that was My Project for years, and nothing moved me enough to breathe life into that artistic gap. I was constantly telling people, “I’m not writing anything,” or, “I don’t have anything to show for the time since we last talked.”
Of course, some confidence-building and perspective shift made me realize my “nothing to show” mindset wasn’t true. I was writing, and my time away from fiction wasn’t putting me behind where I needed to be. Copywriting, journal entries, and social media posts were still writing, and they were worthy of credit, even if they didn’t fit like the feeling of satisfaction from a completed manuscript.
These were my little wins, the tools I needed to approach projects leading me to the big wins.
The little wins taught me I have stories to tell, and people want to hear them. I’m able to inspire and lead with my words. So, I retooled JDHellen.com to be more than my writer website, and I thought about the messages I was putting out there through my published (or hopefully to-be-published) fiction.
The first short story I ever sent out for publication that really meant something to me is called “Epilogue Not Included.” The excerpt below is from the most recent version of the story, the one I thought I needed to share with the world.
“Epilogue Not Included” is just one of the creative expressions of working through my trauma. Although it’s a fictional account of very personal experiences, honesty is there. What’s expressed through the story is how I truly felt — for decades. I knew, objectively, that what happened in my late teens wasn’t “normal.” I knew it was packed with emotion, and despite what others urged me to consider, there was still something beautiful to keep about my so-called trauma. Sure, I wouldn’t always portray these recounts as beautiful, but my trauma was my special “thing.” It was my invisible, internal fuel.
Something changed after 2018.
Maybe, that was the point where I’d made enough small wins to really see how keeping myself in my trauma wasn’t about the creative fuel. It was what people living with trauma do. And as I kept going back, through my writing, my career choice, and even the car I purchased, I wasn’t letting myself change the narrative. I knew the ugly parts, but I kept making excuses for them.
It’s fine to sugarcoat for fiction. But when you’re using your fiction to understand your real life story, you have to eventually let the sticky and sour hang out there.
Let yourself look at it.
I’ve been looking at it — as it really is — for a few years now. I don’t celebrate what happened, and I’m not nostalgic. I’ve moved past using this event as my defining characteristic. There’s so much more to me than being that girl in high school. There’s so much more to love and relationships than the lessons learned from that relationship. (Also, I’m going to break from my kindness for a moment here and state that, aside from the obvious, there are a lot of reasons why we’d never have worked. You know, along the lines of this kind of stuff.)
I owe it to myself and my audience to work on a new version of “Epilogue Not Included” that doesn’t glorify my trauma. There’s a way to acknowledge how I felt at different moments in my life without inspiring hope in the wrong places.
The hope is about my growth and my story.
It’s a good thing lit mags never accepted “Epilogue Not Included.” Something better, something worth reading, will be out there some day.
Are you stuck in a narrative that can use “rewriting”? What can you take away from the sour and sticky to empower others?