Time to Tell the Story

If 2011 is the Year of the Bucket List, then November has definitely been the Month of Surprises. Unfortunately, not all of them have been enjoyable. For better or for worse, though, they've been thought-provoking. By far the best surprise was finding out that a friend of mine is participating in National Novel Writing Month. Halfway through the month, she was halfway to her 50,000 word goal and incredibly excited about her progress and the process. Hearing her talk made me realize how much I've missed writing, and how much I really depend on it to make sense of things in my life. I'm just not any good at sorting things out in my head. I wind up, as a friend pointed out last weekend, "thinking too much." Putting words, ideas, and emotions on the screen means taking them out of my head and forcing them to be what they are. Acknowledging them, re-reading them, maybe fixing a few typos here and there, but, for the most part, committing them to their place in the past. Telling the story means saying what happened, and separating that from what I could have done differently, or wish had been, or didn't understand at the time. The words on the page are the truth (or my version of it) that can't be changed. The story of the future is unwritten and is mine to shape with the choices that I make. The last couple of weeks have brought both hurt and hope, and the realization that I'm going to have to risk the first -- and maybe a lot of it -- if I want to have the second. I've been pretty good at convincing myself that I could avoid getting hurt by setting my expectations really low and then not being very surprised when people lived down to them, so to speak, instead of rising above them. I've been afraid to hope for better for myself, from myself, and from other people, and I can't do that any more. What I might have lost is gone, and I need to let it go. What I might gain will be so much better if I have the courage to let it be.