A Fair Exchange

I never set out to write 800 plus stories - but like so many things in my life, once the train was on the track, it steamed right over me and went in its own direction.

Sometimes the words come without the slightest effort - something triggers a memory or reminds me of some past event - and the writing pours like water from a faucet. Sometimes I have to work at it, knowing what I want to say but not able to put the words together exactly the way I hear them in my head. There are threads to these stories, each is connected in some way to the things I believe about addiction, animals, anger, friendship and the afterlife. I write to vent, to detoxify, to re-evaluate and remember. I write because it makes me feel better to put feelings out in the sunlight and away from the shadows, because I have come to realize that I am not alone in what I feel or fear, will endure or have survived. Human nature demands that we all live with our sins and mistakes and foolishness, that we learn and move on, forgiving when we can and forgetting when we can't. As long as there's life, there's hope, my grandmother would often quote and my daddy would tell me, If you can draw breath, it's not over. Both were strong in their own ways, each had learned the difference between acceptance and surrender. I sometimes think that if I could talk to my daddy now, I would tell him I'm sorry for the moments that I thought him a coward.

Still, I didn't know I had 800 plus stories in me, never mind that I could let them spill out, the light and the dark side by side, often in a kind of emotional competition. Living in the light is harder than life in the shadows.

So I continue to write, plowing through what makes me smile as well as what still hurts. I have no goal in mind, no stopping point. When I'm done, I'll be done - hopefully a little wiser and a little stronger - but if not, I'll settle for whatever progress I have made and call it a fair exchange.