Memoir is a nag!

It's a bit like the ironing. Piled up in the laundry basket of my mind, beckoning with attitude, ever more wrinkled as it sits, waiting for me to sort it. For some reason, the memoir wants to be written in the wee hours of the morning. I don't want to be a night writer. The memoir doesn't care. Daylight hours are occupied by the cleanup of the spilling memoir of the night hours. You see my problem. Living my life again through memoir is at once cathartic and constipating. There is the outpouring of revelation of feelings I didn't know I had or didn't understand. There is the accompanying restrictive fear of releasing it to the page even though once done, I feel liberated. My husband has asked pointedly, "are you sure you want people you know well to know these intimate things about you?" something in me says it is way to late to worry about that. The story is what it is. Sorry for the ugly parts, but those are the major contributors to the tale. I read them to myself and whisper, "how did I ever survive that emotional battering?" it is the survival that matters.

Memoir is about self discovery. Taking a straight on look at where I began, who I became and how I got that way. The major players in that shaping are alive and textured and understood, however late, for their contribution. I so wish I had been distant enough emotionally to really see them in action. And to have recognized their enormous contribution when they made it. To my credit, looking back, I can now see. I owe them everything.