Writing Saved My Life

When I think back to the time that I wrote my first book, I can’t help but remember the events that led up to the penning of the first word, to the completion of the first sentence that led to the first paragraph, and the first page when I typed the period. It was a time of great upheaval for me and my family. It was a time for endings and a time for new beginnings.

The day was filled with confusing thoughts and uncontrollable anger for my life’s situations that were out of my control. Hatred, in its rawest form, walked the halls of my apartment. It wasn’t something that I am proud of but I couldn’t stop what happened that day. It was a time of desperate decisions that led to irreconcilable differences and irreparable fractures between me and my wife.

The day was not so different from all of the others before it, but there was one noticeable chant that captured my soul luring me to my end. My mind chanted the words, “I know how to get out!” And following the demon who was leading the chant, I decided to take my own life thus getting out of the marriage that was nothing more than an illusion, a farce, a contrived plan laid out by my mother-in-law to secure someone for her daughter and get her out of her house.

The first thirteen years of our marriage were filled with tears, sorrows, and yelling that accomplished nothing but more division between me and my spouse. Would it ever change? Would the truth that I suspected ever be revealed so that each of us could make our own decision as to whether we continued or went our separate ways? It was a time of emotional convulsions that would last longer than either of us expected. It was during this suicide attempt that I found the road less traveled and the fork in the road that would save my life.

Following the ER visit in Eureka, California, I was transported to the psychiatric hospital in Oakland, California. It was at that time that my spirit cried for my life. I didn’t want to die but I wanted to find a way to live. I needed something, some cause, some challenge, some hope that would help me find peace. It was during this time that I wrote my first piece that saved my life.

As I sit at my kitchen table finishing page four hundred of my newest novel, I can’t help be relive the moment that changed my life forever in a small apartment in Eureka, California. My first attempt to write a novel consisted of one hundred twenty-five hand-written pages. That collection of soiled and stained paragraphs laid dormant for over thirty years until a new inspiration came into my life. Sitting across from my granddaughter while she did her homework, I decided to resurrect the piece of work that I had left in a box in my bedroom. Once I started, with her encouragement, I found the reason that I was spared. Five years and forty books later, I'm grateful that my attempt to end my life, to end it all, failed.

My first attempt was clumsy and awkward with less flair than my work now. My characters are more realistic and their worlds are more aligned to our own, unless it's some fantasy. My work now is very detailed which, in my opinion, gives the readers a greater awareness of the stories as a whole.