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Emily O'Toole's avatar

Thanks for sharing, Ella. I love the Bob Dylan finding yourself vs creating yourself. So true.

I also love Joan Diddian's: memories are quick to be forgotten (totally summarized).

When I was driving to Arizona last year to be with my mom on her walk towards death (morbid but true), I started to write a story about heartbreak. Since I was driving, I couldn't actually write it, but I thought it out loud for hours - working through the draft and editing portions, changing the order things, how the story unfolded. I knew I would eventually write it down. It was so good. Full of beauty and vulnerability and humor and insight. I "wrote" about the first heartbreak that I remembered (Chris McCoy) and then traced it back to early heart-racing (fingers almost touching in a movie theatre) and then heart-aching - (not getting that cookie I wanted. Not having children).

I remebered a lot on that drive and the memories created words that wove together magically. I cried, I laughed, and I learned things about myself in the telling of that story.

I never wrote it down.

I didnt realize that by the time I got to Arizona, the very heart that I had been "writing" about would slowly fall to pieces as I lived in my mother's death.

I will never get that story back.

I am no longer in that emotional space. I can't find those words. I can't remember the rhythm, the cadence, the chronology- the point. I can't re-read that story, feel the tenderness again, laugh like I did. Because I didn't write it down.

I am so glad you wrote this and shared it. Thank you! I am so looking forward to reading more.

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owen's avatar

this will be SICK

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