The Book that Changed Me Was...Mine?

Imagine my surprise

Photo by Freddy Kearney on Unsplash

I don't know that I can quite explain this. Still I will try, if only to flail at understanding it myself.

A few weeks ago, I finished novel.

Well, let me stop there for a moment; we all know what "finished" means here. It was the first draft I was happy enough with to share with people who aren't me. Every time I sat it aside and picked it up again, I still liked it. And I still like it. And so far, the people who've read it have told me they like it. It's affected them in the ways I'd hoped and in ways I wasn't quite expecting. In short, I feel good about these 94,000 words I hacked together and ripped apart over the past several years. I feel so good about them, that I'm going to be looking for people in the publishing industry to send it to (if you have any leads, I would worship you for several days).

But that's all work for another day.

Right now I want to clickety clack my way through some confusing feelings I've become aware of on the other side of this book: I feel changed somehow. I feel thinner. I feel more confident in myself. I feel impish, almost mean (hopefully not quite). Above all, I feel free.

The confidence I described above is not native to my personality. I am, without a doubt, different.

I'll be as vague as possible. The book was something I've carried in my head for years. It was inspired (though that's exactly the wrong word) by events that were seismic to both my life and the attitude I took toward the world. The act of writing it required a commitment to staring, no blinks allowed, into those events, and doing so for years. Sheer will power of a sort I’d never mustered before.

A funny thing about staring at something though. Ever try it? Try it. Look at yourself in a mirror and don't blink or look away from your reflected image (and don’t say Candyman, for God’s sake). At some point, the picture will wiggle and morph and become an uncanny facsimile of an irretrievable original. You won't be able to pin the instant down, but at some moment, the object of your obsession changed. And it was the intensity of your own gaze that altered it. It's like what they say about observing reality at the quantum level: looking at it changes it.

This happened to me. After years of looking at that piece of shit, I came away with a different perspective about it. The sheer amount of time it took to think about it, write about it, and revise, revise, revise my experience into fiction meant that life had changed the writer while he was writing. Shifting sands atop hungry, burrowing death worms.

After I crossed the finish line with this thing (again, I know it's not really finished), I crashed for a week or so. There was a focused intensity in that final approach, as the day of my parole neared and my belly tightened while it brewed more acid than I needed. The day I thought would never come finally came and I was free of this thing that started as a notion, evolved into an ambition, and finished as an obligation. I emailed it to the kind and brave readers who offered themselves up as human sacrifices and exhaled a long, exhausted breath. I then took my rest (which meant focusing on the Spring semester at work).

In the ensuing weeks, the the cramping bile has not returned to my stomach. I wonder if I am finally free?

In a way, it makes sense. The paranoia and rage that fueled the novel's genesis had changed the inciting events themselves. I had taken an ugly realty and made something new out of it. And since it was now mine, how could I not love it? In some strange way, I had adopted my tormentor and dedicated myself to it, at least a version of it. And this version, I could tolerate, even love (in a "keeping up with the child-support payments" kind of way).

Is this why I feel so different? So much better?

I'd entered into this task like an MMA fighter steps in a cage, snarling with malice in his head. But I'd unblinkingly stared so long at my enemy that he changed, imperceptibly, in front of my eyes. By the time I came to the end of the project, I was grappling with an image of my opponent, not him. And I strangely cared for him. It was like I'd fed and domesticated the wolf at my door.

Please don't think I'm ignoring the simplest answer to my question. Part of what has changed me (for the better, I hope) is the obvious satisfaction of having finished something that most people never do. And to my general satisfaction, at that. Pride in accomplishment is real and it is palpable and more people should work towards that feeling.

But I don't think I would feel better about myself if I felt like what I'd accomplished was carnal revenge. I'm lighter and happier because I let an old hurt go. I opened my hands and let it go. It took almost a decade of tears, typing, and therapy, but this act of creative labor redeemed a bloody part of my past and freed me up to take more confident strides into the always, forever, unknown.