I used to write.
I suppose that’s not really much of a surprise, but it seemed an important point when I opened my eyes on a place I’d never seen that was theoretically three miles from my parent’s house.
When I’d decided to drive back to my mom and find out what was really going on, I’d had to give absence notice to my current employer, for whom I wrote technical manuals. It wasn’t exciting; it was, in fact, soul-sucking drudgery that made me stare longingly at help-wanted signs in Blockbuster, but the pay was good and I didn’t have to think.
Writing, real writing, involved a lot of thinking — dredging up memories and pains and joys and regrets and putting them onto a page for everyone to see and hopefully not recognize. The old rule is write what you know but really, what else is there?
I’d stopped because I didn’t want to remember what I knew anymore. I hadn’t wanted to for ten years. I’d been alone for all that time. Who wanted to think about that?
Before that, though…
Before that, I used to write and had written about the place I saw in front of me right at that moment. It was a homecoming to a place I’d never been. It had a completely familiar feel to it, and that scared the hell out of me.