Scar

She turned off that gravel driveway and headed home. It wasn’t far, 20 minutes or so. Ten minutes in she approached that right turn off the highway and felt that familiar scream inside herself to change course, continue straight, and drive until she was lost. Today she listened. She ended up six hours north in a small town that most people forget while it’s still visible in their rear-view mirror. It had a pub with rentable rooms. The owner was kind. When she woke up the next morning to a missed call from work, she nearly tipped headlong into embarrassment. Yet, this was the first time her lungs had been able to fully expand in months.

He had gone inside after he couldn’t hear her car anymore. He watered his new choices with alcohol and grease. Change hurt but at least it was a fresh wound. A clean wound. Those would heal if you let them. Take care, get better, let it scar over. It would get easier when Spring arrived.

Revenant

It’s been almost two years since I last published something on this page that no one reads. My girlfriend-turned-fiancé stopped periodically checking the tab she always kept open on her phone, I’d say, half way in. As with all things we love, delaying my return to it meant that the eventual revenant treatment had to be bolder, grander, something to justify the length of time. I don’t remember ever reading this rule but it’s sure stuck in my mind as well as the mind of, and I make myself feel better by writing this, the mind of every creative type.

It had become a Big Thing.

So big in fact that I’ve given up on it entirely. “Oh, but you’re here!” you say so kindly. And that’s true. I am here. But the idea that I had once stuck to this blog like a branding iron applied red-hot has faded into a flat, white scar. It’ll be there if you look for it but it won’t define it.

So then, what? I am a writer therefore I must write. I adore capturing the stories of others, true or otherwise, and that love hasn’t gone anywhere. In fact, and I feel I should clarify here, this isn’t about change for the sake of loss but rather for gain. I’ve spent the last two years actively repairing a very broken mind. And I think that’s worth sharing. For I, too, am a piece of The Collection.

This is my story.