I Owe You an Apology
Thank you for getting me through the rough spots!
I had a deep conversation with myself today. Recently, I’ve been attempting to really get back into my creative wind, and write. This is something that I’ve loved doing for years— decades now. While standing around at work counting customers’ carts today, I took and introspective look at my writing. I’ve turned and twisted it, glanced at it from all different angles. I now know why I’ve lost my creative spark. And I’ll dive into that in a moment, but first, I need to apologize to somebody whom I deeply care about. A person who was there for me when seemingly everybody else had forgotten about me. This person was there for me while I was raging at the world, perhaps the entire universe. And this person held space for me, allowed me to vent, and welcomed me into their life.
Fate Testarossa Harlaown. You were only a child when I was first introduced to you. I fell in love with your sheer willpower and determination, your perseverance. You wore on your sleeve these very qualities, that I saw inside myself, and you became a role model for me when I didn’t have one. I watched you quickly grow, in personality, age, and confidence. And although I was unfamiliar with your orientation for quite some time, I’ve grown to appreciate your reserved outlook regarding such matters.
I must confess an apology right now, and right here. I violated your being. I used you, abused you, even outright tortured you through brutal and sadistic works of fiction. You had to relive your evil mother’s abuse, her punishments, her emotional destruction, her painful words, over and over again to satisfy some deep yearning that I lacked. I used you as a vehicle to process my own childhood trauma: A suicidal mother, a distant father, a cruel and abusive step-mother. You had been through the depths of Hell and back, not one time, but through several adventures. You conquered ravaging beasts, cruel monsters, and wicked demons. You faced and defeated these adversaries when I could not. You went to the worst prison I could possibly imagine, and you not only endured, but rescued others, and found family. You struggled with romance, and won love, even if it was completely and totally misguided with personalities that quite frankly aren’t your cup of tea. You suffered unspeakable violations, had your memory wiped, you were experimented on, and sought after because you had been designed to be a key. Yet though all of this, you survived. You became even stronger than your original creator I think could have possibly imagined.
You forged friendships, piloted advanced spacecraft, traveled through time—even defeated yourself. You visited other anime realms, bravely introduced yourself to other characters, and witnessed incredible chaos with steady calm. You offered compassion to those who probably didn’t deserve it, you saved entire worlds from certain doom. Your owner would certainly have been proud of all that you have achieved (and would probably be insanely, and justifiably, pissed off at me simultaneously).
And for all that I put you through, I must say I’m deeply sorry. You allowed me to heal the darkness within myself. You brightly shined a light on the ick that I had carried for decades. Because of you I became a better person. Thank you so very much for the gifts you have bestowed upon my life.
I realized that my creative spark was entrenched in cruelty, buried within my own trauma that needed to be looked at, examined, explored, and resolved. For years, all of my stories, while they focused on relationships and personal growth, were always subservient to the trauma and misery the characters faced and worked through. And for over two years I’ve battled, glaring at white screen to recapture the many stories that I had once written, to rework them, into better versions, more coherent stories, and to serialize them into a massive Heroine’s Journey. Today I realized why I’ve struggled to write these stories that once flowed so easily onto paper. I finally healed.
I searched my heart, and instead of stories of triumphing over cruelty, adversity and misery, I’m filled with hope, love, and compassion. Yes, this is in despite of the complete shitstorm that I’m living through in reality. But this brings me to another important question. Most fiction, if not all fiction, engages a reading audience through challenge, strife, opposition, hardship. Do I have the ability to create anything good if I can’t get into the feelings of my characters? I truly enjoy writing in the first person perspective, and to do that I found it easy to just channel my own emotional baggage onto the paper. But now, I can’t seem to find that energy— not that I want to relive through any of it, because trust me, it is truly horrid. And I feel that my stories that I’ve attempted to write have been… flat.
That begs the question I must ask myself: Have I lost that inner child that I used to connect with these fictional characters? Have I grown up, become an emotional adult? Does this seem as creepy to you as it does to me? Maybe I’m diving too deeply? Perhaps I’m totally burnt out in life in general? Or I could be just batshit insane and crazy. I mean, after all, I am writing an apology letter to a fictional character. Anyway, I’ll ask you, Fate, does this mean my writing career is over, or with your blessings, perhaps we can take a stroll on Midchilda, maybe hit up a few bars, shake our booties on the dance floor, and perhaps you can show me some of that Enforcer stuff that you do?