When a voice is no longer silent…

Eight years. It occurred to my yesterday that it has been eight years this month since Mom’s ex burned the house down in 2004. A lot has happened in that time.

As many of you know, I lost the original draft of my first fantasy novel, Spellbound by Fire, along with many other pieces of writing I had done; novels, poetry and short stories. Writing has always been as vital as breathing to me and it was in that next year I discovered just how vital it really was.

I stopped writing after the house fire. After years of being told by him that writing would take me nowhere, it was worthless, and I would never get anywhere. After years of the violence, threats, abuse of all kinds, anger and pain, he ended it all with one bottle filled with gasoline, thrown through a bedroom window. That house on Main Street was in flames in no time that night. He left within a week after the house fire, having been driven out of town.

After losing all the pieces of what had been my sanity over the years, I lost all faith in writing. I stopped writing and for a dark, hazy year it was like I stopped feeling. I honestly cannot say what is worse; to feel so much pain you want to end it or feeling nothing when you know there should be something, driving you to that same cliff edge.

I became suicidal. It was a dangerous brink I was on. After seriously contemplating it, knife in hand and all, I stepped away from the brink. Something in that day shook me back to reality…if I killed myself I was letting him win.

He would get exactly what he wanted, again: pain. Suffering. I felt angry, but suddenly it was something…I wrote a few poems that same day.

My novels wouldn’t be touched until about 2008, when I joined an online writer’s group and was encouraged to continue on with Spellbound. It was released in 2010, and the new edition, Legend of Kawilara, was released this year.

That inspired me. Writing would get me somewhere. It is what I am meant to do. I am now working on a few other books which I lost in the house fire. Edge of Glory is the next one I am tackling. It is a story about a young girl who wants to be a rock star, enduring addiction and abuse along the way and searching for her biological father, who is a famous rock star and her inspiration.

I am looking back on the last eight years and comparing it with my life today. I know deep down that I will never stop writing again. I have seen the rock-bottom crevice it takes me to when I walk away from it and I never want to go there again. I have broken the abuse cycle in my own life by marrying the best man I could have ever met.

She Wasn’t Allowed to Giggle has gone from a self-publishing experiment to my pride and joy. It is ranked #19 in Amazon’s Dysfunctional Relationships category and just broke the top #25 for the Child Abuse category. It has caught the attention of organizations like GEMS, who used it for their poetry workshop last fall and the local YWCA has also shown some interest in it as well. They will be receiving donated copies of the paperback edition.

I also hear from abuse victims and survivors about She Wasn’t Allowed to Giggle. It does what it was published to do, and that is help people. Some are inspired. Some get angered. This is why writing is my true calling. I have a story and a message, and I will never stop until it gets out there. It’s a revolution and voices will not stay silent forever. I know I won’t. I was silent for far too long. There is no stopping me now.

 

 

See the  official video at: Independence Day by Martina McBride