not the end

I’m not good with endings. I try to avoid funerals and don’t do long, messy goodbyes at the airport. It’s easier to make a clean break and just walk away. Of course, life is rarely that simple. This time last year I was trying to cut the cord at my academic job; I stopped checking my work email and made sure my students had no grounds for challenging their grades. I kept in touch with my colleagues but I didn’t go back to campus once my office was cleared out. I wanted to fully embrace my new writer’s life and eventually stopped checking the online academic job boards. Wrapping up my residency at Weeksville is taking longer than I thought. On Monday I turned in a draft of the picture book they commissioned me to write, and I’m halfway through a longer chapter book that sends a boy named DeShawn back in time. I’m not sure what lesson I want him to learn while he’s gone, but I’m incorporating messages about urban gardens and Hurricane Sandy. It feels good to just be putting words on the page, letting the story go wherever it wants. I’ll have to have more focus when I switch over to the novel; it’s 90% done, and so I’m not going to spend a lot of time revising—I just want to fill in the blanks and move on.

I rarely write about my siblings because they don’t speak to me and after years of chasing after them, I finally gave up and moved on. This week I got an email from my younger sister letting me know she has moved to Brooklyn. I’m not sure what to do with that information. If anyone else in my life stopped speaking to me for six years and then let me know they were in town, I’d probably just hit delete. Family for me is all about failed relationships. I’m blessed to have a loving, supportive, extended family, but my siblings are just a disaster. And I don’t know how to move forward. The Scorpio in me doesn’t want to forget the pain of rejection without reason, and I don’t believe the rules should apply to everyone in my life except the folks who share my DNA. It’s easier when my siblings are on the other side of the border, but apparently the universe isn’t ready to let me off the hook. No clean break, no real resolution. Just another dose of doubt and stress. What’s that line from The Sound of Music? “I always try to keep faith in my doubts.” I don’t like it when things drag on and on, but I’m going to try to keep an open mind. The universe clearly wants me to learn something about living in the past instead of confronting the present and shaping the future. It’s easier to do in fiction!