Been there, done that as seven years ago, I attempted a fictionalized memoir about the first time I fell hard for someone. It was an epic failure and I can write a whole memoir about the fallout I experienced. We're talking friendships lost, strain on a marriage, personal attacks, and a direct threat. This memoir is probably more interesting than the now unpublished one.

Appeasing my parents, or trying to, is a total compulsion. Afterward, I often think, “why did I say that,” or “why did I offer to do that.” My brother simply doesn’t respond. He keeps to himself for the same reasons I try to be someone else. Different defense mechanisms, equal causation. A deception of our deepest selves is what we learned and became masters of. The distance is just safer.

Everyone is going to steal my idea after this, but when I have some success, I planned on making a coloring book of the seven or so years I spent living in one of my various childhood homes. I moved a lot, but a lot of my happiest (and saddest) memories occurred there. From going to carnivals to getting my own room to accidentally hitting my brother in the head with a metal pole, I figured it would be a creative way to let kids get to know me. It would be better than a regular memoir because one, memoirs are long and I'm pretty uncomfortable about rambling about me for 500 pages or so, and two, my experience is rather boring. I came, I lived, I wrote, repeat. At least a coloring book will make my experience at least a little easier to get through and more manageable and you can color me however you want. I can be purple for all I care. Plus, I know I can make a special edition with all of my favorite words (not for kids). Now, I just need an artist...

...

my heart never found rest.

...

then came the stairwell.

...

the sea of streaming faces

including their prompting question,

“how do you spell success?”

...

I nodded

and shook their hands

for blue eyes

always tell the truth

even in silence.

...

my heart never found rest.

...

only that blue is a verb.

...

If I were to write a memoir, I would detail my experience with self loathing and how I hurt myself as a way of releasing that hate. I would detail trying to live in a life where I don’t know what’s real and what I have trained myself to see. I would explain how I try to love myself because I know deep down in the depth of my heart that there is some part of me that loves me. I would show what it’s like being scared to come out of the closet for the first time...and why I keep going back. How hard I try to be a better person than I was yesterday, how I want tomorrow to be better than today. I would detail my friends and how I hold them in my heart.

I started thinking, about the things I don't like/want in my life, as lollipops made of boogers.

My body makes boogers out of contaminants it doesn't like/want in my body.

When the boogers get big/hard enough to notice, I blow(or q-tip) my nose, toss it, and think nothing more of it.

So, when I catch myself thinking or talking about "negative/unwanted" stuff that's in my life... I can laugh at the idea of licking a booger-pop... which then makes it much easier to "blow my nose and toss it" so to speak.

I do not lick those booger-pops near as much as I used to.

another_proser