PE 11 – Surviving Nano

I’ll be writing and posting Personal Essays on the last Tuesday of every month. They will be honest, sometimes vivid explorations of my life.

I’m writing them for two reasons: to help put my experiences in perspective and to purge myself of any residual compost.

Since it is good therapy, you are invited to join me, post your link in comments and I’ll be sure to drop by.

Let it begin:

NaNoWriMo was an especially fine journey for me this year. It wasn’t the writing everyday that was hard; it was the words coming out of my fingertips. I was prepared and started off with most of the story mapped out, thinking I knew what my story would be about. Surprise, surprise when it turned out that two women became each others antagonists. There was no typical bad guy; just a teenage granddaughter wanting a full live too young and her terrified grandmother realizing too late she had spoiled the girl too much.

So no didn’t mean no to my young protag/antagonist. She wanted to do what she saw everyone was doing and was too sheltered to know what she was asking for, or what it would mean. Her grandparents had lost her mother to a drug overdose. They both would have died to avoid facing another death as tragic. The conflict came; they went toe to toe, nose to nose, face to face; shouting, crying, sneaking out, grounding, lying and then someone does die.

Where the hell did that come from? I know some of it is me reading too much or feeling too much for the frustrated teens I see in town. I see life sparkle in their eyes. I see them dying of envy, or admiration, or insecurity. I know, we all know, that these beautiful children will grow up and take over where we left off. How we let them face their lives is very important to all of us.

They think they know what they’re in for, but only experience can prepare them for what lies before them. How they struggle with being held back when they are sure they are ready, and how the parents struggle with letting go when they know they are not. I put my finger on that pulse. Found the beat and tried to keep up with the chaos that Ena, and Marnie faced each day. Everyone had their expectations of how a woman of a certain age should behave.

There was judgment, condemnation, misunderstands and stubbornness that pulled both of them in two directions. Through it all I knew one thing. They loved each other and hated, absolutely hated disappointing the other. Knowing all this, doesn’t mean I caught it all and wrote it down. I’ll need to go back over and over again until I get right. It is a story for anyone who is brave enough to acknowledge that some teens, lost teens trying to find their way, swear, do drugs, drink, and fumble along, making mistakes; and these teens have families that love them and all they want to do is save their lives