Often, Things End

I have just finished a re-read of Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck. I think it's more moving than I Remember Nothing, and more ominous, even though that makes no sense at all. She wrote I Remember Nothing while she knew she was ill. I Feel Bad About My Neck was before.

Even so.

I am a tremendously over-emotional person. I believe this is, in large part, what makes me a good writer. It is certainly what makes me try to be one. Writing helps sort some stuff out. It always has. Whether it's indirect or direct. Whether you see it, like in When You Were Mine, or whether it bears no resemblence to my life at all (except a few ex references. Those are real).

It's therapy. Word. word. word. word. I write. I get through the rocky beginning, and the endless, desert of a middle. I find the sweet ending, sort of. Most of this sucks. Most of it won't make it.

I will edit, and edit, and further edit, and edit some more. And then I will stand on my head, and do everything I just said but backwards, playing scrabble. It's all very confusing. It involves a lot of copy and pasting. A lot of sad, sad cutting. A bit of crying. A few bad decisions. A few breakdowns. One come to jesus moment. MAYBE two, if there is chocolate.

And then I get here.

Finishing a book is a strange experience, but I think you can relate. You have finished books. You have set a world down you've just spent time inside, and said goodbye to it. It's not always easy. Sometimes you don't want to leave just yet. But it's time. It's over. 

Every time I read Ephron I find myself totally perplexed at her ending. Not the fact that she's not here, although that is deeply perplexing, the most perplexing of all. No, what I mean is the fact that she was incredibly unsentimental about goodbyes. The woman who wrote the defining romantic comedies, whose love stories will live on for generations and generations (my sentimentality is really showing itself to be a fault of mine, here), didn't have a particularly emotional disposition. She was no-nonsense. She was onward.

There are so many things in life that end. Romance, and friendship, and trust, and even faith, sometimes. Stories are just one of them, but for tonight, for me, they are what matter.

That is all (for now).

(and yet)

xo,

R