To read an excerpt from the book, please click on the following link:

ashaveilbook.blogspot.com

An excerpt from The Pleasure Palace, my romantic comedy, can be found here:



Thursday, February 13, 2014

Unafraid

I have to say, reflecting, that I really love my writing group and that I did not wait around (til what, age 90?) for anyone to give me "permission" to go back to the other one.  I'm in email contact with the ones whose work I liked the most, anyway, and now I feel less isolated as a writer.  I do not wait around anymore to be treated like some piece of chattel who has to hang out and wait for some random person's permission--by the time the permission comes, if it ever will, I will have moved onto other things and honestly will care very little about the older losses (I know myself pretty well in that regard--I once had a very sad breakup with S., the same person who encouraged my painting, and he wanted to talk to me and reconcile six months later--but I had grown so much away from him then that I did not really want to see him...I told him that hurting me as he did, then waiting six months to contact me, was something I took as disinterest--there was no agreement for a period of silence; he did it without telling me and partially because of that, I had no desire to be with him or really see him again.  We are remote friends now, but I wasn't someone to just be at his beck and call when he felt like talking to me again). 

I feel sad that my Thursday African dance class is gone for me, for now, but I just found out that there is a beginning-level salsa dance class taught by a wonderful teacher on Thursday nights at a different place (so phhhfffft to Thursday night class--there are some gorgeous and nice men in the salsa dance class, I am not ashamed to say--and most of the people in there are my friends from other classes and not Thursday night).

In other words, to my readers who may not know about all these classes and the social structure therein:  life after loss does NOT mean that you have to dry up and blow away just because you have been badly hurt.  There is a great saying in 12-steps, probably my favorite:  fake it til you make it.

At this point, I can see more glimmers of "making it" than "faking it"--and am seeing a lot of positive options for myself.

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