Within a person lies a terrifying energy
My stories often begin with an image and end when a character shows me something I didn’t know before writing them into existence. I like to be surprised by my own words. Each story defines its own path and sometimes ends at meanings I do not feel I control. People have warned me this is dangerous, that ideas without constraint can lead to thoughts people shouldn’t say out loud. I’m okay with that.
My upbringing, my root is rotten. It is made up of the ideas of Pentecostal men in the 80’s breaking the spirit of the most beautiful souls in my family. Deep in that white New England lumber town those ideas trickle down to my dearest friends sending them into repressed states. The sermons resonate today inside my uncles. Their anger seeps onto Facebook and fills my father’s eyes with indignation as he watches Fox News. I watched for four years my family’s enthusiasm for a president who demanded absolute loyalty to his truth, in a simple language I recognize as faith talk. I watched the insurgence on the Capitol without surprise.
From an early age, I showed promise. I remember being nine, sitting at a table of adults astounded by my grasp of theology. I defended my faith with a childlike enthusiasm that caught the attention of church leadership. On more than one occasion, I was called to the front of the church. The preachers told the congregation I would be a preacher of the Word and a leader of the youth. When I entered adulthood, I lost my ability to believe but not my desire to write. My crisis of belief led me to fiction, which is the only tool I have that sets me free to explore ideas without the obligation to end with a single truth, meaning, or moral.
Children are not inherently good. Adults are not inherently evil. Looking into a person shows a terrifying energy. Bread is only as good as the yeast. I’m terrified to dig too deep and find these things inside that make me who I am. It can be easy to see when others are blind, but it is not so easy to observe my own blindness. I think of fiction as my mirror. Something I keep pulling out of my pocket to help me see the cracks born deep within me that only show up over time.
