Clarity?

Clarity.

I’ve been trying for more than a year to figure out why my own memoir project, that had gone over 75,000 words, had become too cumbersome to finish. There is clarity on that now. All it took was the time to think about it.

A good memoir should, at some point, have some sort of wisdom to pass on. It should have a pointed message beyond perseverance and it’s not really certain if mine even had that. The problem, now crystal clear, is that mine was little short of a drawn out exorcism, or beyond even exorcism, it was a self-evisceration. It was a vivisection. I’d opened myself up and spilled out all my innards and demons and toxins and whatever else you may want to call it.

It was ghastly.

It was a spectacle and very little more. There was no message really beyond perhaps exhibiting the limits of human endurance, but with no redemption. The biggest problem is that there was no end in sight.

It was also dishonest. It came nowhere close to balance and was grotesquely unfair to the good people I shared the path with. There was no gratitude at all, anywhere in the 75,000 words. For that I am deeply sorry.

I’m so sorry.

It just took time to think it out, and until now I’ve not given myself that time.