Reflection: When I Changed
This first chapter, for lack of a better word, is probably the shortest bit of writing I did for this endeavor. Honestly, it was about what I expected every installment was going to be like: short, to the point, answer the prompt and move on. All I needed was to do a few reps every day and I’d feel a lot more balanced and prepared for what I wanted to start doing with my writing career (or lack thereof). I don’t need to tell you, dear readers, that were I to write at this level every day for thirty one days, there would be no chance of me getting to the over 120,000 words that this story eventually became, but it was a good start. I didn’t exactly hit the ground running, but it was a good start.
Here, the character is still me, but a me that I chose to kill off instantly in order to get the story moving in a direction I was more comfortable with. We will eventually learn this version of me to be named Grey. He is me, and not me at the same time because as soon as he died, he and I diverged. I needed us to be different people, despite starting as the same, because I really didn’t want to write about myself as myself. I wanted to explore the person I wished I really was. Looking back, I think that’s why I didn’t want to have the story begin with the events of his death unfolding, but rather the moments after death that are giving him pause, making him reflect and think about what it means to truly die. I spent little time focused on the body and far more time focused on the death of the person. The Me I was when I created Grey was the Me that I wanted dead and gone. The same way that I wouldn’t want to continue living my life as the Me I was in High School, I didn’t want to remain the Me that I was at the time of writing this.
A bit of background, when I started writing this, I was still dealing with my transition out of education. I’d been working for a cemetery as a sales person for a few months, and was beginning to feel the squeeze of the economy killing the industry. You would think it would be recession proof, but what the sales people made money on was something that most people were beginning to forego on. I was losing money going to work every day rather than making anything. At that time, I felt that the full fault of this was my own. That my personality wasn’t the kind of person that could be successful. So I looked into the compulsions and flaws of the Tremere that I know deep in my heart I am and tried to build upon the strengths of the clan in order to wear a mask at work and become someone who could find success.
That was who Grey was meant to be. He was supposed to be the successful version of me. Since then, I’ve lost my job at that cemetery (good riddance, honestly) and am working odd jobs while spending my free time job hunting and working on my writing. Reflecting on who I was trying to make Grey into, I’m seeing those traits still reflected back at me in the mirror (I don’t use the silver backed mirrors, so he still shows up just fine). There was more Grey in me that I realized at the time, but honestly, I think I was just in an environment that wouldn’t allow me to see it.
Overall reflection here: Growth does require that we let parts of ourselves die off, but culling these parts of ourselves should be done with great care. You may cut back too much out of fear that you’re not enough, when in reality, you’re just not in a place that allows you to thrive.
