A Different Kind of Strong

When tragedy hits, everyone trips over themselves to be the strong one, to hold it together or pass on platitudes.  Since I’ve never been one for sugar-coating, I guess I’ll be the “weak ” one, because honestly, when someone I care about passes over, I don’t much care if I appear strong or stoic.  I learned a long time ago how much that sucks … So, here  it is:

Today, the loss really sinks in.  When I wrote last night, I was raw inside, but still coming to grips with the shock.  There was a kind of dull pain, a numbness, to how I felt then – like the vague pain of knowing you hurt, but not being quite sure where or how.

Today, I know the answer to those questions, and it’s like a knife drawn across my heart.  The numbness of disbelief is gone, ripped away like a veil that covered over everything – both the good memories, and the ugly truths.

What ugly truths?  The ones that stalk every feeling person when a loved one passes the veil.  Guilt, selfishness, regret, anger, and even sorrow.  All necessary to the process of healing, but all the uglier side of loss.  After all, it is the living who feel the loss most.  Those passed on remember only the love we feel for them.

I’ll admit to my guilt.  It’s a familiar guilt I’ve struggled with for nearly a decade – the guilt of not being there.  In my heart, I know there wasn’t much I could do, but I still feel I should have been able to do more.  I should have done whatever it took, to be there for Mary, to be there now for Renee, Gen, and Joe.

I know an overwhelming amount of guilt that I ever lost contact with Mary, and that it was for so long.  The time I missed out on being in contact is time I can’t get back, and I feel as if I robbed us both of that.  This loss makes me feel even more guilty and depressed by my virtual isolation from the people closest to my heart – my family in every sense of the word – these days.

And yes, some of my feelings are selfish.  I miss Mary.  I miss her razor-sharp wit, her biting humor.  If I close my eyes and listen real close, I can almost hear her voice – and that hint of self-effacing humor and touch of sarcasm that underscored our conversations.  The affectionate squabbling of siblings who, in many ways, were too much alike.

I miss her ready grin, laced with mischief, as if she was some demented elf in the midst of concocting her own brand of mayhem.

But, most of all, I miss her compassion, buried beneath all the layers of sarcasm and mischief. Mary was someone who loved life uninhibitedly, loved her family without reservation, and was always the kind of person, the kind of friend, the kind of sister, you were proud to call a part of your life.  More than anything else, I regret that I didn’t tell her that nearly often enough.

Believing what I do of life and death, it’s easier to bear the sadness.  I know, to the core of my soul, that Mary and I will meet again, someday.  And I would never be so selfish as to wish she had stayed – I would never wish her the pain and struggle she underwent in these past months.

So what DO I wish?

This is where I get angry, because I wish the scourge of cancer never came knocking.  For Mary, for her partner, for her children and grandchildren, I wish that the terrible beast of illness had stayed far from her door.  I wish we’d had more years of the good times – the laughter and the close contact of family.  I wish we’d stayed in contact more, and that I wasn’t so lousy about phone calls.  Most of all, I wish I could have done something to stop this whole situation.  Not knowing how, feeling helpless against the unfairness of it all, makes me want to punch walls or scream.

Going forward, I know I’ll heal. I’ll remember the good times, and the laughter, far longer than I’ll remember the pain of loss. But, for now, I only have regrets, wishes, anger, and the sorrow of knowing that, no matter how temporary the parting, my world is a dimmer place, today.

Out of the Dark: Glimpses of My Life, Part 2

A lot of people hear the term “Romance” applied to my books and automatically assume that I write feel-good stories about white-bread people who’ve never even had a passing acquaintance with trouble (or, at very least, who have never done anything that could be construed as deadly, extremely dangerous, or even downright illegal).  Those people would be wrong.

One of my most critically-acclaimed and most-loved series is my SF nod to both Military Fiction and Romance, Underground.  It deals with the hard realities of living in a post-global-war world, still teetering on the edge of another war.  And a lot of the characters, and some of the events, are loosely (and not so loosely, in some cases) based on real people I’ve known, real events I’ve experienced or witnessed.

The childhood terror I revealed in my last segment?  Yeah, it’s there.  Slightly modified, it shows up in the past of the main character, Tamia.  She is my mirror, my foil, sometimes an expression of my turbulent emotions as a child and teenager, and sometimes the focus of conveyance for events that either did happen, or could have been.

It should come as a surprise to no one, then, that I first began working on Underground at the age of twelve.  Incidentally, this was around the same time that my life both spiraled out of control, and began to finally find focus.

Confused? Yeah, I figured as much.  I’ll try to explain, but you’ll have to bear with me through some taboo discussion topics, for a moment.

While I’m not going to talk about it, here (that’s a subject for all its own post, if I decide to get into it), it’s important to note that when I was ten, and just before the events I’m about to discuss started happening, I witnessed a horrible accident and its aftermath that would leave me forever scarred.  But, as I said, that’s a subject for a post all its own.

When I began to hit puberty, at around eleven, I was still struggling daily with the shame, fear, and self-loathing of what happened when I was six.  Puberty isn’t a good time, emotionally, for any kid.  For me, it carried a double-whammy I knew nothing about, and never saw coming.

I began having headaches.  Massive, paralyzing headaches, accompanied by wretched abdominal pain.  Most times, I couldn’t even move, fought to breathe, and yet tried to downplay or hide my symptoms as best I could.  I didn’t know what they were, and I was scared.  Still, I began missing school, which eventually only increased the number of times I had the pain, as I fought to make up homework, classes, etc.  I had blackouts (not memory ones… I remember every moment leading up to and directly after the blackouts) — I ended up in the ER several times, and each time, they hooked me up to an IV of glucose, and monitored me, and I bounced back within several hours, so they’d label it “dehydration” and send me home.

But no one had an explanation for the headaches, or the spiraling depression I was suffering (the latter,  no one knew about mostly because I kept it to myself.  I already felt helpless — I didn’t want to be branded “crazy” as well).  Twice, I ended up in the ER because I attempted to kill myself — only, no one knew, because I never made a peep about what I’d taken.  I wanted to die — why would I help them make me live?  Things happened that I can’t explain here, but I will say that those events both saved my life and changed it.

Then, one day, I met a girl whose philosophy about life would forever change my own.  She already knew she was dying.  She had a blood clotting disorder that was killing her, and she knew she wouldn’t even make it until she graduated high school.  Her life had an expiration date.  And she gave me the best advice anyone has ever given me.  “Life is something grand and too brief already. Throwing it away cheats everyone who wants to live and can’t.”

We became fast friends — me, her, and her brother, who was her legal guardian since their parents died a few years before .  She was the sister that, until that point, I’d never had.  And he was my best friend, and my confidant. I won’t divulge their names here, because they were important enough to me that, even though I’m sure it no longer matters, I will protect their memories with my life.

When I was fourteen, my soul-sister died.  She was just six months older than I, and I mourned her passing with wretched grief that I kept locked away from the rest of the world.  I was convinced that the rest of the world would not allow me that grief — after all, I believed that they hadn’t allowed me my own pain, when I was a child, and I felt abandoned.

But I retreated inside, became quiet and withdrawn.  The only people to whom I would open my heart and soul were the “guys” — a group of friends who stood by me and supported me through everything (and for those who would otherwise make disparraging commentary, NO, they were NOT all men. I just call them “guys” here because I’m not going to make my friends’ lives difficult because of small-minded individuals who might otherwise do them harm) – and my best friend in the world, who was also the first man I ever loved, and the only man to whom I ever gave my whole heart, without reservation.

I know some of you will snarl and find it disgusting that over 10 years separated us in ages, and I was just fourteen at the time.  I really don’t care what you think.  We intended to spend the rest of our lives together, and there was nothing sordid or perverse about our love.  Remember, in many ways, I had never been a child.  I was well-ahead of my peers, emotionally and mentally.  Many people mistook me for much older than I was, physically.  I didn’t even LOOK like a child.  And he gave me a joy and love I haven’t felt since.  He showed me all the respect and tenderness I never felt worthy of before, and made me feel beautiful and beloved at a time in my life when it seemed the rest of the world had nothing but hateful things to say.

Sadly, it wasn’t to last.  Though we were making plans for the future — a time when I would be old enough for us to finally no longer have to hide how we felt for each other — we had no idea what was coming.  A freak accident took him away from me.  I stood on the tarmac and watched the plane he was flying go down in flames, and a large part of me died, that day.

I can’t even describe how it felt.  Every time I try, the numbness just sets in, and I can’t feel, all over again.  I wasn’t allowed to grieve him, not anywhere but in the dark of night, and in the confines of my heart.  Only at night could I cry, my tears muffled by my pillow.  And the stress of that loss, the agony of living like that, sent my health spiraling downhill.  That was something my family couldn’t help but notice.  They took me to doctors, looking for answers that never came.

And, for the second time in my life, I wanted to die.  But something stopped me.  The words of my soul-sister, and the knowledge that ending my own life was something neither she nor the man I loved would EVER want for me.  So, I decided to live — for them. But a part of my heart closed off, and I knew that loving the way I loved him would never happen again.  Not in this lifetime.

That’s not to say I haven’t dated, or loved anyone, since.  In 2004, I got married for the first time.  I love my husband, in my own way, and he knows the story of my first love, and that there are just some parts of my heart he can never have.  I’ve never kept that from him.

So, yes, I know what Romance is.  It’s loving someone so much you hurt inside, but take peace from knowing that, in some ways, they’ll never leave you completely.  It’s having the courage to love again, even if it’s not in the same way.  It’s not about Happily Ever After — it’s about “I love you” meaning more than a fairytale.  It’s about that love giving you the strength to go on, even when life seems impossible to bear.

BEYOND FAIRY TALES: Changing the Face of Romance

During the 1970s and early 80s, Romance gained a stigma that, while at the time deserved, has been hard to shake.  When people who’ve never read a Romance think of the genre, they sadly think of the books jokingly referred to in Romance circles as “bodice rippers” – namely, because the front covers of most of them looked like the heroine was about to rip right out of hers.

These heroines were vapid, empty-headed idiots who believed that the only way to make their lives complete was to snare a man.  And the men they chose were probably about the most unsuitable ideals of masculinity out there.  I’ve read some of those books (in the name of research and curiosity, back when I believed the books couldn’t POSSIBLY be as bad as the covers made them seem – I was wrong!), and I have to say, if that was my first or only exposure to relationships or Romance, I’d be terrified.  As it is, I was appalled by what I read.  Stories of what, in the end, amounts to rape, leading to love?  As a survivor, I will tell you – not happening!

There is nothing manly or heroic about using one’s strength or larger body mass to intimidate someone else into doing what you want. In fact, that’s the textbook definition of a bully.  And yet, in many of the Romances of the 1970s and early 80s, these bullies were somehow the “ideal” man.  All I can say is, thank goodness those days are over!

Romance has evolved (in most cases) beyond the “Purple Prose” Era, and the days of fainting heroines and churlish heroes.  While you still find a die-hard or two who refuse to alter what’s not-so-lovingly referred to as the “formula Romance,” most Romance novelists would rather die than write that drivel.

Today’s Romance is a different breed entirely.  Today’s heroines kick butt all on their own.  They’re smart, savvy, sometimes hardened, and often carry a weapon of their own.  They’re the sword-toting vampire-hunters, the gun-brandishing detectives and spies… They don’t NEED a man to complete them, and they certainly don’t need one to provide for them.

Likewise, today’s Romance hero is a different breed.  He’s still tough.  He’s still a bad-ass (or bad boy), and he still has attitude.  But in today’s Romance, he doesn’t get away with it.  Today’s hero has a softer side, as well.  Where heroines have toughened up without losing their feminine hearts and compassion, heroes have gained another dimension of their own, finding the ability to actually treat women and children with respect.  They’ve learned to help old ladies across the street, and not be threatened by a woman who’s just as tough as they are.  In other words, they’ve finally gained an equal partner, and not a responsibility.

However, though Romance has come out of the shadow of the 1970s and 80s with a new vibe that’s full of energy and sass, there are still some troubling areas.

Romance, as a genre, tends to abhor radical growing pains more than any other genre.  It took nearly a decade for the changes I just mentioned to happen, and  that wasn’t without a struggle from the dinosaurs who stubbornly dug in and said “this is the way Romance is supposed to be.  That new stuff isn’t Romance.”

 

The same stubborn heel-digging still takes place today.  You have your die-hards who believe that EVERY Romance MUST end with a “Happily Ever After” to be qualified as a Romance.  You have your fanatics who claim that a couple can’t already be in a relationship or married at the beginning of a Romance, for it to be a Romance.  And you still have your writers who ar first to stand up and cry “But this is how it’s always been done.  You HAVE to do it this way!”

I’m a rebel, when it comes to Romance.  Not only do I not shy away from truly gritty and terrible pasts for my heroes and heroines (especially the latter – statistically, women face a much greater risk of harm in daily life than men), but I don’t shy away from those aspects in the character’s present, either.  I refuse to sugar-coat life because people believe Romance should be about escapism.  To me, Romance is about finding someone who loves you, warts and all.  It’s about finding that one person who gets you, in a world that’s run mad.  Romance is about two people finding each other, despite overwhelming odds against them.  Without the troubles, terrors, and pains of real life, love loses all its magnificent beauty and awe.

Nor do I believe a Romance needs to end with a “Happily Ever After.”  This isn’t a fairy tale.  If the characters are meant to be real, if the love is meant to be true, then it’s going to face adversity, both before and AFTER the couple gets together.  I tend to write series that focus on the ongoing relationships of the characters – the ups and downs of trying to make a life together work, against the odds.

I also don’t buy the theory that a couple can’t be married or involved before the start of the story.  I’ve dealt with couples torn apart by life, in my work.  I’ve dealt with couples who are already married at the beginning.  I’ve even dealt with couples who’ve been married and divorced (yes, to each other) before the start of the story.  Love doesn’t take place in a vacuum, and I believe in the REALITY of love, not the fairy tale.  Fairy tales lose their shine, eventually.  They may appear so appealing, in the beginning, but when you look beneath the veneer, the traditional modern fairy tale is as vapid and shallow as any 1970s or early 80s Romance.

So, with open arms, I embrace the dawn of another revolution of Romance – an era with no boundaries beyond love.  What else, after all, does a Romance really NEED to be about?

Living Love: Romance from an Author’s Perspective

I’m proud to be both and author and reader of Romance. I know it’s something that a majority of people like to turn their nose up at or laugh at.  Some people call it smut, others try to play moral superiority cards like “it’s degrading to women.”

I feel sad for all of those people.  Why?

Because it’s clear that few, if any, of those people have so much as opened a Romance novel, let alone read one cover-to-cover.  If they had, they would realize how much more there is to Romance than the stereotypes proliferated by the attempt to lump an entire fiction experience into the mold of one period or franchise.  You wouldn’t base your opinion of Science Fiction solely on Star Trek, or your viewpoint on fiction as a whole on Dr. Seuss, would you?  I think not.

Romance is a fundamental human need.  I’m not talking hearts and flowers, sappy music, and an overabundance of Pepto-Bismol pink (although, if that’s your thing, *shrugs* more power to you).  What I’m talking about is the basic human need to be loved – to know that someone out there misses us when we’re gone, thinks about us when we’re not near, and shows us affection and the desire to be near us when we’re present.  And the stoics out there can poo-poo this until they’re blue in the face – that doesn’t meant I don’t know that when you’re all alone, you wish someone would care.

Romantic novels are about more than sex.  I think a great many people confuse pure Erotica with Romance.  The first is all about sex, and nothing more.  The kinkier, the better, usually.  But Romance is about something more.  There are plenty of Romance novels that don’t involve anything more intense than a kiss (basically, you can hash your favorite childhood fairytales up to Romance – don’t the hero and heroine always live “happily ever after”?).  Romance is about feeling connected to another human being, feeling important and special in someone else’s eyes.

And, while we’re on the subject of “Happily Ever After”… I personally wish to dispute the role of this type of ending in Romance.  Being a firm realist when it comes to life (I don’t have any choice – I have personal, first-hand experience on how quickly it can disappear), I don’t subscribe to the theory that a Romance HAS to end “Happily Ever After.”  I prefer that it end with a satisfactory resolution to the central plot, but I’m not a stickler for the whole everyone gets married and lives happily ever after.  Life changes us, and everything we experience.  We go through highs and lows.  I prefer my heroes and heroines to be real people, not automatons.  Yes, you’re likely to find a happy wrap-up to my books, but you’ll also be left with the sense that this story is just the BEGINNING of their story, not the end.  I call it “Happily For Now.”

And, for those people who think that Romance is degrading to women… *snorts* I dare you to read any well-written modern Romance novel and find me a weak little wilting flower of a heroine.  The days of vapid, fainting ladies are dead and gone.  Today’s heroine can slay her own monsters, thank you very much, and even rescue the hero a time or two.  Today’s heroine is capable, strong, and the complete equal to her counterpart hero.  Today’s Romantic duo are truly equals.

Yes, I’m proud to be an author and reader of Romance.  Because if there’s one thing I’m most glad to have in my life, it’s the capacity to love, and the hope that I am, in turn, loved.

The Buzz: In the Black

So, I’m sure anyone who’s come through my website to this blog, recently, has probably noticed the changes (well, that’s assuming you’ve visited before!)… I’m sure you’re asking yourself “What gives?  Has she gone off the deep end?”

*grin* The answer, my dear friends, is NO, I haven’t gone off the deep end.  Finally, I’m introducing the world to the REAL me… I like black.  No, take that back… I LOVE black.  I love red.  I love to explore the dark and dangerous side of the world, to delve into the depths of the human psyche and see what lurks there, waiting to be found out.

The world I deal with in my daily life is far from serene or “Happily Ever After”… Instead, it reads more like the TRUE Fairy Tales of Yore… dark, and full of mythic themes and dangerous beings which defy our very nightmares.

So, does this mean I’ve slid into Horror?  *laughs* Perish the thought.  Because, believe it or not, I do still believe in the power of Love.  I believe in its power to pull us out of the darkness, to allow us to glimpse the wonder of a world beyond fear, prejudice and hatred.  I believe in the concept of the Soul Mate, and in the power of love to endure past even death itself.

If you’re interested in knowing more about the kind of Romance I believe in, check out the Free Reads section of this blog, or (if you haven’t already) visit my website at www.esthermitchell.com and have a look around.  And, if you’re interested (or feeling particularly adventurous, check out my current releases, IN HER NAME and HOPE OF HEAVEN at Aspen Mountain Press (www.aspenmountainpress.com) or my Near-Future Speculative Fiction offering, TAMIA, at Under the Moon (http://www.underthemoon.org )