Nancy Klein Maguire
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Trauma Memoir

11/14/2019

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​In January 2018, I started writing a death memoir, a brutally honest one. The first days were so dark I didn’t think I would be able to get through them, flashbacks kept tripping me, I kept dodging them with. I woke up at 7:30 AM, but it took until 9:30 AM or 10 AM to find a way out of my nightlife. I felt like a character from Samuel Beckett, “you must go on. I can’t go on. I will go on.”

I kept on, then after months of struggle, the words started coming. In about ten days, I put out 12,000 words. I thought I would sail through the rest of the book in a few weeks. Bad thinking. Not a chance. I collapsed into yet one more flashback, taking the good part a week to recover. I couldn’t write, think, function, or talk to anyone. That passed, I went back to work. Only to be trapped by another flashback.

That’s the name of this game – much like the original journey, like a roller coaster ride. I think I’m almost on top of it, then a crash. I think to myself, I knew this was impossible. Why are you trying? Who do you think you are?  After twelve months of this, my brain simply stopped. I quit. A month later, I asked myself, “do I really want to get back inside that dark time.” Yet, almost automatically, I started polishing the last two chapters. Again, lured inside the dark time.
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