Dear Manuscript

Dear Manuscript:

It has been a difficult year for both us of. I freely admit that I have let you down, and in a deeper way, I have deprived myself of the healing and release that finishing you in 2007 would have brought me. I can only say this, that at some point the comfort that working on you brought me yielded to something too painful to confront. You were supposed to give me a path of light but instead, you began to haunt my port like the tragic specter of your subject.

In months of his illness, his hospitalization, I came to you like a faithful parishioner and poured my pain and fear into your pages. In the narrow and empty apartment, you were my constant companion in the longest of nights and dimmest of days. I memorialized every nagging doubt, every horrific experience, every tearful confession and scorching betrayal within your pages. I was using you to build myself an arsenal, arming myself for battle once and if, his hazel pools ever opened again. Here within your parts and pieces every ugly truth, every tragic step, every aching mistake and insipid hope, was exposed and exploited for my own good. I was going to use you to get over his loss or to leave him if he lived. That was my master plan for you manuscript, that was what I had promised you, promised myself, all those many months ago.

So then what happened? I will tell you. He did recover from the coma but not from the addiction. Upon his waking, I found myself in a battle for my heart. The words from that time did not seem adequate to aid me. The pieces I'd penned seemed only to rub the raw places in my soul rather than fortify it. I created a corner of my portfolio for you and abandoned you there as I tried to find a new life among the wreckage.

He died over a year ago. I have spent the better part of this time bearing the burden of one who has not allowed themselves to grieve. I have been angry. I have been dark and hard inside. That shiny new skin has split in places, my spirit, falsely forged anew, has broken off at the edges. I have suffered the consequences of not facing my truths, my feelings. I have suffered for turning away from you, my most important of all manuscripts.

Manuscript, I apologize for not being stronger, braver and wiser. I should not have been afraid of the emotion you evoked in me, but welcomed it and rejoiced in the catharsis of it. This year, as my new life blooms and my soul heals, I promise to finish you. I promise to reap the benefits of self-awareness and acceptance of the past. I promise to soothe those still aching parts with the balm of written words.