Is there such a thing as reaching down too deep for the sake of a character? Remembering things from your own life that scared you so intensely, shook you so vividly that you reach a point at which you’ve hurt yourself so much just by recalling them that they’re too viscerally painful to rehash? Do you just have to tell yourself it’s a risk, that it’s therapy, that’s it’s for the good of creativity to let yourself go, even if it means maybe lying to yourself that you’re okay, maybe putting yourself out of emotional commission for days on end? Do things like this even have answers?
I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to really confront the way his hands shook, the way his eyes looked like they’d bleed from the hurt, and the contempt I’m certain I never want to feel again. I suppose I should be inspired by the fact that some things can never leave you, aspire to create to that level. But sometimes, there are things that remind you that there is life outside of fiction. And ghosts live in other places than on the page.
M
