So many things I once thought I did “wrong” – turned out to “right” – in the end. Or right for me. It’s the judgments that got in the way. And they’ve been getting in the way again now I’m writing part 2 of my personal story. (Oh you can’t tell this – what will people think?) Of course “people” will think whatever they want and my job has always been to come up with good writing. But then I came to another stumbling block with an episode I’ve been struggling with for ages – a relationship that didn’t make sense.

I know relationships don’t have to make sense (they are what they are / it is what it is) – but I’m talking about real craziness here, the kind bordering on insanity. (I know, another judgment!) And then last week I happened to hear the definition of a twin flame, and suddenly I knew that’s what it was – so it was okay. Crazy was expected. Insanity par for the course.

Once I accepted that irrational went with the territory, I plunged in again – this time with enthusiasm. Yet now that I am almost at the end of the chapter (titled “Cruel Happiness”) a new judgment has popped in. Such melodrama!

I shuddered at all the drama. But I couldn’t change the facts because it was a true story. And living a drama  or being in a drama has come to have such negative connotations. It was true back in the 80s too, when this took place.

Still, I was glad to come up with this label of melodrama. If you’re writing a story, you want to tell people where it takes place. Are you at the seaside? Are you in the city? The park? A room somewhere? Being in a melodrama is a place too.

But now I wanted a quote about it. Something that would give the reader the idea that I knew where I was aside from geographic placement. And Google came up with this brilliant line from Lillian Hellman:

If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy. The end is inevitable from the beginning. But if you believe that man can solve his own problems and is at nobody’s mercy, then you will probably write melodrama.

I especially liked the part about being at nobody’s mercy… (not even the angels this time).

In the end it’s whatever gets you over the hump or on to the next chapter. And for me, instead of all this cringing going on, I’m feeling excited again. (Head up, shoulders back.) Living out a melodrama was hell to go through, and writing about it has been just as hellish. But hallelujah to taking a risk. And hallelujah to being young. And hallelujah to being older and remembering being young without cringing at the memory.

Or am I being too melodramatic…