I am considering participating in NaNoWriMo next month. I make an attempt at this just about every year and every year, I reach a sticking place where no words come to me and I stare at the winking cursor on the screen. Type something. Type something. Type something. Then all the things I am not clouds over all the things I want to be. I give up and walk away from it. I am real good at giving up on the hard stuff. Maybe it is time to dig into the hard stuff. Maybe I should stop laughing in the face of people who tell me I should write a book.

I sat down this morning to work out an outline. The first thing I wrote is “What is the story I want to tell?” That is as far as I got. The first thing I thought when I asked myself that question was “Chris”. It always come back to telling the story of Chris. Except the story isn’t really about him. It always ends up being about me. Me me me. There is nothing extraordinary about our love story. We met in the cafe during the end of our freshman year. Books were mentioned and Chris said to me, almost mockingly “Oh, and what kind of books do you like to read?” I remember narrowing my eyes at him and thinking “I’ll show you!” Then I told him that I liked Dean Koontz, Michael Crichton. I said that I’ve read some John Grisham, but his story lines are all the same and that sometimes I like to read a trashy romance novel. The look on his face shifted from mockery to impressed. A few weeks later we went on our first ‘date’. At the end of it he said “I really like you.” Chris’s honesty completely won me over.

That was it. From that moment on we were just a unit.

There is not much of a story there. No, the story always comes later with Chris’s death. I don’t like that story. I don’t like telling a story of what it is like to not be a unit. The sadness. The depression. The day to day missing of him. That story sucks. It could be a story about discovering my own identity without Chris, but I am not sure I actually have discovered my own identity. I am still trying to figure out who I am, who I am not. I went into Target today without a list or a plan. I ended up dumping twenty dollars worth of face stuff into my basket. I bought a lip mask. A fucking lip mask. Am I now that person who buys ridiculous masks for specific parts of my face? My chin is so broken out right now. I look like I am trying to recreate my puberty. Actually, I don’t think my skin was this bad during puberty. And see what I’ve done here? I’ve completely veered off and have changed the subject.

I can’t sit down for a month of writing if I don’t even know what story I want to tell. This feels like giving up before even starting. I am leaning towards a collection of stories, one centered around food. Probably because I’m hungry, but I can see something brewing now in my brain. Not a recipe book exactly, but a series of essays centered around the table. Table Stories. It could be a mix of stories from my youth, my time with Chris and now. Little bittersweet stories of memories.

Thanks for letting me brainstorm. I now have fourteen things on my outline and I am starting to get a little excited about writing. That’s a feeling I haven’t had in a while.