Writing Saved My Life

Angel amongst the starsFear not for us tonightNo matter how hard things areIn the end, we’ll be alrightThey’ll be a new way of livingAnd a new life to loveFor all the hell we’ve been givenComes a freedom from above
I wrote this poem shortly after my mother died. For eighteen months, she battled stage four ovarian cancer that spread to other organs. She was forty-one. This November will mark thirteen years, she's gone. When I sat to scribble down my feelings about her death, the above verse came out. I was fifteen. For the first time in a long time, I had written something that didn't involve hate and frustration, something that didn't tear me up inside, something that wasn't about pain or suffering. It took my mother's death for me to finally write about hope, and life, and love.
Come with me to my field of dreamsWhere the trees are the gateGo past the redwood treeAnd a little past the lakeNow, we are almost thereSee the flowersSmell the fresh airThe field of dreams is my wishReal life is nothing like this
I was only five years old when I wrote this poem. My teacher, concerned by the last line, changed it to "So come with me to perfect bliss".  I let her, but it wasn't what I wanted. Even at five, it wasn't what I believed. My mother, so shocked and proud that I'd written this at such a young age and coupled with my high achievements in school, failed to catch warning signs that would later diagnose me with early onset childhood depression.

When I was caught in the depth of despair, I wrote about the blackness that surrounded me. Through it all, I shoved that pen across paper and stamped out my raging emotions in a real and visceral way. I look back on some of those early writings and shudder at the intensity of it. Yet, somehow, seeing it on paper pulled me through the turmoil.
The poems above are written ten years apart. First from the observations of a child about her world to a teenager trying to make sense of her mother's death. Somehow both convey an emotion I couldn't vocalize at the time.
Writing saved my life. 
As you can see, I didn't start out writing romance or urban fantasy. My first love was in poetry, then morphed into children's literature. Yet, I wound up where I am now. And it no longer surprises me. Paranormal romance and urban fantasy lend itself to the world of darkness. The monsters are truly monsters. Evil is raw, powerful and oh so frightening. Yet, with romance love is the main component of the story, and with fantasy the hero(ine)'s journey trumps all else. No matter how bad things get, no matter how dark or scary, in the end love will win, the hero(ine) will triumph. It may not be "real life" as my five year old self knew even then, but it gives us hope for what could be.

How has literature changed you? What experiences led you to where you are today?

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