MEMOIR WRITING CAN BRING CLOSURE

 Dread of writing The Orchard was a cloud that hung over my head for fifteen years.  I knew I had to write it, but I kept putting it off. I didn't want to go through it, revisit it, but I felt a certain duty to tell the story since I'd lived it and I was a writer. I felt an obligation to document farming culture in an anthropological way. But I didn't want to write it. I suppose I could say it was on my bucket list if the bucket list contained things I didn't really want to do.  But now that all of my appearances and talks and events are over (except for two in April of next year), I've been rewarded with something unexpected.

Closure. 

I was never after closure. I never considered closure, and I've never heard memoir writers mention it. Some people have asked if writing The Orchard was cathartic, and I have to say not in the least. Quite the opposite. It was horrible and it was torture and it was awful in every way. And once it was published, I had to go around and talk about it. More torture.  I can now admit that while making public appearances I often regretted writing the book because I had to keep reliving it at each event.  I was like a cutter who traveled place to place and cut myself in front of an audience. Oh, that's so melodramatic.

But now... NOW, it's like a door has slammed on that old world. It's over over over for me. I did my job. I no longer have to remember and hold it in my head because I've written it down. I no longer have it looming before me, this book I have to write, this life I have to revisit.  This duty. I never expected to get anything out of writing it, nothing for myself, so the closure has been such a surprise.  Right now I'm wondering if closure ever uncloses. I suppose it does, and I still have those two gigs next year, but I don't know... I feel that it's truly behind me.

Maybe.