This one is about a dark thing I used to say several times in the past four years. Although dark, it‘s also a thing that got me through them is probably one of the reasons why I am still writing here.
Before you continue reading, consider this a warning. This post deals with issues such as suicide, so if you want to stop reading right here, do so.
But let‘s start at the beginning. When the pandemic became tough, I wrote as I never had before. I wrote to survive.
So many things and people I had believed in had failed, had died, had ended and left me, and I could not find reason in continuing with anything from my old life anymore. I questioned everything, and was searching for a new way to make sense of myself.
So I wrote to have reason to still live from day to day.
Sounds wonderful, doesn‘t it?
I wrote to not suffer completely in vane,
But my mind is a dark place, even when there is not such an acute crisis.
As I wrote like I never thought I could write, it happened that I said things.
I sat here in my kitchen between cupcakes and empty bottles of wine as I announced: „Once the witching novel is done, I am going to kill myself.“
I actually said it out loud. I even think that in those moments, I believed it. All my purpose in this world felt gone, and all my energy was put into this one novel, and that would be it for me!
„Once the novel is done, I think I‘m done too!“
My witch would laugh about me for this. „Is this your marketing strategy?“, she would giggle.
One person from this side of reality would casually ask: „What kind of time frame are we talking? You know, for me to prepare myself.“
The time frame in this one actually matters, because I am a slow writer. I am so slow!
While writing a story, I indulge in music, concepts, in research and visiting places. I completely get lost in a story for a long while before being able to tell it.
And I thinkt that is what saved me.
I am not sure how actively suicidal I was when I said this thing. I was depressed and out of touch with myself and the world and a part of me believed this for sure, and sulking intensely into a potential story was what I needed, because while writing in my slow pace, things changed for the better.
By now I am halfway through the novel and I have survived the pandemic and am happy about those that did too. I enjoy writing the novel, and for when it‘s done, I even have three more novel ideas!
These days, I try to write with my 2020 „writing to survive“ attitude, although I have found more reasons to survive than I had back then.
Mistress witch writes 