Whole Stories

For many years, I tried to write heartbreaking stories. I seemed to remember reading such stories myself and the experience of having my heart broken at the story’s end made me feel alive in a way that happier stories often did not. After all, I’d had my heartbroken once myself. I’d loved a girl and she’d left and I didn’t know what to do about that. Such is the heartbreaking reality of life, I thought. The books I read told me it was the reality, and so it was.

And there is something beautifully real about the pain of loss. Something woke up in me when that girl left, something I did not understand had been sleeping. Pain can become a form of appreciation, learning as you suffer that the depth of life is known by how deeply you feel, even if what you feel hurts. It’s just that pain is addictive. You can find it as easily as you can reach for a pill. It’s also not the end of a story; it’s the middle.

What’s more, I found that girl and married her. That was my reality. Still, I kept trying to write those heartbreaking stories in a form of allegiance to someone I wasn’t anymore and maybe never had been. It didn’t go so well. It’s hard to write stories that contradict your own life. It gets harder the longer you try it, and I tried it for a very long time.

Eventually I got sick of that suffering, found no romance in it, no depth in it. It was just the same, little, shallow circle of story again and again and again. So, I tried something new, tried writing what my life had actually showed me. It did not show me a broken heart. It showed me an impatient heart that named my disagreement with life’s impeccable timing pain, and which was never made whole by love, for that is what it had always been made of.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write With Confidence.
You can find William at: williamkenower.com