Editing and thinking about whose story. (Patreon)

I am working on the second chapter. 

There are two letters in the original draft of the book which stand apart from the mother's suicide notes. I still haven't figured out how to incorporate multiple suicide notes into a more straightforward, less experimental structure. But these two letters are their own thing. They're each labeled, "Old Letter." One is to Simon, and one is to Sunday.

My idea with those letters was to show the past, that the mother has always seen herself as  being on this path. 

They stood alone in their own sections, like the mother's other letters. Leaving it to the reader to interpret what they said about the mother. And when I was writing the book the first time, I thought it was a good solution. It filled in some information. There was the gut punch of bluntness that you never expect between a mother and child.

The letters:

----

To my unborn daughter,

You’re quiet tonight. I love the quiet. I hate the noise. The noise and the people everywhere out there in the world, a blanket of harsh light that strangers try to throw over your head. I hope you don't inherit that from me. The fear of people. Of leaving the house.

I hope you don't have the certainty that I have that I will kill myself one day. All this noise and fear and light. It helps to walk. To walk outside in the darkness, when nobody is around. It helps to wrap my head in a towel so tight that my ears and my eyes are safe. If you are born afraid, then walk. When you walk you can be nothing at all. You can just lose yourself in the trees and the leaves and the water and the sky.

I hate it here, in the city. But your father's job is here. My job is here. Fluorescent lights. Cubicles. Clattering keyboards. At least the computers make sense. They're loud, but they fit together like puzzle pieces.

But the quiet. Oh the quiet. The quiet is water slowly filling up a room. You don’t know you’re drowned until you’re drowned. The quiet is the certainty in my mind. Will you ever read this? Do you have a certainty? I used to hate mine. I spent years terrified, seeing doctor after doctor. But now I know it is just me. And that’s ok. You can't cure someone of their self.

I don’t want to live. You aren’t born yet, so you don’t know what it's like. Life. It just goes on and on. Everyone around me wants to live. They have their troubles, and disasters, and they keep on living. Meanwhile, my life is quiet. I have no scars. All I have is this certainty in me, that I am going to kill myself.

But not yet. No, it turns out that I am going to be a mother. I do not want to be a mother, I want to be dead. But your father is so happy. Everyone is so happy, and I am the one who is sick. Wrong. I'm the one who is wrong.

So I think of things to do instead of killing myself. That is my job now. Not killing myself. Clean the whole house. Drive to visit friends for an afternoon. Take a walk. Sit alone in a coffee shop for two hours. Buy a book, so that tomorrow I can return the book. Take a long walk. Buy a dress so that tomorrow I can return the dress. Go and watch the waves crash on the beach. Imagine sitting on the ocean floor.

Write my unborn daughter a letter.

Your mother

----

Dear Simon,

Today you said, “Mama” for the first time. Your father was so excited. I remember when your sister first said, "Mama." I remember because I felt sick. I felt like she had reached inside of me and taken hold of my name, and yanked it out, stuffing the wound with 'Mama.'

But then today, you reached up your beautiful arms and your eyes shone, and you said, “Mama.” And I realized there was still a part of my name hiding inside of me. Small, and free. Until today. When you reached in and wrapped your chubby little fingers around its throat. You tore it from my body to make more room for 'Mama.'

I know it isn’t your fault. Nothing is anybody’s fault.

Your mother.

----

But now, as I am working through the book with a tighter focus on Sunday and Simon, those letters don't make sense in different sections of the book. These are letters the mother would give them when she's still alive. Some, "I didn't know what else to do with these." response. We would get these letters together.

And these are letters children would obsess over, what does it mean about them? What did they do wrong? Even when they were babies.

Something like:

----

Had we really done those terrible things to our mother? We never meant to. But she was hurt. We never meant to hurt her, but we did. We never meant to trap her. But we did. She was hurt and she was trapped.

The sick pain inside her all these years didn't care if we meant to do it or not.

-

This isn't a book about a mother committing suicide.

I want this to be two stories disguised as one. I want this to be a mother, choosing herself, committing suicide. Trying to help her children understand. Trying to shape how they see and remember her. 

And I want this to be a book about the children trying their best to understand her. To see through her eyes. To make sense of it. And they fail spectacularly. They can't. Of course they can't. Some thing you don't make sense of. Some things you have to just accept.