March 8 2025
My day = 1311 words so far. We’ve moved on to creative non-fiction in my creative writing class. This is where I thrive. I thought about recycling something I’d already written. But I want to write new content.
Thought I’d share a snippet with you. I’m more than half-way finished with the story. This is in its raw state. I do stream of conscious writing, and I do this weird thing of going back and forth with my tenses when I write. I’ll clean it up before submitting. I’m proud of myself for including dialogue. I’m dialogue-avoidant usually!
Diary of Starting Over
Camilla Downs
Starting over. How many times have you had to start over? I’m talking cataclysmic starting over. Life changing, starting over events. I’ve had five life changing, starting over experiences. I was 10-years-old the first time. At 38, I started over again for the last time. So far.
Starting over can be a good thing, an opportunity to escape the mundane routines of life, shake things up, experience all there is to be experienced. On the flip side, it can be incredibly traumatizing, a trauma that lurks in the corners of the mind, haunting the thoughts like poison stained ghosts. I have experienced both types of starting over. We can be forced into starting over by the actions of those around us, or by our own actions. My experiences with starting over live within me, they are the building blocks for the person I am. They taught me that I am stubborn, tenacious, and resilient. These experiences are the blueprints of the survival technique of opportunism and the art of improvisation. They taught me that although I may arrive at my destination bruised and exhausted, I will survive and thrive.
It was November 2006, I had just gotten off the phone with my mom. “You can’t keep this up. You need to leave”, my mom implored. I could hear the opening music from a M*A*S*H rerun coming from the TV. I sunk into the u-shaped, burnt red couch. I knew she was right. I had kept from her what was happening, but a mom knows when their child is suffering. This place that is not my own, with our belongings in boxes scattered around, in this unfamiliar city is not helping me to have clarity. I had visited Olympia before, my mother-in-law lives here. This couch I’m sunk into is hers. This home is hers.
Surveying my surroundings my mind drifted to 10-year-old me at my grandparents home in ….
2500 words and 9 pages. Can’t wait to hear from my classmates! It will be workshopped on Wednesday, March 12, 2025.