Because....

People have asked me why I write. Several have mocked it, mocked my topics, my style, my country taste. It’s all good though. Because I don’t care. I write for me and for whoever wants to read it. If you don’t like it, don’t read it and certainly don’t complain about it. I’m not asking for critics who have nothing nice to say.

I write because of imagination. Because I believe everyone has a story and every place has a fascinating history. I write because I know people yearn for entertainment and amusement and knowledge. Because they have for centuries. From the great stadiums where the English flocked to hear Shakespeare’s tragedies and from the time of the original troubadour who told in their songs stories of hero’s from lands afar. Those things haven’t changed much over the years. People haven’t changed and human nature hasn’t either.

 I have a fascinating imagination that I cannot lie about. My thirst for books at a young age took me places outside of the small world in which I had lived and showed my people and places far more fascinating than that of good ol’ Jersey County. I have stories I love to share-I came by the nickname Gabby at a young age and by honest ways- and so I have taken to writing them.

The last few months I have wished I had kept a journal of the previous year of my life. Wrote everything in such detail as it happened everyday as so that I would never forget the life and love I had been given through Jason. But I hadn’t and as I fear the memories will fade I find the words about him hard to come by as tears destroy the pages and the ink that I have put down.

I write because I find there is stories that need to be told, average people who need to be immortalized by pretty words and most importantly because I can escape into the stories I have written. No longer am I a scared little country girl fearing more than anything the night but strong and bold Kyra Summers who had overcome her own demons far better than I could ever hope to do. I become Avaleene Reynolds the moonshine runner tougher than any Duke. Joe Hamlin the hunter who lives a hard man’s life in a hard man’s profession in the treacherous west that Texas knew following the War between the states.

Writing gives me freedom; release from a world of boundaries a world of pain too great for most to handle.   

I feared publishing my work, few knew I wrote or ever wished to become a “writer” known by publication. The amount before that horrible night I could count on my fingers and toes. Most of them knew because of the strength I had in Jason believing in my dreams.

When he died I became center of attention and everyone knew my name, my face, and my heartache. People remember more devastation than they would ever remember the good. More than 2,000 people came through his funeral line at the showing and mourned his death. Many who did not show gave me their condolences. That was many more than who would ever have congratulated us on the wedding we had been quietly planning for.

In Jason’s death I found myself thrust into a center of attention I never wanted to be a part of for any circumstance. And I found myself unable – and unwilling- to write. I still remember, sitting on my bed, where I am right now, and telling a friend I had no idea how to get through this.

He had been perhaps the first person, over two years ago, that I ever told I wanted to be a writer (and most likely the only person who hasn’t read anything I’ve ever written, ever liked my writers page on Facebook or been remotely supportive of me as a writer since publication but whatever- jackass) anyhow... he told me I had to write. Sit down and even if I didn’t write about Jason write about something. Because when I did write about Jason and did put that out there to the world that it would help somebody who had also been cursed by heartache similar to mine.

So I did. I wrote and I sold articles and then published my book if only to prove that he was an arrogant jerk and wrong yet again (because he is always wrong and I am always right). But it helped. I was shocked to discover that I was able to write and able to finally push through on perhaps my only last living dream-being a writer.

Today, three months and two weeks after Jason’s accident there are only three things I find release in. Busting my butt at the gym until I can no longer move, seeing his friends who loved him so greatly and take care of me still the best they can, and writing.

I’ve got a lot of useless stuff to say to the world. Writing lets me put it out to the world and lets you decide if you want to listen.