Always tweaking the opening, the writer changes the words but Isabel stays the same.  

            As I drove home high on chocolate and coffee my mind raced through subjects that affect how I feel and think about my extramarital relationship: depression, the Holocaust, memory, necromancy, and piercing the corporate veil. I want to write down those thoughts while they make sense to me. I have to hurry. Thoughts fly by as dreams do. They must be caught. (that is underlined because it is so awful--who writes like that? I mean--that is precisely what happens with my thoughts, but the words I have used here make me sick. I could delete it as if it were never there, but that would be self-denial. Dreams and thoughts don't really fly. That was lazy writing. Actually, if I can be honest, the words that I used are exactly how I experience thoughts and dreams, but crappy writers from the past have overused words like this so that they seem not to have real meaning. . . is that right? Will I let other writers dictate what words I use? Oh, or am I a member of the world of crappy writers that I have attempted to set apart from myself. Bummer.)

Twice I stopped seeing the man, only to end up with him as if we had never parted. Logically, then, he is not the problem. If he were the problem, separation from him would have meant I had no problem. I am my problem. I do not want to get rid of me. I am all that I have. Something of me will have to be my solution.

 I will begin with what I know to be true. No, that leaves nothing.

Given:  my parents called me Isabel. I cannot be sure what constitutes the “me.”  If I were clear on where Isabel starts and stops I would know more.

I have a wonderful marriage and family. Well, I believed so, because I have been ignorant of the existence of another dimension of experience. Books and movies taught me that adult relationships require love and commitment and work. It turns out that this may just be what kind people tell friends to console them for not having found the real thing. With the man, whom I knew completely from the moment we exchanged our first greetings, my sensory intake from the world around me expanded. Not only did sex become a transcendent experience, but also I began to feel and see more everywhere. I am thirty-four. If I have just now found true love, I can still reach for that life and grab it. Divorce happens constantly. I want to live the dream. I would also like to exercise a bit of caution.

This is complicated, and I want to get it right. If I were reading a novel, I would know exactly what the protagonist should do. All I need to do is write a novel that tells my exact story. Then, once it is written, all I have to do is read it carefully. Everything hidden from me now will be open and clear when I read. I will write everything that I remember and believe until I have a novel.

This document of my experiences and beliefs may allow me to see myself—an old-fashioned black box problem. After reducing experience to writing, I may solve myself like a puzzle. Good luck with that. When I write, my trust disappears. I criticize myself and refuse to listen. I say “I” but the critic is often my parents. Long dead, they haunt me wherever I go.  Oh, so you’re blaming us?

Writing a life has built-in problems. Lies that I tell myself are difficult to perceive. I want to be honest, but I also want to be gentle with myself.

Actually, if that is true, I should clear all thoughts from my head. I once tried a craniosacral therapist for relief from depression. No treatment had worked before I tried his suggestion. Since then, whenever I feel symptoms coming on, I follow his advice. 

He suggested that thinking had failed to fix my problem; “Try not thinking.”  

Problem solved!

Now, I had a new problem. What would I do all day with a not-thinking body? It prevents depression, but it also prevents Isabel. Would I continue to be myself outside of thought? Death is another solution to depression, but I would not call it success.  

While it is true that thinking brings danger, it is what I do. Too much of anything is dangerous—basic Paracelsus. I would have to think in moderation.   

For me, however, the fun is in thinking without regard to safety—to take the ride.

"Necromancy" is a lie. I thought about it later, but not during that drive. I am reading my novel about myself and finding flaws. During the writing process I developed two competing interests.  First, I wanted it to be honest so that I could see myself. Second, I wanted it to draw me in the way a novel might. I would  forget myself and enter the story. Certain ideas, I thought, would be interesting and make a better story if they appeared in writing other than how they did in life. A novel, after all, does not and cannot reflect actual life experience. It is art that allows one to see life experience in a new way. If it is simply a catalog of experience, it is science. Instead, however, the dissonance between what is written and what feels true to me as a reader is too great.