Fifty Seven

I got an email from a guy who had read “Bullies …”

Specifically, he referenced the words

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“Annie died.”

At that instant something happened to me.

Something either entered me, or something left me.

In either case I never knew what it was, but I forever after felt its iron influence. It was a sense of aloneness; it was a sense of self-preservation; it was a sense on uniqueness; it was a sense of anger; it was a sense of fear.

I never lived without it after the moment I heard the words, “Annie died.”

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He had had a similar experience with death.  He said he had had a similar reaction to that which I had documented.

He said he hadn’t known he had had that reaction until thirty years had passed.  He was curious what my experience had been.

Here is what I wrote him back.

“Those words are an excerpt from Screen Saver, a memoir I self published in 2009.  Writing that book was interesting.  In most cases it wrote itself. 

Most of the time, when I sat at the keyboard, something took over my fingers and words appeared from somewhere; that somewhere was not my conscious mind nor were those words driven by any preconceived story plan.  They just appeared – from somewhere. 

Annie died in 1950.  I had no idea of what effect that had had on me until 2007 when those words appeared in a Word document that ultimately became Screen Saver.

But they explained a lot of things I had never known until I finally saw them.”