Disclaimer

I wish someone, many someeones actually, would just tell me why they don't understand it. Is it the concept? I know every time I re-read it, I find that I wasn't able to explain things as well in the beginning. I wasn't able to discern what was and was not important to the overall story, versus what was and was not merely confusing and distracting; unnecessary. Like how Terra essentially teleports through dreaming, how she lives several lives simultaneously. This has nothing to do with the other characters and is impossible to write and still remain coherent. But that generally happens with Terra. Which is why I dropped her as a character with any history and rather seem to focus more on her affinity with Miranda and thus her role as leader evolved.

I know this is just gibberish to everyone else. It's too tightly tied into my own personal history. I can't make an exciting fantasy story out of it, can't seem to develop the universe of it as well as I strongly desire to. I can't focus on the unifying aspects of darkness and depravity that exist within us all, the chaos and the beautiful disillusionment of others' work.

I want to. So very badly. I want to be able to express this world so that others who are the same can see this similarity. I want someone to read this and sit there, dumbfounded as I once did, their head screaming at them that maybe they're not completely insane, completely hopeless. Maybe there is a pattern in all this chaos.

So I developed the imagery, the symbolism, trying to turn the psychotic ramblings of a young, naive little girl into the works of an epic which spoke towards Jungian archetypes and collective unconscious, the power of the subconscious and the relationships between emotions and events and human nature and...

And I'm starting to think it will never happen. Because I can write more about it than I can write of it.

Because it's just too damn hard. Too damn painful to write these things. I can't. I can't make my fingers type what happens in the story anymore. It hurts so much. And the sad thing is I'm so beyond that part now. It took so long but I am. It's gone, and we're moved on. New life now. New stories, but I can't write them until I finish this. You can tell it's hard because even while writing it I would skip whole parts and not even realize it.

Perhaps it's that I try too hard to make it understandable, hoping for that random person to come along who will read it, but when said person comes along, will the story be so far gone from what it was originally intended to be to even matter- to be recognized as what it is, more than what I want it to be?

What I mean to say is that, despite my delusions of grandeur, I know that Laea Wake will never be a best selling novel. It will never be a major motion picture. It might never even make it to Sundance. I may never even expose more than a handful of random people to the stories themselves. But I do this for me. I forget that a lot, because I really do care very much that people read this. Not for popularity's sake, I wish I could be so vapid, maybe it would hurt less when it didn't happen, but for the sake of that "one person" becoming many people. Bringing more meaning and purpose into the actual act. Because that's my only motivation, really, to keep doing it at all. The delusion that the few readers existent will become disappointed if I don't write.

I care so much about other people's feelings that it will keep me writing. Although how effective that is we can see. But this illusion keeps me feeling guilty, keeps this on my list of priorities, rather than dropped entirely. And this act keeps me sane. It really, really does.

Evolving my way of thinking from scattered stories and rules into the chaotic system that has become Laea Wake has kept me from breaking down so many times. "Now how do I explain this in the story." Or moreover "How can I explain this while still walking the fine line between MPD and mere characters?"

When Rain takes hold of me, and I can feel that deep depression, the overwhelming guilt, the proud defeat at the hands of such a formidable foe as my own incompetence, I can understand it. I can understand that feeling as its own entity, as Rain. I know how it/she reacts to the other pieces of me, and I know how to deal with it. I know her/it's relationship with Violyn, all rage and wrath and hate, and Terra with her indescribable incessant insanities, and Kaiya, with whom a connection means self-forgiveness and contentment if only for a moment.

I know each and every one of them so intimately I would honestly have a very, very hard time explaining to your everyday psychiatrist that "No, Mr. Shrink, I do not have multiple personalities. That's not it at all. You think too much on the surface of things. You all do."

If it were just depression. If it were just pent-up rage. If it were just these little pieces of me that would be interpreted as insanities by the rest of the world. If it were just that forgiveness that is always just out of reach. If it were just that mask I wear to seem perfect for the world. If it were just the part of me that holds my memories. If it were just my artistic side, my quiet side, my ever-changing side. I would not understand it. I would still be lost and confused. Finding Tyber's writings and understanding that no, if I converted these feelings to words I would in fact not be immediately locked away in asylum, truly changed my life. Because being able to write it down allowed these developments.

I do this for me. As much as I want to be able to do that for someone else, I can't guarantee it.

But I'll still hope. Even in this new world that we're now living in, I will hope.