Dear Daniel

Dear Daniel,

It is freezing here today. In my room it is nice and toasty to the point it is almost hot. The rest of the house it is need a blanket kind of cold. So I turned on the fan in my bedroom for a little while. I know I know, windchills in the negatives and I’m hot. My internal thermostat is definitely broken lol.

But that’s not why I write. I’m writing today about how one chooses to live one’s life. Growing up was hard for me, but then, here’s the reality, it’s hard for a lot of people. There is now, more than ever, a culture of victimization. The horrors of human trafficking, domestic violence, and child abuse make it very easy for one to slip through the cracks of the world’s justice systems and foster system that make for those who live through these nightmares hard to recover properly.

I look at me. And I look what I’ve been through. And I know I should be a statistic. I have friends who should be statistics too. But for the grace of someone. At least one someone intervening they are not and neither am I.

I know people will look at this blog and see something that it is not. A delusion fan trying desperately to get the attention of someone who inspires them. But that’s not the point of this blog. It never has been. It never will be.

It’s to show that you can live through hell and choose not to be a victim. That you can reach out for help and do the work it takes to heal yourself and pass that lesson on. You can become a survivor. And once you’ve earned that badge of honor to can choose to move forward and choose to live.

There are those out there who are stuck in the victimized mode. And they find it difficult to take responsibility for their lives and actions. I too, was once there. It made for bad relationships and hollow meaning from friends. It conjured pity, not empathy, from others. I found as I continued my journey to healing that I didn’t want that life. That it wasn’t enough for me. People’s pity was a pale shadow of the love I needed to cultivate for myself.

Finally I became a survivor. That was the journeyman part of the healing path. It’s one thing to make the decision to be a survivor, it’s quite another to go through the process of doing it. There’s a lot of two steps forward three steps back kind of action going on.

The one thing I always knew though was that all I had to be was myself. I didn’t have to compromise on who I was or make apologies for it. I just had to get my ass out of the house to my therapy appointments, my psychiatry appointments, and my nurses appointments. I was not ‘crazy’ or ‘delusional’. I may love passionately. Feel fiercely. And may love writing more than anything else on this planet, but I also learned during this time if I needed help, I could reach out for it. And that by not reaching out for it I was doing myself and everyone else around me a huge disservice. What is the saying? Pride goeth before the fall?

In 2010 a terrible thing happened. My best friend lost her father to a botched liver transplant surgery. And as her father lay dying slowly in the hospital I realized my life and writing career wasn’t just going to fall into my lap by magic. I had best get down to the business of living and I started submitting Another Way To Die to different presses. It was there I went from surviving to choosing to live. (Thank you Harold Goodman, Missy Goodman, & Pamela Turner) And when the first contract came I cried. Thank you, Lea. And now with Bella Morte, and Delilah K. Stephans I feel like I’m at another threshold. Thanks to everyone who helped me go from victim to survivor to living. You may not be named but you know who you are.

Sincerely,

Amy McCorkle