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I received an email earlier today that struck me vividly. It was a question from a fan asking me what it was like to live my life. To have good family and everything I have ever wanted and it made me want to cry on so many levels that it drove me here to the keyboard. She asked me how I was able to see my characters so vividly and the answer is simple. I've been there.
I know what it's like to live and love with fear, to be mocked with cruelty and to have to try and find shelter through the most vicious of storms. If there is one scene in all the books I relate to most, it's the one of Zarek walking barefoot through the blizzard, seeking comfort. Of him standing outside, looking inside the cheerful house and wishing with all his heart that he was one of the happy, warm people inside.
If my life was perfect, I wouldn't have gotten up today with only three hours of sleep to work. I would sleep until noon and have my hubby wake me with roses and my children would be perfectly healthy and happy. My oldest son wouldn't be autistic. My middle son wouldn't have health problems and my baby wouldn't be ADHD. My oldest sister wouldn't have Cerebral Palsy. My older brother and my mother would still be alive and when something good happened to me, I wouldn't feel the fear that has made a permanent hole in my heart.
You see, I am Acheron. And I know that the strongest steel is truly forged out of the flames of hell. The kindest thing I can say about my childhood is that I survived it. I know what it's like to be so poor that you have to swallow air so that you can fool your stomach into thinking it's got something in it. I was that child who went to school in boy hand-me-downs, who stared at the pretty dresses the other girls wore and wished I had one too.
I know what it's like to live in fear of being hit for nothing more than daring to meet someone's gaze. There was a time in my life when I was too scared to even ask for a ketchup packet at McDonald's because I didn't want to be hit or insulted for the audacity. I know the courage it takes to put your life back together after it's been shattered into pieces. To boldly stand up in front of the world, raise my fist at it and shout, "I am here and I will not be your victim! I am a human being and I may not matter to you, but I do matter to me and I will not let you hurt me anymore!"
Finding that self worth, that strength inside to stand and fight when all you want to do is curl up and die is the hardest thing. But as my mother so often said, I came into this world backwards and I've been that way ever since. Because nothing I ever did as a child was good enough to please those around me, I learned to not care what other people thought of me. If I'm to be judged, it will be for who I am not for who I'm trying to be to make someone else happy.
I will not let my children know the hurtful words that echo inside me from my childhood. They won't grow up in fear and hurt. They won't flinch when someone raises a hand near them and they won't sit with their back to the wall because they're afraid of being hurt if they let their guard down for even a heartbeat. My greatest gift to them is normality.
Just as my greatest gift as a girl was books. In it, I learned that even when I felt powerless, I wasn't. That I could altar my life no matter how dark the day. That if I could find the courage within, the strength to fight that I could overcome any odds to win. Books were my shelter. They showed me a world where people lived without harm. Where a beggar could become a princess. Where a frog could be a prince.
My writing is what gave me strength. It's what allowed me to escape the reality and horror of my life and to find a semblance of peace within myself. But not even the writing was easy for me.
It too has been laughed at and mocked. I was rejected countless times and the Dark-Hunter series that is loved by so many took me eleven years to sell. Unlike many other writers, I have had BRUTAL rejections, including one that said, "No one at this publishing house will ever be interested in developing this author, do not submit her work again."
Less than ten years ago, we were on welfare living in a hole the likes of which I swore I'd never return to. And yet there I was, flicking roaches off my babies, crying while I held them and apologizing that I'd brought them into this world where I couldn't protect or provide for them. I was making wreaths for ten dollars each to sell at a small boutique while my husband worked in an office by day and a factory at night just so that we could have electricity and a roof. We had no cable and no phone. And I had no car. When my babies were sick which was often, I'd have to put one in a Snugli that a friend had given me and the other in a $10 umbrella stroller to walk ten miles to the doctor's office where they made me wait because I was on welfare and my children's health wasn't as important as the children whose parents had been lucky enough to have healthy children born to them. Children whose medical problems hadn't required NICU and whose medical bills hadn't bankrupted the family.
I can still see the way the lips curled on the nurses' faces and hear their whispered comments, "I'm sick of these people coming in here while I have to work to support them." Not knowing that I was working. I just couldn't make enough to cover the five operations my middle son required or the medicine and breathing treatments my oldest needed in order to live– for that matter the cost of my own medicine to treat my health issues. So many of us live paycheck to paycheck and we're not blowing our money frivolously– as I said my husband and I shared a car for years because we couldn't afford to have two of them. All it took to ruin us was medical bills and the fact that rather than work up until my oldest was born as I'd planned on doing, I had to stay on bed rest or lose my baby. Since my father had just died of cancer and my older brother had died only a couple of years before that, I couldn't stand the thought of burying someone else I loved.
Worst of all, I know what it's like to be homeless. To live in fear of being found out that I don't have shelter for my baby. No human being should ever know the degradation of not having enough money to eat and being mocked by others because of it. I have been that person you passed on the road, walking to work in her brown uniform and a light windbreaker in the winter time so that she could work a ten hour shift and then walk home– grateful that I had a job where they'd allow me to buy my dinner at half the price so that I could at least eat one meal that day.
That was my life up until five years ago. And I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Five years ago, just as the first Dark-Hunter novel came out, I was laid off. The fear in my heart was unbelievable. How could I tell my husband when we were just barely getting our lives back together and coming off welfare?
And I'd lost my job because of company cutbacks. I cried the whole way home. I looked at my children and I was afraid of being homeless again. Of them being mocked for our poverty because I'd failed them as a mother. In my mind, I'd failed as a human being.
They say you should write what you know and that's what I do. I write about people who can find laughter through their tears. People who have to overcome their pasts to have a future. People who don't know how to give up. Who find the strength to smile even while they're withering inside and hurting so much that they don't know how they can keep it together for one more heartbeat.
And while I pride myself on my inner strength. On my ability to stay sane through insanity, I know that standing by my side is a man it took a lot of courage for me to love. Hand in hand, my husband and I have walked through tragedy, enemies and storms. And hand in hand we're still here. It wasn't always easy for us, we are both humans: flawed, scared and scarred. But we are committed and we both hold our honor and our oaths sacred.
I remember saying once to my sister who was rolling her eyes at me and telling me that I was too demanding when it came to men. "Really, Sherri, no one will ever meet your expectations. You need to lower your standards." And to that I responded that I wasn't looking for a boyfriend. I was looking for a partner who would share the rest of my life with me. Someone who would father my children and help me provide for and protect them from a world that had seldom been kind to me and I had no reason to suspect it would ever get better. If ever there was a time to be picky, wasn't this it?
Marriage to me meant finding someone I could trust enough to lie down by his side and close my eyes and trust that he wouldn't hurt me while I was unconscious. I'd been hurt enough in my past when I had no control over who lived in my house. I swore when I got out that no one would ever make me live in fear again. It is an oath I still hold sacred.
And so I set my standards high, never intending to really find someone who could get past the prickly barricade I kept around my heart. I didn't want someone who could sweep me off my feet. I didn't want love. Most of all I didn't want to be hurt anymore. I had myself and that was good enough.
Then one day, this man... not a boy, but a man walked in with a grin so sweet and a manner so gentle and patient that for the first time ever I saw my future in those soulful brown eyes. He took my hand and told me that he'd always be here when I needed him and he has proven those words time and again. I still see my future when I look at him. And while I pray that the future's a good one, I know that no matter what tomorrow brings I won't have to face it alone.
To live my life takes courage. Every day. I have to vanquish the demons of brutal self doubt and criticism. I have to deal with my past and with the sorrow of those I've lost and the fear that tomorrow I could lose again. I have to try and find quality time for my friends, my husband, my children, my fans and my characters. I don't have everything I want, but I make do. And I don't dwell on what I'm missing. I dwell on what I'm lucky enough to have. No, it's not a perfect life, but it's the only one I have and I intend to make it count for something. And when my life is over, I want to be able to say in all good conscience that while I'm not a perfect person, I tried my best. Or more simply. I tried. I didn't give up and I didn't give in. I kept going no matter what.
All I ask is that I never make other people feel as worthless as some have made me feel and that I bring laughter to those who need it most. To all of you, I wish you a far better life than mine. And if I could, I'd give you all the spouse I have because he is my silent strength and it's through him, my children, my fans and my writing that I find happiness and comfort. They are my shelter in the storm that is sometimes life.
Hugs to all of you.
4:56 PM
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