I’m parked at Chapter 19, foot lingering over the gas, heart already braced for impact.

Last week I blew through pages; today the engine just coughs.

It’s 2018—Dad’s descent beginning, a tremor I refused to feel because admitting he was slipping felt too terrifying. Now every sentence flips on the high beams, forcing me to face the potholes I swerved around the first time.

Under the spotlight, every shrug, every tidy excuse, every frantic bend toward normal shows its cracks. No shortcuts, no speed-run. A swarm buzzes—you could have, should have done more—tiny bees I’m learning not to swat; that only makes them louder.

And the heavier question: What if they’re right? What if the way I loved him greased the slide?

So I pin my fear where I can see it:

1. I loved my daddy. That holds, even in the wreckage.
2. Silence writes permission slips.
3. Don’t let the fear of getting it wrong shout louder than the memory itself.
4. This stall isn’t laziness—it’s triage. I’m allowed to pace the burn.

Reliving the moments that read like permission slips for decline is brutal. Setting them beside the real acts of love is both violence and medicine. It keeps me honest: love and complicity can coexist without canceling each other.

A reminder to future-me: healing isn’t a certificate at the end of this manuscript; it’s the messy process itself—a half-developed Polaroid, the image still ghosting into focus while the chemicals sting. Readers don’t need the story tied up with a pretty bow. They need to watch the picture bleed into shape.

So if I freeze tomorrow—or next week—I’ll reach for the next true thing and write it down. Then the next.

One true sentence at a time, Hemingway-style. That’s the work, and that’s plenty.

(Just a mini-revelation I needed to save for the days I forget why forward feels like dragging a piano uphill.)

inspo: my latest mini-revelation // memoir musings // avoiding my “tBWoP” research folder at-all-costs (nobody in their right mind would willingly dive back into that circus) // cringing at all the times my denial dressed up as optimism // cringing when Dad’s new-girlfriend glow blinds my gut-check // letting the fear of misremembering my true blue 2018 thoughts mute my next true blue 2025 sentence

Kinsey Keys

aspiring memoirist rummaging through my noggin, stubbornly clutching the past to my chest like it’s a newborn babe starved for mother's milk.

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