Update 11-20-2024

I’m not sure if anyone will read this- but I’ll put it up anyways for those that might be interested.

I started writing on this site sixteen years ago. I was nineteen years old- halfway through my sophomore year of college- and I was being iced out of my friend group. It was a hard time for me. I started to get depressed and I didn’t understand why it was happening… why my friends had decided to ditch me so callously. I was lonely and looking for something to distract myself from the pain I felt so deeply.

I remember walking to the library after class and taking out piles of books to read. Nothing seemed to satisfy me. The stories were all so vanilla and obvious that I found myself fantasizing about the characters I liked doing different things in different stories. That’s what brought me to Fanfiction. I had always loved Harry Potter. It was the first book that really ignited my love of reading and it was the first place I looked when I came to this site. I wanted stories to go beyond what was already written. I wanted them to do a little bit more… to go a little darker… to be a little more real than what was acceptable in the mainstream. I was satisfied for a little bit- but then I found myself fantasizing about stories and characters again… wanting to read a story I hadn’t read yet. That’s why I took the plunge and decided to write.

I never considered myself a writer. It was born out of boredom and frustration… and it kept my mind off of the real troubles and changes happening all around me. It helped. I didn’t feel so alone. Even when people would flame my stories, I remember thinking “well, at least they read it.” I decided to take a break from D/G and write a Greek Mythology story. I knew it wouldn’t be popular as I had already tried to find the stories I wanted to read and found it lacking… So like before, I decided to write something I wanted to read myself. It was a passion project. The audience wasn’t there for it but I had always been interested in ancient mythology. The stories they told were somehow more human than most of the books I read that winter in the library when I was nineteen. It had gods who did evil things… but were not evil entirely. It had heroes who were not all good and didn’t always win. It had people living their life in an unstable world of legend and myths while still retaining their human emotions. Jealousy, anger, rage, love, kindness…. It was all there for me to write about- so I did.

As I grew older, my life changed. I moved, got married, had kids. Writing was such a hard hobby to maintain when I couldn't even remember to brush my teeth some days and I was never alone anymore. The last story I was actively working on before I paused was Falling Back into Chaos and it stayed with me all those years as I woke up every three hours with hungry babies and pushed little bodies on swings over and over and over again. Years went by and I lost bits and pieces of myself- but that story stayed at the back of my mind waiting for me. My children are a little older now. Still quite small- but they do go to school so I finally have the freedom to get a little bit of myself back. Instead of that being freeing- I find myself married to someone I didn’t know all that well after all. As I finally got out of the cocoon of motherhood- my husband fell into addiction and depression. I now live with someone I can’t even have a conversation with and I find myself at a crossroads once again. Lonely… just like I was all those years ago when I was faced with changes I wasn’t ready for and betrayed by the people I loved.

The thing about life is that it keeps going after you get your happy ending.

When I posted updates recently- I didn’t expect much. Falling Back into Chaos is my pet project… Something just for me… but some people managed to respond and a lot of the messages asked me about Envy and Manipulations. The funny thing is- I wrote it so long ago I don’t even remember the story line. I wrote it. I put so much time and thought into it… I pulled experiences from my own life and things people had actually said to me into the story… but if you asked me what it was about… I couldn't even tell you.

I decided to reread it after googling my pen name and realizing that this story does have an audience outside of this site and the few that I thought read my stories. The truth is… I couldn't even make it through the first chapter without wanting to scrap it and start all over. It was bad. To me, anyway. I wrote stories I wanted to read but then couldn't even read them when it was all said and done. How ironic is that?

I’ve decided to go through and rewrite it chapter by chapter. Hopefully I can get the passion back to write the sequel that I know I started writing and then abandoned completely on a thumb drive lost to oblivion now. I will leave the old story up and write the new story under Envy and Manipulations 36 because that’s my age now. We can compare how my writing and feelings have changed towards the material now that I have so much more life under my belt and hopefully I won’t feel so alone anymore.

I hope you find some enjoyment out of that and I wish you all the best.

R.