The Pain You Hide

Prologue

My mother's imagination is amazing. It was always better than mine, even when I was a kid. I remember spending hours in my room trying to come up with stories that would be just as great if not better than hers. They never were.

"How do you come up with this stuff?" I asked her one day after she helped me finish a story I was working on. I don't know how long I was sitting on my tie-dye rug trying to figure out if the fairy trapped in the goblin's den got away or was trapped forever. When she saw me struggling, she made the brilliant suggestion that a mole in a goblin disguise save the day.

"That's a secret," she told me with a smile. "But don't think about it too hard. Let your mind run free and see where the story goes. Stories are much more fun that way."

"But my teacher says that a story has to have a clear beginning, middle, and end."

I can still remember feeling embarrassed after I shared one of my stories with the class; they couldn't understand what was going on. When I asked my teacher why, she pulled me aside and told me it was because my story was hard to follow. I was crushed.

"But that doesn't mean it has to be boring," my mother said."Where's the fun if you can't change things around? If storytellers didn't take risks, every book would be the same story over and over again."

"But how do you know people will understand what's happening?" I desperately wanted answers. I needed to know my mother's secret; even though her stories were the wildest stories I've ever heard, I never felt lost. In fact, I often felt like I was a part of the story. I loved that feeling more than anything.

"That's easy. You write the story for your characters and nobody else."

"What?"

"If you focus on your characters, then everything else will fall into place. Let me ask you something. When you were struggling with the ending, were you thinking about your characters or were you thinking about your audience?"

My friends' confused faces flashed through my mind. Their complaints echoed in my ears. I bit my lip. My mother placed a hand on my head and stroked my hair like she often did when she knew I was upset.

"Don't worry about it, sweet pea. You're already a great story teller. I know you'll be even better someday."

I called out to her as she stood up to leave.

"Hey, mom? Will you tell me how you come up with your stories? I promise to keep it a secret."

She flashed me the biggest grin I'd ever seen on her face.

"Promise it's just between us?" She beckoned me closer when I nodded. "All the stories I tell you are real," she whispered. "I just listen to what the characters have to say."

"You're lying!" I shouted I was so shocked.

"It's true, but you don't have to believe me. Just know that if you believe in something hard enough, it can be true if you want it to be." She gave me a wink and left.

I was sure she was crazy. She had to be lying. I may have been a child, but I knew what was real and what wasn't. Though I loved my mother's stories and the characters she'd make, I knew there was no way any of them could be real just because I believed them to be.