#substance abuse mention
This post has been cross-posted to the Resources for Ace Survivors wordpress.
This post is for the June 2016 Carnival of Aces, which is on the topic of “Resiliency.”
Content warnings: discussion of trauma and violence (sexual and not), mentions of substance abuse and suicidality and self-harm, all in the context of talking about a work of fiction
Between 2008 and 2011 I wrote the longest piece of writing (fiction or non-fiction) I’ve ever produced–a 133,472 word, 251 page (single-spaced) vampire novel. I poured most of my creative energy into it for 3 years and then just hid it away in my hard drive. I returned to it recently, when I mentioned in a conversation to a friend and suddenly became intensely curious whether it held up or not. For the terminally curious, I liveblogged my reread, but this is not really a post about the vampire novel I wrote (thank goodness–no one wants to read about that). Instead, it’s a post about resilience, how the vampire novel I wrote helped me process a lot of the things going on in my life, and the extent to which I can gauge how much I have grown and changed by looking back on it.
