Matthew Hitchcock

I've been a writer for as long as I can remember and enjoy reading much. I can remember in detail the day the spark arrived in my life to write and express myself on the written page. I hadn't even learned to read or write but recognized a stirring inside that I could not comprehend. After I began to learn to read that strange desire started to make sense though it would take a few more years to materialize.

If someone had told me that I would be trying to rediscover and redefine who I am in my 50's I would not have believed them. Even being skeptical of such an idea would have been an optimistic position. I made choices in my young adult years and carved my fate in something as durable as granite. There was no escaping the mistakes as the situation seemed to me. All I could do was accept what I'd created and consider writing as something I had ignorantly sacrificed to a jealous and controlling woman. She had pretended to support my life as a writer right up until the weeks following that ceremony when I made a promise and said "I will". Writing anything became a battle ground of guilt and drama but that's a long story and part of what I currently am trying to understand and change.

One morning in 2009 I discovered the woman I married had died during the night. One of the first thoughts to blast into my mind was "Finally I'm free" and the guilt that descended was as crippling as the drama she had enveloped me with during the years of her reign. Only someone that has been in such a relationship can understand what I mean and as I open myself up to the world again I'm discovering I'm far from alone in those circumstances.

"Now what do I do with the rest of my life?", was the question coming to my mind. The thought of exploring the trash heap of dreams and hopes barely even registered. I took little vacations to get away. I made a few new friends and just went exploring tentatively. I was focused on trying to live alone. Creativity was at such a low level I rarely even scribbled a few lines in my journal.

I felt like a zoo animal that has just been released from a small enclosure to a much larger one and was uncomfortable with the openness of it all. In a strange way I found it easier to just keep walking the old familiar pathways with an occasional foray into the wild. That means writing caused me to feel the echoes of the guilt hammered into me for all those decades. I barely dared set foot in that formerly forbidden realm.

It's taken me several years to finally retrieve the dream of having something published. My wife and friends today believe in me and say there is potential. I'm trying to overcome decades of living in a cage and learning to believe in myself as well.

I still find the idea of hundreds of rejection letters to be a daunting thought. Writing is one thing and the business of being published an entirely different matter in my mind. I write because it's something I love to do and try to keep that in focus while trying also to adjust my mind and emotions to new possibilities. The cage is open now and this wife new to me is gently prodding me to step out while she tries to do the same for herself. There are pathways to be explored and a future yet to be written. These first steps are tentative but I'm finally beginning to take them.

That's a broad look at the me that lives today. I have yet to explore very far into The Writer's Cafe but am optimistic that I may find kindred souls here and that I haven't entered into some brutal world of egotistical writers. I hope that I can give and receive help and encouragement here.