Usually, I share a fresh excerpt from one of my memoirs on the first weekend of the month.
Today, I don’t have an excerpt to share.
Not for lack of content; I’ve written thousands of words I’m proud of, but because I haven’t opened Extraordinary Machine in Scrivener since March 22. This is hard for me to admit: I started the year on fire, pouring my heart onto hundreds of digital pages, but life has had other plans.
Instead of a polished excerpt, today I’m sharing what’s been going on, where I’ve been, and where I’m headed.
When I started writing Extraordinary Machine in January, I didn’t fully grasp what it would mean to relive and recount my childhood trauma. After one particularly gruelling weekend, when I wrote a chapter that left me feeling as terrified and paralysed as I was at four years old, I told my therapist I still wanted to continue.
Yes, I had re-traumatised myself, but once the words were down, I was able to ground myself, process, and remind myself that I was safe- that I could never be hurt in those same ways again. Writing about my relationship with my mother and my childhood was excruciating. But it felt necessary. It felt like healing.
In February, I had an incredibly vivid dream. I’m always a vivid dreamer, but this dream stood out. I found myself in an escape room, entering through the back door. Inside, I could hear others behind adjacent doors laughing and enjoying their escape rooms. I went into a room on my own, but every door I opened only led to another and another until, eventually, frustrated, I left. As I walked away, I realised I hadn’t enjoyed the escape room because I didn’t have a guide to lead me through it. Everyone else had someone leading them through the clues, but I had entered alone, without help.
The dream stuck with me for weeks. Eventually, I realised it was telling me something about the process of writing my memoir and confronting my past. Each door was trauma, something from my past, and each door opened onto another. The dream showed me I could stop whenever I wanted. I could pause, slow down, or even step away entirely.
Then March came.
It was transformative, chaotic, and deeply clarifying. Examining my past forced me to examine everything else—my present, my future, my relationships.
Early in March, I had a deeply personal realisation about myself. It’s not something I’m ready to fully share yet, but it was significant, something I’d avoided facing for a long time, something I no longer wanted to hide from or feel ashamed about.
This realisation opened another door: the end of a decades-long friendship.
Behind that was another door I’d padlocked and ignored—my marriage. Facing that meant ending my 14-year relationship.
Finally, one last door that had already begun creaking open was my workplace. I’d started the year experiencing panic attacks at work. Complaint handling is already intense, but when combined with poor management, it becomes overwhelming.
A few days after ending my marriage, I also quit my job.
In one month, I redefined who I was. I ended significant relationships, left a stressful job, and confronted deeply held truths about myself. Through all of it, I kept coming back to that escape room dream, realising that I wasn’t helpless.
The doors weren’t just opening themselves.
I realised I was kicking them down.
And I didn’t need a guide, because I realised I was the guide.
I decided which doors to open, which to close, and which to padlock.
The truth is, I needed to open every single door. I had to see what was inside, catalogue it, organise it, and sometimes discard the content. I refused to keep living with hallways full of doors hiding things I was too scared to face.
I’m still living with my ex-husband, co-parenting our cats and saving money in expensive Sydney. I have a new job—still complaints handling, but less likely to trigger panic attacks. I’ve come to better terms with who I am. I’ve embraced it. I feel free.
So, when people ask, “Are you still working on your memoir?” I laugh. Yes, I am.
I still want to publish by year’s end.
But as a friend reminded me recently, sometimes you have to live before you can write about it later.
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