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The Inspiration for the “My Life as I Knew It” Time Travel Series 4/3/2016 12:07:56 PM
Around six years ago my husband and I decided that we wanted to have children. At that point in our relationship we had been together for four years, we both had good jobs, got some traveling under our belts and had been living together for a while so we knew we were ready to settle down.
To make a very long story short: it never happened. We went through all types of fertility treatments, explored other options such as adoption and at the end of the day we realized it wasn’t meant to happen. Don’t get me wrong, it was not an easy conclusion to come to, by any means! (I’m not going to delve into the harsh details about that journey in this blog but if you’d like to read up on it, here is an article I wrote: Just Respect Our Decision) When we started trying to get pregnant I was already in my late thirties which can be a difficult time for some women to conceive, although infertility knows no age! Common to most women suffering from infertility, I blamed myself and started playing the “what if” game: what if I hadn’t waited so long to try getting pregnant? what if I hadn’t smoked when I was younger or drank so much, etc? The list could go on forever.
One day at work, while thinking about all those questions, I had a vivid picture of myself waking up one morning in one of the apartments I lived in during my twenties. It was the oddest thing because I could actually feel the panic I would have felt at suddenly waking up more than fifteen years into the past and three-thousand miles away in a time and place I had all but forgotten about. What would I do? Would I try to change the course of my life in any way? Sure, I’ve made some monumentally bad decisions in the past but those decisions are also what made me the person I am today. If I had the chance to meet my husband sooner should I take the chance of changing the course of – not only my life, but other lives – for an opportunity to try and start the family we wanted sooner?
Those of you who know a little about me know that I have always loved writing but never felt confident enough to share it with anyone and writing has been a comfort for me when going through trying times. When I got home from work that day, I sat in front of the keyboard and the story of Brianna came to life. While writing about Brianna waking up in that dingy apartment in Fullerton, not understanding what she was doing there, and looking over her twenty-six year old body and comparing it to how it looked the night before when she was in her forties, my fingers trembled while tapping at the keyboard. It truly was a surreal feeling.
JIM
Almost every character in this story is loosely based on someone who has touched my life in some way, including Jim.
I was raised in a very strict, organized religion. I was a third-generation member of this religious group so my family held some deep-seated roots and a lot was expected of me. Personally, I didn’t believe most of what I was taught but the times that I shared my doubts with my family didn’t go over very well, to say the least! So I simply went about perfunctorily attending church meetings and preaching the Word door-to-door the way I was expected to in order to avoid fights that got very ugly.
I met “Jim” at one of these church meetings. I had heard about him previously through some mutual friends and he didn’t have the best reputation. Keep in mind, he was not a bad kid. He didn’t get in trouble with the law, he finished school, didn’t use drugs, etc. However, he and his family did not attend church regularly, nor did they participate in the preaching work which is required of all members. To make things worse he was considered a flirt and he dated girls outside the faith. I didn’t care about any of this. We’re talking about someone who looked like a cross between Patrick Swayze and Kurt Russell (could you blame him for being a flirt?) And, as I mentioned, he was not a “bad kid.”
With no blessings whatsoever from my family and others in the church, Jim and I got to know each other and hit it off. Not only was he a good guy whom I had a lot in common with but he had a great sense of humor. I was never one to think much of myself; growing up I never believed that I was pretty, smart or talented so I couldn’t believe someone like him was interested in me.
After a few weeks Jim sort of disappeared from my life. I never found out what exactly happened but I could only assume it may have had something to do with my family and the church since I was given a lot of grief about seeing him. In time, I moved on and the memory of him slowly faded…until I started writing My Life as I Knew It.
After I began writing the book, memories of Jim began to pop into my mind after many years. I decided this was a sign to include him in the story and I’m so happy I did. I’ve had several comments from readers wanting to know more about him and Brianna.
Wherever “Jim” is now, I owe him a big thank you for making a brief but significant appearance in my life which, in turn, gave me another bit of inspiration for this amazing series.
You can find My Life as I Knew It and the 2nd book Life, As Is on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.
