#7 Looking for Truth

My memoir is about centering and focusing on what is most important in my life, the elimination of outside people and factors that affect me negatively and inhibit my performance. My story is somewhat unique because the main focus essentially takes place over the course of one hour, a single hour during my summer. All the details I included are true to a ‘T’ and I think I should add even more details just so I can convey the big impact this experience had on me. The details support my focus of finding myself, but I need to elaborate even further.

My story is told sequentially, but I do not mention specific time differences. I begin with my arrival at camp, then skim over a few days, and then end on my experience that took place a week into the session. I believe it is easy to follow, I do mention just enough time frames for my reader to understand. I included minimal dialogue, most of which is between myself and a child who is non-verbal. Working with children who do not communicate through verbal language makes it easier for me to re-call ‘conversations,’ because I can vividly remember what I said to him. A major part of my memoir is when Alex speaks to me through sign language, which a completely valid type of communication and I can re-call exactly what signs he used because it was such a great moment.

I think I need to include more of my experience or compassion for working with kids with autism in the beginning of my story, otherwise my audience doesn’t know how much I truly care. As in all of my writing I want to be honest and tell the complete truth, this is a story about how I was not proud of myself. I let a man get in the way of my life, my work, my thoughts which I am very ashamed of. But I need to be honest about how I let myself down and more importantly how this experience made me pick myself back up.

I hope that I do not come off as the heart broken girl who feels sorry for herself. I want to focus more on Alex and my time spent with him instead of Yogev, the man I was love sick for. In order for my story to be ‘felt’ by others I need to include more imagery and describe the weather, woods, field, exactly how that summer day felt in humid upstate NY. In my head the scenery played a major role in my experience, but I barely touched upon it so far.