I mean, I always knew it would be over someday. Jesse’s story has been plotted out, beginning to end, since the first day. I’ve known since May 20th, 2007 how this would go. That’s a really long time, when you stop to look at it. For nine years, I’ve had this guy living in my head. I feel like I know him just as well as I know any real person in my life. Maybe better.
How do I say goodbye to that? I have to, of course. The story ends, like I always knew it would. I wonder, three years from now, five years from now, will I think “I wonder what Jesse is up to now?” and be tempted to write about him again? Right now, I have no plans to. The only thing worse than a story ending is a story dragging out long past its natural life. No zombie stories here, thank you very much!
Jesse’s been good to me. Better than I have been to him, that’s for sure. I have dreams that in some alternate universe, Jesse probably hates my guts for all that I’ve put him through. But he’s soldiered on, coming out on top against long odds again and again.
All I have to do is start typing the words. Some of them will be a surprise to me, because even though I know how it goes, I don’t know how it gets there. Some of them have been floating around in the dark spaces of my brain for nine years. Once I put them down on paper (on computer screen), they’re out. There will be a hole in my cranium where they used to be. There will be a hole where Jesse used to be.
So I make notes, for now.
Because I’m not ready to write it just yet.
