I didn't know how important his approval was . . . until now.

You know, it’s absolutely amazing to me how much time we spend trying to make others proud of us in our lives without even realizing it. As children we seek our parents’ approval almost daily in the early years, a little less throughout adolescence, and again more frequently as we enter post high school life and begin to make our own way in the world. For some, we realize how important our parents’ approval is to us, but for most it’s something we give little thought to when making life changing decisions. We think we are making decisions based on what we want to do, or what we think is best for us. But in reality, whether we know it or not, most of us are actually making decisions that we hope will make our parents proud. Their approval means more than we care to admit most of the time and for some of us, it means more than we ever thought was possible.

For me, it was not so much my parents I was trying to make proud of my actions and decisions in junior high and high school, and I’ve only recently discovered that while I thought I had outgrown that stage of my life, I have been seeking his approval ever since. When I was 12 I met someone who would become my mentor and eventually one of my best friends growing up. He was a teacher named Jack who had an uncommon talent at reading moods in adolescent youths and determining which of them required his assistance with ‘outside issues.’ As a somewhat troubled adolescent who went through many periods of depression and managed to somehow make it through each of them, Jack was my lifeline more than once. I clung to his hope for a better tomorrow, his encouraging words, and his smile on my darkest days. On the better ones, I simply enjoyed being in his presence, listening to whatever he wanted to talk about, and occasionally sharing a laugh or two. I knew back then that I was making decisions that I thought would make him proud, it was part of what got me through those turbulent times, but I never realized that it was something that would stick with me for the remainder of my life.

Last fall I began a journey, a new writing project based on an idea I had many years ago and a story I use to tell myself at night to help me fall asleep. It took place in my home town and was about a girl who felt lost, alone, and when she thought she had nowhere left to go for safety, she managed to end up on the doorstep of a friends house who gladly gave her a place to stay for a while. That lost girl was me, and the friend was, of course, my mentor Jack, most of the time anyway as a few other adults in my life did fill that role on occasion. It was partly based on my real fear that coming out to my parents would result in them kicking me out of their house, but it quickly became a simple metaphor for the way I was feeling most of my life in that little town; lost, alone, a misfit who belonged nowhere and simply longed for someplace to fit in and feel safe, and being in the presence of Jack always made me feel safe.

As I began typing the story and developing it into what has now become my first almost published book (deal in the works, book release to be determined), I thought I was simply retelling that story and developing it into a full length novel. However, as I continued to refine the story and characters in it, I began to notice a trend forming in those pages of text. Eventually, it dawned on me that what I was really doing was creating an open letter to Jack explaining to him things I had been keeping locked inside my own head since my junior high and high school days. The fictional characters in the book began to take on personality traits of both myself, as the scared girl, and Jack, as her mentor and friend. By the time I was finished with the third draft I had trouble separating the characters in the book from their real life inspirations and, once I accepted that it was something I needed to keep in tact to make the story more powerful, I began to openly use the chapters in the book as a means of conveying my true thoughts and feelings about my past life in that small town and my relationship with Jack, both past and present. It became a means to show Jack how I viewed our friendship both then and now and how important he was to me growing up. It was something I always wished I could put into words and make him understand, yet every time I tried I failed. Through the pages of this book, I found my words and finally managed to convey that message loud and clear.

Tonight, while performing my routine evening check of e-mail, I learned just how proud of me Jack is, and always has been. Tonight I realized that my goal of showing him my view of the world through my writing was a success, and I was unprepared for the flood of emotions that came with reading that e-mail. Before I made it to the end I was in tears, yet I was not sad. I am still at a loss for words to describe the feeling; maybe it falls into that rare category of things that just can’t be captured with words no matter how hard we try. I realized tonight that one of my goals in life as a whole has been to make my parents proud, which I know I have done many times over, but also to make Jack, my mentor and friend proud of me. And tonight, in reading his response to the finished version of this story, I know that I have done exactly that. Project Complete!

I still have a little work to do on this project before I can put it to bed completely, but I now know that it has served its purpose in my life. It has allowed me to heal some old wounds, realize fully what an impact Jack had on me, and muster the courage to walk back into his life. For me, though the success of the book in the mass market is yet to be seen, it has been a success. It is my first completed novel, it is a gift to those who made it possible, and it is a glimpse at the world through my eyes both growing up and present day.