Welcome, Arthur Padilla - one of our newest authors and guest blogger for the week.
Arthur wrote "A Kris Medford Mystery - Two Sides Of The Same Face." Which can be found on our website at www.breakingruleswritingcompetitions.com
Discovering Kris Medford
In June of 2013, a very good friend of mine decided that life here on Earth was not what he wanted and he chose to leave. I knew him from the time of his emergence when he began to understand his gender and I was honored to be a part of his life and his journey. When he died, I was struck by the impact of the loss. I cried and became confused about my own life and why I had not found myself ready to leave. How had his life become so different than mine? How had his road taken him to such a different place? More than that I was confused and unforgiving in my willingness to have let him become so distant; I always assumed there would be time. I would see him lurking on Facebook and we would always say hello. We always said that we missed each other. But we never said how much. We never really said what we meant to one another. If I had just worked faster and harder. If I had figured this out before. And the “ifs” will probably always be there.
About a year prior to his death, I began to struggle with my own cascading emotional challenges. Since then, I have spent most of my waking hours working on the complex issue of post-traumatic stress disorder. My personal experiences and the many people I have met in my life who have been stuck, have motivated me to understand PTSD. I spent many years trudging through this murky world taking down everyone that I came in contact with. The resulting manifestations were always grand and outrageous and they slowly took everything from me before I was able to understand that I was acting out my trauma. I was ensuring that I did everything I could to manifest what I had come to believe as true. My friend was also grand and outrageous and he also lost everything. We both suffered from PTSD.
Finally, during this same year, I was struggling with my own disconnect and confusion because my partner of two years had become distant and was pushing me away. Some of it was my PTSD and some of it was her own burgeoning awareness of her gender. She came out to me about a week after I had finished my first draft of this book. We both spent the Christmas season of 2013 in a sort of stunned silence. I was stunned because I had spent the past year writing about and learning about Kris and here in my personal life, I was being invited to witness Kris’ process of living into being a transgender woman. I have been with Katherine and have witnessed her courage and commitment to resolving the dissonance that has influenced her whole life; silently pushing for freedom while feeling the waves of misunderstanding and fear as society screamed their ignorance. She has become my real life hero. She has inspired me to expand my understanding of Kris and what it means to be special.
All of this is to preface where the character Kris Medford comes from. For Kris, her message to the world is that she doesn’t have to be perfect. She just has to be willing to work at it. In this first story, she is confronted with a part of herself that she has never really met, as she becomes aware of her PTSD. The experiences in this first book force Kris to see for herself that she experiences significant physical responses to her memories and if she is threatened the part of her that has kept her alive regardless of the costs, screams to life and seeks revenge. This dance between the part she controls and the part that is unconscious begins as she confronts her lies and her denials.
She is also the one that survives. She came to life in my head days after my friend left us. She allows me to see myself, someone different, as courageous and ready for whatever is next. She allows me to believe in the power of change and that for all of those that came and went before us, she manifests hope. She allows me to believe that every day I will walk closer to being who I always wanted to be. She is the woman I am not and she is how I learned to understand my own PTSD.
Kris is how I want to manifest my understanding as I move forward in my research of PTSD. She is fiction. She is not me nor is she my friend, and she is not Katherine. Yet, for many of us who remain hidden in our own ignorance, Kris is a way for us to say to everyone who loves us that we can be different and we can be honorable, dependable, and courageous. What we are asking of ourselves is monumental. Nothing can be left a secret. Nothing can be left unsaid. I will do as Kris does and find a resolution that works for me.
I wrote this for all the reasons above and because I wanted my friend to know that I heard him. He needed to know that the road he chose was harder than mine ever was. He was my hero. I saw him as my strength when I was once again driven to the edge of my own tolerance. To him I say:
When I talk to you, I also listen to what I think you might have said. You might be gone and I won’t get a hug again or see your smile or hear your laugh. You don’t know what I felt when you would punch my shoulder like I was one of the boys; the sense of belonging you gave me will never be lost. I will always be proud of you and because of you, I have been spurred to move forward. I found Kris because she is those that went before and those still to come. I believe in hope and the power of the human spirit to persevere. And I will always believe in you, my friend.
