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Interchange
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Secret confession: this is an old, old story.
And gosh. I was so young when I wrote this. Can you tell?
I mean, it’s not quite as whimsically naïve as my high-school fiction, but it’s getting there.
I was in uni, so I’d finished a few short stories by the time I wrote this one. But I was still feeling my way through the idea of ending a story, of having character development without slipping into didacticism, and this narrative uncertainty on my part shows, I think.
But regardless, I am proud of this story, because it represented the fruit of a very specific period in my writing life—and in my inner life, because of course, when you write from the heart a story can’t help but reflect some of your inner longings, your inner turmoil—the inner demons that you’re still busy battling.
This particular demon, I think, was one that we all face when we grow up: learning to set boundaries in our relationships.
I mean, I wasn’t in a relationship that needed boundary-setting in any specific way at the time. I was, in fact, probably engaged to my husband, if I have my timeline correct. But I’d been a very placid teen in many ways, one who lived in a boat that was rocking plenty on its own, thank you very much, so I never felt the need to do any boat-rocking of my own. I was, and fundamentally always will be, a peace-keeper and a mediator.
So while this wasn’t necessarily about setting boundaries in my current romantic relationship, it was definitely about finding the courage to set boundaries around my emotional life in general; to be brave and own my life; to refuse to drift on somebody else’s current or let indecision pressure me into a course of action that wasn’t wholly my own.
This story also signalled, in many ways, the beginning of that era in my writing, corresponding roughly with my twenties, where I had a lot of trouble forgiving naïvety—because I had been naïve once, in a rather significant way, and it had almost cost me something that I valued highly, and I was struggling to forgive myself.
This shows in later stories I wrote during that time period, where I was not so kind to characters who demonstrated any sort of naïvety at all. In fact, they usually ended up dead.
At least here we can presume that, whatever Ella decided, she is happy.