Meet Tom Mosley

Should you write a memoir?

I’m not saying that you should, but here’s why I wrote mine and maybe it will strike an author chord with you.

Your memories are valuable. Your life is one of a kind. No one else before or after you will have lived your exact experience.

A long time ago, I lived a private hell and that had me creating a new me, every few years. A new trauma would occur in my home and I’d be faced with the realization of still being very lonely and therefore I’d attempt to figure out who I needed to be, in order to be whatever unachievable ideal my father wanted. Maybe you knew me as we grew up and you thought of me as being quite studious. Or maybe I was a goofball. Did you think I was shy? Or was I an ugly duckling wearing a gigantic orthodontic device? Was I talkative and someone you laughed with? Maybe I was playing softball and trying my best? Maybe we played string instruments together and I pretended to like it. Did I have my nose in a book, so maybe I avoided talking altogether? Maybe you watched me riding my moped all over the countryside? Did I comb my hair a lot? (I loved feathering my hair for a couple of years.) Or maybe I was a version that combined all of the above.

I kept secrets and many of those secrets involved treatment at my father’s literal hands, due to his narcissistic behavior. I was unloved and often felt like it was my fault.

I have neighborhood and school friends on my Facebook page and a few have reached out to me after reading See You Later and confirmed how skilled I was at never allowing my family life to follow me beyond my homes threshold. No one knew, well, no one, until a cute boy entered my life when I was 15.

Here’s why I wrote my memoir. I grew up in a time that did not have labels for what or who my father and mother were. It was simple, my parents were broken people raising a family and they were pouring their brokenness into each of their children. My brother slept in his bedroom a lot, like a lot a lot and stuttered, but me, I’d play for hours in my bedroom as a little girl. We lived separately within that home, my mother also spending hours in her bedroom. Our communal areas were full of loud silence, due to those painful spaces being littered with past arguments and ugliness. And if you timed entering the family room just right, a massive volcano would erupt in the family recliner, saying hateful comments and insults about you or your mother.

My life needed documenting as a manual of sorts about abuse and dysfunctional parenting, but what really needed documenting was the young man who healed me during much of it. He left our world much too soon, and he is the real reason I pushed through my stories suddenly spilling out of me. As I remembered him, I wrote about his quirks, his emotion, his vernacular, and that fabulous smile that often only surfaced for me. During my adolescence I developed a coldness within myself. I could be funny and humorous at school, but I always avoided caring about myself. I crafted an outward appearance of normalcy, but inwardly, I never thought that I’d make it to the age of 21. Now I wonder if within my premonitions about Tom dying had me subliminally knowing that at the age of 21, I’d face the greatest loss of my entire life. Could be. I have countless pages in my diaries talking about reaching 21 and if I did, I’d know that I would be alright. Tom thawed out that cold girl. And you might not believe me, but deep in my diary is a dream where I kept seeing the letter ‘M’. I even drew a picture of the letter as it had floated around my dream. I dunno, is that ‘M’ for Mosley or is it simply a dream after eating one too many Cheetos as a 14 year old? Dunno. I have so many unusual moments and many needed knowing. Why? Because there is a time when you finally realize you have moments that others might learn from or relate to.

My point is, it’s a fantasy to think about getting your life onto paper. My reality is that I did it. It took time. It took energy. And if I’m being honest, it aged me, but you all know Tom Mosley now, and in that, you know me a bit better. He needed knowing. He was incredibly selfless and I don’t know who I’d be if I hadn’t met him. Read See You Later and meet Tom Mosley or maybe you knew him and you’ll get to see bits of him that you recognize. But, I’ll introduce you to the young man that I knew and got to eventually marry. And as you meet him, you’ll also meet the real me from back then.