Have you ever met someone who was so intriguing, so outrageous and/or so impenitent that you weren’t quite sure how they could actually exist? As an author, I am often asked how real my characters are, or if they are all just figments of my ever rampant imagination.
Well, I did have the pleasure of meeting one such captivating and amazing woman, who for the sake of this post we will call Raven. She was of a certain age, defiantly single, apathetically well heeled, maternal though not quite motherly and determined to live life by her own rules.
She often spoke to me about excursions to New Delhi and sailing along the Seychelles, liaisons with people so renowned that I would never guess them in a million lifetimes and lovers who professed their devotion to her after years of not having set eyes on her countenance.
She’d worked for people who did not have the best interests of those whom looked like her at heart, and she consulted individuals who found it easier to throw cash at problems than rightly address them.
Raven was well accomplished; a king maker and a powerbroker. She told people what they didn’t want to hear while daring others to do the same to her. She was complex but easygoing, quite durable yet minutely fractured and fragile.
I asked her one day, with all that she had accomplished in life, what more could she want?
Everything, she told me unflinchingly.
But how? I wondered silently, only for Raven to answer my unspoken question with a hint of knowing in her brilliant smile.
I am all that I want to be and nothing I don’t.
I forgive myself daily, not ever excusing my bad behavior.
I relinquish control of the uncontrollable.
I don’t apologize for my best if it’s all I have to give.
I love with abandon, but never to abandonment.
The events of my life begin and end with my permission.
Only my pen can craft my story, my ink is the positive Type B.
Raven perplexed me. Raven provoked me. Raven inspired me.
I knew her. I’ve known her. She is indeed real.
