(Re)Starts by Patty Blount

In computer science, we rely on the reboot to fix all manner of problems. When we install or uninstall certain programs, a reboot or restart is often required to remove any lingering ghosts in the machine* and voila! Everything’s fine. A reboot simply restarts your computer and all its software services.

If only life were so simple.

Think about it. If human beings could be rebooted like computers, there’d be no such thing as PTSD. Just uninstall Trauma.exe, reboot to remove any lingering traces of the program and ta da! No need for countless hours spent in therapy, trying to undo the damage of the past. YA author Adam Silvera explores such a reality in his debut novel, MORE HAPPY THAN NOT, which I highly recommend.

The reality is human beings can’t literally start over. We can begin new experiences – a new relationship, a new school, a new career, another child, even a new identity. But we cannot literally start over. And yet phrases like starting over, starting again, a fresh new start, have become so common in our lives, they’re almost clichés.

When we talk about starting over, we’re really talking about embracing change. We’re trying to put a positive spin on something that terrifies the hell out of us.

That terror is what I try to show in my novels. For example, I used the same scene – returning to school following a traumatic event – in both SEND and SOME BOYS. In SEND, Dan Ellison’s first day at a new school is full of angst as he obsesses that everyone here will discover he’s the bully who caused someone’s suicide back in eighth grade. In SOME BOYS, Grace Collier’s typical Monday morning is infected by the growing certainty that everybody, literally every person she’s known since kindergarten, believes Zac, the boy she accused of rape, instead of her. Both stories build on that moment of terror: what will Dan do when his secret comes out…and it will? What will Grace do when everybody abandons her…and they do? It makes for compelling fiction but in real life? 

It's painfully hard.

In 2010, I learned my mother’s breast cancer was stage 4 and metastatic. What would I do when she died? She died in 2012. For a while, I felt like I might die, too. But I learned to live without her.

In 2015, I lost my day job. Two months later, I was diagnosed with an extremely painful auto-immune disease that I feared would also end my career as an author. What happened? I learned to change. I got a new job. I got a smaller, more economical car to get me there. I began treatment. I learned to use dictation software and write in the mornings now, instead of after work when my pain seems to worsen.

All the time, I’m learning to adapt to change and you know what? It’s GOOD! It’s not starting over, it’s just continuing on with a maybe a new coat of paint or a shiny pair of shoes but what’s inside is still me, still the sum of all my past experiences, traumas, and memories. I learn from mistakes, change what hasn’t worked, what hasn’t helped, and do better. Each day, I do better than the day before.

Tell me how you approach change, fresh starts and reboots! Comments are open.





*If you’re not computer savvy, don’t worry. Programs tell you when to reboot. If you are computer savvy, know that I’m referring to DLL files locked by the OS. If you know what service is impacted, you could simply restart the service, but it’s just easier all around to restart the entire computer so the right DLLs can be deleted.