There are moments in life that you want to remember in vivid detail and replay on a loop through your mind; the early days of an intense romance, the moment when one of your children makes you proud, getting great news about the health of a parent who’s been sick. When I’m calm and content with a bit of free time, these are a few of the memories from my life that I enjoy. Sometimes though, the uninvited visions show up instead; an outboard propeller on an old boat, visible between the two tips of my water skis as I float, waiting. Waiting for the nightmare that followed.
In my novel Beautiful Bad, the book reveals early on that the protagonist Maddie has suffered a blow to her head during a camping accident leaving her physically scarred. As the story plays out, it becomes increasingly evident that she has a far worse injury which is invisible to the eye. She carries with her the traumatic memory of a boating accident when she was a girl, the aftermath of which has tainted her life in drastic and ultimately fatal ways.
The description of Maddie’s harrowing boating accident in Beautiful Bad is saved until nearly the end of the book, as a means to understanding her better, but it was the first chapter I wrote. Like Maddie says just before she begins to tell the story, I also had been thinking about my own accident my entire life.
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My grandmother had died. Not long after, my grandfather remarried a nice lady who lived in a little house on the shore of Lake Tapawingo in Missouri. I was eleven and this was all very exciting because now we had access to a lake house and a boat. My grandfather invited us all over to go water-skiing. My sister was home from college and my parents drove us out for the visit. It was a beautiful summer day; the sky was a bright blue and we were all happy to be on the water. The problem was that the boat was old, had a rusty outboard propeller, and my grandfather was starting to act confused in his old age. Worst of all, it wasn’t his boat and he didn’t really know how to operate it.
For a long time afterwards, my memories of the accident came unbidden and presented themselves to me as a horrific slide-show that left me exhausted and depressed. The first image was when I was in the water looking towards the boat and viewing it between the tips of my water-skis. The second image was bubbles, froth and lake scum, accompanied by the sensation that I was being tumbled about helplessly. Then there was a loud splash and my dad was beside me. The churning water settled but I couldn’t move. The rope tow I’d been holding had somehow become wrapped around the propeller. It took me a second to realize that the rope tow was wrapped around my body as well, and I was lashed to the propeller, my head about a foot under the surface of the lake. I watched as my dad took great gulps of air and then tread water in front of me, trying to untangle the rope. I watched him fail. I watched him panic. I can still see his face, terror mounting. Then there was the moment when I couldn’t hold on any longer and my mouth opened, desperate for air but filling with water. It was then, right before I lost consciousness, that my tiny, terrified mom reached down, grabbed me around the wrists and tried to yank me out so hard she pulled my arms out of my shoulder sockets.
After I’d stopped struggling frantically and passed out, it was my quiet, steady, studious sister who finally managed to unfasten the life-jacket straps that had become entangled in the giant knot of rope and pull me free.
That accident, rescue, and subsequent week in the hospital affected my life in many ways, some bad but also some good. As I got older and began to travel a lot on my own I always believed that I had more courage because I felt I’d already seen what it was like to die. But, I was reckless and took chances I shouldn’t have, because I also felt like I was not supposed to still be alive. These complicated feelings helped me shape the main character of Beautiful Bad and my accident became her accident, with some embellishment.
In the book, Maddie attempts to address the anxiety she feels through “writing therapy.” In reality, I did much the same thing. By writing about my accident I was able to step back and get a clearer picture. No longer was my traumatic episode just snapshots of desperation. I chose to focus on the positive; my parents and sister loved me dearly and did everything they could to save me. After years of wondering why I struggled with self-destructive impulses I looked at what I’d written and realized that my near drowning had left me with post-traumatic stress disorder. A lot of my “inexplicable” behaviors were actually quite common in people who have had such accidents. I found that comforting. I was able to use this discovery as part of Maddie’s character development in my book.
I felt immense relief after writing that first chapter, and it turned out to be hugely pivotal in Maddie’s arc as well as crucial to the story as a whole. By writing about my trauma, I was able to lessen it; not make it go away but make it more bearable. Now I’m finally able to feel the memory of that afternoon coming over me and not be paralyzed by the intensity of the shock and fear.
I feel like I own it now.
