(This relates to a continuing series, An Assault in Venice. Part 1 starts here.)
Before I started publicly blogging about Jeanette and including the gruesome details of her assault from my perspective, I sent her an email. It was a—hey, I’m thinking of writing about this and I want to make sure it’s okay with you—email.
She wrote back:
Write, write, write! I will want to read it. I’d love to hear your story.
I was both excited and afraid. I was excited because I’ve wanted to write this story for a long time. From a purely story perspective, this is a knockout. But I was afraid to write it because on a personal level, this story is filled with emotional landmines and psychological trapdoors. What’s clear is that my number one goal through the event was to protect Jeanette as much as I could, and it seems as though that has continued with time.
Certain recent events have transpired that have drawn me toward the telling of this tale. Those events will be revealed over time. And the public forum of blogging was really just a tool to keep me writing, which has been highly effective.
Now that we’re public, and there are readers who keep encouraging me to continue (thank you!), I thought it would be fun to “break the fourth wall” and include a few words from Jeanette. This morning she sent me the following email…
(more…)