Someone said I should write a bit of a note of explanation about the last few chapters.
They were the hardest to write I've encountered yet. They hit deep, and hard, and brought up old feelings and pain that I had carefully forgotten. I'm glad to see it again - it makes me a little more aware of what I went through when I was younger, and gives me more empathy when talking to younger people of any sort of orientation. But, fun it wasn't.
I'm not that great a writer, and I felt pressed for time, so I didn't have a whole lot of time to polish things, and induce the feelings I wanted. So I resorted to tricks - thus, the title (though I found it fitting) and the careful not-saying about further chapters. I've been on the brink of suicide before, in the dark and alone with no one to turn to; I wanted you, the reader, to see into the same place.
Hopefully, by this time, anyone who thinks that this series will end up in a mindlessly happy ending has left. You, who are left, I hope will forgive me for whatever stress I induced within you.
But, someone needs to say the uncomfortable, the horrible things that we forget when we are in the bright lights talking to each other.
We need to remember what it is like to be in the darkness, balanced between living and dying...
Ellen