My Emotional Thesis

Why I started writing this way..

It was something I was going through. Something I quickly found out I wasn't alone in the experience. We were hairstylists at a high end salon and The ownwers hired a tyrant. But she didn't give herself away at first. It started with stricker rules and tough love s toned lectures. Little by little more girls were running to the back in tears. It trickled out to the front desk girls. Then down the hall into the nail room. This evil tone then crept into the break room where we all took solace and we commiserated with each other during our lunch.

One by one people quit. The tyrant hired a replacement faster than we could blink. Drones, with no emotion. No flare. My fellow creatives were dissappearing like flies. Thats when it hit me...I thought I was joking but I wrote it down. "I should write a book about this."

As I continued to work with the few friends willing to stick it out, I wrote our interactions down. I wrote the crazy things she said to us and the hours she made us stay late because she heard us talking about our fun dinner together after work that night. She would embarrass us in front of clients. Speaking of clients, we lost a few of them too. She was rude to everyone. Not a person was safe from the poison she spewed.

So I wrote. then I started to think of it like a murder mystery. Anytime someone quit, that would be a murder. I had 2 or three of them written out before we moved to Texas. My husband got a promotion. I found a new job. I put my story away. It was forgotten until, two years later and another asshole at work was cemented into my mind. That's when I remembered my story. "I'm writing a murder mystery about these crazy people at the salons I've worked at." I would tell my new clients at my new salon. I also started doing people's hair at home. I'm glad I did too because there was yet another person who was not who they perceived themselves to be. This is when I transferred my story onto a disk, then a few years later onto a cloud drive. At the time, I still didn't realize I was processing anything at all.

Several years later after I joked about writing with my clients because of more foolish behavior from coworkers and bosses, neighbors and more bosses and their husbands. I decided I needed to get this out of my head and into a book. Publishing wasn't even a thought at this point but the words came quickly. The pages filled. I was digging into the hurt and betrayal that I had lived through. My friends were excited for me and encouraged me to self publish. My clients even talked me into doing an editing party. All the feedback was truthful but I loved every bit of it. I was grow through and into someone a bit stronger.

It was a bit like writing in a journal...except I was able to get fictional revenge. The best kind. It really worked for me. It actually made me realize that it wasn't about me at all. I was affected temporarily and learned something. I am now grateful for these things I have gone through that needed to be revisited. The extra bonus is that I control the narrative and probably always have.