I had never thought about this. I believed memories, good or bad, were part of who I was, perhaps even what I was. I'd lived those moments and every one of them had deposited something within me, adding up to the sum of who I was on any given day.

I had this flaw, - for want of a better word - where I started things and never finished them. An initial excitement emerged, a frantic beginning, a manic middle and then... I moved on. This related both to my writing and my relationships.

The writing... As an avid reader, after I'd finish each book would come the moment of envy. Followed by the inevitable question: Why can't I do this? Thousands upon thousands of authors were managing to do it. Start, finish. I on the other hand started, always started but never finished. Story after story, time after time...

I felt I lacked something. As the years passed, I began to seek this something. I examined writers, delving into their lives; I flirted with philosophy, psychology, the metaphysical. But when you don't know what it is you're looking for, it is difficult to distinguish if and when you've found it.

I then turned inward, searching within myself, examining my own traits and beliefs. Certainly, I lacked commitment, I detested routine and I loathed feeling tied down. Yet it seemed writing required all of these. Other writers said so and said it often.

I did, too, delve into the whole 'how to write a book' industry. I devoured tips, advice, bought the eBooks and the manuals, read the blogs and all those articles: "10 ways to..." "12 handy..." "5 essential..." "The 3 most common..."

The underlying theme in all was: "Write about what you know."

This was a revelation sure, and it made perfect sense. I just couldn't apply it back then.

My relationships? Same deal. Initial excitement, frantic beginnings, manic middles and then... Pfft. I either walked away or I was left picking up pieces. Same excuses: Commitment, routine, tying down...

I felt flawed for a very long time. Until something catastrophic happened. I won't detail the reasons here but the end result was that every bit of writing I had amassed (before computers) ended up dumped in landfill. I lost everything. Thousands of pages, dozens of notebooks, diaries; scribbled thoughts and impressions, emotions, conversations with myself and others...

They say that when you capture an image with a camera, your brain doesn't record that image because you saw it through a lens, not your eyes. (Something like that anyway.) I discovered similarly that when you record something, that is when you put it down on paper, the same thing happens. Your brain does not retain it.

Losing my words I'd lost the memories too, see. I could not recall a single piece of prose, not even the odd line from the hundreds of poems I'd written. A curious and very frightening emptiness. I didn't know who I was, or who I had been most of my life! I had the person I was now, but the journey - when I trawled through my memories - lacked any substance, all validation.

It was an awful period, the aftermath. I sought out people from my past, some I'd loved, some I'd friended. Searching their memories, hoping that in doing so, I'd resurrect some of my own. But people remember things differently. Like when three people look at the same thing and come away with three separate and quite different impressions...

Then I lost my soul-mate; some of you may have read the piece 'MY FIRST KISS DIED'. He'd been there for almost all of it: teenage years, marriages, divorces, children tragedies and triumphs and every single screw-up in my convoluted journey through life. He had been my only living connection to everything I considered lost.

Dark, brooding days followed. Days without hope, moments when I almost forfeited the will to live. I hadn't put pen to paper for two years. I had no words, riding instead long empty hours on trains and busses, staring blankly out of dusty windows. Who was I? What was I?

"Write about what you know." This simple phrase saved me. It had lingered in my mind and I began writing a memoir, suddenly and unexpectedly one day. Went right back, to the beginning, to the things I'd never dared put on paper, using the second person voice. You saw this... You felt this... You thought this... This and this was done to you...

The buffer offered by this second person voice got me through the evil in my childhood, carried me through subsequent times and places, people and situations. I gave everything over to the pages through this you. I wrote for months on end until suddenly, one morning, I found myself typing THE END.

I had done it. I had completed something for the very first time. And in doing so I understood that memory is indeed a prison. I had been trapped in perpetual childhood; equally trying to escape that first dark and damp basement and in turn recreating new versions of it. Over and over, in everyone I met, in everything I did.

I also accepted the loss of my writing after this memoir. I was able to do so because I understood how those lost words had been a prison too. Within them lived the descriptions of every new attempt at freedom, every new recreation of that first basement. I cannot possibly describe the relief this acceptance brought. What I had assumed my greatest tragedy had in fact been my true salvation.

Who am I now? I am a writer, the label fitting comfortably, the words flowing within a disciplined, committed, routine environment. I am those authors I once envied. I am also free, no longer imprisoned by my memory.