no cryptids here

(if you want to read the Vorkosigan saga, don't start with Memory. There's reading order info here.)

The book is about Miles Vorkosigan, a 30-something year old man (with bipolar disorder (ish), and significant physical disabilities) who, in an impressive feat of self-sabotage, has just destroyed the career he spent his entire childhood yearning for. He became who he wanted to be when he grew up, and screwed up so badly that he put thousands of lives in danger. He burnt his own dream to the ground. But he survives it, and becomes himself in the process.

When I was 18 and reading Memory for the first time, I didn't really like it. Compared to previous books in the series, nothing much happens. It's boring. Miles goes from being a chaotic space mercenary double agent to a government detective.

A decade later though, I keep on finding the quiet moment that he describes in the passage above more and more often. I have a metric fucktonne of childhood trauma that is seriously messing up my life, and I'm miserable... and I'm okay? It's hard to explain.

"It gets better" has always rung hollow to me, but there's some truth to it. Time does not guarantee any sort of healing, but to exist is to gain more experience existing. It doesn’t make things hurt less, but it gives you more space around the hurt.

Like Memory, it's a bit boring, but the truest hope that I can give you is that:

If you stick around long enough, you'll find the quiet place inside you that is yourself.

It sounds cheesy as fuck. Maybe a bit "good for you, but that's not going to happen to me." But I promise every one of the ~15 people I've asked (who are between the ages of 30 and 90) has agreed that this is A Thing. Really. And some of them don't even like me.