Gods started as a song.
I suppose a lot of stories do, now that I’m thinking about it.
How you met your partner on the dance floor as Shut Up and Dance was playing.
How your first kiss was to Just a Kiss by Lady A.
How you were both mouthing the words to the song playing over the speakers at the grocery store while shopping for diapers for your firstborn.
Everything can be tied to music; our whole lives have a soundtrack that we rarely keep tabs on.
But this one, We Would Be Gods, started with a Barenaked Ladies song and a failed attempt at a now-defunct writing challenge (you know the one).
Before the Fall
It was 2013. I worked for a megacorporation, and I hated it. Every minute of my day was forced smiles and politeness. I was making barely enough to survive to the next paycheck and sinking lower into a depression that my partner at the time refused to admit was real.
In the back office of the hotel I was working at 50–70 hours a week, there was a computer. A computer that housed millions of songs bootlegged from before Napster and Limewire existed, all the way through to current day.
Because of this computer, I was able to listen to songs I hadn’t heard in years, and some I haven’t listened to since.
But there was one BNL song that I had never heard (which is WILD because at this point it was 15 years old), and it came on one day.
I was sitting at my computer, typing uselessly into a program older than me, and it hit me like a sack of bricks.
“I met you before the fall of Rome and I begged you to let me take you home. You were wrong, I was right, you said good-bye, I said goodnight.”
Was there a world where a love could span centuries and never fade? Was there such a timeline, such a space for something that important?
The first time I tried to write it was garbage. I did it wrong. They weren’t in love; they were toxic. They kept circling around each other for centuries, trying (and failing) to make it last.
Trying Again
But a few years later, I tried again. I had been single for a while at this point. Healing from the CPTSD that came from multiple long-term relationships with narcissists and manipulators. I was no contact with my mother. I knew what it meant to be loved for who I was, not what I could do for people, because of my friends.
So I tried again.
As my favorite quote says:
“I have this dream of being whole. Of not going to sleep each night, wanting.
But still sometimes, when the wind is warm or the crickets sing...
I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for.”
A Love Worth Waiting For
A love that time will lie down and be still for.
That time itself will stop for.
I wanted it. But more importantly, I wanted to write it.
As with all my stories, I wrote the book I wanted to read. The characters I wanted to take a journey with.
In doing so, I found Lethe and Colm. I found Styx. I found myself too.
I knew as soon as I finished it that I wouldn’t settle for anything less than that love.
And you know what, dear reader? I didn’t.
I found it. I found the man that loves me regardless of my faults, my broken bits. Some days he loves me more because of them. And that, friend, is worth the wait.