Our final project, writing a myth based on a mythology that could be retold in a modern setting that also drew inspiration from some part of your life, ended up being far more introspective than I first thought it would be.
As a fiction writer, there is a certain amount of yourself that you insert into your story, it is just something that happens although it might not always be intentional. This time, I was tasked with making that be a large part of the project. It was quite difficult to get to a place where I felt comfortable with insert myself and my life into the story, although I had known from the very beginning that that had been my intention.
The myth I chose first, Hades and Persephone–an old, tragic love story that I considered to be very misunderstood. I had loved the story since I was a child, which perhaps did not bode well for my future, but that is beside the point. At first, I consulted my boyfriend and he very much wanted me to pose him as Hades and myself as Persephone, but due to the tragic ending that I had in mind, I did not want to put that sort of energy or onto our relationship, as I was paranoid that if I wrote a story about two lovers who were pulled apart continuously, that it would not be good for our future.
Afterwards, however, I realized that the part of my life that best fit the scene would have been the relationship and love I had for my friend Donovan. He was a couple years older than I was, when we met I was 12 and quite a strange child, but he put up with me and helped me to grow into a fully-formed person by the time I was 16. To tell the truth, I had at the very least, had a crush on him since the moment I met him, a tall boy with ice blue eyes and a smile that would make anyone blush. I can remember very distinctly when he sat me down and told me that our friends had started to ask us if we had been dating–he said he felt guilty when he realized that was something he would not be against, as I was still young and he felt like he was taking advantage of the difference in our ages.
I couldn’t have cared less and we began a sort of romance that was overtly asexual, it was pure and loving although it was not without it’s tempests.
Within the few months, however, tragedy struck and his father abruptly passed away. He would then spiral into a pit of depression, and soon decided that for his mental health, he and one of his closest friends would go on a short two-week vacation and then he would return home and things would go back to normal.
He never did return home. It has been over three years now since he was heard from by anyone, his family, his friends, anyone–which is where I find my twist in my myth–the character that is based off of Hades disappears after his love goes back to where she was from.
