Non Fiction

My Journey Climbing Through Windows

Kimberly Zeidner

You tell everyone it’s fiction, but it’s not fiction. People write about what they know and what people know best is their own lives.

I began writing “Climbing Through Windows” on January 1, 2005. There was no particular reason or motivation behind it. I just wanted to write about things that were going on in my life, but in a form different than a journal or diary. Every so often I would sit down and write a little about what had been going on in the crazy world of Katie, Ashton, Ducky, Robert and Armando. I didn’t tell anyone I was doing it; not Joey, Emily, Christian, Amy or even Autumn.

To be completely honest, I don’t remember whom I first told about my novel or how I brought it up. What I do recall was that everyone was instructed one very important thing: DON’T TELL ASHTON! I didn’t want him to know that there was proof of the things that had happened between us, but when my friends began referring to themselves and each other by their characters’ names, Ashton was finally informed as to what was going on. He took it well, but he hated the fact that I wouldn’t let him read it.

Writing my story was fairly easy, but getting it published was a much more difficult task. In the working world, employers want to hire people with experience and the wonderful world of writing is no exception. It took a lot of diligence and rejection, but after a few months (a considerably short period of time), I was finally informed that my hard work had paid off.

While I was trying to get my novel published, my life was changing drastically. My core group of friends, the same friends my characters were based on, had fallen apart for various reasons. The people that I always turned to for support, the people that knew all of my deepest secrets and most genuine emotions, were no longer there for me. Even Ashton and I stopped speaking, which was traumatic in itself.

When “Climbing Through Windows” was pre-released, I was surprised at how many people approached me to express their congratulations and tell me they bought my novel. It was weird, but I felt like a local celebrity. Unfortunately, when you write a story based on actual events, you fear what the people involved are going to think, especially when those people were once and no longer your friends. I began to panic. No one I knew had experienced anything like this, so I had no situation to compare it to. I couldn’t reassure myself, “Well, when it happened to so-and-so, they did this.” I was having my fifteen minutes of fame, but I couldn’t enjoy it.

My biggest concern was what Ashton was going to think. While it had seemed far-fetched that “Climbing Through Windows” would ever become a bound book that Ashton would see, it never occurred to me that he and I would be on bad terms when it did see the light of day. Would he hate me for writing it? Would he think I was pathetic?

When his copy was delivered to my office early one morning, I thought I would be sick. It took a while to gather my courage, but I finally called him and agreed to meet up with him later in the day. After months of debating over whether or not I should write the personal inscription inside that I so wanted to say, I decided I had nothing left to lose; everything would be out in the open soon enough.

I delivered the novel to Ashton that night and instructed him to hug me one last time, for he might never want to again. I left his house knowing that, from that moment on, nothing would ever be the same. I was surprised when Ashton called soon after I left him. With excitement in his voice, he told me that he had pictures of the events I described in the book and was marking them off as he went along. Then he said the words that I most feared to hear. “About page one ninety-nine,” he began, referring to the message I had left him there. “That is the single most beautiful thing anyone has ever said to me. It nearly brought me to tears.”

I hung up with him and burst into tears of my own. I had made the right decision in speaking my final peace through a private, heart-felt message. A few hours later, when he reached the conclusion, I received a text message that said that I’d never know how touched he truly was. Somehow, I think I do know.

The next day, not only had I discovered that he told everyone we knew about the story, and their character’s name, and how much he loved it, but he also left me a seemingly anonymous review to read on my publisher’s website. The message was written by “Chapter 22, Page 109, Line 1, Word 9.” Realizing that I didn’t have a copy of the book with me, I was relieved when I found a digital file saved on my computer. Frantically, I tried to decipher the secret code. I skimmed through to the location and found the name I was being led to: Ashton. I went back to reading what he had to say and was immediately impressed at how well he had picked up on the metaphors and other writing tools I had used throughout the story.

A few days later, I met up with Ashton at “The Wish,” the bar referred to in my story. He embraced me so strongly that even Joey noted how intense and emotional it was. When I was ready to leave the bar, he embraced me again just as tightly, but before letting me leave, he instructed me to go home and reread Chapter One while listening to a particular song. With much anticipation and curiosity, I raced home and got comfortable in my bed as I found the song on my I-pod, opened the book to the designated chapter and began my journey. And what an emotional one it was! It was like the song was written for us; it was written for us to describe exactly how we were feeling as we read about our history together.

At four in the morning, we finally discussed how Ashton felt about what was written about him. He told me that while there were parts in the novel that hurt him, I gave him an amazingly special gift that meant more to him than words could ever express. I had spent many sleepless nights worrying about his reaction and I finally concluded (thankfully) that it was all for nothing. Too bad there’s no guide to writing that could have warned me about that!

My mother always cautioned me to not write secrets down. “If you do, then there is proof that they were said and you will regret it,” she told me. After being estranged with Ashton for six months, I felt like I no longer knew this guy who I loved for three years. That’s an odd feeling. But while he read the novel and the words I can’t take back, he relived our past and, for that moment in time, he once again became that guy I knew and loved. Needless to say, I have no regrets.

So sure, time has passed and our lives are different. It’s unfortunate and painful, but it happens. In fact, what great love story doesn’t end in tragedy? The difference between Juliet and me is that, instead of committing suicide, I wrote about the greatest love of my life.

There’s a fine line between fact and fiction. So should you fear the blurring of those lines when attempting to make your dream of writing a novel come true? Absolutely not! We’re always told to live our life with no regrets. My advice is to make sure you write it all down.

“We’ll always have Paris,” Humphrey Bogart said to Ingrid Bergman in “Casablanca.” Well, all Katie has left to say to Ashton is, “We’ll always have ‘Climbing Through Windows.’”