I'm writing a book, a memoir that deals with my youth, until I was about 24. Here is a sort of preface that I wrote last night.
"What follows is an account of my youth, from my earliest memories through my undergraduate years. It’s divided in three parts of 8 years each, for a number of reasons. Other than abiding affection for the number 8 and its multiples, there are ley lines that suggest themselves in the landscape of my life and they seem to occur in increments of 8 years.
At 8 my childhood, in a lot of ways, ended.
At 16 I became a witch. And that’s the fulcrum on which this book balances. What does becoming a witch entail? For me, it meant discovering the peculiarly female nature of witchcraft and the fact that by looking at the world through a certain lens, I could define myself by the very sexy term WITCH. It meant that I wasn’t, or at least I needn’t be, a victim of patriarchal circumstance. It meant that there were other girls and women out there with whom I shared this title, this mantle, this thing that had killed us in earlier days but that hinted at the possibility of being able to save us now.