Creative Nonfiction

In certain stories of creative nonfiction, there can be many similarities to events that have happened to many people. Whether it is things such as the loss of a family member or problems stemming from relationships, there is at least one person in the world who has shared almost the same experience. Even with similar events, there is also the factor of each individual coming up with their own resolutions to their problems. These situations are what affect the stories of Cheryl and Suzanne.
In The Love of my Life and The Same Story, there features two main female protagonists who end up in slightly similar circumstances in certain points of their life. Both have had a family member pass away, and that death leads them to do certain things

they probably would not have done otherwise. Near the climax, they both end up becoming pregnant and ultimately deciding to go for an abortion, which in turn begins to lead into their resolutions at the end of their stories. However, their different ways of coping with their family member’s deaths, their personalities, and their ends of the stories separate them into having their own unique tales.
Starting off with the deaths, this event is the most important to each character’s story.

With the death of the mother in The Love of my Life and the father in The Same Story, both start each character’s story off and remain central to how they act during their tales. Cheryl in The Love of my Life keeps thinking about her mother and how she wishes she were still alive to remind her that the acts she is doing during the story, such as sex with multiple partners and her constant cheating on her husband, are immoral and need to be stopped. Her grief over her mother’s death takes the events of the story up until the end to finally have her begin letting go of her, with her losing her mother’s ring being symbolic of that. Likewise, Suzanne in The Same Story grieves over her father’s death and questions whether or not she should have been closer to him when he was still alive. A few months after, she meets a man and has a small relationship with him, which kicks up the rest of the plot. Though her father is not as central to the plot as Cheryl’s story, it still happens at the beginning and helps shape up the plots to both of

them.
Another interesting point is how each character portrays them throughout the story.

In the love of my life, Cheryl knows even from the beginning of the story that the thing she is doing is wrong. She sleeps around with other people, constantly cheats on her husband, and has little care about her life or direction. She constantly wishes her mother was still alive to tell her not to do anything she does in the story; she cannot cope and does not have the power in herself to stop what she is doing. Her pregnancy in the climax causes her to be in a state of denial, trying to do everything in her power to try and miscarry it, mostly through longer and longer bouts of jogging, though nothing causes her to miscarry. This also serves as a turning point in her life to try and reflect on all the things she has done. She later decides to have an abortion, divorce her husband, and get her life back together and leave her past and mother

behind.
Like Cheryl, Suzanne in The Same Story goes through similar events. She has sex, albeit with only one man, and gets pregnant because of it. Her realization causes her to be angry and upset with herself, snapping at her boyfriend when he jokes about it. She also goes through many bouts of depression, going so far as to cry whenever she is able to stop at a stoplight. Her way to cope with this problem is to drink an unhealthy amount of alcohol and caffeine to try and cope with her situation. This story focuses more on the pregnancy and how it affects her actions until the climax with her abortion.
One of the most significant differences to each character is how they perceive themselves during their stories as well as their personalities and emotions. Cheryl hates herself and applies crude terms to what she does, such as being a slut, as she feels they accurately describe her. She has a feeling of hopelessness throughout the story and stays in a constant, depressing slump even during the resolution at the end where she loses her mother’s ring in the river. Suzanne, by contrast, seems to be more aggressive about each situation she goes through and even though she uses the same terms to describe herself as Cheryl does, she does not like attributing those words to her actions in the story. She responds to actions more aggressively, such as getting angry at her boyfriend when she jokes with her about being pregnant. Her dad’s death leads to her becoming more self-destructive to both her and her child by drinking dangerous amounts of alcohol and caffeine and jogging several miles at a time in the hopes that her baby will miscarry and she will not have to schedule an abortion as a result.
The last major difference is their resolutions to their stories. Cheryl’s story resolves itself when she finally lets go of her mother, with the resolved subplots, such as the abortion and her divorce with her husband, building up to her reflections and helping her try and go on with her life without her mother’s guidance. With Suzanne’s resolution, however, it ends with her finally deciding for herself to have an abortion and cutting ties with her boyfriend. From this angle, Cheryl’s resolution ends when she accepts the death of her family member after the various subplots resolve themselves. Suzanne’s resolution has the opposite effect, with her family member affecting less of how her resolution turns out. Hers does not happen until she resolves both her pregnancy and her ties to her boyfriend, which were more prominent issues than Cheryl’s. It is interesting to see how both characters have the same subplots affecting them, but they play a different order of significance when reading their story.
Wrapping up, Cheryl and Suzanne’s stories have an interesting blend of similar subplots and reactions to outside events, but their reactions to the current events that unfold around them as well as their different ways of coping with their losses offer deep and different plots to the family death that affected them. Reading their paths they take and where they end up at the end also provide good insight to their characters and show how different people resolve their conflicts in their own ways.