It’s time
I have to face my darkest- and to me– a most shameful part of my existence for the past few years. Well, if I am going to be honest, it’s been longer than that. I choose to focus on the past couple of years because that’s when the shit hit the fan. (Literally, one time that actually happened but that’s a story for another time.) I stopped writing. I stopped doing a lot of things. I didn’t want to engage with life. Some days I didn’t want to exist. I wasn’t suicidal. I just felt done. Alone. I did have my husband and kids but my tribe? I didn’t know if I had that anymore. That is a terrifying and lonely feeling.
I knew that to be true for a while but it didn’t really hit home until my sister died. Let me back up.
When my Mom passed away in 2006, I had such an overflow of people in my life to help and offer condolences. A favorite author of mine (Shirley Jump) sent me flowers and a plant. I had an abundance of love from friends that I knew I could call on 24/7. It truly made all the difference in the world to me. Just the mere knowing that I wasn’t alone. That’s the thing. When you’re sitting in your grief, sometimes you just want to call or text someone and say, “This really sucks!” and you know you’re not imposing because they reached out sincerely and with love to tell you to do that.
When my sister died I received a couple of texts. A call or few. But for the most part it was sweet words of sympathy on Facebook (as we do). Now, before you think I am blaming anyone for this, I realize I am responsible for the majority of it. I isolated. I wasn’t the best of friends to anyone. I withdrew long before she died. There are reasons for it but that’s an entirely different story.
Then, my dad died. Actually as the southern girl I called him Daddy. I have never felt more untethered to my world than I have without him here. He was the most amazing man I knew. He would tell it like it was but with love. I was a Daddy’s girl. When he remarried there was a period of adjustment because the woman he married just wasn’t looking for additional family. We (my siblings, me, my kids, my nephews) were baggage too late in life. Talk about depression. But Daddy made sure we always knew we were the light of his life. He shared things that helped me distance myself from that pain with the private things he told me. No matter what was stolen, I was always Daddy’s girl and his own grandkids were his heart’s joy. He was the first person to hold all 5 grandkids. With Daddy, we knew we were his. And that? That got us through. He bent over backwards to make sure we knew we would always be his priority. I’m so thankful for the confidences we shared, not only after my sister passed but since my Mama died.
It had only been a bit over 2 years since my sister passed away when he lost his battle with pancreatic cancer and died. I didn’t even know how to do life at this point. I know it happens and I’m not special when it comes to loss but there comes a time when it can just be too much and it will pick you up and slam you into your new reality with no warning and nothing to prepare you. And this new life? It’s so foreign and dark and lonely. It takes everything in you to sludge through each day. Some days I wouldn’t. Some days I stayed in bed all day and slept. My dreams were a welcome respite from the grief that engulfed my very soul. At this point in my life, I had already lost a baby, a sister, and now both parents. (I won’t even go into the in-laws and other types of losses.)
Writing? Who gives a fuck? I didn’t have anything to say. Or rather, I had so much to say but why? Writing felt foreign and wrong and I couldn’t. In truth, I knew I couldn’t say everything I felt. More importantly, I didn’t want to dig into my feelings. Nope. That wasn’t going to happen. Whereas writing was once my passion and my love, I refused to even open my laptop. My desktop was nothing but a dusty, electronic enemy.
Opportunities passed me by. Friends drifted away. I found anything and everything I could to distract myself. I’d watch movies. I’d read books. I’d scroll online. But? Only from my phone. I can’t even fathom how all of my grief poured down onto my children. I hurt for how much of their mom they lost because of my grief. (For the record, they are all adults and are pretty amazing people. And? Therapy is my gift to them that keeps on giving.) Thinking about how much I stole from them and their childhoods will probably always hurt me. Guilt. Quite the bitch, huh.
So, what am I trying to say? Who knows? I just know part of my healing will come through my writing. It was once the thing that energized me, fulfilled me, and brought in an income once upon a time. It was something I would lose myself in even with the shortest of articles or posts. There was a time I couldn’t fathom not writing. That would be like asking me to stop using oxygen. I felt like they both kept me alive. Deprive me of either and I wouldn’t exist. Which in hindsight, perhaps there was a little truth to the writing part. I was barely existing. But you wanna know something?
I did the damn thing.
I wrote.
It’s time.
