8/19/2020
I had such high hopes for this year. I truly, honestly, did. That may yet change, but for now, this year has turned into one of survival.
Good news is that you can grab Degara’s Mark Part 1 on Amazon (Yay! Go get it and leave me some reviews…please 😉 https://bit.ly/degarasmark)
Another bit of good news is that I’m still drafting up Degara’s Mark Part 2, hopefully to be released later this year. I’m also in a chicken anthology edited and curated by the wonderful Bokerah Brumley (check her out at: http://www.superbokerah.com), who has held my hand through a lot of writerly crap, and still manages to put up with me and my incessant whining. 😉
I also have a dark sci-fi romance that’s an Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass twist. It was supposed to be in an anthology as well, but I couldn’t make the deadline. It hurt to watch my name erased from it, my work languishing without a place to go, but this happened at my request, and for good reason.
In the midst of all this…mess…that is 2020 – the pandemic, the suction-like sound of work going down the drain thanks to the pandemic, the stressful politics, and the rollercoaster of sheer uncertainty we all seem to be riding……
…….Mom came down with (early) stage 4 small cell lung cancer.
I am, in fact, typing this very blog post from a table facing her chair as she has her 2nd day of her 2nd cycle of chemo.
So, deadlines are really no longer my own. My priorities have been throw into a blender. Chemo and Mom’s response to it lead the chaotic, sporadic way, our business that feeds us/provides electricity and shelter is second, and everything else, aside from immediate family, has been thrown aside.
Writing, though, is still happening. The words don’t flow as well, partly because my mind is always partially elsewhere and partly because my emotions are harder to tap into (survival mechanism, what can I say?).
However, it’s become my refuge. It’s become the place I can more in whimsy, frustration, great joy, and terrible fear – without unraveling and finding myself clinging to a tear-soaked floor.
And before I misrepresent my whole situation, I’d like to let you know: I’m blessed. Mom’s responding well to treatment so far. We’ve had hiccups, yes, but she is responding, and actually feeling better most days than she has in months. Our business, while not tripled in size as it was supposed to have been, is still there. Some work is still happening, bills are still being paid, and the promise of work to come still exists. I’m still sending out bids, which is a blessing. Emails and phone calls, while not as many, are still being responded to.
Life is *still* happening, and not meandering down the path of destitution and heartbreak that I feared – and continue to fear.
All-in-all, compared to many, my family and I are blessed and fortunate. And thankful for every bit of that.
However, in all this “oh, not as bad as I thought it might be” area that we seem to be in, I teeter continually on the edge of “but when is it going to get bad?” This, honestly, is perhaps my biggest fault. Not that I’m not a positive person (I am), but that the PTSD kicks in, usually at 3 am, and I find the panic. “Things are going good, so when do I need to brace myself for the blow?”
I don’t do well without some control, which is my 2nd largest fault, and so I panic about mom, I panic about work (and the current inability to make meetings – or even beg for jobs in person), I panic about homeschooling Logan (is he going to fall behind?), I panic about Josh, I panic about everything. I could be completely asleep, and then, BAM. I startle awake, and my emotional gates upon and not enough logic to bar them shut, my brain assaults me.
And this repeats, usually nightly, until exhaustion sets in. I jog, I meditate, I write, but in the dead of night, the only comfort I can feel is in a repeated, nearly chanted prayer, sobs on the back of my sleeping husband, and the hope that someday, we’ll all make it through this.
And we will. The 2020 error message will go away, life will be fixed, and positivity will once again be sent and felt.
Until then, I’ll keep praying, jogging, hugging, crying, meditating, and writing….perhaps in the hopes that any one of those things will help us all, in some small form or measure, move along.
