Over the last five months I have rewritten this blog post a billion times.
Okay. More like fifteen. But it feels like a billion.
Back in December it was a simple: Hi. This life thing is hard sometimes, isn’t it? I hope y’all are doing okay. What’s everyone reading?!
However, in January the post took a dramatic shift in tone morphing into: A terrible thing just happened to our family. So I am digging myself a hole, and I’ll be living in it now. Hope we’re still cool when I (maybe, eventually) crawl out of it. Hugs all around!
Then another emergency joined the party, and the post became this clunky disaster. Not knowing how to clean it up, I left it hanging over my head—an ominous cloud I didn’t want to face.
That’s when a global pandemic hit (as they do). The post transitioned into a rally cry for healthcare workers and staying at home to save the most vulnerable among us. It felt preachy but important.
Yet the very day I declared the post good enough, we found out my grandmother passed away. So I took a million deep breaths and crawled back into my cozy, quiet hole—the post postponed again.
Embracing being quiet is challenging. I’m attacked daily by guilt.
Shouldn’t I be doing more? Reaching out to others: seeing how they’re doing, helping them out? Shouldn’t I care about my career as an author—write daily, market?
However, what could I possibly give right now?
I am bone dry—used up, worn out.
Enter Stephenie Meyer publishing Midnight Sun after twelve years.
Twelve. Years.
In the time it took Meyer to finish Midnight Sun: our youngest daughter grew from a newborn to a middle schooler; my father and both my grandmas passed away; I earned my Creative Writing Degree; two of our kids turned eighteen; we bought our first house; I wrote four books and published two; a global pandemic sprang up—and the list goes on.
A lot of life happened during those twelve years, some of it stretching me to a breaking point. Yet I remained in one piece. And when the dust settled, the people who love me best were right beside me holding my hand.
Maybe I’m a tad bit more tired than I was twelve years ago. But I am still me.
Funny how something so random and seemingly meaningless can knock a world of sense into a person.
Soooo…I think it’s time to share the thing that happened to our family four months ago. The thing that makes me want to vomit every time I talk/type/think about it.
On Friday, January 3, 2020, my husband had a heart attack. Not just any heart attack—the widowmaker. A blood clot blocked 99% of his left anterior descending artery.
It should have killed him.
That’s not hyperbole. My husband should be dead. Doctors and nurses tell us nonstop it’s a miracle he survived.
I almost watched my best friend die in a crowded ER hallway while he held my hand.
He spent seven days in an ICU. Seven days during which I barely ate or slept. Seven days during which every time I looked at our kids I wondered how I could manage without my best friend. Seven days of terror and doubt and so so so much pain.
He was in the same ICU my dad died in. The knowledge my husband might die there too bludgeoned me.
However, he is not dead.
My husband is very much alive. He is healthy—his quick recovery baffling doctors.
And I think it’s time I take this Frankenstein’s monster of a post and let it go.
I don’t know what this means moving forward. Currently, I am not writing at all; I have no desire to market; I can’t be on social media without feeling overwhelmed; and the thought of doing anything outside of being a mom, wife, and human being is simply exhausting.
One thing I know: I’m going to fangirl hard over Midnight Sun—pull out my old Twilight shirts, listen to the movies’ soundtracks, maybe hunt down some old fanfic.
Because why not?
Why not embrace a little crazy and let my fangirl flag fly high? Why not buy a long-awaited book with a pomegranate dripping blood on the cover and squeeeeeee with my friends over a sparkling vampire falling in love with a high school girl?
Who knows what the future holds—where we’ll be twelve years from now?
Hopefully, then as now, I’ll still find joy in books and music—or just the simple act of breathing.
In the last year, life beat me up pretty badly. But I’m still here. And I still love Twilight.
So come at me, life! I’ll be right here in my quiet, cozy hole reading books and dreaming up my own stories.
And someday soon I’ll crawl out of this hole and get back into the swing of things.
Maybe. Eventually.
Who knows when?
For once, I’m in no rush.
