Writing the “Suck”

They say that when you’ve lost someone, or you’re going through a difficult time, it’s a good idea to write down what you’re feeling. Sometimes it’s easier to articulate the emotions on a page rather than spew them out verbally. Since my mom died in March, I’ve been hit with waves of grief and anger. I can ride out some of the waves and wait for calmer waters, but others crash over me and drag me under, and it’s all I can do to keep my head above the surface. My therapist says that that’s when I need to “feel the suck.” Because, what else are you supposed to do? I can’t shut out my emotions and ignore how I feel because I know that’ll be more damaging to me in the end. So I feel the suck, and I thought, since the tidal wave is so prevalent right now, I’d write about it too.

I attended a grief journaling workshop a week ago, which is probably what helped give me the strength to write more about what’s happened. To be honest, I almost didn’t attend the course. I felt good last Sunday. I was calm, happy, and motivated, and I knew attending the session would likely trigger all the other painful emotions. It was important, so I went and wrote about what was haunting me the most about my mom’s death. It wasn’t the fact she was dead that hurt so much, it was hearing the three words that changed everything; “Mom just died.” Bless my father’s soul for having the strength to call me and tell me what had happened. I never knew how much three little words could hurt and change things.

(And Dad, if you’re reading this, I’m not saying any of this to make you feel bad. That’s not the intent at all. I love you.)

So I wrote about it. I wrote about how the words haunt me periodically, as if reminding me that, yes, this really did happen. Like my mom’s ashes on the shelf aren’t proof enough. And I realized more and more just how angry I am that it happened. I’m not mad at my mom (though I’m sure I hold some resentment towards her that she left).

I’m angry that I didn’t get to say goodbye. I’m angry that I didn’t make that final phone call to her. I’m angry that I feel like I chose writing over making that call. I’m angry I didn’t get one more chance to say “I love you.” And I’m angry that I didn’t try to do anything to save her, even though her death certificate indicates that, no matter what we did, she likely would have died anyway. But I’m still angry. I just want one more moment to talk to her, to tell her how sorry I am and reiterate how much I love her. I want to feel her hug, her touch, see her smile, hear her voice. 

But she’s gone.

And so I’m feeling the suck and waiting for the wave to ebb and flow so I can take a breath and keep moving forward. At the same time, I’m listening to songs that make me think of my mom like Plumb’s “Lord, I’m Ready Now,” Sara Bareilles’ “She Used to Be Mine,” and even Hercules’ “Go the Distance.” Music has always played an important role in my life, and when I need to feel, when I shut out my emotions, music forces me to face them.

I don’t know what’s going to happen from here. I can’t look too far in the future because to think about my mom not being there is just too damn sad. And with Covid, it’s kind of hard to think about what’s going to come next. So it’s put a block on my writing. Sometimes the words come, but more often than not these days, I find myself dreading going to my computer to put a story down on paper. It’s like that creativity just isn’t there any more, even though it is…was?…my passion. I miss the fire I feel when I put words down on paper. I miss the excitement and the joy that comes from creating new worlds and characters. I feel empty, like the joy of writing just kind of deflated when my mom died.

People keep telling me to take time and be patient, it’ll come back. Wednesday will be 4 months since mom left. And while I’m coming to terms with it to a degree, there’s still a little guilt echoing inside of me in regards to my writing. Have I put my writing, my literary career, too much before family? Did I miss spending important time with my family because I was too focused on getting my books done?

When I held my last book launch, my mom had wanted to come, but I told her I wasn’t quite ready for that yet. She and I were still working on our relationship, and we were still working on boundaries. In the back of my mind I thought, “Well, what if I don’t let her come and she dies?” I figured it was just my typical anxiety nagging at my  brain. I was going to have signings in the summer, after all.

Mom died two weeks later.

So yeah, I’m feeling the suck, and the anger, and the grief, and the guilt. I know it takes time to heal, but I don’t feel like I have something normal to fall back on, because our world is very much not normal right now. And writing…is more of a burden than a joy, no matter how much it pains me to say that.

So what do I do? Do I just wait patiently for that muse to come back? Do I try to find some other passion in case the one for writing doesn’t return? Do I just deal with the suck?

I’m never going to be the same person I was before March 8th, 2020, and I keep hoping that the person who comes out of it will be stronger and be able to find peace in herself. Until then, I keep taking one day at a time. No day but today, right?

 

A Picture of Grief

This is the first time that I’ve written anything publicly since my mother passed away suddenly on March 8th, excluding her obituary and her eulogy. To be honest, it felt like the creativity completely went out of me, and that my relationship with writing left me along with my mother. I cried. I went to therapy. I talked to loved ones and friends about it. But it didn’t feel like I was completely letting it out. Yes, I was grieving, but I was angry too. Angry at what, I don’t really know. At the world for going to hell when all I wanted to do was mourn my mom. Angry that I never got to have that last phone call with her. Angry that it happened at all, and I couldn’t somehow save her.

That anger built up and exploded at one of my own books. Between crying and screaming like a wounded animal, unleashing a sound I have never made before, I ripped apart my most recent book, Wolf Pit. Literally, I tore it into pieces and threw it against the wall and yelled at it, like somehow that would make the grief better.

And it helped. For a time.

For a brief moment, I could breathe a little easier, and I shocked myself back into reality and kind of realized that my grief made me lash out at my own writing. Wolf Pit was the last book my mom read. And she died before we could even talk about it.

You have to understand, ever since I was a child, my mom was there for me whenever I talked about my writing. She’d stay up late to read over school papers to make sure I hadn’t screwed up my thesis statement, or used the wrong words. She’d listen patiently as I spewed out story ideas and drew diagrams for her of wolf spirits, gods, magic systems, new worlds, etc. She might not have always understood, but she listened. And it was far from where I had started.

I never really liked to read when I was a child. Instead, I wanted her or my dad to read to me. She was strict about it, though. When I started memorizing books from listening to her and reciting them back to her to act like I was reading, she caught me, and she’d make me pick a harder book. But that eventually instilled in me a love for the written word. Books took me away to new worlds, and I was introduced to a hobby that helped me escape anxiety and depression (not that I recognized it at that time).

My favorite book was Aunt Isabel Tells a Good One, by Kate Duke. This book had everything. Adventure. A child and an adult weaving a story together. My first heroine (in mouse form). The heroine saving a prince. Romance. I loved it, and I read it over and over both with her and by myself.

When I started writing my own books, she encouraged me to read them to her, including fanfiction. I remember printing off pages of my Redwall fanfiction that I could read to her late at night while we were visiting my grandparents in Wisconsin. We’d stay up so long, her on the bed, me, curled up on a comfortable cot. I loved it.

There was this one time when I gave her the final chapters of a trilogy I’d written. After she was finished, she didn’t say a word to me. She just went to bed. I thought she hated it, but she told me the next day that the ending (and what I did to a character) made her so sad she just had to go to bed. I felt bad…for a second, but then that devilish author in me did a happy dance that I could illicit such an emotion from her.

Throughout my writing journey, she was always there, either listening to my plots, or reading the books once they were completed. Even when our relationship struggled, we could still share our love of stories and writing together. She was the first person to get me interested in one of my favorite authors, Mercedes Lackey. And when I was helping my dad clean up the house after she died, guess what books I found in a bag next to the tv…ones by Mercedes Lackey. The same ones that had inspired me to read the series.

I know she’s still with me in spirit, but I also know that I’ll never hear her voice again. Never really be able to share my ideas and discuss books with her ever again, and it hurts. It might be small in comparison to everything else right now, but my mother helped fuel my love of reading and writing. So when she died, a little of my writing spirit died with her.

I’ll go back to it eventually, I know that. Mom wouldn’t want me to quit, especially not after how I ended Wolf Pit. And my love and memories of her can live on in my craft, using what she taught me. I just wish to God I could talk to her about what she thought, listen to her advice, and hear her encouragement one last time.

Keep your loved ones close, give them hugs, and remember to tell them you love them.

I miss you, Mom.