Up until a few weeks ago, I was in hell.

The past nine years have been rough. I had sudden attacks of nausea with heart palpitations and passing out, brain fog, lack of energy, and abnormal depression and anxiety. Doctors insisted it was “menopause,” “stress,” or “food poisoning.” It was after the COVID shots everything got worse: my hair fell out, I was in constant abdominal pain, and eventually, I couldn’t eat anything except oatmeal. It was all I could do to get out of bed, and, to quote Steven Belanger’s story “Blackstone,” in the Monsters in the Mills collection, “do the damn day.” Food terrified me and social situations became impossible, so I didn’t go anywhere except work. Doctors just kept telling me “I don’t know. More tests a month from now” while I was literally starving to death.

Meanwhile, the world chugged ahead. I felt abandoned, visiting my friends’ social media accounts to see them delight in life, eat things without a second thought, write stories, go places, make plans. In Britt Nicole’s song “The Sun is Rising,” she sings about a person’s hopes for the future burning, and I identified: I was being reduced to ashes and swept aside.

I thought seriously about Swedish Death Cleaning and making my will. Call me a drama queen, but when everyone tells you there’s nothing wrong with you and you know there is, you’re sick as a dog, you can barely function and that starving will eventually kill you? You lose something very important: hope.

As far as my writing, I prioritized the Spring 2024 issue of 34 Orchard, which was released with great success and, if I do say so myself, it’s a stellar issue (get your free copy here: https://34orchard.com/issue-9/). Our Zoom release cocktail hour was an absolute blast, in which I was talking to people in several different countries around the world right in my dining room; my husband’s reception at his Masonic lodge, which I planned, was an amazing day; I was honored to serve on a virtual panel for StokerCon 2024. But everything I had in progress—a short novel for an upcoming call, a screenplay due at the end of June, the finishing up of Tidings, a short story for an anthology that needed an overhaul—all of that was shelved. I couldn’t write a decent sentence if you’d tied me to a chair and forced me; my inner voice was gone. In truth, though, none of it seemed to matter. Most nights, all I had the energy for after a long day of surviving was laying on the couch and watching Netflix. I didn’t talk to too many of my friends, even though I made sure their birthday gifts went out on time. I would look around my messy house and think, oh well, weren’t those parties so glorious? Wasn’t going out and having pizza and spending time with your friends fun? How about all of those awesome vacations—aren’t you lucky you got as many as you did? I’m so glad you took photos, because you’re never going to have that again. Your life is over, be grateful for what you had and what you accomplished. Next.

I had a celestial theme for Nathan’s reception following his welcome. Why? It’s appropriate, but that’s a Masonic thing.

Aren’t these little moons cute? We put them on the tables. The little stone moons were Nathan’s idea.

Believe it or not, almost ALL of this food WENT. We had a lot of hungry mouths! It was an amazing day. I was starving, but I almost felt normal other than that. I almost felt like, ‘hey, I’ve still got it!’

That said, there were some other interesting bright spots, Read the rest of this entry →