Return to Me

Hello! We meet again, at last. After the crushing loss of my sweet, irreplaceable soul mate Michael O' Rourke in 2012 (June 30th at 2:10 in the afternoon; I just happened to look down at my phone the moment the doctors must have 'called' his death, 'cause it's on his death certificate), I stopped writing. It felt for all the world like words had left me. My heart was shattered, my soul was shattered. I felt like I would never write another creative word...and for almost five years, I've been able to ignore the pain of writing's absence from my life. Amazingly, through many, many lonely and sad nights, then a series of profound events that have reshaped me almost from scratch...I've found myself longing to write again; it's always been a part of me. At this point, although I would dearly love to be able to make a living at this comfortable habit, I've accepted that this honestly is a daunting prospect. After all this time and all that has happened, I'm tired. In every corner of my being I am tired. And I think I lack the energy to make myself a successful writer from the ground up, as the best in history have done. However, there is always a blog! And lately several friends in my new life have suggested I try it-- TADA! Here I go again:) Notice the name of my blog? I am here. I have thoughts. They are worth sharing. I want to share about my writing, my relationships (without going into any detail), my aspirations in this new city life. After Michael died it took about three years, but I finally found a lawyer who could help me sell the home we'd bought together, without illegally excluding his parents who held a legal claim to the property as his next of kin. I would have thought it utterly impossible...but miracles happen all the time at my church, which is where I found this man. Out of finding him, I was introduced to a realtor who also helped me ready and sell the "lemon house" that was originally a HUD house, vacant for a year before we got it having fallen into serious disrepair. I had done a lot to it in the preceding years-- a lot of it with Michael-- but the house and the property were far more than I could maintain all by myself. So I thought it was un-sellable, but this Miracle Man somehow found a way to make even that happen, and I ended up even making a small profit. This made it possible, along with the happy circumstance of an available one-room apartment just before I had to be out of my house-- to an apartment in exciting down town! Yes it's still Grand Rapids and not New York, but the smallness of it only makes it more dear to me. I'm learning my way around and getting out there into the social world more and more all the time. So a return to writing is the long-overdue last step in returning to myself. It's taken a lot of soul searching; I feel like I must have been in shock for a year after Michael died. How could I write anything that he wasn't going to critique with his boyish humor to make me smile? How could I succeed at a writing career AT ALL without him? Why would I? It was the same right after my dad died in 2006. I didn't want to do anything literary for the longest time...because I couldn't hear his voice telling me if it was good or bad, or that he was proud of me. But I got through that, by telling myself that a father expects to die before his children...and kids expect to outlive their parents. But Michael was just a two years older than me. Thirty-three years old when he died. Our souls were practically the same age-- in the thousands:) He was young at heart and I was seriously serious enough for both of us. But somehow we met in the middle and "got" each other on the deepest level. Without that, what was left to inspire me in this world? Well now in his favorite season, I return to a creative side of life that I've long, long neglected. It's an outlet for my musings, frustrations, aspirations, (possible advice), hopes and desires (as much as can comfortably be shared)...care to join my adventure?