A Year and a Half Later

May 1st marked a year and a half from the day of my accident. It was just another day of rehab and walking and working and editing and sleeping and resting. A couple weeks on and it hit me emotionally. I could be dramatic and say it was the toll-of-it-all that threw me but I was exhausted muscularly.

I've hit a new level of physical ability. I leveled up. But now I am at a new hard beginning. I'm doing it, but it's whooping me. So I took a month off from writing. I binged on The Handmaid's Tale and American Gods episodes when I would usually be working. For full disclosure I also watched Penny Dreadful, The O.A., Grace and Frankie, Orange is the New Black, and Stranger Things.

Today came the last possible rejections because I have no more stories floating about for submission. That sat uneasy in me. So I wrote down the ideas in my head I'd been avoiding. I wrote when an old story idea cracked open and became a full novel.

I sent a story out to a reader and their critique was perfect. I love them. I'm keeping them secret. (At least until they get through a dozen or so of my stories.)

I have found my inspiration to write again in the same place I always find it. In nature. I spent the day looking up submission calls and choosing stories to send out and fleshing outlines down for a couple more I want to write. It feels good again. The itch-to-write feels in my body the way it felt before my accident.

I'm going to need that.

I spent the spring writing down things here and there about my coma adventures. I have been writing them out, telling the details, and I have needed more comfort come bedtime. But I am a writer and this is how I process. I write. So in my heart I am writing as a means of healing. It is mostly taking the edge off of the difficult emotions surfacing.

There are still deeper waters left to tread but it doesn't feel like drowning.

It feels like liberation.