It All Starts with Me.

God, I can't remember the last time I sat down to actually write anything for this site. I've been busy and tired, and I've been bogged down by my mental illnesses. Which is not really a unique situation, to be frank.

Want me to be real for about half a page or so? I'm having a really hard time. This year will make five years since my mom's death, and anyone who's read my work knows my relationship with her was um...really not great lol.

But because I'll never have any real closure on what all happened between us, I'm basing a book on our relationship and exploring what all went on and how the characters will deal with it in a way that my mother and I didn't. I've spent the past several days studying her blogs from years ago, and I feel so raw and hollowed out right now.

Reading things that she's told me before, but that I didn't have the maturity to really acknowledge at the time, and trying to apply them to this book that is already going to strip me naked to the world is fucking terrifying. And there's no one in my life I can talk about this to. Therapy is bitchin expensive, and my siblings (the only ones who can understand what it's like losing this woman from the perspective of one of her children) refuse to acknowledge that there was anything bad about her at all. But I can't really blame them for that, because for these past few years, I refused to acknowledge anything good about her.

Anyway, I'm just frustrated because I've teared up in a public Starbucks about five times in the two hours that I've been here, and I'm terrified that if I write this book, the little family that I've kept in contact with will turn away from me because I don't want to pretend that my mother was this amazing angel.

But I need to tell this story. I need to acknowledge both the good and the bad in my mom. I need to acknowledge what I did wrong and what I did right in regards to my relationship with her. I need to close this chapter and walk into the rest of my life with my head held high and the will to grow and be better, rather than stagnate and wonder why nothing ever changes.