It's Not Over, It's Just Beginning

I wonder if my best writing is behind me. I wrote Eyes on the Horizon amid great mourning. My heart was broken, my marriage was disintegrated, my day-to-day consisted of existing for the next day without doing something stupid and messing it all up. The years flew by. The kids, now grown, grew up while I existed in this weird place of growth.

I did grow. I learned that people you think you love sometimes suck. I learned that the ideal job doesn’t last when the company decides to accept the payout. I learned that cars break down, dogs die, houses sell, court cases are lost, and tears get shed.

Years of this. Years and years of all these ups and downs. The days where you fall asleep with a smile on your face because, well, “it was a good day.”

I’ve cried with characters that I made up in my mind! That’s amazing.

Yet, I do wonder if my best writing is behind me.

Maybe I’ve cried my last tear, felt my last giggle, killed my last annoying-in my face-buzzing and laughing fly, lost my last pound, cared about my last wrinkle, written my final email…

That’s how life is right? You don’t know if this is the last of all of it – good, bad, stress, love, fear, laughter, beauty, darkness, solitude, or merriment.

Maybe it’s all behind me now.

Maybe falling in love and laughing until my sides hurt with my very best friend made me this way.  Maybe this awesomeness made me a bad writer and I’ll never be able to soar again… to feel the speeding heart, the oxytocin in my brain waves, the thrill of zapping that annoying fly.

A second ago, I went outside and called for my cat, and my anxiety is sometimes so bad that I think, “Damn, the hawk got him” and I just think that the pain of losing him will be so horrible and I think about breaking the news to Paige & Tony and telling them, “I think the hawk got Goose”. Then I walked inside and started writing.

Goose just jumped on my lap and now I’m happy, and smiling again because the things I think in my head always seem to be worse than my reality. Until they’re not. And maybe the joy of seeing him after I experienced the darkness of my thoughts is how I exist now.

That’s messed up, no?

I’m happy these days. Happy that I finally got the courage to publish Eyes on the Horizon. Happy every time I nail an email at work and “get it” and “feel it” and know that I’m an asset; happy with every message I get that says, “I read your book in two days. I couldn’t put it down;” happy to see smiles on my own face. Happy. And anxious and worried. And anticipating, always anticipating that the dark cloud is going to stop and sit over top of me.

Life itself.

But right now, I’m happy.  I saw Springsteen in concert on Saturday at Nationals Stadium in D.C. and… well, my soul, my spirit, my joy was soaring and still is. Bruce is and always will be my muse, my hero, and a very close friend.  

I’m not done writing. I’m just getting started. Play the songs, Bruce!