Every Dream Ends

 As I drifted off to sleep last night my mind returned to Autumn of 2006. I was playing with my little ginger cow kitten in the foyer of my old house. I saw everything in clarity like I had never left. I could see the house just the way it was, down to the cobwebs dangling off the chimney pipe coming off the wood stove after a summer of disuse. The little kitty boy was wound up and when my then girlfriend opened up the front door he darted out. My dream of the past quickly turned into a nightmare that I also recall just as vividly. The kitten darted across the road into a dark woods. I could hear him crying from across the road. I crossed into the forest and searched for him for hours but all I could hear was his fading mews as he ran away, scared as the sun was setting. I couldn't sleep all that night. I put bowls of food on the front porch in case he came home. I checked every hour until 4 in the morning when I saw that half the bowl of food had been eaten. I grabbed a flashlight and looked all over the yard. I was about to give up when I peeked underneath my back deck and, sure enough, there was little Mango staring at me -- wild eyed. I hollered at him and he ran right up to me. I held him for hours, cuddling him as I went back to bed for the remainder of the night.

Then my dream turned to years later, in the Spring of 2010 after we had moved downstate to my home town. Mango would sit in my laundry room window every day, watching this little wild cat who would come sit on a bench beneath the window and talk to him. It was the same routine every day. Eventually, a few days before Christmas, the wild cat now name Clarysse decided that she wanted to come inside and meet her Mango.

They were inseparable. Just this summer we took in a stray kitten, then adopted another. Mango and Clare (after ten years together) were finally parents and loved their babies. Day and night they would snuggle and play. They were a perfectly adorable family.

Until yesterday. 

After two days of appearing to be under the weather and off his food, I took Mango to the vet for some tests. I believed he had a hairball based on his coughing and cramping. It wasn't a hairball, but liver cancer. His intestines had shut down. At 14.5 years old any procedure was dangerous and the doctor felt the prognosis was poor, even with surgery.

I lost that sweet little kitten yesterday. It hits particularly hard right now. We lost our other fluffy boy, Coal, just a month and a half ago after a battle with leukemia. All the while that we were tending to Coal our Mango boy was dealing with his own silent fight -- and we never knew.

I wanted to write this down, preserve his story in some form. He was much more than a cat. He was my buddy, and truly felt like my child. He is gone. The last chapter in his innocent little story has come to an end, and the dream has slipped into the ethereal. Goodbye, my big bear.

Back on writing hiatus for a bit until I feel better.

Cheers,

Stuffing the Monster Back in the Closet

 I haven't completely hidden my mental health struggles over the past several months but, man, did they ever get the better of me while I was on my writing hiatus. 

There is only so much family fun time that any one individual can take before they run screaming into the night. That needs to be said, and it needs to be normalized. You can love your kids more than anyone has loved anything in the whole history of ever and still reach a point where (especially during a pandemic) you just can't breathe anymore and need a break. I reached that point a couple of months ago but kept pushing through it. Once Maestra was done and turned in I didn't have that distraction anymore and Pandora's box of nightmares and anxiety was officially open and flooding through my life. On top of my own insecurities I was suddenly dealing with a teenager and a four year old also suffering from varying degrees of anxiety and mental health issues. I am leaving my poor wife out of this because she is dealing with things (better than I) and knows that I am there to support her in whatever way she needs.

Simply said, my mind has tricked me into believing that the entire world is falling apart. It's not my first rodeo and I'm sure it won't be my last. I'm intelligent and sane enough to realize that the brain is extremely skilled at coping with stress while still amplifying anxiety until seemingly small things blow up into crippling doubts about any given subject. Throw in a four year old who can make train horn whistle sounds for twelve hours straight right next to my ears and it becomes a situation beyond the stress of anything that I have ever experienced, before, in my life.

What's another consequence of this, you may or may not ask? Suddenly I find myself suffering from Impostor Syndrome, again. I've had a successful book launch just weeks ago but I now find myself incapable of starting my next book because my head is full of doubts being shouted at me from somewhere within the darkness of my mind meat. It's like this large looming monster whispering at me from a closet, beckoning me onward and into the darkness. It eats into my mental health and cripples me until I have days where I am incapable of doing anything at all, except keep my children alive and fed until my wife gets home from work. 

I have said it before and I will say it again because it REALLY needs to be echoed around the world right now: It's absolutely okay to be broken. The world is crap. This country is particularly crappy right now as we are the most divided that we have been since the Civil War. Tolerance and Acceptance have flown out the window and the few people who haven't been utterly polarized are standing here wondering if we're the crazy ones. I am heartbroken for the world around us and what it has done to us.

So how do I get through this alive, and also convince myself that I actually am a writer again? That's an excellent question. Several times over the past week I have tried to get into the new story. I found that I couldn't write any words on the page. It felt so intimidating. I didn't even feel that overwhelmed when starting my first book. Then I spent a few days just working on furthering my world building and outlining. I was convinced that having more of a fleshed out blue print would make it easier to start writing. I was wrong. It hasn't helped. I have tried to set aside a more private space to write in. Nope. Not helping. Last week I tried taking a day for myself and getting away to the family cottage to quiet the monster. In the silence it's voice got louder and I came back home before noon. 

Through all of this I am keeping in the front of my mind that all of this is transitory. We're 15 days from an election that will either help heal the nation or be a catalyst toward a new civil war, depending on how the winner and loser both handle the situation - will it be with dignity and grace or with open disdain and hostility toward the process which will incite violence upon one another?

Again, it's transitory. It has to be. This isn't the end of me, or of humanity. It will pass. 

When it does I will still be a writer. 

Until then I am going to have to learn to ignore that calling from the void that would rather break me down and leave me in perpetual darkness.

___________

R.M. Smith's Concentric Worlds series on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08KGSN1YM

Hiatus Continues, Bathroom Remodeling Fun!

 When Michigan went into a Stay at Home order back in March we were in the middle of a bathroom remodel project. The contractor working on it wrapped up as much as they could in the final day but left a couple of days worth of work left to finish. They promised that as soon as the Stay at Home order was lifted they would be back the next day and finish. The Stay at Home order was lifted 4 months ago. I don't think they're coming back -- especially after the owner blocked my phone number. 

So, my wife and I are going to be handling the mostly cosmetic touches ourselves. A few weeks ago I installed a bi-fold closet door. Next up I silicon sealed around the bathtub. Tomorrow we will be picking up the paint. We had to wait until the end of summer so we could get some relatives to agree to watch our 4 year old while we get project-y. I love my son but he absolutely gets in the way like you wouldn't believe. This morning he went in after I put down the silicon seal and smeared it all over the floor and dug it out of the groove between the tub and the floor. Good times.

To no one's surprise, I haven't done much on my next book yet. Last night I finally made myself sit down and work on some world building. It's not much but it's a solid first step. The way my brain works, now that I have that initial step taken, I will build off from it at a steady pace until I begin drafting later on this month. I'm hoping to finish writing it by June, 2021 so I can actually enjoy a pleasant couple of months of summer weather off from writing before beginning work on the next book in the Concentric Worlds series.

Meanwhile, Maestra is out in the wild and selling surprisingly well. I am eagerly awaiting some feedback on it (good or bad.) I very much look forward to signing copies and meeting fans, again, when the world is a safer place. 

Back in February when I did my last book signing I had no idea that it could potentially be a year and a half before I would be able to do another appearance. This whole pandemic is still so surreal. 

I hope that the world will be a more united place once the virus is gone. I know my country has a long way to go toward healing. We've spent the last several years becoming so divided that life feels pretty hopeless, anymore.

One day at a time. 

Check out all my published works here: https://www.amazon.com/R-M-Smith/e/B07ZGH16ZC/