I've gotten back into the swing of creative writing, back to an old project that I pitched to my teacher. He had asked I send him a written version along with writing samples if I had them. Unfortunately I can't find the final draft and suspect it's back home in California on a USB stick. Scary thought, all that work - the only copy of that version of the story that took me about a year to write, one hour once a week, every week, while working a full-time stressful job as a senior graphic designer down in Silicon Valley.
Any rate, so now after most of the day spent writing, I recreated a 3 page summary of the story from memory, and gathered up the best of my reference art from the project.
All in all, I'm recovering fairly well from my near-death experience 3 weeks back. A sudden severe asthsma attack woke me in the middle of the night. There doesn't seem to be a way to say 'I couldn't breathe at all' that people believe you could do for several minutes and still be alive, but whatever that way to say it would be, that's what I was doing.
I thought my life was over. It was the first time I'd ever had a severe asthma attack, so I didn't know what was going on and in that life or death desperation, I didn't even think to try using the inhaler I had. But I seriously doubt I could've gotten enough air in to inhale in those first minutes, when I actually faced death.
I ended up spending a week in the hospital. They released me too early, my GP said, after listening to my screwed up lungs. And I felt like it. I was scared. To make it worse, all the time my mind was also still going nonstop, thinking of the past, thinking of a certain toxic woman. Thinking of the feeling of being shamed and betrayed, the feeling of injustice, and all that. I couldn't stop it or shut it up, even as my body was still struggling out of a precipice, clutching on the edge of a cliff and too weak to pull itself fully over the bank, and stand shakily upright again.
And then there were those life goals, the future, or something. I could barely even lift my eyes to look at the horizon. When I did, a few weeks later, I felt dizzy and disoriented.
I had been accepted to a writing program just two days before I nearly died.
Now I saw, there is my life goal - to write stories - finally here in front of me - acccessible, possible, as it had never been before. And there is my death. And over there is the devastation of the past, the stress and pain of which, in no uncertain terms, had helped bring me to the point of that death.
At that time, just 2 short weeks ago, I could barely move on. My mind clutched onto death even as my body was trying, needing to recover, as my soul needed to recover and be free.
A friend of mine put it straight to me, urged me to have an open conversation with the woman in question, to get the crap and pain off my chest that I'd dragged along all this time, and after that, 'when you leave the hospital, start a new life.'
For the 2 weeks that followed, I didn't have a sense of any new life. I struggled with isolation once I got back to my apartment, feeling too low in energy even to go buy food for myself and too weak within myself to even call friends and ask them to help me. I could barely even speak from all the coughing, and it took a lot of energy to say more than a few sentences.
Once the near-death was over, people who'd shown up for me went back to their lives and own problems, which happened to be pretty real too in some cases. Along with my housemate Alex, who's consistency really impressed me, my friend Phillip also stayed in touch, but he had to get away from his own relationship problems and go back home for a while. Clarisse got ill, Sven was managing his ongoing house-drama, and Mike was well, being Mike. Thankfully my counselor finally called and offered to come by and visit me and help me buy food. I was really grateful for that.
I'm getting stronger slowly, and now I can face things and see them slightly clearer. I can let go of that past. If not with love, then with anger and strength, but one way is better than no way. I can put it in its place and go forward. I still don't know what the future will hold, but after working on writing all day today, I feel positive and focused for the first time in a long while.
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