A greeting
What's one more introduction to someone who writes them all the time? A setup, a biography, a foreword, a prologue? Just one more?
A lot, it turns out.
I don't often know what to tell people about myself these days. I endeavor to live a boring life, and usually I succeed - but my family history, my soul-searching, my jacked-up health are so ridiculous and dramatic that they sound like fiction.
Sure, I write a lot of fiction. But not this, and not now.*
I could tell you about the myriad of events in the last five years - much less the last two, since my last run in Idol - ranging metaphorically from a slap in the face to a baseball bat in the gut. How many doctors, how many surgeries, how many medications. Personal betrayals, big and small. Losses of presence and the death of big dreams. Pain and anger and wondering why.
That would all be true. But it wouldn't tell you about all that was in between.
You wouldn't hear that, despite the overwhelming grief of three of those events, I chose the right actions and found peace within them. Or that answers I was approaching at a mere crawl are now advancing at a brisk pace. Or that separating the wheat from the chaff has given me the most remarkable circle of loved ones I've known in my whole life.
If I only told you how bad things have been sometimes - and God almighty, have they ever - you'd never know that I'm one of the luckiest people you'll ever meet. That my parents are loving, generous, and batshit crazy, and that I wouldn't trade them for the world (though sometimes a brick wall is welcome). That every day I wake up to a partner I couldn't possibly deserve: big and geeky and irritating and a hell of a cook, how I can't stay mad at him no matter what he does, how he meets everybody on equal footing, and is my sanity in human form.
I'd be remiss to leave out the fact that among my special gifts is becoming friends with the most remarkable people you can imagine. Or that after more than a decade and a half of searching and shuttling, I have actually landed at my dream job, and I am really, really good at it.
In short: I am grateful. And I am really damn tired of waiting to get "the old me" back, of waiting to get my life back. Some things are gone forever - and some I gave up way too easily.
Way back when, Idol re-sparked my creative life. It brought me back to a place where words pour out of my fingers like water, where sometimes they make other people laugh, cry, or wonder. It introduced me to more of those remarkable people, and to so much remarkable writing. Then my life got tough again, and I started cutting things away - the wrong things, it turns out.
What will I do when this season is over? I don't know yet - but I know that while I'm here, I'll be one step closer to OK, one step closer to really happy.
The road is as short and as long as it ever was. The grass is just as green as it can be in every direction, where it's not a bit wilted and weedy. I'm the same person you might already know, and someone I almost don't recognize.
But I'm here just the same way I've been all my life. I'm here to read, I'm here to write - and I'm pleased to meet you.
* And if, when you read my future posts, you ever wonder which is which - check the tags; they will never lie.