Are you there, God? It's me, Sam.

It's time to get a little personal. Mostly because I'm taking it upon myself to face everything that's happened head on, to accept that it's something I'm dealing with, and dealing with it I am.

Back in February, my ex-boyfriend passed away.

We'd only spoken a few times in the past four years. We didn't part on exactly good terms, as we both wanted very different things in our lives. And I moved on, and found someone wonderful to be with, and lived my life as best I could. I don't regret a single thing I went through during that chapter in my life, I really don't. I continue to believe that anything that happened during that time helped shape me into who I am.

Funnily enough, he was the first person to ever critique Halfer for me.

When the Facebook message from him popped up in my inbox that week, I felt a whole wave of emotions crash over me. I did not want to speak to him. I did not want to hear from him. As I said, we did not part on good terms. And so I ignored the message, and then the one after that.

A day later, he was gone.



If you're wondering why I haven't updated the blog in over two months, it's because the wave of crippling guilt that washed over me pulled me under, like a rip tide of camel back-breaking straws, and what I had been carefully working on - going back to therapy, making an honest attempt at struggling through what was still only minor depression - shut me down. Almost permanently.

I know what it's like, now, to lie in bed for days on end. To wake up, struggle through work, get back under my covers and lie there, wondering if there was anything that would ever change. A dead-end job, an isolated existence, writer's block to end all writer's block. It was a pretty awful month of internal struggle with myself. I blamed myself for what happened with him, and in some ways, I still do.

I haven't written.

I've tried. I've gotten a few pages here and there, and I have an idea for a new short story that I hope I can bundle with its companion tale and possibly e-publish on Amazon. But I haven't written it, and even after finally forcing myself back on meds, I'm having trouble putting words on paper. It's like there's a blanket draped over every piece of the story in my head, muffling it and keeping it from surfacing for use.

But now I can write this blog post, and I can tell you that I continue to believe that all of this is just things I can use, emotions I can pull from, to use in my writing. No matter how painful they are. So you guys should remember that, that everything we go through is something we can use, no matter how tired we are of hearing "just think of it as story material."

I'm getting better, little by little, and soon I'll be able to create once more.

On a lighter note, Saturday's my birthday and I'm thinking of making a chocolate stout cake? Though with Culture Shock I'm not really sure I'll have the time to make it. We'll see.