Everything is Fine

"Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic, and fear which is inherent in a human situation."  - Graham Greene

Have you ever hit a point where you tell yourself that everything is fine?

Well, I'm finally back at that point.  You see, when I started this blog, I had planned to publish a post once every week or so.  Clearly, that hasn't been the case.  Everything was fine, then life happened.  The unexpected hit and everything was flipped upside down.

Sigh.

I'll start my little tangent from the top.  There have been a few medical emergencies within my family.  If you know me, my family is my top priority.  I will drop everything for them.  So when I realized that something was wrong, life was put on hold.  My father has been in the hospital three times over the past few months.  The first trip, it was sudden.  As in he was fine Monday, then in the ER Saturday.  The doctors were worried.  The things they were asking me made me worry.  But come Tuesday, he was healthy enough to be discharged, but I was still concerned.  He almost died, not joking.  Then the next Saturday, only a few days later, he was back in the ER.  We know why he almost died twice in a week, but we don't know what caused it.  Cue the doctors.  Multiple doctor visits to try to find the cause of this mysterious illness just to have everyone say he was fine, he was healthy.  Me, I'm the one driving him around and listening to all this thinking not fine.  Because of what he has, I'm the designated chauffeur to make sure he gets places safely since one of the issues was him passing out.  Anywho, some time passed, nothing else happened, we breathe again.  Whatever it was had simply vanished.  We were in the clear.  We get a call from our doctor.  She tells us to get him to the ER now because his blood work told her something was severely wrong.  We go.  Now, the closest hospital to us is horrible.  It is a whopping two stars out of five at best, but we go because of, well, reasons and it should have been an easy fix.  Hospital says there's something else and my dad ends up staying for a few days.  It has been a couple weeks since and we are waiting for results and to be able to do more tests.

During this time, we are dealing with my aunt.  Okay, some quick background.  My grandfather passed away a couple days after Thanksgiving 2016.  He and my dad were very close, even through his dementia.  My aunt, however, had been hiding my grandparents from us for a while and when we manage to find out where they are and what happened, the tension started between my aunt and us. My grandparents love my side of the family.  I was glad that I was able to see my grandfather before he passed.  I am grateful that I was able to tell him that I loved him.  My grandfather was an amazing man.  But my aunt, she's the worst person I have ever met.  Because of her, there was no mourning period for us.  It was straight chaos.  Since my grandfather's passing, we learned of the extent of her greed, her selfishness, her stupidity, her tendency to behave like a toddler.  It takes a lot to piss me off, but this woman has managed to do so plenty of times this past year, including scream at me over the phone then hanging up on me after I call her out on her crap.  It is non-stop with her.  I worry about her caring for my grandmother.  I am convinced that the stress from my aunt is the cause of my father's health problems.  Ug!  It's like talking to a monkey!  A big, stupid monkey named, uh, I'll keep that to myself for privacy's sake (Emperor's New Groove reference, woot woot!).  I hate that we are knocking on the door of legal action.  It is going to create a rift within the family.  All because someone threw a tantrum.

Double sigh.

It's stressful.  We worry, but we have managed to pull through everything so far.

I hate that word now.  Fine.  What's fine anyway?  Living in a state where it could be worse?  Or better?  I want to be comfortable.  I don't want my chronic bad luck to strike five times a year.  I want to not need to worry about if my dad needs to go to the hospital.  I want to be able to enjoy a nice dinner with my husband.  I want to not worry about certain people invading my life.  I want to not want to punch certain people.  I want to live quietly with my husband and build a life with him.  He married into this, into this chaos of a family.  I know my family isn't simple or sane, or completely tolerable, but despite the obvious flaws, he saw me and was still crazy enough to marry me.  I love him so much.  He's such a strong man and has been my rock during all the insanity since our marriage.  Without him, I would be in a million pieces.

It's that word again.  Fine.

But it's more than fine, it's okay.

To get away from my troubles I did what I do and shoved my nose into my writing.  Yeah, yeah, I know it is my answer to everything, but it really does help.  I can shove my worries aside to live in my head.  I can play with my characters and create new situations and problems for them to wrestle their way out of.  That is my idea of fun.  I am still avoiding writing book three because I feel like I'm still in the wrong mindset for it, but my side projects are growing.  One is a collaboration with a friend of mine, he can draw, and I have kinda gone off on it.  Went from two small chapters to six in one day.  Hard to stay away from my usual romance on that one too.  Another project of mine, Infected, has also been receiving love.  It started off as a little idea where I could practice my horror themes, which I am struggling with honestly, and I quickly became attached to the unpredictable nature of the main male character.  That's my problem with writing, I like my characters too much and they tend to hide their life story from me.  Greedy little jerks.  Jerks that I love.  Well, mostly.  There is this one girl that I plan on killing off soon.  She has played her part and she has become annoying.  Or maybe I'm venting my frustration through her?

Besides my writing, I have taken on a couple other projects.  For instance, my sister rides horses.  She asked if I could blackout a picture for her.  For those who don't know, blacking out an image is blacking out everything except your focus.  She had a picture of her on her horse going over a jump so I blacked out everything, background, jump, sky, and left it so you only saw her and her horse.  Easy.  Now I'm being asked by others if I could blackout their pictures as well.  I guess I'm good with Photoshop!

I'm fine.

And that's what I have been.  I have been fine for years.  I had plenty of hardships to fight through and I have always been fine.  The mask I wore hid the grumpy, jealous, bitter, lonely girl I had become.  It took a decade, ten years to fight my way out from under that mask.  Ten years of living in the world of fine where the pain was expected.  No, I was never suicidal but I did have those days where I wanted to crawl under the covers and sleep the day away.  During that time, I learned that no matter what you go through, there will always, always be challenges.  It is how you tackle them that echo your inner self.  I try to avoid trouble.  I don't want to deal with the stress it will bring.  That is what my life has become again, troubled and filled with conflict.  I don't want to hurt anyone, especially myself.  I broke before.  I am still held together by tape, and not the good duct tape either.  I don't show my timid self because I have learned to hide it.  Very few people know what is under my mask.  While that mask still sits on my face, it is off-center, revealing who I am while ready to hide again.  I am fine.

My mask makes everything fine.

That mask, while under it I am safe, I still reach out to find who I am.  Again I return to my writing.  It was through words that I was able to sort through my troubles.  You can tell through my writing, if you look a little deeper, what I was feeling.  The first story I wrote is long.  I worked on it for years by throwing scenes together, writing chapters that didn't connect, venting onto paper.  It became my crutch.  Every so often I return to that world to see how my characters are (they're fine, by the way).  Some of those old scenes I am tempted to use again in another story simply because I love what I wrote.  Then I remember the mask.  I see it staring at me as I reread that first story.  That mask watches me and I smile.  I overcame a depression that I fought to hide from the world.  No one knew that I was struggling.  I never wanted anyone to know.  I liked my mask.  But the mask slipped as I wrote.  It transformed into words that held my pain, joy, sadness, and hope.  Emotions tinted my words.  They still do.  And I'm glad because fine became okay which became good.  Writing helped me out of my funk.

I have adopted an it could be worse attitude.  I have also trained myself to think positively about the situations I encounter.  While I know that train of thought isn't the case for everyone, it works for me.  I have seen how things can be worse.  I know things can always be better, but it is the what-ifs that scare me.  What-if things were worse?  Life would be so much different.  Different how?  Different better?  Worse?  Would I have wanted that difference?  In truth, some things I have considered and wanted for, but with the life that I lead now, I am quite content.  At least it is not a boring one!  Afterall, it could be worse.  I could not have who I have or be where I'm at and I am thankful.  Because without some of the hell I went through, I would have never met some wonderful people.  I may have never found writing.  I may have never found the happiness that puts the smile on my face at night.  While things are stressful now, I know that it could be worse.

While my mask always sits at the ready to tell the world I am fine, it cannot hide me from reality.  The stress and the worry that I know is coming will be suffocating but I cannot idly sit by and watch it run wild.  While I apologize for making this post long and about my personal problems, I do not apologize for the fact that writing this out makes me feel better.  No, I do not keep a journal.  My journal is my writing.  Writing is what keeps me balanced.  Writing makes me better than fine.