Today, after my busy summer of preparing for the first week of Summer Camp here on The Astral Plains, I get back to writing - my other passion.
I started writing shortly after I started riding horses. I do not remember a time when either of them weren't at the forefront of my thoughts. Years ago my mom gave me a giant envelope made out of posterboard full of my writings from grade school. I've already written several books. They were about my family, and cats, and horses. I wrote about what I loved.
In college I was an English major for four years. I wanted to be a writer. Eventually, I realized that you didn't need an English degree to be a writer. I also realized that after the death of a friend, I didn't have the strength to grieve for him and stay in school. I was a wreck. Ryan Street, or Streetie Weetie as I called him, passed away just after New Year's Day. I believe it was January 3, 2003 but I've never been good with dates. My friends, his friends, and I spent 3 long, grueling days in the waiting room of the hospital after he had a seizure. He never woke up. I was in that waiting room with 2 ex-boyfriends. It was tense, and uncomfortable for so many reasons.
Sitting here, I shed a few tears for Street. He was one of the best friends you could ever hope for. I only knew him a few years. But, they were some of the very best years of my life. He had a way of bringing everyone together. During those years I was friends with people who I never would have been friends with otherwise, most of them I am no longer friends with. They weren't the kind of people who stuck around in my life. But, when Street was alive, everyone wanted to be around him all the time.
I have a photo album of those days. We had so much fun, that some of those pictures are hidden behind other pictures; they're indecent, and they were developed at the grocery store. I still have a pink leopard spotted bra hidden away in a drawer or plastic tub or suitcase somewhere just because I have a pictures of me wearing that bra with Street. (Also, there's one of Brad Buchanan in it. If you still talk to "Iceman" tell him. He's not on FB for me to embarrass him publicly.) We were fresh out of high school, had over 21 friends buying alcohol, and locking ourselves up in someone's cousin's house for a weekend. Thanks for the memories cuz.
My senior year of high school I lost my Uncle Johnny and Mom-Mom, my grandmother, in the space of less than a month. Pop-Pop, my grandfather, died a couple of years later. When Street died I was still reeling from their deaths too.
It has just dawned on me, as I write this, that Street's death drove me to follow my heart and build my future. Wow. That made me cry.
Uncle Johnny's prayer card reads: "I shall lead you through the loneliness, the solitude you will not understand, but it is my shortcut to your soul." I held that so close to my heart over the years. That saying, by Thomas Merton, has gotten me through all the tough times since. To me, it's a better way of saying "Everything happens for a reason." All those times I felt at my lowest, lost, alone, afraid, I brought that prayer card to mind. For my birthday in '05 I tattooed it on my arm. I know I still have the prayer card somewhere, probably in a diary.
Of all the suffering I have gone through in life, dealing with death has always been hardest for me. In an odd way I welcome it, in the way that I no longer fear it. I know that through the death of each of my loved ones, I have learned a priceless life lesson. Some just take longer to realize than others. I'm blessed to find my way to the other side, eventually.
Street's death pushed me to find my future. The year he died I went soul searching. I made the decision to move to Colorado to work on a dude ranch. I drove home the next day. Unemployed, and painfully grieving, I auditioned for the Renaissance Festival that summer. That year I met two of my soul mates, my best friend, Megan, and my husband, Wayland.
I have accomplished so many of my lifelong dreams since Street's death. Next up, publishing a book.
I've worked on writing, starting and stopping, three different novels. I'm taking my newest project and running with it. Soon, maybe you'll be buying it off of Amazon and getting lost in my world. For now, it's time for me to go get lost there.
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