Fizzled

If Vocal taught me anything in my first year of membership, it was that other members hold a higher appreciation for the words fumbling from my keyboard than do the judges at Vocal. Had I written this four months ago, it would have been a bitter admission; today I state facts with a wry chuckle and a heavy dose of humility. My aspirations for 2024 are not to burn out or give up on writing.

My interest in poetry and story-telling began when I was a wee boy of five or six years growing up in eastern Maine, USA. Frankly, to say I liked poetry at that age is mere steps from deceitful and chock full of exaggeration. What I liked was mental imagery painted in simple rhymes quoted or read to me by my beloved Mum. When primary school lessons required acrostics or basic family histories, I loved telling about Mum and her lineage to the Mayflower. She loved everything I wrote, and lapped up praise like water in the desert.

Puberty arrived, and writing fell away. It didn't return creatively until depression crashed into my life. I didn't know it was depression; I thought it only grief in its wretched process. Yet while grief runs a course, depression and anxiety can cripple life, and without intervention they can bring ruin.

The adulation that fueled my love of life fell silent when I was seventeen. Gentle answers and stern guidance that once alternated for my path were no more. "They" say that shock prevents sorrow so you can function and get through necessary responsibilities, but is shock supposed to last four years?

When I was 21 and away at college, the shock of Mum's death four years before from cancer finally wore off. Throughout that year I raged at the God I claimed was her hope and mine. How dare He take her from me? How dare He claim to be loving, yet remove from me the one person I needed the most in my life? How could He be so unkind? so ruthless? so hateful? so weak? How Dare HE??

At my worst moments, I would leave the dorm late at night and walk into the darkness where no one would hear me, and I would scream at God until my voice was hoarse, stamping my feet like a little child. Then one night, I had a vivid dream in which was walking toward a cliff. I began to tremble with fear because I do not like heights. I reached the edge and looked down. I couldn't see the bottom; it was pitch black. I noticed that the fear was gone, and I began holding a conversation aloud with myself.

"This is it, Mack. This is where all your screaming and yelling and tantrums have led you."

'What do you mean?'

"It's now or never, Mack. If you're going to blame God for taking Mum, then this is the end of the road for you and God. It's time to get off the fence. You've been hating Him all this time in private but pretending to be a 'good Christian' in public, and it's time to choose."

'But if I leave Him, I'll never see Mum again. She trusted Him, and she's with Him!'

"So, you're angry with Him because you don't think he's trustworthy, but you know Mum found Him trustworthy, and because SHE found Him trustworthy, YOU won't tell Him to kiss off??"

'yeah'

"What was that? I couldn't hear you."

'YEAH.'

"What are you gonna do, Mack? Keep blaming God, or maybe look at this another way? Like, when you prayed for God to heal Mum as your friend David said, maybe God said 'no' to keep her on earth, but 'yes' to healing her...y'know, perfectly? Never to suffer again? Never to possibly get another cancer again? Sure, you miss her, and that's natural, Mack. But God will take of you, like Ed said. Have you even been listening to your friends this year?? Mack?"

During that dream, I recognized that it was time to leap into the darkness once and for all time leaving God behind, or listen to the argument going on in my subconscious and stop running away. A couple of days later, I met up with David and Ed for our weekly gathering of mutual encouragement and accountability. While we talked, I reached my conclusion: It was time to trust God as Mum had.

I told them about the dream, including how I'd referenced them. As my story drew to a close, I jumped from my seat and yelled, "Praise God she's in heaven!" Yes, I did that. Poor Ed and David didn't know what to do. Ha ha ha. I reassured them that I wasn't saying I was glad Mum was dead, but that I had finally accepted her death, and that I could see how much better off she was perfectly healed than remaining on earth getting sick again and again, even if it meant that I had to live the rest of my life without her in it.

The breakthrough didn't result in sunshine and buttercups for me overnight, but it marked a turning point in my outlook. However, the depression and anxiety remained, and they remained undiagnosed for another 22 years. During those years I wrote a little, at first, and then from age 32 or so, I began writing much more. That's when I began teaching creative writing to junior high students. And to teach them, I had to learn how to do it better, so I had my wife teach me.

My wife is a very creative writer. Before 2019, she could write a 5,000-word story in two hours or less. However, a nearly fatal illness that year robbed her of some of the skills she once possessed, and writing is a much more deliberate process for her now, though she remains as creative as ever. Knowing her abilities, I asked her to "learn me," which she was glad to do. I was well-versed in formal writing, and she added to my knowledge with assorted elements of free-style prose.

By the time of her illness, I had been diagnosed with depression and anxiety and took medications to help control the symptoms. However, I discovered that writing helped me cope with the stress related to caring for her and our sons while working full-time 50 minutes from home. When I chose to see a therapist, too, the professional encouraged more writing, and I soon developed several shorter works into longer pieces, including a novella and a full-length novel, the latter of which I published on Amazon in 2022.

In 2023, I was eager to take my writing to new levels. I'd begun writing a sequel and a prequel to my first novel, I'd published my novella through an online source, I was writing two blogs, maintaining six other social media pages, teaching full time, and overhauling a department-wide curriculum. Then I joined Vocal, eager to see if I could win a challenge with moving prose or witty repartee. Nope. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Six months into Vocal, I ghosted myself. Stopped writing my blogs, deleted most of my other social media pages, and stalled on the curriculum overhaul. The sequel hit a brick wall first, and then the prequel did. I decided to overhaul the original novel. I pulled it from Amazon in June, completed the rewrite in December, and haven't decided when I'll republish it.

So, to what do I aspire in 2024? I want to finish SOMETHING.