I Don't Want to Write This

In addition to writing lyrical, engrossing books readers will forfeit sleep over and gripping query letters that no agent or editor could ever delete, writers are supposed to write witty, fascinating blog posts that help us build the platform agents and editors seek (1 million followers? That’s all?) before they’ll even think of publishing your work. But I don’t feel like writing this.

You see, my stepdad died.

And that giant hole has sucked up any energy I would have had to write a blog post about my experience at the Kauai Writers Conference or my thoughts on this week’s eruption of personal stories describing the abuses of the US healthcare system – even when I wrote a memoir about my experiences with medical gaslighting and massive medical debt while healing chronic Lyme disease.

I don’t want to write a blog post about what a wonderful man he was or feel like I have to justify the cell stopping grief I feel over a man who was simply a “step.”

I don’t want to explain that he was the guy who taught me to drive a stick shift and didn’t complain when I grinded the gears. I don’t want to have to defend his value in my life by sharing that he was the guy who chased my teenage abusive boyfriend (on whom I based FINGERPRINTS) down the street with a shotgun.

I don’t want to explain that he read every article, story, and book I ever wrote until he could no longer read.

I don’t want to, again, feel like I have to say, “We were really close,” and wonder if the person I’m telling is judging the word “stepdad” or if I am.

So, I’ve written nothing, instead sitting in death’s void.

Death is funny because even when you know it’s coming, you never feel what it’s like without that person until you are indeed without that person. And it’s so difficult to describe what someone means to you because no matter how strong your verbs are or what adjectives you choose, you can never really explain what it feels like to walk into a room where you’ve sat with that person 1,000 times and sit there alone.

You can never really explain what it means to have loved and been loved by someone who is gone.

But I can’t think of writing about anything else. So, this is it.

My stepdad died and I miss him.

Green Mountains of Vermont