Life has a way of moving on, whether you're ready to or not. The only thing to do is keep going.
My sibling and I spent a month away for my father's death, and now that we're home, I've spent some time trying to figure out how I feel about this. I've always been an introspective sort, and I actively work to be honest with myself, and it's been difficult to pin anything down; I feel like I'm stretched thin and flapping in a non-existent breeze. It's hard to focus on any one thing at a time, and I'm aware that I'm talking about weird shit too much to friends (to those that I know that smoke, I bring weed up constantly, now, and my train of thought often derails so I end up confusing people with a train of non sequiturs, instead). The physical pain has eased, though I've had daily headaches, and I'm frequently exhausted. I want to "turtle" and crawl into a hole to hide, but I also don't, and I want to be with someone that cares about me more than I want to be alone. I want to be comforted, but don't want to be coddled. I'm more forgetful than I normally am. I've started and abandoned more writing than I care to admit, because I lose the thread halfway through.
I've come out of this, the culmination of my father's illness, with mixed feelings about medical care, hospice care, the bureaucracy involved in the end of someone's life (e.g., probate, going through physical possessions, reams of paperwork), and the dying process in general. I have also come out of it with very strong feelings regarding the same for myself: If I am faced with the prognosis that my father had, I'll be very likely to decline care and instead row a boat out into the sea and go for a swim, instead. It's funny - ha hah - that before my father was ill, he used to tell me that if he ever went through "that" when discussing a few specific illnesses, he'd walk off into the woods and never find him, which was a source of anxiety when it looked like he was indeed going to go down that road, and here I am ultimately agreeing that suicide would be a reasonable alternative to the prospect of going through what he did.
I've been suicidal. I am not, now, and hope never to be again, but after the last several months? As I said, I've got a lot of conflicting beliefs going on right now. My father's not the first person in my life to have died from a battle with cancer, and it's never been a pleasant experience, but this is the most gruelling and drawn-out. His time in hospice is a source of one of those conflicts - enough that I am still, even weeks later, unable to properly put into words what I'm conflicted about. It's a good thing, hospice, but also horrible. It's necessary, but optional. Like I said, conflicted.
My muse has left me, but for little moments here and there as a result.
There is a new story in the works, though, and I'm excited for it. The main character is - and has been since I started it, before my father's death - fleshed out more clearly than most of my characters are at this stage, and he feels more real to me as a result. The story itself is nothing mystical but does have an element of mystery to it, and writing it transports me to the setting in a way that most of my writing doesn't. It is, in short, a comfort story, and rather a cliche:
It's a road trip, one that I think I want to do myself when I have a bit more freedom and funds to do so. I don't know if I'm going to convert a GMC P30 into a motorhome, which is something that requires both money and mechanical knowledge, neither of which I have and which my character does, but I'll figure out a way. A step van - and that one, specifically - is not the best choice for the trip he's taking, and it will need work while he's on the road. But he's determined, and he's passionate. It's going to require a lot of research on my part as the story progresses, but that's part of the fun.
The main character, though, is what sets this apart for me. I often have to work to build this character, but since he's been heavily influenced by real people in my life - one of which is my father - he's nearly writing himself. I'm excited to get back into writing again.
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