Down the Rabbit Hole

Cranberry Walls

So it has been several days since I last wrote...well, anything. I'm hoping my pending vacation will help shake some original thought lose. If anything, a few days away in the sun will help me de-stress and perhaps I'll find myself far more prolific on my return. In a few hours I'll be leaving the long security lines and the raucous sounds of city plow trucks far behind me. This vacation is significant not only because of its absolute necessity to maintaining my mental health but because it the first one ever with my fiance. I realized today just how nervous I was feeling about it. For the last several years I'd managed to convince myself that I traveled enough for work and that my vacations were better spent at home, where I could, naturally, make sure my ex was safe and sober. Now, happily engaged to a nice, normal, totally wonderful man who's even more excited about our vacation than I am, I realize once again, how much time and opportunity I squandered over the past five years. And while I'm nervous, its more the excited, on-the-verge of adventure, butterfly-fluttering-in-the-stomach feeling and not the anxious, gut-twisting, shuddering-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach state in which I had lived for so long before. I'm feeling content and I'm looking forward, nearly without fear. This means something significant to me as far as my writing goes though...it means I have to finish my story before the fullness and happiness of my new life makes remembering and memoralizing my old life impossible. I promised myself I'd make the pain and loss I've suffered worth something by writing about it. I would give all that squandered time, lost vacations, pain and tears some credibility. I would write it all down so one day, I could read it and know just how far I'd really come out of the dark. So I'm going to go on vacation, I'm going to drink and eat too much. I'm going to kiss my fiance and enjoy every waking moment of our time together. Then I'm going to come back and finish this fucking book and put the past to rest at long last.