Reality Check aka A Painful Confession

Maybe this past month I've been in denial. Despite my desire to remain optimistic, I guess the time has come to face facts - it's time to start over, and it sucks big time!

In the first week of last month, I had a crisis so severe, I couldn't even entertain the possibility of not being admitted to hospital. I'm talking pain that was more like random electrical discharges that surged through my body if I tried to instruct it to do the smallest thing. When people have asked me what being in a crisis feels like, I usually say it is similar to the pain of being in labour. You know that point when the mother-to-be screams like a wretched beast: "I don't care what you have to do, just get it the hell outta me! Give me the fucking knife I'll do it my damn self..." Or maybe that was just me? I don't know, but that kind of pain is what it usually feels like. However, this time the pain felt like when you have an exposed nerve in your tooth and just taking in a sip of air feels like torture. That is the best way I can describe what I went through that day.

I came out of hospital two days later, but the recovery time took two weeks. I could barely walk and as such, was stuck upstairs in my room for the duration. By the end of the two weeks I had some how caught this crazy ass flu that made me feel like I was dying all over again. By the end of that I was adamant - I needed to get out of the house. Though it was cold as hell outside, my children had lost their hats, and the mother in me felt bad enough for not being able to cook etc. but allow them to suffer in the cold? That was more than I could handle, so I went out. For most of my journey I was on the phone to a friend via my handsfree, popping in from one shop to another, searching for the kind of hat that had ear flaps (don't know what they are called) before finally buying some minimal preparation food that I could serve up to my short peeps that evening. My outing had been painfully strenuous, but I was just happy that my short peeps head's would be protected from the harsh elements of the season.

Since being stuck in bed, I would allow my youngin's to pile in with me and watch a movie on my notebook, and that evening as we chilled together, I got a text come through on my phone. My eyes widened in horror as I picked it up. My alarm wasn't due to the contents of the text, I hadn't even got to acknowledging that yet, it was the absence of my usb key that usually dangled from it, that threw me. I took a deep breath and got out of bed and started searching for any place it may have dropped. The cord that joined it to my phone wasn't damaged at all, so how on earth did it come off?

After ransacking the house, and remembering clearly that it was still attatched to my phone before I set out, it could only be that I lost it whilst gallavanting in search of head-gear. This was serious, I was in pain again, but I had no choice. I absolutely had to go out and look for it. I tucked my children in bed, promising them to be back shortly, grabbed my torch and opened the front door.

You have got to be fucking kidding me! Of all the worst times, outside was covered in snow that before opening the door, I had been oblivious to. Where the hell did all this come from, I was out there bearly 3 hours prior, there was no signs of snow back then. But even the mini blizzard wasn't enough to stop me, I needed that usb back. I retraced my steps for over 2 hours, leaving descriptions and contact details with every store I had visited that was still open, before finally coming home empty-handed.

I always tell everyone about backing up their data and though I was gutted, at least I still had that much... Or so I thought. My last back up only had one paragraph of the 15 or so chapters of the last book in my trilogy. I had not only lost book 2, but book 3 and all the notes also. The only saving grace is that I had more recently backed up book 2 in the form of sending a friend the first 17 chapters to give me her thoughts on. Even so, since then I had written another 5 chapters or more.

I refused to believe I had really lost so much and so carelessly, that I dared not tell more than 4 of my real close peeps and even then each time I heard myself recount the story, I felt like a part of me died. Speaking of it was like admitting I wasn't ever going to find it again. I preferred instead to hope it would turn up, perhaps I would get a phone call with good news. A month later however, I finally have to take a reality check: It's gone, 20 or so chapters of my soul's passion, gone. It's not coming back. It really isn't coming back.

I haven't been able to write the sequels over again with the same drive ever since. Couple that with tending to a body riddled with pain and a recent heartbreak, and you've pretty much got a sister who despite the front, has totally lost her mojo. Maybe I'm being a little over dramatic, but it feels like I'm suffering a bereavement of sorts, though I honestly don't know which pain hurts most.

Needless to say, it may be a little while longer before book 2 gets published if at all.