Hello, everyone!
I hope you guys are doing alright (or great or wonderful or maybe even just okay). It’s been a while.
So originally I wanted to come back from this random, indefinite, startling hiatus with a bunch of chapters done for you guys and the story TATM (finally!) finished. I wanted everything to be absolutely perfect for you guys, but the truth is, I just couldn’t. I really just couldn’t.
The reality of that fact weighed on me significantly—and has weighed on me nearly every day since. Do I still plan on finishing TATM at some point? Yes. Absolutely yes. Do I know when that is? No.
The short version of all of this is that I’ve always been a perfectionist who blows negative criticism out of proportions and ties my self-esteem to other people’s opinions of my work (and me) in an unhealthy way that leaves me afraid to write wrong, speak wrong, or even breathe wrong. So when I couldn’t live up to my own impossible expectations for myself and my story, I just gave up. Maybe, to you, it felt like I fell off the face of the Earth for a while. You’re not alone in that. That’s how it felt to me, too, like I lost myself.
I think a part of me did want to disappear, instead of facing my own flaws and weaknesses.
What made it even worse for me, ironically, was the constant love and support I got from you guys—which I am still to this day grateful for in ways that words cannot do justice to. I had always felt so alone in life, like nobody wanted to listen to me and then suddenly there were so many of you guys reading the musings of my heart. I was terrified.
You guys were always so kind and loving and consistent with me, showing up week after week, and I was just so afraid that you’d see me for who I am—imperfect, incomplete, unsure of things—and not show up one day and I’d just be sitting there alone, again.
So I guess I just disappeared before you guys could.
