When I get home, I pull my computer out from under my bed, open up Google Docs, and write.
It’s like my body is taken over by an outside force. I don’t even realize what I’m doing until I’m on the sixth page and a story is forming like magic. Names and places, sentences and paragraphs, relationships and conflict and the connecting thread of love.
I write like I used to, not worrying about what other people think. Not worrying about what it all means, just what it means to me.
I write until my hands cramp up and my back aches. I keep going.
I write through my mom’s insistence that I come out for breakfast, then lunch, then dinner. I write until she finally brings me a tray of grapes and pretzels and cubes of cheese—things I can eat one-handed, the other hand consumed with the tap-tap-tapping of words. She smiles and kisses my head, leaving me to it.
The anxiety comes in waves, and I don’t ignore it. I acknowledge it, examine it, and then let it go. I don’t let it stop me.
Writing again feels like reuniting with an old friend. Except no—that’s not right. Because it’s a part of me, it always has been, even through these lost months. It’s more like reattaching a limb. Or my hair growing back after the Big Chop, different but wholly mine.
I almost lost sight of what the whole purpose of the happily ever after plan was. Not just finding the happily ever after of love, but finding my words. Seeking out my voice again. And it’s easy now, because it’s loud—screaming. Not the hushed whisper it was before, but booming, all caps, thunderous and self-assured.
And when Sunday night comes and I have pages that I’m proud of—maybe not perfect, but perfect to me—I finally share my words again, attached to a long email that ends with “I love you, I miss you, I’m sorry.”