Shannon McNear, Author

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So, last night I tried to talk to someone about Mom, and the whole situation this past year, and I swear, I couldn’t get a coherent thought out. My brain just refuses to work in a linear fashion right now. And the anger. I feel so fragile, so brittle, like the merest blow will shatter me. I’m constantly having to rein the anger back in, over every stupid little thing. Writing ... oh, yeah, I said I’d get to that. Over the past year, I’ve put proposals in for three different novella collections but nothing was chosen. Probably a good thing, because with everything else going on with Mom, I honestly didn’t have time for a contract. In October, though, once we had Mom settled into rehab care, I thought I’d be able to settle in and focus on my writing. On doing something productive. The suggestion was made by my agent that I come up with another historical romance, something aimed at a certain popular category romance publisher. With no little grumbling, I found my thoughts go

            Part of the problem with grieving is that it doesn’t come in this nice, neat, clearly labeled package: “Oh, here is Grief. I will take it out and feel sad and nostalgic for this person [pet, thing] I have have been separated from, and then after ten minutes, I will put it back away and on the shelf until another day.”             No. For starters, it blindsides you, almost never when it’s appropriate or convenient. It may or may not be accompanied with tears. It might manifest (as I mentioned before) as anger or apathy.             Grief makes me stupid, forgetful. It’s raw and yet enervating, causing me to be far more sensitive than any human being has a right to be, and at the same time calloused to the hurt of others.             What really sucks, is that as time goes on, it feels less about missing the person who has left this life, and more that a whole chunk of your own life—who you are, what you base your daily routine around—is suddenly just gone.