"What we left behind"
/Woke up yesterday morning to a Facebook notification from the "Suddenly Single Show". It was a podcast ran by a friend of mine whom I did an interview for back in January of 2019. The original interview was expected to come out in March but had been delayed. Frankly, I had pretty much forgotten about it. It couldn't come at a more… interesting… time. My last thought before falling asleep the night before had been "How much life must I live before my words matter?"
Writing is hard, so is web design, so is 3D modeling, Animating, so is UI/UX and all the other things I do to support my dream, the dream of telling the Amaranth Chronicles. My current contract has me putting all of my skills together to build someone else's dream and while the work is interesting, and pays well, its made my goal feel so much further away. These days I'm feeling unheard and unseen, and I can't figure out why so it was a bit of a shock when I heard my interview and saw a quote in big black and white text.
🤔 Do men hurt like women when they get dumped? Yes, they do! Alex was dumped via text message 📲 on the way to couples #therapy 😢. Listen to his #inspiring story about what he learned about himself from having his heart broken 💔 and how he has been putting the pieces of his life back together since then.
Listen on this week's episode of #thesuddenlysingleshow #podcast 🎙. Available on your favorite #podcasting platform, ask Alexa or Siri to play The Suddenly Single Show podcast, or at www.SuddenlySingleShow.com.
I was shocked at how “wounded” I still felt from the previous year. I thought I’d feel differently when this episode came out. The nightmares still continue and so do the random days of sudden and overwhelming loss. Having loved her for nearly two years and walked with her in those first days when she started to truly confront the unimaginably terrible things that had happened to her, I never thought I would lose her to them. It’s one thing when someone falls out of love with you, it’s another thing when they love you and don’t want to saddle you with their baggage so they run. Never, ever, has something impacted me so acutely. Losing her was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, it’s strange then to hear myself laugh about it considering how sick to my stomach during the interview I was. The heartbreak gave me a lot, made me look for things, answers, I wouldn’t otherwise have reason to seek. That I’m thankful for and after seeing my quote in big black and white letters, I can only hope that somewhere out there someone finds some peace, some direction, some indication that they aren’t alone.
I guess that I was hoping for something, something to make me feel seen on social media. I changed my profile picture to my quote in hopes of people seeing it, maybe listening to the podcast. Its been 48 hours and no one, NO ONE has commented. In any other circumstances, I'd say using social media as a barometer for your visibility is a really really stupid idea but now I feel a sense of cosmic isolation on a level I had never previously imagined.
The morning was rough and I was having trouble concentrating. I felt strangely vulnerable while simultaneously worrying that all I was going to do was attract the ire of people who thought that a display of emotion is a display of weakness. I was browsing Youtube on my phone while I sat in my car during a break and saw an ad for the documentary “What we left behind.” A crowdsourced film that is both a retrospect and a pitch for a reboot of Star Trek Deep Space 9. I watched the Ad and saw the love and devotion in the showrunner Ira Steven Behr's eyes. I know that feeling, I know that feeling all too well. I feel it nearly every moment of my life for my own series that I am so dedicated and desperately searching for ways to get out there. To my surprise, "What we left behind" was only showing in theaters for one night. What a tiny distribution for something that's had so many dedicated fans and crew working for so long.
Seeing the 7pm show time, I felt something call to me. My dad is the only other die-hard Trekkie I know and thankfully he lives close enough that we were able to go see it together. It was a moving film and the pitch for the reboot of the series was very VERY exciting. I had a lot of thoughts running through my head afterward. I was mentioning to my dad that because I have skills that transcend just writing, skills that help me visualize my series people think I have everything planned out and everything's going to be A-OK. People can't imagine somebody with this much firepower desperately needing other peoples help. That's part of why I am alone. There's nobody who can help me because nobody's been this far out from Center. And as I started to drive home, I realize that this element could very well be why no one cared enough to comment on this great grief I've been dealing with for the last couple of years. When you look like you have it so much more together than everyone else, you just become invisible. No one can relate to you or your struggles.
... And then... for the second time in a day. I felt that cosmic isolation…
