Endings

If even for a second someone starts talking about school this week I am first to jump up and list off all of the homework I have to do over this Thanksgiving break. Which is a lot. While working full time. While trying to fit in friends that are home for break. While dealing with car problems. While making time for family. It's extremely overwhelming.

Seriously. I've had no less than four panic attacks about it already. And have I even started the three papers I have to do this week? Of course not. Which means I have three papers to do within the next three days. Joy. 

I often get just so... overwhelmed. I get so hung up on all of these little things that I am stressing about and life just seems awful when I do that. 

But today... This Thanksgiving I am so extremely grateful that things end. 

I know that sounds weird. But it's the truth. 

I am SO grateful that in the next three weeks, after five papers, one workshop, one revision, four finals, and a lot of crying.... it will all be over. This extremely busy semester will just be done. 

I am so grateful that even though this year started off terrible and my dad broke his hip and then had to get his kidney removed because of cancer and it was SCARY... it ended. And my dad is fine and the surgeries are over and the fear is gone and everything is fine now that that's done. 

I am so grateful that after 17 days of self torture, I finished a book. 

I am so grateful that even though I got hit by a car and I didn't get my new car for a month because of repairs, the repairs are done. (mostly... just gotta take it in one more time!) 

I am so grateful today that all of the stresses, terribly classes, bad relationships, horrible heartbreaks, numbing fear, huge projects, periods of lost faith.... End. 

Today I'm full of gratitude. 

Today I know things are going to be okay. Because all bad things end eventually. 

20,000 words.

I'm 20,000 words in with my latest novel and as I reach the halfway mark I feel half empty. 
Not fully. Just almost half empty. Like all I have in me is words and I threw 20,000 of them at a blank screen and left them there, leaving their places empty inside of me.
I'm 20,000 words in with my latest novel and I feel like the most real parts of me have been hidden underneath those 20,000 words and now they're unearthed. 
Like all of that anxiety and self hatred and those dreams and hopes and plans and repressed memories and all that love was always there but buried underneath 20,000 words. Just waiting for me to find it. 
I'm 20,000 words in with my latest novel and I feel alone.
Like for the last year there have been voices in my head telling me a story and now I'm 30,000 words away from putting them completely on paper, giving them a home, and they won't be here anymore. 
I'm 20,000 words in with my latest novel and I have spent so much time already forming and creating and planning these people and this world and everything about them that I have forgotten who I am. I am 20,000 words closer to realizing that I've never known who I am without these made up people.
And I don't know how to handle the real world.