If you are following any of my working stories then you probably know that I haven’t updated anything in four months. I have been actively reading stories and responding to comments, but I haven’t released any new content. So, I am here to tell you why.

**Advance Warning: This gets really really long and personal, but I would like to think that exposing those things about myself that I try not to talk to will help open room for discussion, so if any of you are going through something similar, then maybe I can help. Read it, if you want, or skip it, that’s cool too. It’s totally up to you.

Let’s start with a little back ground information so that this makes a little more sense to you.

There is a running joke among my friends that I should write screenplay for a soap opera about my life and sell it to Hollywood. Let me tell you, I would be rich. I am not going to bother you with the nonessential information or too many details. Long story short: my birth dad was a jerk (abusive, both mentally and physically, and alcoholic, absolutely nuts, the whole nine yards) and when my parents divorced, the court ruled that I spend my time split between the two houses. That lasted four about four years before I ran away. I went to live with my mom’s family and haven’t spoken to my bio dad since. Needless to say, his family kind of hates me.

Fast forward three years. I am 19 and I am in college as an English Education major, just trying to get by. For 19 years I had kept the truth about my uality a secret and in January, just after the New Year, I make my coming out through a very long, very wordy Facebook post (classy, I know, but I killed 200 birds with one stone). It doesn’t go well. My family on both sides are very religious and I have lost track of the number of times I am going to Hell or that I am the physical embodiment of Satan. Not exactly the coming out I was hoping for. The household blew up and everything was in shambles for a while.

One month later (because I can’t catch a ing break), my grandfather, whom I had lived with for 16 years and who was a very important to me, was diagnosed with lung cancer. He decided to take his fate into his own hands and ended his dialysis treatments. He died one week later.

Fun fact: death . Especially when it is someone close to your heart and integral to your life.

Imagine that you are in a wave pool or the ocean and you have just been down by one of the waves, but before you can get back to the surface, another wave pushes you down and you are spinning and disoriented and it becomes a waiting game of what stops first, the waves or your lungs. Well, that had been my life for the past 9 years.

So, why am I telling you all of these things you never wanted to know about me?

Well, there are a few reasons.

One: You are my friends and my readers, and if you have made it this far into this post than you deserve an award, or at least to know the truth behind my reasoning.

Two: I am selfish and it feels really really good to get this off of my chest, even if it means unloading this here (therapy is expensive). There is a handful of people who know all of this about me because I am usually a pretty private person who doesn’t like to burden people with her emotional baggage.

Three: Like I said, it feels good to write about this. Writing has been cathartic and a therapeutic outlet for me for as long as I can remember. I have always been a writer. Not a good one, but I have been one. I have mentioned before that I am an English Major. I have taken a writing class this spring that has completely changed the way that look at and approach writing. This class, a Composition Theories class, demands that we, as future teachers and writers, examine and evaluate our writing, our writing process, and our writing philosophy for pros and cons. What can we do to better ourselves as writers and aspiring educators? After months of metacognitive self-examinations and reading essays and studies from major researchers in the Composition field, I finally found the source of my Writer’s Block (aside from my mental and emotional turmoil).

When I first started writing on AFF, I did so as a means of entertaining myself and a small group of friends. You can see it in my early work, 365 and The Deli Boy; they are ty crackfics full of inside jokes and friend memes. I never meant for other people to read them. I only keep them up because some people, bless your souls, enjoy them. I was writing for my first “Audience Addressed”, a small group of people that I targeted with my writing. Then came the “Audience Invoked”, the people outside of my target audience who came to my work because they – you – enjoyed it. As I gained more subscribers and more attention, my Audience Addressed expanded to include all of my readers, you and your peers. If you are familiar with my oneshot collection, Shots of Bangtan, or my blog, then you will know that I used to take requests from readers and wrote what they wanted to see. I love doing that, but I think I got so caught up in giving everyone else what they wanted that I lost myself and my voice as a writer. For the first time in my nearly 20 years of living, I started to dread writing.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not blaming you; I appreciate all of my subscribers. This was all on me. I failed myself as a writer and when my feelings started to leak into my writing, I failed you. I am only back now because I think I have grown as a writer and rediscovered myself and my voice.

So, there you have it. I hope that you understand my desire to make this blog post and to share it with you. I hope that you can understand me a bit better.

If you read through this entire mess, then thank you. I am not looking for your sympathy, only your understanding. I hope you know how impactful you, as my readers and friends, have been on my life. You are all so overwhelmingly positive and supportive. When the time comes for me to stop writing on AFF permanently (which will not be happening anytime in the foreseeable future), I will be able to look back on this experience and all of the people who helped shape into something so crucial in making me the writer and the person I am and for rekindling my love of my art and its craft.

Tl;dr: My life is a mess, my brain is a mess, my writing is a mess, and I am not okay. But I am trying to be better because you deserve more and, more than that, I deserve more (sorry, but I have to be my top priority sometimes).

Thank you. All of you.