Not the one-year anniversary Substack I thought I'd be writing

It's a wild, wild life.

Last night, I finally collapsed in bed after my fourth straight day at hospital with my dad.

(You can read that story on my Instagram feed. TLDR; spinal injuries create all kinds of ripple effects, some more severe than others. It’s been a scary week, though he seems to be on a promising trajectory now thank the goddesses.)

You know that kind of emotional tired that you feel in every bone and muscle and tendon and cell and whatever’s inside a cell that your 9th grader who’s taking in biology could name?

That.

When my dad was in and out of lucidity on Sunday and Monday—the days that were too scary for me to go into much detail right now— they would ask him his name, where he was, what my name was. Yesterday, the doctors asked him the date and we laughed that none of us knew, so even a rough estimate would be fine.

“November 29 I think?”

An impressed oooohhhh made its way through the circle of doctors.

I later asked my dad if he cheated perchance, having noticed the date scribbled on the dry erase board hanging on the wall. He swore he didn’t. (Though it would be okay if he did.)

Wait. November 29? Really?

•••

Lying in my bed last night, staring at my ceiling with a five full minutes of quiet and a whole room to myself, my mind refused to follow my body’s lead and just chill. Instead, it raced through that never-ending mental list we all carry around of things that are due, that are overdue, that were supposed to be planned or written, posted, replied to, paid, purchased, found, mailed, watered, cleaned, or showered.

(That last one being me. Still hasn’t happened. There’s always tonight.)

Among that list: The belated “I’ve been here one year, so thank you!” post to all of you.

Well here it is. This is it.

And it’s just as fun and full of wit as I had always imagined it to be! Oh what’s that I hear? The Pulitzer committee calling, saying they're creating a whole new category just for me, to celebrate this exceedingly praiseworthy Substack anniversary post?

Truly, I’m touched.

When I wrote my welcome post for I’m Walking Here in November of 2022, I really thought this space would be different. I imagined it having a lot more humor and silliness and shopping and zombie movie discussions; a lot less grief (and grief) and war and loss (or fear of loss) in all its myriad forms.

I thought there’d be more writing in general, and less of life getting in the way of the writing about life.

And now, as I sit tapping on my laptop keyboard from an ugly straight-backed chair with my feet on the edge of a hospital bed, trying to ignore the beeping and booping sounds all around me—here we are again.

I guess that’s the thing I am still learning about my personal writing; I may have a wide lane, but when that lane is life, basically, I don’t get a whole lot of say in the direction it may take. I can only control how I respond to it, how I think about it, and how I might extract some insight from it that hopefully does us both some good.

As for you, dear readers, well wow. I never imagined there’d be so many of you here. Thousands, not just hundreds. (What!) I did know how wonderful it would be to find even a few people from my OG online community here again, but I didn’t expect how thrilling it would be to discover so many new voices too.

For those of you who are here supporting me — with a paid subscription or just with your presence, your time, your comments — thank you with all my heart. Whether it’s been a full year, or just a few months, you haven’t tried to jump out of the window of this moving car with dubious GPS and I am grateful you’re still here.

If only because you know I’ll always have good music on the speakers.

With that, let’s use this song to kick off the playlist for year number two.

Adventures await us. Just don’t ask me what they will all be.

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