I’ve known for a couple months that I wanted to set up a blog to focus on this topic, and as soon as I had the idea of using the domain imeanttodothis.com I knew it was what I wanted. I had to go through some hoops to get the domain, but fortunately although someone was using it when I first checked, it was for a blog that they hadn’t ever posted to, and it was about to expire. They let it go, I went through a backorder and an auction, and here we are.
My husband and I are on staycation this week. We’d planned the time off just before Mom killed herself, thinking we might go to the beach or the mountains, but after a few weeks of dealing with both the trauma of what happened and the logistics of managing everything (I was the executor of the will and she had no other immediate family left, so it was all us) we realized that what we really needed was a chunk of time to just rest. We didn’t even realize, when we made the decision, that I’d soon come down with viral bronchitis that would last for a month and that just as I was starting to get better he’d get hit with a nasty virus that’s been going around.
It’s been a rough season. Spending a bunch of time at home snuggling with the cats and playing video games is exactly what we needed.
I really didn’t expect much accomplishment of myself during this time – the entire point was to just rest and recover – but I did want to get this blog set up. The timing was right – I finally got control of the domain just last Saturday. I also knew that it would take me some time to get it just the way I wanted it. I really do think of this as a place. It’s a room, and I’ve been fussing over the furniture and the drapes. It’s not a fancy room but it needed to feel right to me. It needed to feel like a place I’d be comfortable coming to talk about Mom, because talking about Mom means talking about some of the most vulnerable parts of myself.
Now I have the place. I have the outlet. When I go back to work on Monday, when I restart my usual life routines after this time free from obligations, I’ll be doing more than just going back to work after a vacation. I’ll be truly starting the process of figuring out my new normal. Having a space where I can write about all of this will be, if nothing else, a mental and emotional safety net. Sometimes it’s easier for me to process things in the form of “how would/will I write about this” and I needed a platform where I could do that whenever I needed without feeling like I was burdening anyone or filling anyone’s feed with triggery content.
If you’re here, you know what this is and I have no need to apologize for it.
