WordPress Anniversary today!

 

7 Years

 

Seven years ago I found WordPress and I signed up. I had heard about blogs, but I had no true grasp of what they were. Nonetheless, I signed up. I posted 2 poems that I had written a couple of years before and had posted on my domain site, TontoCreations.

TontoCreations  was a fun place for me to write poetry, short stories, and colorful birthday pages to my family. A place to learn HTML and practice it on an unsuspecting family. In 2008 when I let that name domain go, I nosedived. It was a terrible time, an uncertain time and a time of fear. It was also a time of hiding. I did not want anyone to know I was sick. I tried to hide it. It was no use. I wasn’t able to function. Everyone knew I loved to write, create, and now I was not able to.  It was the elephant in the room. No one mentioned it yet, it was not to be overlooked.

I was in the process of getting sick that year. I was not functioning well at all and I was not able to focus enough to write, read or do my job. Especially no reading,  no  magazines, no books, no Bible, No reading at all. The words made me physically ill and I couldn’t understand the words.  It became obvious, Phoenix, we have a problem.

I was one sick puppy. Finding this website in 2009 made me feel that I could perhaps I could become active, alive and interested again. I had two poems from the TontoCreations days that I shared one on that day and one a few days later, after that, I never returned. It had not worked. I was breaking apart. Seven years ago next month I wrote my first book. I was becoming sicker and sicker as I wrote. That NoNoWriMo 2009 product was the last thing I wrote. I would get much sicker before I began to get better.

Everyone in Phoenix witnessed my decline. There was no more hiding the fact. Unable to work, unable to function in society or even in my own home  in 2010 I gave up my broken life in Arizona and relocated to my daughter’s house in Kentucky. For a year, I struggled, fought, and clung to the hope for a normal and happy life. It was not looking good even in a new state. I had brought my illness with me. It was not environmental I realized. It was internal.My life should have been good now. All three of my children were in the same state. I was with all my grandchildren. I expected miracles that never materialized. I was clinging to hope that I could find peace in writing, I began to write a new story in November 2011 during NaNoWriMo. I was able to write 50,000 words. I began to believe in hope.

I made a doctors appointment in October with a new and different type of doctor and saw her the first time in December. I had dreams of getting better. Until I had a personally devastating loss on December 2,2011 and I was once again unable to write. I again was broken and unable to function after only one month of writing. That NaNoWriMo 2011 story is lost and I suppose I am ok with that.

I saw  a new doctor for the first time the week of Christmas, December of 2011. She said she thought she knew what was wrong. She began to work with me to make me better, to make me come back to life. I have been working on coming back to life since that first appointment. I had to make some hard decisions and face some terrible truths. I struggled to regain joy and happiness. I struggled and lost myself into a pit of emptiness and numbness.I wasn’t living now, I was only breathing. Yet she continued to work with me, seeking answers trying various methods, encouraging me back to health.

The tide turned in December 2014, my sister and brother gave me a trip to see them in the Pacific Northwest. It was lovely to see them, but hard to hear that they could see the emptiness. I was a shell now and they saw it.They not only saw it they individually called me on it.  I visited, laughed, remembered silly memories, I listened to them, and longed to fight. I wanted to come back to life, my real life.

My sister gave me some reading glasses and a book and I was surprised to find I was able to read and enjoy a small book on the airplane from Washington to Kentucky.

 

I stumbled through that one book which took almost 5 hours to read. I finished the book on the plane and I picked up another book from my dusty bookcase as soon as I arrived home. I read it in four hours. It had been 6 years since I was able to read anything. Unable to find joy in words, to lose myself in reading. I began to hope I was going to be better. I knew I would not be well. Knowing that I would not be sick and miserable and cut off from reading made me feel hopeful for the first time in years.

May 2015, I had been reading the books in my bookcase for almost five months. I requested a library card and began to frequent the stacks picking up some of my favorite authors from the eighties and nineties, from an earlier time in which I enjoyed reading.

   I remembered finding Goodreads in 2012, so I  returned, three years later and began documenting my books. In June, I began writing simple reviews. Letting me know what I had found interesting or good about a book. It found that I loved writing small simple reviews. I also liked the feeling of people liking my reviews. So I took more time with them. Added more feeling to the reviews and including what emotions the book created in me. I began to take pride in my reviews. I wanted the books to be loved by others as they were by me. It might only be fifty or one hundred words, but I was actually writing.

Last October 20, 2015, I was given a nice happy anniversary note from WordPress and decided to check it out, again. I found my abandoned poems and I posted a review of a book I had just finished reading. I wrote a few more reviews over the next few weeks and I was hooked.

It has been a fun year, with plenty of changes about how I write and what I write on here. Maybe now you understand why I was back home a year before telling about my Alaskan cruise. I long to share the beauty that is out in the world. The beauty of words, and the joy I find in discovery. I can’t stop writing. I am like a waterfall, words are flowing by the ton over my keyboard, and I find the beauty in it. The words are healing, perhaps they aren’t curative, but they are healing.

Life is funny, it takes you on twists and turns and sometimes you realize you have been going in a circle. From writing to mute, and back to writing.

One year later. I am still here. Writing, enjoying writing and totally engrossed in my daily life of writing, blogging and more writing.  It is a good place to be. I am finding joy in reading and writing. I may still struggle with the other aspects of life, but I have found joy and a lot of amazing and fun people, here on The Page Turner. Thank you for sharing my year!

I hope we share more funny moments, a lot more books, likes, comments, happiness, announcements,and visits. This is my story. I only share it with you. I do not share it on Facebook or other social places. I want my friends to know me, and to understand my journey.

Thank you for showing me love. I have felt your love and friendship and I give it right back to you.

Vicki