Since you’ve been gone, I’ve struggled so much with regaining my creative spirit.
So much so that I almost lost it entirely.
As someone who has always been a lover of all things artistic; painting, reading, film, photography, and especially writing—it’s been absolutely devastating.
Not as devastating as losing you, of course. But it equally shaped me into who I was, arguably just as much as you did.
And I thought that, maybe, after I finally managed to somehow crawl over that five-year hurdle of life without you, I could find it within myself to love being creative again.
I’ve heard that that’s what happens a lot of the time, anyways.
I miss who I was before so much sometimes that it aches.
But I still don’t really feel any different.
Sure, within the past five years, I’ve had a few spurts here and there of creative energy where I was writing all of the time. They were glorious, but brief moments. The periods in between were much worse, much longer, and much heavier.
Nowadays, though, for the most part, on the rare occasions when I actually try to write, I often end up an hour later with nothing but useless words on crumbled pieces of paper scattered all around me.
It’s because of those many failed moments that I’m really starting to fear that my creative spirit has been lost forever.
Or, at the very least, will never return to what it once was, ever again.
And that haunts me almost as much as you do.
Today’s prompt comes from my own thoughts and feelings. Each of these letters to my dad are written candidly; unedited and unfiltered.