I felt a sense of wonder for the first in a long time.

I went digging through my drafts just now, and I stumbled upon this fragment — all I had saved of a small sketch I was working on.

It is fitting that I would wake myself early and haul my tired fat deposits out the door for a doctor appointment that is scheduled, actually, for tomorrow. So I found myself outside a little after nine in the morning, all dressed up (in jeans, dirty worn men’s sandals, bed hair, and an oversized Penguins hoodie) and nowhere to go.

It was, as I recounted to my husband, cool and quiet and full of yet-to-be. There was a grey cover on the skies and a touch of misting here and there. The roads yawned wide and empty. Light was diffuse but intense. The clock tower at the courthouse

The next morning, I found out. About it. And instantly my world came crashing down… the world I had only just finished rebuilding.

The day before.

I have to get back into this. I have to push myself. I’ll never get it back if I don’t. I’ll never get my life back. And, God, I want it back — please. I’m almost there. We’re almost there. We’ve been working hard. I’m only just starting to feel it. Please, this time, let me wake up not to a creation crumbling around me, but to a potential I can fill.

There is no thing in life I want more. I want what I had — but it was flawed. And I understand now: I don’t just want to keep it and correct its wrongs. I want, instead, to make something, something new, something better, something stronger. That space, that potential never realized. I see it now. I want to fill it.

Please.