A Foreword

Several months ago I started writing a novel. I was in the midst of a nervous breakdown and spiraling down into the deepest depression I'd ever experienced. This episode was different than the others I'd experienced since I was nineteen years old in that I also experienced extreme euphoria. I went days without sleep and wrote my little heart out while everyone else was asleep. I was convinced it was pure brilliance and that any who read it would be overcome with the bliss of pure emotion it evoked.  When I would get depressed I knew something was terribly wrong and that I needed help but when I was on a high of euphoria I didn't think I needed help from anyone.
I was diagnosed as Bipolar Depressed. I was given medication. I started seeing a therapist again. The meds evened me out so that I didn't have wild mood swings anymore. I slept at night. I got back into a regular routine of housekeeping and child rearing.
And my people were happy that I was "normal" again.
But I was BORED. 
The medicine took away my passion for so many things. It took away my clarity of thought. I lost my libido. I didn't want to write anymore. When I did, it was so generically engineered that even I was bored to tears by it.
To top it all off, one of the medications caused most of my hair to break off or fall out and caused me to gain almost forty pounds.
I began to miss the real ME.
So, I weaned myself off one of the meds and almost immediately my hair stopped falling out. I haven't gained any more weight but it sure is a lot harder than it ever was to get it off.
And now I want to write. I want to share. I want to create. I'm in that colorful cycle of grandiose thinking and I want to be brilliant.
But here's my conundrum (and the reason I've deleted so many attempts at novels), at almost 40 years of age I still feel like a kid who needs permission to write the stories I want to write. The last thing I want is to embarrass my parents or my children by writing about subjects that they have no idea I have any connections to. (I wonder if E.L. James worried what her family would think of her when she wrote 50 Shades of Grey?)
I've given my parents three grandchildren so I'm pretty sure they know I know about the birds and the bees. But what would they think if they read excerpts of just how deep my knowledge is?
See, the kind of stories I like to write (and read) are those about relationships between families, friends, lovers.  Emotional relationships and physical relationships and co-dependent relationships.
So, today, for the first time, I am giving myself permission to write what I want to write and I won't allow guilt to assault me anymore.
Hopefully, the next mood swing will hold off until I can get at least the first chapter written. I may publish it on this blog just to see what kind of reaction it brings.
Thank you all for letting me be me here on this page and not judging my self-centeredness. It's been said that the greatest relationship you'll ever have is the one you have with yourself. I'm just now starting to figure that out.
xoxo