Aurora's Blog

I never really thought I’d say this.

I’ve been trying so hard to hold on for the past year and a half or so. And I kept posting late, and backposting drafts I’d finally finished, and trying SO hard to keep up. But I never really could.

For anyone new to this party –

The blog’s beginning:

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I started blogging back in 2012 because I wanted to document my exciting new project of 52 half marathons in 52 weeks. And I kept blogging, because for the most part, cool stuff kept happening. I was on The Price is Right and Let’s Make a Deal (and goodness gracious do I love game shows).

I did more projects too – 52 volunteer activities in 52 weeks (for one). I kinda sorta became a little bit super best friends with Cory Booker. I wrote extensively about the ups and downs of trying to give my freaking kidney away. (Eeesh!) (That one’s still gonna happen though; I believe it!)

I did something new for my birthday every year, and wrote about trapeze-ing, hot air balloning, co-piloting a helicopter, going on a police ride-along, and doing “Skyrobics” with my dad.

I met Hillary Clinton (a couple of times!). I went to the Creative Arts Emmys. I talked at length about what it was like to have a crazy congenital heart defect, being in and out of the hospital, and ultimately having open-heart surgery.

I got to go to a few Simpsons table reads and meet the incomparable Matt Groening – and Yeardly Smith, the woman who embodies my hero (even if she is a cartoon), Lisa Simpson.

I did a number of different athletic type events – my first 50-miler (an ultramarathon), a 31-mile obstacle course, a number of marathons and more.

(It’s felt really crazy to write this all out, because nearly everything I mentioned happened between 2012 and 2015. So, it was an almost shockingly busy, fun, exciting, interesting, fairly-fully-lived 4 years.)

And then “the incident” happened. (If you don’t wanna click to a new post, or read a whole thing, the gist is, I got into a really prestigious writing program I’d been applying to for six years, moved across the country, and then was sexually assaulted by a popular classmate (more than once), found myself in an abusive relationship, learned what “gaslighting” is, and just had a really (reeeeally) rough time at every turn, and dealing with all the aftermath of that.)

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I tried to blog about all my activities I was trying to use as an escape. (And I did some cool stuff – met a bunch of animals, went to Legoland…)

But I still had sad posts and confusing posts and late posts. The blog became a mess. I became a mess. Everything was a mess. And it felt like SO many of the things I loved in my life were slipping away from me, as everything became harder. [Because even merely functioning became harder.] If I couldn’t get brush my teeth, I don’t know how I was gonna keep my hobbies up.

But I kept trying to blog – about what happened, how it made me feel, some things I was learning… I’m still kind of on the fence of if any of that is something I “should” have been blogging about. Was it interesting and informative, or too much sharing (and thoughts not perfectly organized)? Who knows… Either way, it reached a point where I sort of stopped having all that many new things to say (especially when, as I just mentioned, I wasn’t 100% sure what I should or shouldn’t be saying about all of it to begin with).

And there’ve been many posts that kinda make it seem like “I’m all better!”… Because there have been many times in these past couple of years where I thought, “I’m doing so much better!” …And it’s totally true that I am generally definitely doing better.

But as I continue to deal with consequences of everything that happened – e.g. repairing broken relationships (including work ones, which affect my career, because literally every aspect of my life was affected), repairing my body (which needs shockingly more repair than one would think), getting through school (being two years behind in the program since I deferred until he left), and more… there are still a lot of very bad days… I have a lot of ups and downs (still), because it’s all hard very hard to deal with…

(I said once it felt like an avalanche, because more and more just kept happening, and while the avalanche has gotten lighter, or changed, or something… the whole “it being an avalanche” remains to this day, as in… the event itself might be over, but you still have to figure out how to trudge through all the snow/get out of the aftermath.)

It’s exhausting to experience, exhausting to write about, and I’m imagining it’d be exhausting to read about as well.

(I’m just… I’m still not whole again. And who’s to know if/when I will be…)

I don’t have anything revelatory to say about all this stuff/this part. You’ve already heard about having the puzzle, or vase (or whatever my life is) shattered. I talked about starting to pick it up. But now the tedious work of putting the pieces back together – I sadly just kind of think at this moment, I sorta need to focus on that tedious, quiet work – on getting better in every way… And I don’t think I have the capacity to speak about it in blog form (or at least not regularly, on a nightly basis).

(While I generally have found sharing my life, and writing out new thoughts and experiences to be helpful, in this one instance, I don’t think writing is helping me… And I don’t think writing about this would be helpful to you (the reader) either, as far as I can tell…)

So, I’ve just got to take a break from blogging for a while.

I really am very sorry. I love blogging… And it was one of my last holdouts. There are soooooo many things I used to do regularly that fell away, so I sank my nails into blogging and held on as long as I could…  I did not want to feel like he took this away from me too (when he feels like he took so SO much)… But it’s become too unsustainable for me right now. I’m sorry.

So, what now?

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Will I come back?

I plan to! I hope to see you here again, when I feel I’m capable – back on schedule of 11:33pm California time every night. (Or at least, that’s the hope.)

And when will that be?

I’m not sure. If I start a new project, or get on a game show, I will write about it here. So, it’ll be either when something big and exciting happens, or when I feel reasonably back to myself. [And that will also probably mean that it’s time to start something reasonably big and exciting, or some fun new project.]

[And I imagine I’ll still always blog about the “new birthday thing” whether I’m “on break” or not, so hopefully I’ll see you here around every June 25th, at least.]

When can you know the blog is back, without having to check all the time?

On the right hand column of this website, if you scroll under the little welcome message, there’s a button to subscribe by email. If you do that, you’ll be alerted when I get back. (You can tweak the settings how you want them.) And/or you can follow me on any and all social media. My handle is @AurorasBlog everywhere (Twitter, instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, whatever you want.)

Lastly –

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While I do plan on seeing y’all here again, and interacting with you and all that jazz… Still, since I am sort of going away for a while, I just want to tell you thank you so much for all the years of wonderfulness.

It’s meant a lot to me when you reached out to tell me you liked something (or that you had issue with something), or that you learned something, or thought about something in a different way – because of something I wrote…. And sometimes, some of the messages you wrote me made me think about things differently too! So, I’ve appreciated the input and camaraderie and readership.

(It’s also totally tickled me when you’ve recognized me at races, or anywhere, in person.)

Thank you so. much. for being so kind about so many things. I’ve loved having you here to share my journey. You mean a lot to me. And I hope to see you in the not terribly distant future.

xoxoxo

• Aurora