I wrote this for my dad back in 2020
It’s part of an ongoing series I used to publish on my blog. The series was called “Conversations with an Empty Chair”.
This day should never have existed. I should not be counting the minutes, the days, the months, the years since we said goodbye. Sometimes I wonder: Did I imagine you? Were you ever really here? Am I just talking to myself? I know, you’ll tell me I’m being silly. I want to live every day to the fullest, I want to make the most of whatever days I have left. I want a life I am proud of, a life that I will give back to Him who first gave it to me. I want a full life, and you taught me that, you who left everything too early, who left everything in the middle. But the things that mattered, those stayed behind. Your love, the perfume of your life, your faith. I’m scared that everyone is forgetting you. I’m scared that you only ever existed in my head. I’m scared that all the “I love yous” I remember never happened.
But 7 years is a long time.
And I don’t know if I’ll live more or less than that until I meet you again, but absence is an ugly thing. It’s alive, absence is. The gap you left behind is the personification of pain.
But they did.
7 years is a long time.
But one thing I’m not scared is that I will ever ever ever forget you.
~Conversations with an Empty Chair
5.15.2013~5.15.2020🥀 7 years without you. ~M.C.
In a few weeks it will be 13 years without him. Unimaginable, when I did not want to live a single day after he was gone. What have I been doing for 13 years? How have I been surviving?
You know the answer. I have been writing.
I have been pouring all my grief and my love, which had nowhere to go, into my books, as you will know if you have had the misfortune to read any of them. For example, here is what inspired my upcoming book Die For You:
Loss
Pain
My own mental health struggles and the urge to share it with others
My beloved, tortured country that suffers under the thumb of corrupt and ruthless rulers
The redeeming grace of second chances
My bear
K-drama and my recent trip to Korea
My faith
After all of this, I am sure that you will never want to read it, not in a million years. But just in case you do, here is a link to preorder it.
Life doesn’t owe any of us a chance to breathe, but writing has been air to me.
And all of you are the reason why I keep publishing my little (or not so little) pieces of darkness, and hoping to bring light into them, and into my world. Maybe into the world in general, who knows?
Anyway, if you have read this, thanks for reading. You have made me feel less alone. And, since we all deserve books anyway, here is a link for the Romance Book Blast, an online platform which, for only one day, is featuring hundreds of romance reads available for you to download on your preferred platform. Find them here: https://www.romancebooklovers.com
My very own book, HOOD, a prequel to my Outlaws series, is featured on the website, so if you haven’t grabbed a copy yet for f r e e , here is your chance!
Once again, if you have read this, it means more than you will ever know: it means I am not alone. And that, in the end, is what books do for us all, isn’t it? That is what stories do. That is why I write them.
With all my love and thanks,
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