In April of 2023, I wrote a piece entitled, “Disappearing.” We were well into long months of my mother’s mental and emotional decline, and in the following months, I would see a complete change in my life. I began retracting from most of my social world. I left for the woods. It was necessary.

The “river house” as we call it sits on a bend of the headwaters of the Manistee River. It is secluded. It is quiet. It is a place I’ve cherished since my father brought me to discover these ten acres almost fifty years ago. Just three years later, he would have most of his right lung removed due to cancer. He was forty-eight. At that river house in 1997, he died in my arms from the malingering effects and new cancerous growths.

My mother has been declining in abilities these last several years, and finally in 2023, she entered memory care after living alone on the river for twenty-six years. During that span, I did what I could to caretake and make sound a retreat that would remain for the family. I wasn’t alone in this endeavor. There was a period where I was around the country, and then there was a period where I was completely lost to life. But the river house was always looming in the viscera of my conscience. A dream that kept me afloat.

In these past two years, I have had to re-experience life-trauma. Relive pain that I assumed was long buried. It came alive in the wake of working with family, again, and seeing people I have avoided for reasons of recovery for most of a decade. Suicidality and depression are real. You are always in recovery.

Harken forward to today, September 5, 2024, and I have been in the woods, walked amongst the mountains, kayaked new lakes and in oceans, and currently sit in the house on the river in my new studio – essentially my old studio moved from downtown Petoskey. The aura is familiar, and the dream seems complete. Seems.

What now? I cherish the times in my chair, surrounded by books and memorabilia, enchanted by thoughts and plans for new manuscripts. I set my easel in the summer porch and paint. I grab flyrods and fish. I walk the woods. There are birds to watch; silence to enjoy. But there’s a new struggle. A new tear in the recovery of my soul. I like this isolation. This alone time away from divisiveness and argument in our society. I enjoy the disentanglement of conversation and the uncomfortable lag time of discussing the weather. Christine and I chef at home most of the time now, mostly because we like our cooking and the fresh food experience. I have reveled less in the restaurant and bar scene. Even the coffee shop experience became heavy.

So, this tear in my soul, this isolation, is it bad? I’m not sure yet. But I am becoming more comfortable in my own skin, again. I am still a few months away, I believe, from total re-engagement, and not entirely confident my social skills will be intact. I like people. I like to be around people. But after reliving past trauma and past panic, I have worked to cement my own assertiveness to protect my life. I do not intend to ever lose my soul, again. To never delve into the muck of the pessimistic parade that shadowed me for years before and after my father’s death. I’ve learned to paddle away from waves before they break over the bow.

My wife and children continue to be breakwaters in my war with life. They continue to buoy me and provide docking ropes as I drift. The life of me, now, wants to travel; wants to see grandchildren grow and be a part of the lives we brought forth. I want to reappear on the streets and in the villages as a meanderer wandering for the sake of wandering. No focus of a “job” or responsibilities to be seen in the social circuits. I don’t need the flagging of my ego or accomplishments to make me glow. I don’t want the attention to make me feel as if I belong in the world. If I end up in that mode, I know I’m slipping. I’ll ask for a lifeline.

Reappearing can be dangerous. Isolationism is a killer as we age. But a balance in the soul of someone who’s been lost since birth, doesn’t equate to teetering toward the abyss and then bolstering oneself by false pride and stupidity. My emotional warfare has found a détente. A common space in the world where I now know I am not totally alone in my journey. Others like me, that suffer from darkness, survive. I shall as well.

I am reappearing, slowly but surely, but nonetheless, walking in a world I finally think I understand, as I round into my late sixties. So, if I fumble the conversational ball a bit, or seem quieter, that is a good thing. I’m practicing. I’m writing again. I am carefully reentering the environs of society. I am being contemplative of my life. I am finally becoming the human I always wanted to be.