NaNoWriMo — National Novel Writing Month, for those of you who have somehow missed all of my blogs and tweets and Facebook status updates regarding the matter — starts in less than nine hours.

Nine hours, until I can finally start writing the book I’ve been planning for the last two months, until the idea I got over a year ago can finally take shape and grow.

I sat at McDonald’s, waiting for Sandy and my godkids Kaylene and Konner to arrive. I hadn’t seen them in a while, and I missed them so much. I sat waiting among parents with little kids running around, eating dinner, playing in the PlayLand, and suddenly realized that I was probably the only person there without a kid. It felt a little strange, not being in what I call The Mom Club, even though most of my friends have kids. I felt kind of out of place, a lone woman waiting for her group to arrive.

I started to wonder, what would it feel like for a woman to meet her child for the first time in such a situation? I thought about it until Sandy and the kids arrived, and while we ate I scribbled the idea down on a scrap piece of paper.

It sat in my ideas notebook for a long time.

After it’d sat in that notebook for about a year, I pulled it out and expanded the idea on a single sheet of paper. I did a little bit of pre-writing, then lost my steam. I paperclipped the original scrap to that sheet of paper, and it went right back into that idea notebook for another few months.

In September, I started thinking about NaNoWriMo again. The idea I’d forgotten about suddenly demanded to be written. Originally, I’d thought about just writing a short story. I had done a brief character outline of my main character, but nothing else. Now, a different character had taken shape, with a host of supporting characters to guide her through the journey I planned for her.

I spent the last two months breathing life into these characters and preparing an outline. It gave me something else to think about besides the stress of being sick and the stress of school.

Now, hours away, I am still itching to get started. The fire that started within me is still burning brightly. I actually can’t help but wonder if the events of the last couple of years of my life have all led up to this moment. It took me being really sick and going through trying to get diagnosed to get back to my first love: writing. It took me having to drop out of school because I am just too stressed out and my body is suffering because of it. You know how, in a book or movie, big events are the only things that change the main characters? It’s like that in real life, too. For me, being in pain and enduring all these weird ass symptoms — someday I will post an updated list, as they’ve progressed a lot since — was what it took to get me to come back to writing; I haven’t done much writing in over a year.

In coming back to my love, I feel like I’m finding myself again. Maybe I can’t find the pieces of me that this disease has taken away, but I am finding pieces of my old self that I can still have. I can still write. Yes, it may be painful sometimes (I can still remember writing The Cure Program during NaNoWriMo 2007 and all of the pain that brought me), but it’s worth it because it reminds me that I am still here inside of this hurting body.

So although it’s hard to be completely honest about how I feel — how truly depressed I am — I can honestly say that having Secondhand Mom to look forward to has given me purpose again. It’s not the same kind of purpose that school gave me — the doing it just to do it kind. It means more, and it makes me feel like I’m alive. I know that sounds so corny because it’s so goddamn overused, but that’s truly how I feel. As I thought about all of my characters and gave them histories and problems and brought them to life, I think I brought myself back to life. This disease has sucked an awful lot of life out of me, and I know that the people around me will agree with me when I say that.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, writing this book is giving me a reason to keep on fighting for myself. And right now, that’s the closest I can get to describing how I feel.