How did this all start?

I can't believe it's gotten this far.

I haven't written this much in my whole life, which is funny to me since I have been coming up with stories since I was a small child playing make believe. I recently looked back through old journals and word docs on discarded flash drives at the back of a drawer, I couldn't believe how many stories I had come up with; yet only managed to write down the basic idea of or maybe some small one-offs here and there. What made Chasing Shadows so different?

The timing.

My life has been falling apart since the year I turned seventeen, I had been mostly healthy all my life but that year my health took a turn and it has been going downhill ever since. Thankfully through multiple surgeries and more treatments than I care to recall, I am no longer in daily pain and my health has normalized to a degree...well, as much as it can considering I have lasting effects that have altered me for the rest of my life. But do you know what else happened that year? I got a little dog who also altered my life, only for the better.

Now this little dog was the best thing to ever happen to me. I'm not religious, I don't believe in divine intervention or even fate, most things in life are pure coincidence after all, yet every now and then things will happen that makes me question this and it was that little dog. I had always wanted a Yorkshire Terrier and had begged my parent's for a dog for years but the answer was always the same "we have too many pets in this house as it is", mind you none of said pets were mine yet I was still expected to help care for them. Then one summer day, my parents were coming home from the grocery store and noticed our neighbors that lived down the street from us had puppies in their front yard, they were Yorkie breeders and had people coming to look at the pups. So my parents, being the dog lovers they are, stopped to see the puppies and chat. They had no intention of telling me about this interaction until they had asked the neighbor when the puppies were born, to their shock the answer was my birthday. According to my parents they both looked at each other and had the same thought: "well shit, we're getting another dog". After all, how could they say no when the exact breed of dog I wanted was available and also so happened to be born on my birthday? They came home and sat down on the couch behind my computer in the family area, which made me panic at first as they rarely used that room so I immediately assumed I was in trouble, when they said the glorious words that they had seen Yorkie puppies for sale down the street. I remember my heart racing as I quickly caught on that they wouldn't tell me this for no reason, it could only mean my dream of owning a little dog would come true that day. After talking about the logistics for a good while they finally took me down the street, by then there was only two little boys left. One of them completely ignored me as he was too busy following the mother around while the other was hiding under a table, so while I was trying desperately to get the attention of the one puppy my sister manages to drag the other out to bring to me. She placed him in my lap and it was love at first sight. That little puppy would not leave my lap for anything, if you tried to move him he dug his sharp little claws into my legs and even ignored both of his birth parents and sibling. The neighbors were shocked, they said in all the years they were breeding puppies they hadn't seen one become so quickly attached to a person before, to the point of completely ignoring their birth mother which was highly unusual when they're actively in the same space. So he came home with us, I named him Henri (ohn-REE) as I was learning French at the time (none of which I remember now, except for a few curse words). He adapted to the living arrangement changes faster than any other dog any of us had ever seen, it was as if he had been living with me his whole life. He was a spitfire, feisty and intelligent, always keeping me on my toes with his antics. That little dog held my heart and soul in his tiny paws.

For thirteen beautiful years we were inseparable, where I went he followed. He was there for all the hell I went through with my health, as well as other horrible situations as life just loves kicking you when you're already down. I can honestly say I probably would have ended my life if I didn't have that cute little furry face to wake up to every day. I gave up many hobbies due to being in too much physical pain to do any of them, I used to ride my bike for miles and go for hikes, draw and write, garden, fish in the nearby lakes, some crafts here and there amongst other things. My mental health deteriorated along with my physical health as I lost the ability to do a lot of things, even carrying the damn laundry basket to the laundry room became too difficult and that broke me piece by piece. I became more bitter and angry over time, even at one point turning to alcohol to drown out the hell that had become my life. Yet the one constant light in the darkness was Henri, he would snuggle with me for hours on end while I lay there in pain, comforting me while I cried.

On my thirtieth birthday this last year, a big one that I was looking forward to celebrating as my twenties had sucked and was also his thirteenth birthday, tragedy had struck. He had a cough that I had just attributed to allergies that he had his whole life, but then he started struggling to breathe and right after I got off the phone with the vet he stopped breathing in my arms. I will never forget that image for as long as I live, or the pure terror I felt in that moment. I managed to resuscitate him and rushed him to the vet, who is the nicest woman and took amazing care of him. She was gentle when she gave me the news that he was in heart failure and had six months at best, she sat and cried with me as I broke down at the realization that I was losing the light of my life. My world grew darker that day.

My mental health took a serious blow as my life became nothing but keeping him comfortable for as long as he had left, I retreated into myself further and shut down, shutting out loved ones in the process (some of these relationships never recovered from the aftermath of this). I was on autopilot, I lived to make sure he had his medications every day that kept his little heart going. Also though, and this is hard to admit, I started making plans for what happens after he passed. I couldn't fathom going on after he was gone from my life, so I started getting rid of my things, which is extremely unlike me as I hold onto things far longer than I should. I even wrote a will and a goodbye letter to my loved ones. Every day that passed he got worse and it was slowly killing me alongside him, I used to stay up all night just to make sure he was still breathing.

You've probably noticed by now that I'm still here, even though my sweet boy is gone. You're probably wondering what changed.

A damn hyper-fixation is what happened. I had come across an indie animation show that I began to fixate on, in a way I hadn't done since I was a stupid teenager. It was a short show, only eight episodes and had already ended, but I watched it over and over again as it brought me comfort. It also sparked something inside of me that I thought had died a long time ago: my creativity. For the first time in years I had picked up a pencil and drew a face, which then turned into more drawings of the same face until I had filled the only sketchbook I had kept. Then a name appeared: Ophelia. This was quickly followed by a story that might have come from a dream, to be honest I can't really remember how it came to me but most of my stories come from my incredibly vivid (sometimes terrifying) dreams. I surprised myself again by actually writing it out in my notes app on my phone, filling it with page after page of the story that was unfolding before me. Chasing Shadows was born, the story of Ophelia and Enoch and their struggle for freedom. It started to take over my life, writing on my lunch break at work and my hours of staying up with Henri were filled with me writing while he slept next to me. Most of my writing has been done at night, hence the name The Absence of Light for this website, as I couldn't bring myself to sleep in case something happened to him in the night. Suddenly my broken heart and destroyed mind started to heal, I was noticeably happier and drinking less. My world started to look brighter, I was making plans with friends and being more social again.

I think you know where this is going though.

Tragedy struck once again, while at work I got the text I had been dreading since my birthday. I rushed home to find him struggling to breathe and barely conscience so I took him to the emergency vet, I'll spare you the details of all that transpired but to make a long story short I was told it was time to say goodbye. So I called my family as I knew they would want to say goodbye as well, when they all arrived we sat in that little office and waited for them to bring him in. I will pause to say that the emergency vet was amazing and I am so grateful to them for the care they gave not only Henri but me as well. They wrapped him in a blanket and let me hold him close as he passed from this world in my arms. They let me hold him for as long as I wanted to, then I drove home with music blaring and all the windows down while I screamed and cried. That will forever be the worst day of my life.

All the progress I had made was seemingly washed away, the following days I drank heavy and called out of work. I did some things I regret in my drunken sorrow, said somethings I shouldn't have and hurt some people. The pain of loss radiated off of me, I became a less than pleasant person to be around. The light had left my world with his passing, there was no longer a sun in my sky, only darkness. In that darkness though I found a small sliver of hope, a tiny flame that had ignited before he passed. Even in my sorrow I continued to write, it was a small comfort that took my mind off the gaping hole left behind; so I let it consume me, to swallow me whole before the grief could. Before I knew what had happened I had written over forty thousand words and had the story planned out from beginning to end, Ophelia and Enoch coming alive in my imagination and filling every corner of my mind with their shenanigans. I kept drawing Ophelia, started a collage for the story based on the advice of a friend, made playlists for songs that reminded me of the characters and scenes, and went back and started actually rewriting my notes into full on chapters. I wrote more and drank less, and started to slowly heal.

Chasing Shadows has saved my life and I do not state that lightly, it gave me something to strive for as not only do I want to see the story to completion but I want to give life to the other stories in my mind. The sorrow I have of losing my precious Henri will never fully fade, but over time it I will come to terms with it. It's ironic, he came into my life as things fell apart and left as I finally started to heal, as if he knew it was safe to go and that I would be ok. His job was done, he is no longer suffering and while I am not sure if there truly is an afterlife I like to believe he is sitting on my grandfather's lap somewhere.

Thank you, Henri. You were the best thing in my life and I still carry you with me everyday, thank you for being there when I needed you most. I love you with all my heart and soul, my little prince, rest easy knowing that you did a good job being my best friend and soul mate.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading! Sorry for how long this post was, there was a lot of info to get through and it was both heartbreaking and soothing to write. This is not the end, only the beginning. I dedicate Chasing Shadows and any books that follow to not only Henri, but to my friends and family that have supported me, as well as anyone I meet along the journey. Make sure to come back for any updates I post!

"This is the night I set me free" - Set Me Free by Rachel Platten