I started this site in an attempt to help people going through not Normal things. I think it’s so important to know that you are not the only one going through something, that there are others out there struggling too. For my sister site that focuses on Disney, I wanted to help people enjoy Disney World as much as I do. The same with the Youtubes and TikToks.

I’m write because I can not NOT write. I can not NOT create. It’s something that is an outlet for me and a calling in one.

But I got sick.

I am hoping one day to continue this mission, this journey, but for now everything must stop. I will be posting a couple of videos that are already filmed, and then I am stopping. I think in the future it might help someone who is struggling see they can make it to the other side of being sick, but for now I am in the thick of being sick and that’s just my reality. Denying that Gastroparesis has changed my entire life is not going to help me get better.

I have been pushing up against my reality, fighting it. Isn’t that what we are all taught? Fight through, conquer, be a survivor, an inspiration, and all that? In years past I was a notorious giver-upper, and I am really proud of the person I have become. I do not quit. But there comes a time when giving up is the smartest thing to do. Maybe it’s not giving up, but giving in and accepting the truth:

It has taken a lot to get to this point, but I can no longer deny my reality. Denial doesn’t make it go away, you know. It just makes it harder to handle.

So this is goodbye for now.

I will be paying to keep up the sites, but I will not be updating them until I am better. For my writing, I am retreating into a world of make-believe, and writing my fourth fiction book, and editing the first three for publication. I can’t imagine that this is forever, but this is for now.

Maybe you need to hear that, too.

This is for now, you know.

It doesn’t mean it’s your reality forever. Life changes on a dime, and I am proof positive of that. I moved to my forever, pinch-me-I’m-dreaming, “so lucky to be here” city in October only to find that forever is only going to last a year, and then I have to go.

Before I start writing a book, I picture the general overall arc of the storyline, but the story always takes me places I didn’t imagine it going to when I started. In a very long line at Disney recently, I thought about this next book I am writing. How to kick things off, and what I want the ending to look like. In every book there is a beginning, and there is “The End.” A good plot has a lot of twists and turns, ups and downs, good and bad.

It’s the same with our story. With your story. What you and I are going through is just a Plot Twist. It may feel like the end, but it’s just the beginning to every chapter that comes after it. It’s only chapter 11, and there are so many chapters to come. Keep turning the pages, even when you are in the thick of a bad one.

I’ll be seeing you on the other side of this chapter.

Love you so much.

Amy Tangerine

The post Tangerine: Chronicles of the Not Normal | Episode 8 | It’s just a Plot Twist, and Goodbye for Now appeared first on This Is Really Not Normal.