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Jay Lake had colon cancer this summer. I followed his entries on Live Journal the whole time. Everybody’s got a digital camera now, hospitals have internet access, and the miracle of YouTube made it possible for Jay to keep in touch with everyone. He reminded us how much he loves us, and gently warned the world that he was Almost Back.

I make no bones about the fact that I’ve led a fairly charmed life. Every day is an adventure, every petty person a character, every unfortunate event a story waiting to be told. Jay’s predicament stirred my old memories to the surface, things I had tied to cement blocks and tossed off the bridge a few years ago when I had my own cancer scare. A similar week in the hospital and the relieving revelation of a harmless congenital birth defect later, I had a new lease on life and a long recovery ahead.

But it wasn’t the worst thing that has ever happened to me.

Breaking up with my fiancé last fall was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

Like legions of women who came before me, I wanted a fairytale so badly that I was blind to all else, stupidly devoted and loyal to the bitter end and beyond. I got a fairytale all right, but one more of de Sade’s literary styling than de Beaumont.

When the truth of the situation finally laid itself before me in black and white I became physically, violently ill…but I was not surprised. At the end of the play, in the last act, when all the secrets are revealed, you are never surprised. The evidence was there all along, you just chose not to see it; you made the subconscious decision not to put the pieces together. I went from having a soul mate to being a statistic. I realized that, at the heart of it, I was the guiltiest party–guilty of deceiving myself.

In 2005, a gifted doctor opened me up and cut out a piece of me that made me unique. I now have three little scars that remind me when I’m overtired. In 2007, a silver-tongued devil opened me up and cut out my heart.

That devil was me.

Those scars leave an even more painful reminder. A dream died that day– my beautiful, innocent dream–and its murderer still walked the earth. A murderer whom I had to face every morning in the mirror.

And to top it all off, the world had conspired to leave me alone with her.

I knew two things immediately: the first being that if I really wanted Global Thermonuclear War, I had Brian Keene on speed dial. (I didn’t want that, of course, but when the shite hits the fan it’s surprisingly reassuring for a girl to know she’s got that option in her back pocket.) The second was the answer to the question pertaining to whether or not I was far enough gone to play the gothic romance card and commit suicide over the whole affair.

N-O.

Nope.

No way.

Huh-uh.

As they say here in Tennessee: Hay-ell no.

The words drove like nails into my brain and lit up in glowing, Technicolor neon. I had a charmed life and I liked it; no selfish loser was going to take that away from me. I remembered what Mom had told me about those self-important rich kids in high school: they only have as much power over you as you give them.

It never ceases to amaze me how much life really is high school all over again.

But that one word in my head — NO — those two letters so unwavering and powerful, echoing silently in my ears, actually made me smile. They gave me strength. I knew without a doubt that I was going to be okay. The only thing standing in between me and perfect mental health was time.

For the record: Time sucks.

Then, I picked up the phone.

The reason this action was significant is because I’m an E-mail Queen of the Universe. As a general rule, I don’t pick up the phone. Ever. My mother, my sister, Dan Gamber, and Tom Piccirilli are all familiar with the process of yelling threatening messages into the answering machine in an effort to get me to lift the freaking headset off the cradle. And that’s just answering the telephone. Me calling people — when I’m not at a convention playing Cruise Director — just doesn’t happen. But this just happened to be one of the rare times in my terminally self-sufficient life when I’ve needed people. Actually needed them. I had spent years collecting friends here and there all over the planet — it was time to see how big my world really was beyond e-mail.

I was humbled by its vastness.

I’ll never know what my friends thought when they saw my name pop up on their cell phones: maybe that the sky was falling down, maybe nothing. But they all answered. Every single one. Oregon, North Carolina, Indiana, New York, England, Australia. There was an unprecedented outpouring of love in my direction, and I unabashedly soaked it all up. After every conversation I felt a little better, for a little longer. I called my mother, who dropped everything and booked a ticket to Nashville. When I did finally calm down enough to call Keene, he offered to press the red button without me even having to ask. But I am a goddess, and it is my job to leave the world a nicer place than when I entered it. So we’re all still standing, with the majority of the populace none the wiser.

You’re welcome.

I wish I could say that I threw myself into my work at that point, but I spent most of last year on the road or on a plane going somewhere, to some event, sometimes three and four weekends in a row, distracting myself from the hell I was already living. I got used to flying in bright and early Monday morning, going straight to work from the airport, doing a school or library appearance during the week, and then flying out again Thursday night or Friday afternoon. I surrounded myself with friends but gave myself no time to recharge.

For an introvert, that’s a cruel and unusual punishment. A slow and painful death. I was one hissy fit away from throwing my microphone at the audience and stomping off stage.

So help me god, I was turning into Mariah Carey.

When the inevitable happened (shite, fan, etc.), my first order of business was officially declaring a hiatus. Sharon Shinn told me to treat myself as if I had lost a limb. I needed to take it slowly. Take it easy. Give myself time to heal.

Time again.

Did I mention how much time sucks?

There’s this thing people tell you after you’ve broken up with someone: that the time it takes to get over it is half the length of time than the relationship actually lasted…or something to that effect. It’s like friends telling you that muscle weighs more than fat when you’ve been working out at the gym like crazy and it hasn’t made a difference. There’s truth to it, and it’s sweet that they’re trying to help, but pretty much it’s just frustrating.

I didn’t have two years to casually toss out the window, so I gave myself until June. Almost eight months with no conventions and no school appearances. Eight months of ‘vacation,’ as it were. Eight months to start writing again. Eight months to sort my life out. Eight months to remember what it was like to be bored. Eight months to remember how amazing it was to be me.

Apparently, I had forgotten.

Heck, yeah, I was depressed. I had Tim Waggoner calling me at midnight to stop me weeping into the floorboards. Ken Scholes was on duty at daybreak to scrape me off the ceiling. I don’t even want to guess how much time Ed Schubert and I clocked while I was crying so hard I shouldn’t have been driving. Poor Jason Sizemore’s still walking on eggshells.

But they wouldn’t let me go until I was laughing again. And I did laugh. I had given myself an allotted time to be depressed. Since everything was progressing right on schedule, according to plan, I let myself off the hook. It was funny. And ironically liberating.

Even depressed, every day was still an adventure.

I actually accomplished quite a bit in the last eight months. I edited five books for Solaris. I added almost 20,000 words to my novel. I started blogging again. I caught up on some serious TV watching: 6 seasons of CSI: Las Vegas, 4 seasons of CSI: NY, and all of Alias from beginning to end (I’m now on Battlestar Galactica). I bought tickets and took Janet Lee to a Foo Fighters concert. I wrote five short stories and — with some prodding from Pic and Ken — actually submitted them to magazines. I sold one.

One I gave to Jay Lake as a get well present.

I landed the gig as ‘The Voice of Ingram’ on our new podcast website, and started having a lot of fun with that. I chopped the head off a rooster the day after Christmas — this is Tennessee after all, and it’s not a proper Greek holiday without a little sacrifice. I saw a doctor, a real one, and went to a physical therapist who taught me the exercises I needed to do to keep from having horrible tendonitis the rest of my life.

I chatted up Stephan Pastis for an hour under the guise of doing an interview. I had my very first photo shoot. I saw one of my dearest childhood friends tie the knot. I went deep sea fishing and was physically, violently ill for six hours straight. I even summoned up the courage to call the Ingram Employee Assistance Hotline, which I discovered was neither a hotline nor assistful.

The book I wrote with Sherrilyn Kenyon hit the New York Times bestseller list two weeks in a row and appeared on the cover of PW, and I didn’t care.

I’ve learned a lot about the world in those eight months. I’ve learned a lot about myself. I kept calling friends — not as frequently as when I’d hit the bottom, but I never hesitate to pick up the phone. (Well…almost never.) I booked tickets and made plans for after June 13th — always after June 13th — the first official day of Mo*Con. The first day of the rest of my life.

Fitting that it’s a Friday the 13th.

Today is the 11th.

I’ve got the directions printed out that take me straight to Maurice’s house. I’ve made koulourakia and baklava to bring to Mo*Con in honor of my triumphant return (I have to make Nick Mamatas’s cake tonight after my publisher dinner). I’ve got boxes of books in my car — both my own and a stack for my friends to sign. I’ve got to Rain-X my windshield because they’re already talking about flooding, and I have to change the clock in my car to Eastern Standard Time.

Since Jay set the precedent, I suppose at this point I should remind everyone that I love them, treasure them, couldn’t have survived without them — and warn the world that I’m Almost Back. It’s time to see how big the universe is outside my little house.

I hope to be the one dancing on tables, celebrating its vastness.

Alethea Kontis’s first publication was her essay in Apex Digest issue #3. She is now the author of AlphaOops: The Day Z Went First and the official Sherrilyn Kenyon Dark-Hunter Companion, as well as co-editor of the SF all-star anthology Elemental. Find out more about Alethea’s own plans for world domination on her website: www.aletheakontis.com.

In June 2008, Apex Publications released a collection of essays and memoirs from Alethea titled Beauty & Dynamite that includes contributions from Brian Keene, Tom Piccirilli, and John Ringo.

Beauty & Dynamite can be bought in the Apex Shop or along with the rest of Alethea’s books in the Apex aStore.