Annette Fix 📖✍🏼

@annettefix.bsky.social

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Memoirist | Experiences Enthusiast | Squirrel Wrestler | Dog Mom | GenX Bog Witch | Blue Dot | Ally | ENTJ | Discover more 👉🏼 https://linktr.ee/annettefix 🏖️🥗🛼🏐🏋🏼‍♀️🎯📖🎨📷🪘💃🏼📽️🥋

A green 1960 Royalite typewriter with page turned into the carriage that says “…and she lived happily ever after.”
My Beretta Bobcat 21A .25 ACP and magazine, zip-tied inside a police evidence box.
You know that voice. The one that shows up when you're scrolling through LinkedIn at 11pm, watching people half your age announce their promotions. The one that whispers when you look at your bank account, your relationship status, your career trajectory. “You should be further along.” I heard it again last Tuesday—that familiar punch to the gut. The math started immediately: if I had made different choices five years ago, if I hadn't gone travelling, if I'd been more strategic, more disciplined, more... something. But I have a sneaking suspicion about this particular mental terrorist: it's not really about being behind. It's about the myth that progress is linear. We've bought into this idea that life is a ladder everyone climbs at the same pace and there's some cosmic scoreboard keeping track. But life isn't linear. It's more like a spiral staircase in an old house—sometimes you're going up, sometimes you circle back to where you thought you'd already been, and sometimes you discover rooms you didn't know existed. The "further along" voice assumes there's one path, one timeline, one definition of success. It ignores everything you can't quantify: • the resilience you built during that difficult year • the compassion you developed through struggle • the boundaries you learned to set • the relationships that deepened when you stopped performing and started being real By society's standards, you may feel "behind.” Your timeline is not their timeline. Your ‘behind’ is not actually behind—it's exactly where you are. And where you are is the only place you can start from. The next time that voice shows up, instead of asking, "Where should I be?" ask "What am I learning right now?" Progress isn't always forward. Sometimes it's deeper. Sometimes it's wider. Sometimes it's just staying still long enough to see clearly. You're not behind. You're becoming. 💫
Monday and Tuesday this week, Pal had 5 grand mal seizures. The last one Tuesday/Wednesday at 1am was the worst. That morning, he no longer knew his name or understood any of the words of our daily life. I don’t know if his whining breaths and restlessness were from disorientation or pain, or both. I promised him on our cancer journey over the last 8 years that I would never let him suffer. You may have seen a video I posted a couple of weeks ago of Pal doing zoomies at the beach and being his always-joyful self. I thought we were winning his mast cell cancer fight. Until we lost. 💔 Now, there’s a huge hole where my heart used to be. Since the start of the pandemic, Pal has been beside me 24/7 for the last 5 years. He’s been my everything everywhere all at once. If he couldn’t go somewhere, I didn’t go. I went on our downtown and beach walk late last night. It was familiar and comforting, and equally heartbreaking and pointless. And now, I’m not sure what to do with myself. I will make a tribute video of our wonderful life and all the joy Pal gave me with his whole heart and sweet spirit, but not yet. I just can’t. 💔