Jacquelyn Dohoney

November 24, 2022

TW: Death, grief, depression

The last couple of weeks I’ve noticed myself slipping into a pretty good depression. My new NaNo manuscript just isn’t working, and I’ve felt myself doubting my abilities more and more while I’ve been querying The Mortician’s Eyes. It’s not just imposter syndrome, it’s more than that. So I took a break from writing and tried to examine myself to see what was going on inside my own head.

The solution just hit me like a ton of bricks. This time last year was the last time I saw my father-in-law. His name was Don, but we just called him Pops. Pops was a grumpy, old school tattooer. And when I say old school, I mean OLD SCHOOL. He was the founding father of tattooing in Salt Lake City. When my husband first started tattooing, no one would give him a chance. He was too much of a liability for them. Homeless at twelve, he had to learn to adult on his own real quick, which meant he got involved with people that weren’t the greatest for him. Truth be told, he was a hooligan, and no studios wanted anything to do with him. That was until he moved to Salt Lake and walked into ASI Tattoos. Pops gave him a chance when no one else would. 

You see, Pops wasn’t my husband’s real father, but he was his mentor, and more of a father than anyone else has been my husband’s whole life. Fast forward twenty years, and Pops also accepted me into his family. He was kind of known for that. Some people were scared to death of him, but to me he was one of the sweetest people I’d ever met. 

So, back to Thanksgiving. I’m sitting at the kitchen counter talking to him, and he asked me how my writing was going. I told him it was going no where, that I was really frustrated, and I was thinking of throwing in the towel. He looked right at me, grabbed my hands, and said, “Don’t you dare quit writing honey.” Two months later he was gone, and it broke us for a long time. But the memory of what he said has stuck with me.

You see, Pops believed in both my husband and I when we really didn’t believe in ourselves. And that’s the trouble. Right now, I don’t believe in myself. But I do have people that believe in me. And that’s the most important thing during times like this. When you feel like all is lost and it’s not worth continuing, you find those people who can pick you up and carry you when you can’t carry yourself. I can actually hear his voice in my head right now telling me to keep going, and so I will, because I don’t want to disappoint him or any of the other people carrying me on their shoulders. 

So this one’s for you, Pops, Rich, and everyone else. I’m going to keep writing this story, and one day I’m going to publish it. One day, I’m going to make you proud.

Thanks for reading guys,

Jackie