When people ask me what I do, I reply, "I am a writer." That is what I do now.

I worked as a healthcare systems analyst for 30 years. In April 2016, I moved to Louisville to take a management job with a major health insurance company. I lasted five months. Subsequently, I failed at four more jobs in quick succession. Quite suddenly, I was unable to work in my field. Summer of 2017, I had a bipolar breakdown, complete with a psych hospital stay. Neuro-psych testing revealed serious declines in my cognitive function and memory. One psychiatrist posited it might be early onset dementia. That has not turned out to be the case, thankfully.

In May 2019, I moved back to Washington State to be my now 85-year-old mother's fulltime caregiver. She was hospitalized in very serious condition with necrotizing fasciitis and was not expected to pull through. She did. A few months later, she had major heart surgery. She recovered from that as well.

Now, she is rapidly declining from vascular dementia and a host of other health challenges. It's been rewarding to be with her, and often horrifying. Nonetheless, I choose this life. I've no desire to do anything else during this season, during this last bit of time she's here in the physical.

I have always been a writer, but now I have the great fortune of being able to write hours each day. I write about my life's experiences: recovering from childhood sexual abuse, living with bipolar, my recent HSV-2+ diagnosis, and my faith deconstruction journey.

I also write extensively about my "sexual reawakening", which was sparked by an affair I embarked upon in late 2016. It ended in early 2018. It was one of the most pivotal experiences of my life, and I packed more growth and gained more wisdom during that time than I had ever before.

That intense, rapid, life-altering growth has continued, unabated, for the last seven years. I would never have anticipated the direction my life has taken and the woman I have become. But I like myself, now. I like myself very much.

So much of my life I didn't think I'd make it. I lived with Suicide for decades. But I Persevered. I wouldn't go back. I wouldn't change one thing. I keep walking it out, just putting one foot in front of the other.

"People living deeply have no fear of death." -Anais Nin

Please visit my publication Living With Genital Herpes. I've written two books: How To Do Single With Dignity & Grace and Empowered Online Dating, available on Amazon. Read more of my work at www.cocodensmore.com. Contact me at cocodensmore@outlook.com.