The moon sets, and the sun rises

A sci-fi writing club I've been in for over a decade is shutting down at the end of the year due to dwindling membership and participation. I have so many emotions that I can't even categorize them. A large part of me is grieving, because it, and the friends I made there, has been a staple of my life for so long. Even though I haven't been as involved lately as I used to be, I still have a special place in my heart for this group.

At the same time, part of me is relieved, because many of those same friends have ostracized me because I dared (gasp!) to state an opinion that they didn't agree with. And when I stated that opinion, not a single person out of the 5-6 people I wrote to bothered to respond to me. Not a single one, not a single word. And most of them that would contact me outside of the group's concerns no longer do so. Kinda made it clear to me where I stood. I'm fairly certain that once the dust settles, there will only be two or three people who bother to ever contact me again. Like I said, there are a lot of mixed emotions in this whole shebangabang.

Oh, and let's not forget the guilt, shall we? The insidious voice whispering to me that maybe if I'd done this or that, things might have been different. Maybe the group wouldn't be dying out if only... I think the phrase "if only" is the most evil phrase in existence. The truth, though, is that over the last three years infertility has been the number one thing on my mind. Writing stories about make-believe people wasn't nearly as important as talking to real-life people who understood what I was going through. Researching IF treatments, then writing about what I found to benefit others, was a higher priority than plotting dastardly deeds for a villain in a tale. I might have lost the ability to string together words to make an interesting story; but I can write a treatise on reproductive endocrinology that would make you swear I was a doctor.

Rambling now. All mixed up. An era is ending.