Island

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

Mt words are:

ordinary ~ help ~ funny ~ island ~ language

It was submitted by: https://www.bakinginatornado.com

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I don't have the language required to ask for help I guess.

Ok I think maybe trauma erased my ability to use the right words. The thought of admitting "I can't" isn't something easy to come by despite being aware I need to work on it which often leaves me on an island alone with my own resentment.

It probably also doesn't help that the majority of people I've been vulnerable enough with to ask for help have let me down completely or held it over my head. It doesn't create a lot of faith that anyone else I ask will be the one person who doesn't make me feel like shit about it.

All of that makes having a chronic illness pretty dang hard. Every time I think I have it figured out, something will happen and I have to find a new normal. Like how having had covid twice despite not leaving home and having the vaccines caused such intense insomnia I haven't slept for more than an hour or two at a time in almost 2 years. I can't even begin to explain the hurdles I now have to go through just to be able to write a couple sentences a day or maintain letters. Or just make a ridiculously funny wrestling meme. I can't even enjoy TV shows the same anymore. I can't see them. I can't read the subtitles anymore. I can't even process them most of the time. I just slip back into familiar ones that I know the plots to by heart or things that won't require a lot of brain power. The only thing I can read right now are things I've already read...and reading about new worlds and new people have always been my one method of escape. I have a whole fucking tattoo about it. I just can't anymore. At least not now...

But even with this new problem the world doesn't stop nor does my house. And my house is anything but ordinary. So by 9 a.m. I've gotten up, made the bed, medicated at least 4 animals, swept, mopped, argued with my kid about getting up to walk the dogs or about brushing his teeth or taking his meds (which I still make up for him in his pill minder) or whatever else the teenage angst is about that day, often shampooed carpet at least in spots that need it, washed dishes my kid left in the sink, cleaned up messes the cats made from at least one type of bodily function, wiped down counters and cabinets, made coffee for at least 2 people, made breakfast for everyone, cleaned up after breakfast, entered a bunch of online contests to try to win extra money because we're fucking poor, dusted, vacuumed, folded some laundry if I hung it out the day before... Sometimes there's extra. Sometimes I have help with one or two of these things. But this is just the first 2 hours of my day and it never ends. Every time I think I'm caught up something else needs to be done. I'm on my feet at home for at least 8 hours a day. Most days at least 6 hours at a time...with joint point from my cfs and plantar fasciitis making it impossible to walk. By 8 most nights, my pain level is so high I can't talk. I can't even cry. I'm too tired to fucking cry.

Every time I ask someone to do something and get told "I will" just for it to still not be done 2 hours later that island of resentment grows bigger and the next time I really need help, I won't ask. Why would I?

I keep thinking I'll learn to master my broken energy battery and only do the things that need it, but when your mom has broken into your house and tried to physically assault you over you insisting you have actually do keep things clean all because an argument started when you offered to take her on a spa trip for Christmas, could anything ever be clean enough? Probably not. Not when every time you've ever been in her house her husband still treats you like a 16 year old kid who is apparently utterly incapable and disgusting and conveniently forgetting you're 41 now and even when you were 16 with a semi dirty room you were also dealing with the aftermath of abuse and rape and were constantly threatened and bullied for being gay and weird without any support from the people who should have noticed you were drowning in a bog of torment. I don't exist as a real person to the people who were supposed to love me, and there's not any amount of time that erases the instinct to seek out worth with a clean countertop or scrubbed walls or being 3 weeks ahead on your weekly list of extra chores and thinking "I haven't done enough" and doing it all again anyway.

There's always a voice in my head. There's always trauma. There's always resentment.

And so here I am, dying for help, dying for a break... And what I get is more work.

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

No Ocean No Cry

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This month 5 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts. 

My “Secret Subject” is:

If you had a choice, would you rather live by the ocean or in the mountains? Why?

It was submitted by: https://www.bakinginatornado.com

Uh so...I guess this is my answer hahaha

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I think I'm the only one left now.

The sun was just starting to stretch its tendrils of light above the horizon which should have been a comfort all things considered but that thought, that she was the only one left, created a startlingly deep well of emotions. No one expected to be the final girl. Real life didn't work like that. Thinking on it now, those girls always seemed more than slightly relieved even while traumatized and full of fear and grief and confusion but how could she be relieved? She should be dead right along with the rest of them. Wouldnt that be the kindest thing? To face an eternity of nothing so she wouldn't be haunted by what she'd seen? So she wouldn't have to face the fact that there was a whole world of darkness and shadow and death and tentacles that she hadn't known about? How would she ever sleep again?

In movies the final girl is always some badass who faced down whatever monster or demon that some guy with no trauma (probably) had imagined up to be a metaphor for depression or whatever but apparently real life didn't work that way. She had run. The moment she could, she ran without looking back and she hid. She hid while all her old college friends were screaming and begging and dying, torn apart by that...that thing that had crawled out of the waves and grew legs right in front of them, its beak gnashing, tentacles burning and pulling and ripping... None of them even thought it was real.

Ha. She'd pissed herself. That's what she'd done. Where were all the final girls in the movies who did that? Her face was crusty with sweat and tears and snot. Why did they never look like this?

She'd seen too many bad horror movies.

Not a single one prepared her for the real thing.

They'd all come to this little beach to celebrate Jenny's wedding. A wedding that would never happen now. Jenny was somewhere down the beach in 4 pieces if that thing hadn't eaten her yet. It was supposed to be a 4 day girls trip. They were going to some clubs, to wine tastings, snorkeling... This was just the first fucking night. It was supposed to be a chill smoke and drink session by the waves as the night wore on. They were laughing and reminiscing and catching up. It had felt so goddamn good to be back with the people who'd held her when she cried over what happened with Mason, who had her back when she'd pressed charges on him...they felt like home in a way she'd never had with anyone anywhere and now...they were all gone. It would be kinder if the writers of her life just let her die now.

The screams had stopped a long time ago. The creature or whatever it was hadn't bothered to look very hard for her. She'd only gotten a few yards down the beach between two small changing huts. It hadn't even really looked in her direction...maybe it understood that nothing it could do to her would be as painful as being the only one left. She'd watched it walk back into the waves and crawl under them but didn't dare come out because death might be a blessing but she couldn't will her legs to get her there.

The sun rose higher. Seagulls and crabs were feasting. And she knew if she could somehow explain the truth to anyone and be believed or come up with some sort of believable lie...she would never ever be able to face a beach again.

Humans should fear the ocean.

She crawled inside one of the huts finally able to let her guard down enough to move and slept.

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Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.BakingInATornado.com

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog

What TF Sarah https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

A Number 4, Hold the Patriotism

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This month 5 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

Your “Secret Subject” is:

Are you a fireworks person? How do you celebrate the 4th of July?

It was submitted by: https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

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No.

I feel like I could probably leave it there, but that wouldn't really make for an interesting read, so let me overshare some more of my thoughts and life. Why the fuck not?

I've never liked fireworks even as a kid. Cried over them every time. I startle easily, though--loud noises, someone just randomly coming around the corner or speaking to me when I'm in my own world, the most tame scene in a not even very scary movie. It doesn't take much.

Let me introduce you to my friend, Childhood Trauma. C.T. has been faithfully by my side for as long as I can't actually remember at all because, you guessed it, Childhood Trauma. She's pretty cunning but ever-present in my life. Honestly, she really shaped who I am as a person even this many years later. I don't know who I'd be without her. And the great part is no matter how hard I work at pushing her away, she pops back up at the weirdest times, and it's like she never left at all! And she definitely likes to give me some jump scares.

Seriously, fuck fireworks. I get little snatches of memories here and there about being a kid. There are things I know without remembering specific events, but there are many little blurs of things I can recall, and there are some terrible images of my parents having knockdown physical fights over fireworks especially on the 4th buried in my brain. July 4th is my mom's birthday, you see, and she didn't want my dad using the 4th as a reason to get drunk and shoot off fireworks (and his mouth) and pretend it was for her birthday. We couldn't get very many fireworks in a Georgia legally back then, and I remember crossing state lines to this little hole in the wall shop in Alabama with the tension thick enough it slapped against your body like a weighted blanket so heavy you couldn't kick it off.

So we'd drive back, the car either scarily quiet or loud with the fury of two people who didn't have a clue how to love or understand one another. By the time my dad shot the literal fireworks, the metaphorical ones had ruined the day. And unfortunately my feelings about fireworks are forever associated with those metaphorical ones my childhood was so often witness to. There's nothint but panic and fear and a desire to hide under the covers and pretend it's all okay.

As you can imagine none of this really lays a great foundation for celebrating the 4th, fireworks or not.

I didn't grow up in a very patriotic family. We were poor working folk. Money was a hard topic. We were rural and low class and in this part of America in the 80s and early 90s, that meant something different than it does now. It was outlaw country then, for us at least, real rednecks like the warring for unions kind. And outlaws like the we don't fuck with cops kind. American was just a small part of our identity, the smallest. Everything else was just so much more pressing, right? So this "holiday" that my parents would still have to work on was always more about my dad getting drunk on my mom's birthday than America. America took a backseat to my mom wanting a day for herself in a life slowly killing her and my dad wanting to let loose because being a fucking adult sucks bricks especially when you're killing your body for barely enough money to keep everybody dressed and fed. And as shitty as all that sounds, I'm very glad that on top of all the trauma my childhood gave me, I didn't also get brainwashed into blind patriotism or religion. I feel like it left me open, if I somehow worked through the trauma at least, to bigger, different ideas, to be curious, to ask questions, and to demand better.

What exactly are we celebrating anyway? America is rarely any of the things we were taught in school. And the older I get and more I learn, the more I realize how little there is to celebrate. We won a war for our sovereignty and immediately started doing the same exact things to other people that we started a war for in the first place. I think we have a lot of work to do before it's time to celebrate, but I certainly don't shun others for wanting to use time off or whatever excuse to have a good time with some good food, friends, and family...if you leave the fireworks out of it at least.

And even if somehow I could get past all that, my friend who was murdered back in 2002 had a birthday on July 3rd, and even this many years later, as I always say when I write about him, he stays on my mind. Loss and grief are weird things whether it's the loss of a friend in a tragic, unexpected, and senseless way or the loss of childhood to trauma and pain. They're always there. They're always the same size...you just learn to grow and shape yourself around them.

Halloween is the better holiday anyway.

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Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:


Baking In A Tornado https://www.BakingInATornado.com

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

What TF Sarah https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com/

On the comfort of goblin life

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This month 5 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My “Secret Subject” is:

What is one item that brings you great comfort?

It was submitted by: https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

Little Places

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

Steam ~ shower ~ cold weather ~ space heater ~ closet

Submitted by: https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com/

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I used to hide in my closet.

When I was a kid, there was seriously no where safer in my dad's house--4 walls, a tiny space but big enough to lounge on pillows and read, and away from anyone who might spot me and try to hurt me. I spent hours in there reading book after book and pretending I was anywhere else but home. Home was shouting and hurt and pain and fear while books let me live in magical places with talking cats and weird siblings and cute girls. Holding a book in my safe spot, I knew I would never have clicked my heels 3 times a la Dorothy of Oz and gone back to the place that hurt me so many times.

Except I did. 

Teenage me, traumatized by my parents and boys and life, returned to that house maybe a year after my mom left it because she moved on quickly with a man who despised my existence as much as I did his, and they made things bad enough that I'd rather be hit than stay. I needed my closet.

It didn't last long, living there. But my preference for small spaces where I could hide from the world and sit in my emotions or hide from them too never left. I couldn't hide in my closet at my mom's and none of my apartments had any with much space, so the shower became my refuge.

I posted as a dark joke a status on Facebook recently about people not taking showers whether because of depression or chronic illness. Where the fuck do you cry then, I asked. Because fuck if I know. That's my place... it's the one place I get to be alone without even animals watching my shame and grief and it's still my one place to escape. I've spent a lot of hours with podcasts and audiobooks in showers thinking about anything but what was going on in my life. In cold weather I crank up my little space heater and the hot water and let the steam cleanse my soul. And in summers I turn the hot water all the way down so I can feel something besides the humid weight of the south's hellfires.

I plan out conversations in there, scrub my soul of all its roughness, and let the tears roll if I need to. I plan stories and learn about fascism and laugh with podcast hosts. There's something about being hidden away from everything that helps me let my guard down and it started with the safety I felt in my closet at home.

But...is that the best I can do?

As a queer woman I stopped living in the metaphorical gay closet at 15. I was still a baby. A traumatized, too old for her years baby but still very much a baby and I knew then I shouldn't hide who I am. So why do I still need the shower to feel ok? I don't think it's particularly healthy not to want to cry or let my guard down in front of anyone else. I don't think I should be embarrassed or afraid to let myself be vulnerable. But knowing and undoing are two very different things.

I was taught that crying is shameful and gets you nothing but hurt. "Shut that crying up or I'll really give you something to cry about" was shouted at me always. I wasn't allowed to have the feelings I did without mockery and abuse. I was taught crying is *b a d* and being upset isn't allowed. But I was taught a whole lot of other shit I've let go that didn't serve the person I wanted to be, too. And it's time for this to end.

The shower is the last stranglehold on a me that too often keeps herself behind a fortress of walls and moats filled with alligators, that keeps her pain and hurt locked away behind teeth and booby traps (ok a pun sue me). But I don't want to be that person who can't be held for fear she'll cry more, who can't let anyone see that softer side for fear it will be exploited. I want to be someone whose vulnerability matches the toughness, who knows how to let the right people in and close off the rest because not everyone deserves to be there...but some do.

I don't want to be resilient because I don't allow myself to feel all the things that make it harder to keep going in the moment and push them down and bury them until I have time for them later. Maybe we put too much emphasis on resiliency without realizing sometimes resilient, strong people are the ones who have struggled the most and need people the most and are too afraid to ask because that same resilency comes from repeatedly being let down...

I don't want to be resilient. I want to be supported as much as I am supportive.

We get once to do this life thing in my personal opinion. Just the once. And I don't want to be at the end of my once with regrets on what I could and should have done to be the best version of me not by societal standards but my own. So showers are going to have to be for washing hair and maybe still for listening to podcasts and feeling refreshed but not for tears. Gonna have to reserve some shoulders for that.

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado https://bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

The Crazy Mama Llama https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com/

Tea Cup

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 8 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My “Secret Subject” is:

If you woke up to find you were still 16 years old and you had just been dreaming of what adult life might be like, how would you react?

It was submitted by: http://thelieberfamily.com

This was difficult for me, but I think I hammered this thing out into something worth reading.

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16 year old me had already lived through some difficult shit in her short few years. There's no sugarcoating it. From an abusive alcoholic of a father, a mother affected a lot by him and her own abusive parent, their divorce, the violent aftermath of the divorce, rape, and living with people at 16 who absolutely did not get her, did not want to, and hid her (the highlight reel), 16 year old me was broken into tiny pieces that a later me would have to try to put together into a whole being. Imagine a tea cup shattered on the floor being held together by a little glue and spotty self-love, missing the handle, chipped, the cracks minute but visible yet still standing, still stout. Fragile but determined. That's 36 year old me, that surgically reconstructed tea cup that will never accomplish what it might have been meant for but is still beautiful, still going, and still has purpose.

Also imagine some filthy word like "fuck" painted in delicate calligraphy across the front because it's me we're talking about...

16 year old me, though, was still in shatters. Waking up to find she'd gone from the me I am now back to who she was then... torture. Still understanding there were nearly 20 years standing between where she was and the part where she, I, we reconstruct the tea cup and find ourselves happy and at peace with where we are would bring a lot of pain, torment that she couldn't go to sleep like a princess in a fairytale and wake up when things are better. To feel the warmth of a life being lived and lived with love and wake up back in the cold of a castle tower, brick and mortar walls constructed to keep everyone out and protect those tiny shards of tea cup, Trust No Bitch flashing neon across the outside would almost be enough to push her over the edge.

At first.

But maybe it would give her hope after the first few moments of realization hit hard but while she was still awash in the glow of what would be. She might not be out of the thick of it, but there were a lot of nights she didn't want to live anymore at all, plenty of barren, hopeless nights when the tears had dried up long ago and the isolation was too much, too alienating, too cold. Seeing that future and its possibilities and how loved she would be; how fulfilled surrounded by her little family (chosen and not), the animals she saved and adored and gave new lives to, her letters keeping her fulfilled, in good conversation, and with purpose; and, how much she would laugh instead of cry even with a few more hard times ahead would give her strength to keep going and live life on her own terms.

That's not to say she wouldn't be slightly confused, young me. Married? Divorced? A kid? She wanted none of those things. A degree but no job from it? She was supposed to do G r e a t T h i n g s with it, you know. And a chronic illness? That was never in the cards. But she would see herself making the best of all of it, learning from her mistakes, carving her own path, and I think she would find herself at peace with where she is headed once she made terms with the fact that she was still stuck in the pit for awhile longer. Those things, even the illness, made her a better person, mentally stronger. And the kid...his long-haired, anime-loving, too smart for his own good weirdness would be something she never could have planned for anyway. He gave her purpose stronger than anything else she would ever know and every giggle would renew her life. It was a tragically flawed but beautifully constructed puzzle, her tea cup, and it was better than anything she thought she would have.

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Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado http://www.bakinginatornado.com/2018/03/karma-on-fire-secret-subject-swap.html

Cognitive Script https://cognitivescript.blogspot.com/2018/03/halloween-joke-in-march-sss.html

The Lieber Family Blog http://thelieberfamily.com

The Bergham Chronicles https://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com/2018/03/nosy-flystander-secretsubjectswap.html

Southern Belle Charm http://www.southernbellecharm.com

The Blogging 911 http://theblogging911.com/blog

Part-Time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2018/03/march-secret-subject-swap-go-green.html

Elliot's Turn

She sat in a dark corner with her knees drawn to her chest hiding her face behind a golden curtain of greasy hair. At this point, she could only wrap her arms around her legs, rock slightly, and marvel at the complete insanity of the predicament she had gotten herself into. She imagined life as a huge 8-legged monster covered in scales with fangs dripping poison. Everything that could go wrong lately had gone wrong. She lost her mom, the one person she had ever been able to count on. Her dog was missing. Her boss fired her for missing work for her mom’s funeral. She found out that her best

friend was sleeping with that bartender guy that she was crushing on. She didn’t have enough money to pay her electricity bill…or she wouldn’t be able to eat all month. Either way. And, the hits just kept coming, big and small. For the longest time now, it had been one thing after another.

The temptation was strong to follow that brick road in her mind that wove inside the labyrinth she had created in therapy so long ago.

If she could get to the heart of that maze…

When she was a kid, she saw her dad shoot her mom (her real mom not the woman who raised her, the woman she grew up calling Mom). That’s what they say anyway. “They” being everyone else really. Therapists who wanted to know all about her feelings, social workers reviewing her case, kids at school whispering in the hallways… She didn’t really remember it herself though. That’s the day Elliot first showed up, and Elliot saved her from remembering it. Elliot always seemed to know just when she needed him to take over, to rescue her from herself. She missed that about his presence more than anything. Right now, she is sure that Elliot would know what to do if she could just get to him at the heart of the labyrinth.

So, she sat in the corner in grave contemplation. It wasn’t ever really her decision to stop Elliot anyway. She loved Elliot. She needed him. But, it scared the shit out of Mom when he was there, and quite frankly, he wasn’t exactly nice to her mom. Or anyone for that matter. He was kind of a dick, but what do you expect from the person that saw all the fucked up shit in her/their life? He was the one who saved her all the time from the things that went wrong starting with her dad killing her real mom then himself…from Mr. Lancaster, the prick of a foster dad who spent his nights on top of her until Elliot showed up…from the Dunns, those psycho super religious folks who beat her until she bled for questioning the instruction she got from the “homeschool” lessons she got… He intervened and typically scared the shit out of whoever was hurting her or kept her shielded from things she didn’t want to see or hear or deal with. Whenever she thought about ending it all, he was there to take over and give her space and a break to retreat inside herself and hide.

But there was a flipside to that, too. Elliot was her savior, but once he was out, things quickly spiraled out of control. He was into a lifestyle completely different than hers. He wanted women. Lots of women. He drank. Smoked. Partied. Loved cocaine. For all the good he did, he was still a destructive force that left their body used and abused when he retreated back to that little cave inside her, and that often left her as mentally vulnerable as she was before he took control of things. The change gave her new things to battle and focus on, though, and mostly that was ok. He cleaned up her messes, and she cleaned up his.

Balance.

Why had she ever agreed to lose that part of herself? It gave everyone else peace of mind, but what about what she needed and wanted?

If she didn’t have her mom, and she didn’t have Elliot, she wouldn’t last through all this stress. She could feel that desperation rising, threatening to boil over. A couple mornings already she had woken up thinking what it might be like if she never had to lay in that dingy sheet covered bed in her tiny, stale apartment ever again.

In her building sense of hopelessness knowing that even just one more thing going wrong might be THE THING that toppled whatever grip she had on life, she knew she had no choice.

She had no map and no memory of how to solve the maze she herself had constructed, and she had no idea how crazy Elliot would be after all this time locked inside her or if he would even still be there, but she found herself with her eyes closed picturing the opening to the labyrinth all the same.