A haven for creative people living with mental illness. This is the place where you can tell it like it is, not yet another place where you have to pretend to be someone you've been told you should be.
I stopped writing in
2007 due to fallout from my disastrous first attempt at becoming a
published author. When I started writing again in 2012, I only
intended to write Aliens fan fiction for myself because people suck
and Xenomorphs are wicked cool.
Fan fiction is real
writing. Even the cringeworthy self-insert fics I wrote as a young
teenager and would have to kill you if you discovered them.
Writing fan fiction
saved my life more than once, no joke.
Much of what I write
these days could be classified as Cthulhu Mythos fan fiction.
Back in school, I
wasn’t smart enough to belong with the academic nerd brigade, but I
was too nerdy to belong with the self-proclaimed rebels without a
cause.
I’ve been trying
in vain for decades to find a niche in which to fit, only to learn
time and time again that I don’t fit in with any of them.
I’m an acquired
taste that most people don’t acquire.
Even when people
don’t treat me poorly, I’m aware that they’re just being
polite.
I struggle with the
belief that artistic pursuits are self-serving vanity. I sometimes
find myself thinking I am exaggerating my disabilities to get out of
working a “real job.” However, I always struggled with trying to
keep myself from having a mental breakdown when I worked a “real
job.”
I was never able to
work the sorts of hours that my family approved of. I would become
severely depressed after a couple weeks working day shifts. I usually
opted for jobs with evening and night hours. The types of jobs I
worked were always physically demanding, such as health care.
I’ve been called ugly many more times than I could possibly
count. Admissibly, I am far from a paragon of physical beauty. It is
likely I could aptly be described as looking like the back end of a
bus. However, I feel it is necessary to pose a question. Is someone’s
lack of perceived attractiveness an acceptable reason to belittle and
ridicule that person, turning them into a scapegoat for your own
feelings of inadequacy?
Is having a plain face and a body perceived as being either too
fat or too thin, too short or too tall reason for disdain?
When I was younger
and believed God/the Universe/whatever was on my side despite the
mountain of evidence to the contrary, I reckoned I would one day
magically turn into a confident and clever person with an impressive
and unexpected solution for any problem. There would be aces up my
sleeves along with my arms! I could pull a rabbit out of my hat at
the drop of the hat! I would be some sort of female amalgamation of
Gambit and MacGyver!
That was the
fantasy.
The reality is I’m
a bumbling numpty with a cool tattoo on my left calf.
Image copyright Cara Hartley/Ornery Owl
The photo is mine. I can't fathom why anyone else would want to use it, however I will allow it with proper attribution for neutral or positive purposes such as a tattoo appreciation or a Motörhead fan post. If you want to use it for immature and stupid reasons such as sniveling about how horrible it is for women to have tattoos or making shitty remarks about the weird indentations in my chonky leg, you can go fuck yourself.
As for those people who enjoy feeling smug and superior about their tattoo-free state, isn't it nice that we live in a society where you can choose not to have tattoos while those who want them can have them? I have seven tattoos. They all have personal meaning for me. I hope someday I can afford to get a few more.
If I had to pick a favorite Motörhead song, it would be Orgasmatron. The blunt philosophical takedown of religion, politics, and war delivered by a raspy-voiced, no-bullshit working class champion over a hard-driving melody and precise backbeat is at once brazen and transcendent.
Like a salmon, I’m always swimming upstream and bears are always
trying to eat me. Sometimes anglers try to catch me too, but as soon
as they get a load of how beat up and decrepit I am, they throw me
back. They know I would taste terrible. Bears don’t give a damn.
They aren’t known for their sophisticated palates.
According to this post, I may be more salmony than I realized when
I decided to make this self-deprecating joke.
I wrapped up a
meeting with a couple other members of the First Coast Romance
Writers group a little over an hour ago, and I feel emotionally
dysregulated. It wasn’t anything they did, it was that same feeling
of realizing that I’m just so completely different from most
people. I always feel like I’m having to try to pass for normal
when I’m quite simply not. It’s exhausting and discouraging.
