Denise Covey: #JuneWEP - my #flashfiction, ESCAPE FROM MARIUPOL

Denise Covey: #JuneWEP - my #flashfiction, ESCAPE FROM MARIUPOL: Hi there! Time for the June WEP contest. This prompt Please Read the Letter required no thought from me. I immediately imagined someone esca...

Excellent writing. There are no words I can say to do it justice.

I sometimes despair that I have to live on a disability allotment of $1240 and get most of my provisions from the food bank. There is very little left after the bills are paid. My son often reminds me that even though our situation is difficult, we are in a better position than many people, even in the United States.

(My son is high-functioning autistic and not able to hold a normal job. He isn't on disability because one of us has to be able to amass savings in case of an emergency. I cannot have more than $2000 in savings.)

Writing Off the Edge: WEP April 2022: A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

Writing Off the Edge: WEP April 2022: A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall:   It's already time for another WEP Challenge in our Year of Music. This month's musical inspiration is "A Hard Rain's Gonn...

It's so heartbreaking. When I was delivering food in downtown Denver from 2017 to 2019, I often drove by the Denver Rescue Mission. I would have been homeless myself if not for my son allowing me to move into his townhouse and sleep on the couch. There's no excuse for it in a first-world country. The only thing that keeps people homeless is the greed of those in power. Everyone should have food, shelter, medical care, and utilities, regardless of their ability to pay.

Tackle It Tuesday: Breaking it Down Again

 

In truth, I tend to take a deist approach to these matters. I don't think God/the Universe/whatever gives enough of a fuck about me (or anyone else) to test me. I'd prefer to think the Universe isn't that much of a cunt, and I think that any personified higher power simply isn't that involved. The Universe behaves more like The Force in Star Wars. 

Karma is simply the energy of our actions plus our circumstances. Some shit is simply beyond our control. Other shit may be in our control but we may not to be able to act on it in the most effective fashion. I'm at the breaking point with most of it, so I'm going to break it down further.

When I was still working a J.O.B. (Just Over Broke), I was driven by anxiety. There was the anxiety that I wasn't going to get to work on time. There was the anxiety that I wasn't going to get enough sleep. There was the anxiety that I wasn't going to be able to get any writing done. I was bound and determined that working a J.O.B. wasn't going to stop me from doing what I really wanted to do.

All along, I gaslighted myself with Teh Big Dreem. You know the one. The dream where I become an overnight sensation, am able to quit my job, meet Teh Handsum Prints, and live Haplessly Ever After. Yeah. That one.

Today, approximately three years beyond when I was last able to work for someone else, the chickens have come home to roost. But these chickens are not gentle hens laying golden eggs of inspiration. Nor are they funny Foghorn Leghorns, cheering me on with cheeky comedy gems. Nor are they Little Red Roosters serenading me with smoky blues numbers. Nope, these chickens are the shadows of the shit I avoided dealing with for decades. They are fucking trauma vampires and they are fucking with my head.

All of my life, I had to fight against an enemy and my writing sustained me in the fight. When I was in school, the enemy was the fuckers who bullied me. I was determined that one day I would have my revenge on them by being successful and adored by the public while they rotted away in loveless marriages with ungrateful children, toiling away at dead-end jobs they hated.

Once I started working for a living (if you could call it living), my job became the enemy. My writing was going to lift me above the rat race and, depending on how much I loathed the job, I would either benevolently put in my two weeks' notice or I would burst into a rousing chorus of Take This Job and Shove It. Either way, my cruise ship to the High Life would come in, and for once I wouldn't be at the airport.

I actually did work at the airport for a while, first in a bookstore and then in a clothing shop. It was kind of fun at first. It started sucking pretty quickly. My boss at the clothing shop was bugfuck crazy and her son would have made the kid from the Omen pee his pants. The little monster was completely out of control. I literally had a headache anytime she brought him with her. I'm sure he went on to set fires to mailboxes or worse. Not even joking about that.

Currently, the U.S. disability system is the common enemy, but I don't know if I'm up to taking on the entire-ass corrupt system currently in place. I'm fighting it by exposing it, but I don't have the energy to do much else and I have my doubts that anyone is listening. 

Disability is even worse than working a J.O.B. in most ways. I don't have to punch a time clock and I don't have to answer to a power-hungry supervisor, but I do have to follow a set of unrealistic, Draconian rules. To break free of the clutches of the U.S. disability system, I would have to make an unrealistically large amount of money. I would literally have to become an overnight millionaire. 

Although the federal government sees the piddling amount that I make from book reviews as insignificant and allows me to claim the standard deduction, SSD doesn't see it that way. I have virtually given up doing book reviews for pay because I don't want to have to report that nothingburger to disability and risk having my benefits lowered. Most of the time I make less than $100 doing these reviews. It's a fucking hobby. It isn't a real job. But I still have to declare "self-employment income" from it. Fuck my life.

I'm trying to do better with the whole self-care thing, (I kind of hate that term, to be honest), but I'm so used to burning the candle at both ends and running myself to the point of exhaustion. Taking care of myself doesn't come naturally. Youth, stupidity, magical thinking, and self-medication used to mask the damage that I was doing to myself. 

Obviously, I'm no longer young. I may still be stupid as a bag of bricks, but I'm no longer able to gaslight myself with magical thinking. The only "self-medication" I do these days involves shit prescribed by the doctor. Antihypertensives, asthma and allergy medicines, diabetic medications including insulin, eye drops for glaucoma, anti-rosacea cream that makes my face feel like I've been mummified for several millennia, thyroid medication, and triglyceride-lowering medication just don't hit the same as booze, pot, and illicit pills. 

These days my idea of a party is seeing if I can find something that doesn't suck too much on Amazon Prime to watch while playing games on my smartphone to earn Amazon gift cards. I have people that I like but nobody I can call a friend because I always feel like I'm bothering people. I'm a loner by nature but sometimes I wish there was somebody that I could bounce things off. I honestly don't know how to be a friend because I don't trust anybody. I've got my reasons.

Well, it's party time. And by that I mean time for me to take the aforementioned medications. Are you jealous yet?

Spirit of the Universe, I'm trying hard not to give up. I'm trying to make it make sense. I'm trying to take responsibility for my health. Maybe I could have a win--just a small one? 

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

Things Ornery can't do anymore

Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors

Resource Books:

52 Weeks of Writing

https://amzn.to/33sESxd

Self-Help Sucks

https://amzn.to/3sCWA9q

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

Creative Commons License

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This work is the intellectual property of Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp and Naughty Netherworld Press.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. Odysee’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on Odysee. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

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Come As You Are Party: Breaking Down my Breakdown

 

Trigger warning for those who want or need it: Suicide Ideation

"The readers in the world - regardless of how much or how little writing talent they have - become the people who succeed in life."

Unless they're me. 

I am an abject failure.

I am burned out on reading, and on promoting other people's books.

I am discouraged about writing. Clearly, I can't cut it in the popular writing world, but I feel like I've been ousted from my own universe and can't get back in. 

Nobody wants to read what I write, but I can't give the people what they want because what they want doesn't interest me. 

52 Weeks of Writing encourages me to find an "accountability partner."

I'm already accountable. I am a fucking taskmaster. I won't cut myself a break. I'll sleep when I'm dead. And so on. 

This is what I need:

I think that Stephen, being the King of Horror, has forgotten what it's like to not know if anyone needs or wants what you write. He knows that someone out there needs his stories. 

Clearly, nobody needs or wants my stories. There will never be a single soul who says "boy, Story X by C.L. Hart really helped me through" or "wow, that poem by Ornery Owl really spoke to me," or even "that cheeky Lil DeVille's spicy stories cheered me up when I needed it." 

If I haven't made it by almost 60, I'm not going to make it. Honestly, it's discouraging rather than inspiring to be in the company of people who have made it to some degree. I'm going to have to resign myself to the fact that my stories are just a coping mechanism to keep me from topping myself. I wanted something more from them and I wanted something more for them. They deserve better.

I'm sick of myself. I'm sick of this breakdown. I'm sick of living in a world of broken-down things that I don't have the money to fix or replace. I'm sick of living in poverty. I'm sick of all my health problems. 

I've just spent over an hour trying to correct my whacked-out blood sugar. Having zombie organs floating around in my body doing jack shit is a fabulous adventure. Please do try it sometime.

On second thought, don't.

I considered shooting the moon with my insulin this morning. Just dialing the pen as far as it could go and saying goodbye to this failed existence. The only reason I didn't is that my son would be in dire circumstances without my help. It's strange how I can be indispensable and yet an utterly useless piece of shit all at the same time. Such a dichotomy I am. 

Don't tell me to "get help." There isn't any. I don't trust counselors. 

Don't tell me to "take medication." Psych meds make me psychotic. I don't enjoy being psychotic.

Don't tell me to "go to the ER." This isn't an emergency. This is suicide ideation. If I went to the ER every time I experienced suicide ideation, I'd have to live there. Being placed on a psych hold wouldn't help me, it would make things worse. I know what's wrong with me. I'm fucking discouraged and I'm sick of it all. I need a win and I'm not going to get one.

I'm going to have to do something else with my writing. Pursuing fame and money makes me depressed. Well, more depressed. 

I'm going to have to go back to writing what I like to write.

I need to find the key to the gate of dreams again.

Lead on, Mr. Lovecraft.

The line about the key to my dreams is a reference to the story "The Silver Key" by H. P. Lovecraft. You can read the story here if you are so inclined.

https://cthulhu.fandom.com/wiki/The_Silver_Key

The first few lines go a little bit something like this:

When Randolph Carter was thirty he lost the key of the gate of dreams. Prior to that time he had made up for the prosiness of life by nightly excursions to strange and ancient cities beyond space, and lovely, unbelievable garden lands across ethereal seas; but as middle age hardened upon him he felt those liberties slipping away little by little, until at last he was cut off altogether.

Lovecraft was writing about himself when he penned this story. He struggled with depression including suicide ideation just like yours truly. 

The story's protagonist, Randolph Carter, is actually a bit of a dick. He brings misery to the life of the hapless Yaddithian wizard Zkauba. My yet-to-be-edited novel "The Wizard's Key" includes a sympathetic account of Zkauba's plight, which led him to call on Nyarlathotep to free him from Carter's influence.

I hope it isn't too late to re-open the gate.

Perhaps it would be best if I slept for another couple of hours. We're going to try the journey to my mother's house once again today.

Spirit of the Universe, please help me recapture the joy that writing once gave me. Please help me remember what's important. It isn't validation. Still, it hurts seeing so many other people winning when I seem to do nothing but lose.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

Free use image from Pixabay

Resource Books:

52 Weeks of Writing

https://amzn.to/33sESxd

Self-Help Sucks

https://amzn.to/3sCWA9q

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This work is the intellectual property of  Naughty Netherworld Press and Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. Odysee’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on Odysee. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

Come check out Readers Roost, the online bookstore featuring works by indie and small press authors. Discover your next great read at the Roost! It's the link you need when you wanna read.

https://bit.ly/ReadersRoost

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Fucking Around Friday: The Definition of Insanity

 

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

After several days of Stupid, we're back. I sort of know where I'm going with this, but there are a few topics I'd like to address. I've given myself permission to take as long as I need and write as much as I want. I've told my inner critic to fuck off. So, let's do this.

First, some questions from 52 Weeks of Writing. The link to purchase a copy of this book for yourself can be found at the end of the post.

What are your goals for the upcoming week?

Let's just take a page from my planner. It looks a little bit something like this.

Write a flash fiction for the Fish Flash Fiction writing contest. Maximum words 300. No limit on theme or genre. Does not need to be about fish. Deadline 28 February.

https://www.fishpublishing.com/competition/flash-fiction-contest/

Enter Women on Writing Flash Fiction Contest (Max words 750)

https://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/contest.php#FlashFictionContest

Deadline 28 February.

Submit poetry to Humana Obscura

https://www.humanaobscura.com/submit

Humana Obscura is now accepting submissions of poetry, prose/short fiction, and art for its next issue!

Submissions will remain open until the end of February 2022.

No politics, nothing rhyming, nothing longer than 75 lines. Haiku is preferable to Senryu. Previously unpublished only, no simultaneous submissions.

Poetry – 3 to 5 poems (or up to 10 haiku, tanka, or other forms of micro poetry, 5 lines or less), no longer than two pages each. Please include all poems in one document.

Short Prose/Flash Fiction – no more than 2 pieces, 1,000 words maximum (per piece).

Unpublished only, no simultaneous submissions.

Work on story for Dragon Soul Press Chance on Love anthology.

https://dragonsoulpress.com/anthologies/

Deadline: 31 March 2022

Anthology: Chance on Love

Word Count – 5,000 to 15,000

Theme – Everyone deserves a chance at love. Whether it lasts forever or ends up being temporary, these characters will fight for the chance at happily ever after.

Rating: R

Work on story for L Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest. Sci-fi, fantasy, or dark fantasy, up to 17,000 words. Deadline 31 March 2022.

https://www.writersofthefuture.com/enter-writer-contest/

Work on Cosmically Bonded (part of my ongoing serial series.)

Submit a piece for this month's WIP contest.

Have another look. Are you being realistic? If not, what would be more realistic?

On the surface, this looks rather unrealistic. But when I break things down, I don't think it is. I've already written the poem for the WIP challenge. I just need to put it in a post and submit the link. 

I can write a few Haiku for Humana Obscura. 

I can submit Lucina Entombed to the Chance on Love anthology, although there's a possibility it may be a little clean for their liking given the R-rating in the description. The story contains no descriptive erotic scenes and scant profanity although it contains adult themes. 

It took me a few months to write this 7500-word story. It's a combination of three fairy tales (The Buried Moon, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White) re-imagined in a sci-fi setting. I submitted it for potential inclusion in an anthology and never even received an acknowledgment of receipt. I attempted to contact the person compiling the anthology and heard nothing from them. I have given said anthology up as a lost cause. 

The story is a bit of an oddball and I'm not sure anyone else will want it. My policy is to shop out the stories that aren't part of my ongoing serial over the period of a year and then publish them myself. I'm thinking of compiling an anthology of my work at the end of the year and calling it something like C.L. Hart's Space Oddities Volume I. 

I feel like ideas of this nature make me sound extremely arrogant and self-absorbed. The truth is, I don't think that I will ever have much of an audience. I really like my stories but nobody else seems to. This hurts me more than I can convey. 

Also, I completely suck at promoting my work.

Image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay

Me promoting other people's stories

Me promoting my own stories

What can you do this week to make sure you achieve your goal(s)?

Not have my car battery conk out on me again, something I completely blamed myself for. I had a bit of a mental breakdown when it happened. I am in quite a vulnerable position. Living in the middle of nowhere I need my car to work 100% of the time. I keep up on maintenance. The battery has plenty of life left and there's nothing wrong with the alternator. So, what happened?

I only drive about once a week. Modern cars (even an older one like my 2011 Ford Fusion) have computerized gadgetry and an alarm system that impose a small chronic drain on the battery. I'm taking the car back to the mechanic next week so they can install a switch that will allow me to turn off the battery when I'm not driving the car. This disables the car alarm, but I live in a very low crime rate area and my room is in the front of the house. The car is nearly always in my line of sight. 

Also, we had a few very cold days last week and my car is parked in the open. The cold drained the battery as well. 

My anxiety was astronomical after this happened. I hated myself for allowing it to happen. I could not make myself write and spent several days just watching episodes of When Calls the Heart. 

Why was I unable to write you may ask? It wasn't as if I suffered an irreparable loss. My fucking car battery died. Boo fucking hoo. What a crybaby.

Back in 2013 when my car was hit by a wall of water as I was trying to get to work during the 100-Year Flood in Boulder, Colorado, I was unable to write for a month afterward. I felt like I didn't deserve the luxury of a "hobby" like writing. People had lost their homes. Some people lost their lives. How dare I think I should be allowed to engage in a fucking leisure activity? I'm always such a selfish bitch.

I suffered from (additional) PTSD following that incident. I have complex PTSD from chronic incidents of abuse throughout my childhood. When things are working normally, my anxiety is manageable. Put something out of place and I start to come apart. 

I know all about how people who can "go with the flow" are more likely to be successful. I have had to realize the fact that I will probably never be such a person. I am always teetering on the edge of disaster. I live in a house of cards with a sand foundation built on the San Andreas fault. I am always one huff or puff or seemingly minor disaster away from devastation.

The Spent module allows users to experience what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck. (In my case, disability check to disability check.) It isn't fun.

https://playspent.org/

I used to have such big dreams. Some really were unachievable. I can live with that. What kills me is the feeling that none of them are achievable because I am so awful at everything. 

Hold on to your hats as things are about to devolve into a bitch fest.

It's probably evident by now that I like to listen to independently produced relaxation music and electronic music such as deep house or trance while working on these posts. I saw some long mixes that I might have checked out except for one teeny problem. Rather than posting some nice pictures of, say, nature or candles or people dancing, the thumbnail images feature blatant tits and ass. 

How the hell it's supposed to be relaxing to stare at cleavage or butt crack is beyond me. Even if I was attracted to women, I wouldn't want to be staring at cleavage or butt crack. I'm attracted to men and I don't want to be staring at package shots or male butt crack. Fucking hell, just rename your channel Dudebro Haven. Tits and ass don't convey "positive coaching."

Anyway...

Spirit of the Universe, I am lost again. Please help me find my way.

~Ornery Owl is Searching~

Image by moonzigg from Pixabay

Resource Books:

52 Weeks of Writing

https://amzn.to/33sESxd

Self-Help Sucks

https://amzn.to/3sCWA9q

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This work is the intellectual property of Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp and Naughty Netherworld Press.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. Odysee’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on Odysee. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

Come check out Readers Roost, the online book store featuring works by indie and small press authors. Discover your next great read at the Roost! It's the link you need when you wanna read.

https://bit.ly/ReadersRoost

Buy me a coffee

http://bit.ly/NNPCoffee

Or buy me a coffee here

http://bit.ly/NNPKOFI

Join me on Patreon!

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Playlist for the Post

https://odysee.com/@M%C3%BAsicaElectr%C3%B3nica:3/LA-MEJOR-MUSICA-ELECTRONICA-POSITIVA---THE-BEST-ELECTRIC-AND-POSITIVE-MUSIC:d?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

https://odysee.com/@MUSIC-RELAX:e/musica-electronica-positiva108:e?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

https://odysee.com/@WKDsociety:8/WKDsociety-house-of-electronics-mix:9?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

Wicked Wednesday: The Devil In Reverse

 

I decided to do something a little different today. I drew a Tarot card to ruminate on and got the Devil in reverse. The card is from the International Icon Tarot.

The card represents the critical factor for the issue at hand. The Devil, when reversed: Resistance of temptation. Freedom from bondage. The pursuit of higher goals despite the influence of luxury and pleasure. Release from obsession with money and power. Liberation from fear, weakness, and indecision through communion with higher powers or the inner voice.

So even though I don't think I've been doing a great job with it, the Universe seems to think that I am breaking away from my clamoring for adulation and belief that I am a loser if I am not insanely wealthy. 

I am aware that there are people who think that divination tools including the Tarot are "evil" and there are others who think they are silly. I don't think either of those things. You're welcome to think whatever the fuck you think on this subject. I don't intend to argue either way about it with you, so keep that shit to yourself and go write about it on your own blog if you are so inclined. I'm not religious but I'm not an atheist either. I don't have a problem with either atheists or religious people as long as they can be respectful of my agnostic views. 

I was going to do a little more with this, but I've realized that I'm really fucking hungry. I'm trying to (slowly) learn not to ignore my body's needs. I spent so much of my life doing that, starting as a young child when it was done out of necessity. We were really poor when I was little and my father was working towards his doctorate. We often ate horrible shit like boiled soybeans. 

If I never see another boiled soybean in my life, I'll be happy. I like other soy products like tofu. I like roasted soybeans. I cannot abide boiled soybeans. They have the same appeal as cardboard. I could choke down boiled soybeans well before I would ever eat liver and ditto raw squash, however. I love cooked squash but I really can't stand it raw. It tastes like cotton dipped in a little chlorophyll. Liver tastes like a mixture of mud and bile. It's entirely gross. When my mother cooked it, the house smelled of it for days afterward. I always fed my portion to the cat under the table.

After my father got his doctorate, we no longer had to rely on awful boiled soybeans for nutrition. We stepped up from the lower class to the middle class and we were pretty well-fed. Food restriction was still a thing though as my father didn't want to allow any sweets into the house. My father never had the proverbial "sweet tooth." The rest of us liked sweets, though, and when my mother noticed that my brother and I were sneaking candy into our rooms, she put the kibosh on my father's sweets ban.

My father was always very fatphobic, and he engaged in orthorexia, running approximately six miles a day in his prime. He ran in old-school Converse shoes. He was a big man, six foot four and around 200 pounds. Running this much without proper footwear took a toll on his spine over the years. He eventually had to have a laminectomy on several vertebrae in his lower back. By then he was severely physically handicapped because of a stroke. He was relentlessly critical of himself, often referring to himself as a "useless cripple."

I fight not to allow body shaming into my treatment of myself. I need to learn to be okay with eating when I'm hungry without policing my food choices (other than to calculate the amount of insulin I need to eat a portion of food) and without shaming, scolding, or punishing myself for having a large body.

Fuck size shaming and fuck diet culture. These are the only diet books I use.

The Fuck It Diet

https://bit.ly/FIDCIE

Health at Every Size

https://bit.ly/HAESCIE

Here is the book that helps me work on my addiction to approval.

https://amzn.to/3sCWA9q

Spirit of the Universe, please help me to keep working toward self-acceptance. I don't feel like anyone will ever understand or like me and that hurts, but I realize it doesn't mean I'm less worthy of being treated decently, if only by myself. I deserve respect at whatever size I am and whether or not I am famous or wealthy. Please help me to respect myself, Spirit. Amen.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

Ornery Owl

Round and All Out of Fucks to Give

Free-Use Image by Open Clipart Vectors

Hangry is ready to chow down!

Free use image from Pixabay

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This work is the intellectual property of Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp and Naughty Netherworld Press.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. Odysee’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on Odysee. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

Come check out Readers Roost, the online book store featuring works by indie and small press authors. Discover your next great read at the Roost! It's the link you need when you wanna read.

https://bit.ly/ReadersRoost

Buy me a coffee

http://bit.ly/NNPCoffee

Or buy me a coffee here

http://bit.ly/NNPKOFI

Join me on Patreon!

Subscribe for as little as $1 per month.

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Cressida de Nova: National Poetry Writing Month

Cressida de Nova: National Poetry Writing Month:       Day 8 Weekly Scribbles 64 my refuge my pink queen size bed so cosy so secure my place to hide from the world to find peace and sleep ...

I mostly sleep on my left side. It might have something to do with the sciatica on the right side. 

I don't like sleeping on my back as I tend to be more vulnerable to sleep paralysis in that position. 

My bed is an old, dilapidated couch that sags in the middle. I still like it better than most people.

Blow Your Stack Saturday: It's Not All In Our Heads

This is a response to a post on The Mighty regarding suicide ideation.

If I went to the E.R. every time I felt suicide ideation, I'd have to live there. However, it is impossible to talk about feeling this way for fear of being involuntarily incarcerated (and yes, I do think of it as incarceration) in a mental health facility. I made a promise to myself when I was sixteen, involuntarily placed on the psych ward at the hospital after cutting my wrists, and treated in a shameful and dehumanizing way, that I would never return to one of those places. I have kept that promise to myself for nearly 40 years, and I don't intend to stop.

I also heard many times over the years:

"Oh, just stop looking for attention."

"You're overly dramatic."

"Just stop feeling that way."

"Life's hard for everyone. What makes you think you're special?"

"You bring your problems on yourself."

I stopped telling people how I was feeling and just kept it inside.

Furthermore, there may be non-psychological reasons why a person feels less than thrilled with life.

Try living in extreme poverty (I made less than $5000 last year) but when you go to try and get EBT (food stamps) you and your autistic adult child (who was not even present at the meeting and thus not allowed any say in the matter) are threatened with jail time for "trying to defraud the system" and your physically disabled self is told that if you were "truly disabled you would need a caregiver." I don't need a caregiver, but I can't work a regular job. I do freelance work from home. How the hell many psychologically "normal" people wouldn't start to feel like taking the exit from life if this kind of crap was happening to them?

I've also come to be very angry because of how I was treated when I was sexually assaulted on more than one occasion in my life. It happened in 1980 when I was 15. There was no intercourse so I knew no-one would believe me, but it was sexual assault. I had been a formerly "good kid" except for the pot-smoking and the drinking because I needed an escape from the way I felt because I was constantly psychologically and sometimes physically abused at school, let's call "bullying" what it really is. I started acting out, cutting classes and then cutting myself. Instead of asking questions I was sent to the school counselor who called my parents. When I got home, my mother aggressively pulled up my sleeves and demanded angrily to know "what is wrong with you?" I knew better than to ever tell the counselor anything again. I may have been troubled, but I wasn't stupid.

I later engaged in consensual activity with a boy that I really liked, although this was an ill-advised idea. When I yelled in pain because it hurt, this made him angry or uncomfortable and he abandoned me. It was then that I made the suicide attempt that put me in the hospital.

When I asked: "why do boys only want girls for a piece of ass?" nobody caught on that I might have been sexually assaulted. I was told that I needed to keep myself out of situations where I might be used in that way. All of the onus was on me, none on the guy who assaulted me or the guy who wanted to use me for sex but then dumped me because I wasn't ready.

When I was sexually assaulted at 18, I was told by my father that I shouldn't have put myself in that position. I had a mental breakdown and ended up dropping out of college.

When I was sexually assaulted at 32, I was having back to back panic attacks for most of the day. I needed help. I was given drugs. I don't respond well to drugs. Prozac left me feeling numb and I sat there staring at my arm wondering if I should cut it to see if I could still feel. Xanax made me sedated and then suicidal. None of it stopped the panic attacks, so I stopped taking it. I had back to back panic attacks when I was awake for an entire year and the advice that I was given by my family was that I had gotten over it before when this had happened to me and I would get over it again. I had one so-called mental health "professional" who referred to me as a "basket case."

Although I do have legitimate psychiatric issues (type 2 bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and complex PTSD), there are also environmental factors that contribute to my suicide ideation. People never want to look at those realities. It's more comfortable to believe that the person experiencing suicidal thoughts is simply "disturbed" or "mentally ill."

Cie Has Blown Her Stack

Carpe Diem Tan Renga Wednesday: Such a Cold Night

Image by Robson Machado from Pixabay

lying down

with quilts over the head

such a cold night

I spent many nights like this

in a trailer with no heat

~cie~

notes

The Hokku stanza was written by Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694). The Ageku stanza was written by me. It is autobiographical.

Carpe Diem Haiku: Senryu: Lost at Birth

Image by Michael Gaida from Pixabay

born to a hard life

a world of trouble and strife

you deserved better

~nobody~

notes from nobody

Written for my son. I was not able to give him the childhood he deserved because of my mental health issues. Now we live together in poverty trying to support each other as best we can. If there are angels, I believe he is one.

Come As You Are Party + MFRW Blog Challenge: Catch-up: Week 1: Vacay or Staycay

Image by Eli Digital Creative from Pixabay

I am playing catch-up with this prompt. I missed the first two weeks. If you are interested in joining in, visit this blog.

The question is, vacay or staycay.

Well...

I don't have enough money to consider vacay-ing, and even if I did, my disabilities limit what I can do. So, that's a big Staycay. Which at this stage of my life is probably what I'd prefer anyway. 

Road trips really aren't fun anymore. There are too many aggressive drivers and the speed limits are ridiculously high. The speed limit on I-80 heading to Cheyenne is 80 MPH. Personally, I think that's courting disaster. Whenever I have to drive to Cheyenne, I take the frontage road. 

Road trips aren't fun, and the airport sucks big hairy donkey balls.

Yeah, I'm staying home.

~Cie the Ornery Old Lady~

Image copyright Open Clipart Vectors

Ornery Literary Services

Will Work for Links and Tips

Sandcastle Creations

Image by Marjon Besteman-Horn from Pixabay

I remember playing in the sandbox as a child

Hands digging into warm orange-golden grains

My sandcastles were, in reality

Nothing but cloddish bucket shapes

But, languishing in my imagination

I saw them as wondrous perpendicular spires

Climbing up and up to dizzy heights

Where a virtuous knight played out his heroic role

In the theatre of my mind

I couldn’t have imagined then

How pedestrian my life would become

No longer able to earn a stable income

I sit before the computer’s typewriter keyboard

Praying that the laconic moments

Will be few and far between

As I attempt to form a story

Of a dashing but broken hero

Through the curtains I see shadows of branches

~Cie~

Notes:

I chose the picture because from the back, at any rate, this is very much what I looked like as a child. There is no way I could have known what would become of me or my life. If that little girl had known what kind of worthless and hideously ugly creature she would become, she wouldn't have wanted to live.

I didn't stay cute for long. Even around six years old, it was becoming apparent that I had a terrible overbite. Two years of braces and that dreadful Martian headgear left me with a crossbite, which doesn't play a part in my appearance, but it is uncomfortable. It also left me with dead nerves in a couple of my front teeth and it couldn't close the gaps between my teeth. I ended up having to get an abscess removed, root canals, and caps on my six top front teeth to hide the remaining gaps and the fact that my left front tooth and left incisor are black from the nerve damage.

Dental veneers can hide how ugly my top front teeth are, but nothing can hide how ugly my face is as a whole, unfortunately. I am not at all a good-looking person, and in a world that is biassed towards a certain type of beauty, it has hurt me very much to be as ugly as I am.