Our subject needs no introduction!
Okay, she kind of does.
I’m Cara H, the Cheesy One, The Cheesemeister. I’m Cie, pronounced C. My real name is pronounced Care-ah, as in I care or pretend I do. Anyway, it ain’t Car-ah. The Car-ah is something you drive-ah. If I were a Car-ah, I’d kill you if you tried to drive-ah me.
I write dystopian and Lovecraftian fantasy and science fiction under the pen name C. L. Hart. That’s my first two initials and the first syllable of my last name. I picked it because my literary heroes H. P. Lovecraft, P. G. Wodehouse, and J. K. Rowling asked me to join their prestigious Secret Society of Authors Using Two Initials and a Surname.
If there really were such a society, I would join. We would sit around drinking tea and telling stories.
I also go by Owl. Ornery Owl, that is. Ornery Owl is the persona who pens my poetry and helps me dredge up repressed memories. I am Ornery Owl and I have something to say, come what may. You can listen, or you can ignore me. Whatever.
I was born on February 15, 1965, during a raging blizzard. It was a portent of a turbulent life to come.
I wish people would have listened when the head nurse spoke up and said leave this one alone. People have always made it their business to get up in my business, even though they didn’t care a hill of beans for me. It’s the rare person who gives a damn. The rest are either nosy or evil.
I grew up dancing with the likes of The Beatles, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and The Rolling Stones. Later, I danced in the dark with Bruce Springsteen. When The Kinks said “Come Dancing,” you know I did.
“Do you love me now that I can dance?” I asked my schoolmates.
“You can’t dance. You’re ugly and weird. Nobody likes you,” my classmates said, and my inner critic confirmed it.
My inner critic’s name is Ayce Hole. I named her after an awful diet candy infused with lidocaine. It was supposed to numb your stomach so you wouldn’t feel hungry. I wanted to look like the After pictures in the Ayce ads, so I ate the candy.
When I looked in the mirror after noshing on a couple of mouth-numbing caramels, I hoped to see a gorgeous swimsuit model looking back at me. Instead, I saw an unhappy, bulimic teenager with numb gums, and because the candy had no nutritional value, I was hungry. Like most miracle cures, Ayce was a scam. Quelle surprise!
I was seventeen years old and a senior in high school when Michael Jackson’s album Thriller was released. I dug the Werewolf story set to music. I wanted to create exciting entertainment like Michael. I was an ugly duckling with a voice like a pissed-off swan, but I hoped that the Powers that Be would take pity on me and alter my less than comely appearance and far from crowd-pleasing musical abilities. Barring that, I hoped they would put me on the path to becoming a comedic actress. Character performers don’t have to be drop-dead gorgeous.
What I craved even more than talent, however, was adulation and excitement. I not only needed to be told I was good enough, I needed it reaffirmed constantly. I needed to hear that I was amazing! Beautiful (in an unconventional way)! Talented! Wonderful! Of course, because I don’t really believe a word of it, I needed it repeated again! Again! And again!
I wanted to be the thriller, and I wanted to get my thrills. I was always on the hunt for the next party. I needed one drink to pull me out of my shell, another to lower my inhibitions, and however many came after that to help me forget how much I hated my life and myself. I couldn’t stand for things to be still. I always felt like I was buzzing inside. Being high or drunk helped reduce the imbalance between the way things were and the way I felt they should be. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my behavior was a cry for help.
It literally took more than five decades for me to finally understand what was going on in my head. I had many erroneous labels slapped on me over the years. My favorite of these has to be “hysterical neurotic.” I’ll never forget the clown of a shrink who bestowed that sassy little number on me. I’m proud of the way sixteen-year-old me gave him what for. He was a damn Freudian misogynist who didn’t deserve the respect he demanded. I saw right through him.
My second favorite label is “borderline personality disorder.” Borderline personality disorder is the modern hysterical neurotic. This label is overwhelmingly applied to women and girls. The manifestations of “borderline personality disorder” don’t come out of nowhere. Every single person this label is applied to has complex PTSD. Every “borderline personality” has been traumatized, often sexually.
I was also misdiagnosed as having both type 2 bipolar disorder and OCD. When I was unable to afford Lithium, I expected to have “bipolar” episodes. I never did. With a little research, I discovered that I actually have ADHD and complex PTSD. People with ADHD can manifest obsessive behaviors and negative feedback loops that mimic certain aspects of OCD. However, the approach to short-circuiting such behaviors is different with ADHD than with OCD.
Suddenly the reasons for my thrill-seeking made sense.
Sometimes I feel like I’ve been cheated because I could have started making progress a lot sooner if I’d known what was really going on sooner. However, as the curmudgeonly Dr. House observed, you don’t get what you deserve; you get what you get. No amount of complaining will allow me to go back and make my discovery sooner, so I’ll just have to take it from here.
One day at a time.
~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~
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Heyyyy, ya wanna make sure people don't stick with their workout? Just make your exercise routines all about weight loss and having an arbitrarily "perfect" physique! Bingo-bango-bongo, those less-than-perfect types will drop away like flies, leaving you surrounded by only the kinds of hunks and hotties that a superior specimen like you deserves to be in the company of.
What, me, sarcastic? Surely not! This will totally happen and you completely deserve it! Being a body-shaming concern troll in no way means you should crawl back under your bridge.
All right, I'm setting the Sarcasm Shaker aside now before I risk seasoning this post with too much of a bad thing. Anyway...
As Jennette McCurdy observed in her autobiography, I'm Glad My Mom Died:
People seem to assign thin with “good,” heavy with “bad,” and too thin also with “bad.” There’s such a small window of “good.”
Nobody deserves to be shamed into hating their body. I just did part of Jeanette DePatie’s Everybody Can Exercise video.
The participants in the video are real people of all sizes, not leotard-clad Stepford wives. I was only able to get through 15 minutes this time, but now that I’ve found something that I can tell myself to do at least 15 minutes of, and I’m not having to come up with the routines, I think I may be able to keep up with it. My endurance sucks, but I’m hoping to rebuild it.
Body shaming leads people to give up on exercising. I may not be a genius, but that seems pretty damn counter-intuitive to me. As Ragen Chastain of Dances With Fat (https://danceswithfat.wordpress.com) says, you are the boss of your own underpants. Therefore, if you wish to make weight loss the focus of your workout, you may do that. However, there are several reasons why I don’t recommend that approach. More importantly, you don’t have the right to tell anyone else that weight loss needs to be their focus for anything.
These are my realistic goals.
I have asthma and back problems and I’m almost 60 years old. I’ll never be able to run a marathon.
Did I mention that I hate running?
I like swimming. Unfortunately, there is no place to swim in this town. The nearest swimming pool or rec center is going to be a good 60 miles away.
I like walking, but I hate it when I go out in public and the public be there to attagirl me and treat me like I’m mentally deficient because I have physical problems. I don't want to be anyone's inspiration porn.
I also hate it when I encounter unleashed dogs because fuckers in this town think everyone should love their snarling mutt.
All that being said, I think videos like Jeanette’s are routines I can stick to.
I can do at least 15 minutes a day.
It doesn’t feel like a chore.
The routine is led by a compassionate, encouraging person.
One need not be in perfect shape to participate.
There is no fat shaming or thin praising.
It would make me feel proud of myself if I were to exercise regularly again. Hopefully, it will increase my stamina, flexibility, and strength. Perhaps it may even help lower my blood sugar.
What will exercising not do?
It will not make me a better person than people who don’t exercise.
A commitment to physical activity is not a measure of personal worth. I wish people would stop treating it like it was.
~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~
October 5 question - What do you consider the best characteristics of your favorite genre?
Oddly enough, the weird Lovecraftian fantasy I write as C.L. Hart and the naughty and bawdy erotica I write as Lil DeVille have a common trait that I appreciate.
I don't have to adhere to conventional rules. My characters can be oddballs. They don't even have to be human. They can originate beyond the stars. They can be vampires or werewolves or anything else I can imagine.
In some ways, the main difference between a C.L. Hart story and a Lil DeVille story is the heat level. There are a lot more platonic connections in the C.L. Hart universe. Let's just say that nobody reads a Lil DeVille story for the platonic connections.
I enjoy reading political thrillers and regency romance, but I would suck at writing them. I need to be able to transcend the bonds of reality and probably of good taste to express myself.
