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 normally write for adults. I find writing for youth extremely challenging. I ended up opting to write a lightly fictionalized autobiography of myself between childhood and my pre-teen years which centered around my imagination and the fantastical fiction genres which inspired me. In writing about myself I ended up opening a lot of pockets of unresolved grief.
The place I lived between the ages of four and nine was a semi-rural pocket in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where people could have small farms and keep chickens and such. We had a very large yard, a half-acre. Unfortunately, the house was in rather a shoddy condition and cockroaches the size of school buses had a tendency to get inside. The bugs are huge in New Mexico, and I was not keen on that. But I did love the little skinks and horned toads and such. We also had many beautiful plants around such as the honeysuckle vines, and the cicadas would sing us to sleep.
I was a very shy child and did not have many friends. The characters I met in fantasy worlds were my friends, as were my pets and the animals in our yard.
Although I was born in the Western United States and raised in the Southwest for a number of years, my parents were both from New York. When certain relatives would visit, they would ridicule my accent. A New Mexico accent is a bit of an off-Texas drawl. To this day, I bristle whenever anyone askes the seemingly innocent question: "where are you from?" To me, that question is loaded.
I'm real and raw, I'm irreverent, I have tattoos, and I tend to liberally sprinkle my conversation with profanity. Don't like, don't read and then complain. Should you do so, I will have to assume that you are the kind of person who is too stupid to avoid walking into a pit which has glaring neon signs and a barrier fence around it.
List 2 things you have to be happy about?
I'm happy that my son is part of my life. I wish that other members of the family would accept him as he is. He is high-functioning autistic and just talking to him you wouldn't know he's any different from people who are neurologically "normal." My mother insists that he isn't actually autistic because he doesn't have any extreme behaviors and his intelligence is higher than average. She thinks he should be able to just go out and get a job. He's never been able to hold a job because he becomes overwhelmed and then gets depressed. I get tired of arguing with her about it. I hope someday he finds a job he can do, because I think it will give him a sense of accomplishment. However, I don't think he's any less worthy because he hasn't yet.
I guess I'm happy that I have a job, even if the pay isn't great. I have a lot of health issues. My job allows me to make my own schedule and doesn't require punching a time clock or working a certain number of hours. However, the pay is extremely variable (I deliver food and pay depends on tips and number of orders run.) I say I guess I'm happy about it because a lot of the time I don't want to work at all. Call me lazy if you want. I refuse to call myself that anymore. That word has given me such a complex that I feel guilty about resting, ever.
Have you ever owned a rock, pet rock, or gem that is not jewelry?
I'm kind of a huge fucking dork, and I love plays on words. See if you can spot the "rock" in the image I shared. He isn't jewelry, but he is a gem. I gave him some jewelry in the form of a copper bracelet for protection from unwanted energies. I don't think he'd much care to be referred to as a pet.
Are you a hugger or a non-hugger?
I really don't like to be touched. I did hug my statuette before I put him back in the display case, where he watches over the ashes of two of my best friends: my beloved cats, Lafayette and Trinity.
Lafayette died on his sixth birthday, and I will never get over losing him. He was very special. He was a small cat but always a big kitten. He lived in the shelter from the time he was a month old until I adopted him when he was eight months old. He had quite a few health problems which all seemed to be minor. He was from a feral colony, and, I imagine, he was probably quite inbred, but that didn't matter to me. He died from kidney failure. I've always wondered if I'd gotten him to the vet sooner if I could have had him for longer.
Whenever I show my tattoos, I so often get the kind of person who feels the need to comment that they don't like tattoos. I don't care if you don't like tattoos. Don't like them, don't get them. There's no need to be snotty about someone else's choice, particularly when the tattoo has personal meaning for them.
I've never had the money to get a tattoo honoring Trinity, but here is a picture of her. She died at age 10 from brain and lung cancer.
What inspired you or what did you appreciate this past week? Feel free to use a quote, a photo, a story, or even a combination.
I have been having trouble being inspired to write at all, which is why I've resorted to puking out personal crap that nobody wants to hear about. Oh, hell, let's be honest, nobody wants to read my stupid stories either. I wish I could go back to wanting to write them anyway.
All the lights have died somehow, or were they ever there?
Stan: See, I find that hard to believe, ‘cause I got to say, Sam, you got the look. Sam: The look? Stan: The one a lot of guys get after they’ve been through the meat grinder – the one that lets you know they’ve seen a lot of crap they can’t forget. The second their feet hit solid ground, they start running, and they don’t stop – not till they find something to hold on to. Sam: You think that’s what I’m doing here? Just holding on? Stan: I think the two of you are holding on to each other, yeah. ‘Cause I know she’s scared. After what happened to Don, I don’t blame her for taking off. Needing to run away and hide – I know why she did it. The question is – what are you running from, Sam?…
Sam: Please, yeah. [STAN opens the beer and hands it to SAM.] Thanks. [STAN opens another beer for himself.] My, uh – my brother used to do that. Stan: Yeah? Sam: Yeah. Stan: He a good guy? Sam: Yeah. Yeah, uh, he – he was… the best. Uh, I, uh… I lost him, and, uh, I ran.
Sam was suffering PTSD. That’s what Amelia’s father was talking about. He’s soldier. He recognized it in Sam right away. Sam was hiding from his grief and his real life as a hunter because it had taken the most important person in his life.
Amelia: Is that why you’re here – to drag me back? This is my life. Stan: This – it won’t last. You are living in a dream world. SAM turns back to the sink. Amelia: I like it here. I like this house. I like Sam. Stan: Sam is a mess. Amelia: I’m a mess. But when I’m with Sam, I’m happy, Dad. And I haven’t been happy in a really long time. So please, just… let us be messes together. Give us a chance.
And later Sam tells Fred:
Look, it can be nice living in a dream world. It can be great. I know that. And you can hide, and you can pretend … all the crap out there doesn’t exist, but you can’t do it forever because… eventually, whatever it is you’re running from – it’ll find you. It’ll come along, and it’ll punch you in the gut. And then… then you got to wake up, because if you don’t, then trying to keep that dream alive will destroy you! It’ll destroy everything!
Look, I know that Sam’s story wasn’t told well, but it’s there in the text if you look. Sam didn’t just not look for Dean. He abandoned Kevin and didn’t hunt down the remaining leviathan. He was traumatized, and he went AWOL.
I’ve said this kind of thing over and over and OVER and it makes me a little sad that nobody is listening. People ask for explanations and then promptly ignore anything that doesn’t make Sam a horrible person.
I agree that Sam’s story wasn’t told very well at all, but it’s STILL THERE if anybody either bothers to look or actually listen to someone who has.
I didn’t think it was stupid or pointless, I thought it built character and I thought it’d be a good chance for us to see Sam dealing with trauma. It just makes me a little sad (again) that people either can’t or won’t see it that way and instead view it as Sam “being chill” about it.
That was the opposite of Sam being chill. Sam was so not chill that he wasn’t even Sam at that point. He had vacated the building. When Dean disappeared, so did the Sam we know. That is in no way surprising. He was so traumatized that he just shut down. He would not have needed to run away if the pain hadn’t been so great that even Sam was afraid to face it. That right there says a lot. People who think Sam didn’t care that Dean was gone have obviously never dealt with that level of grief and pain and have no understanding of the fact that everyone expresses it differently. No, Sam wasn’t “chill”. Sam wasn’t even Sam. That’s what PTSD is all about.
I wanted to say that this conversation helped me realize something that’s been going on with me for years now. After years of being told to “just get over” things, I started shutting down my emotions. This is an accumulation of things that have happened in my life, including being sexually assaulted 20 years ago this October 31, an incident which, by the way, I was advised “you got over this when it happened to you before” (when I was 18.) “You’ll get over it this time.”
I don’t think I ever got over it, I just realized that no one would listen to me so I internalized it and kept going. I still had multiple daily panic attacks for a year.
My father died after a long period of decline in 2010. I was very stoic about it. I kept going. It’s not like there was anything I could do to change things.
November 4 2014 is the day that I learned that someone who was a personal hero to me was having his mind stolen from him by dementia. I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t do either. I filed it away. I think about this person multiple times every day, and I feel awful and helpless, but I never cry.
July 17 2015 should have been a wonderful day but it was one of the worst in my entire life. It was my best friend Lafayette’s birthday. People will say of Lafayette “oh, he was just a cat, you should get over it,” but learning that his kidneys had shut down and I had no choice but to have him put to sleep, I felt like I’d been hit by a fucking asteroid. I didn’t know why I was still alive. I didn’t cry, though. I went numb and I got angry. Over the weekend, that day kept replaying itself in my mind repeatedly and I literally wanted to kill myself just so that fucking memory would stop. I always wonder what I could have done differently, if there was any way I could have saved him. He loved me, he believed in me, and I let him down.
November 9 2016 was a banner shitbag day. Not only did the Electoral College inflict Lord Dampnut on our country, but I lost my dear friend Trinity to lung and brain cancer. Trinity was another one of my cats. She was an 11 year old Calico cat with the loudest purr. I did cry when I said goodbye to her, but when I walked out of the vet’s office, I went stoic.
People accuse me of being cold inside, but if I let myself feel the pain, I couldn’t function. I often wonder what the hell is wrong with me because these things make me so sad. I want to cry, but I literally can’t. Also, I’m afraid if I were to start crying, I’d break down completely.
I know this was long winded and I’m sorry if it’s hijacking the original post. It’s just that I wanted people to know their words helped me understand something. It also helps me understand why I’ve had a hard time writing. I don’t feel like I deserve to. I feel like the worst fucking person in the world.
I guess I feel better in a way, because I feel like if Sam had a similar problem, then maybe I’m not such an awful person after all.
Sam is a hero. He is also one of my alternate universe friends. I don’t care how stupid anyone thinks that is.
I just wanted to put this here to help people understand one of the reasons why I defend fan fiction so staunchly. Fan fiction is not just a medium for “horny teenage girls and frustrated unhappy women” to get their rocks off. It can literally save lives. Not everyone’s life is wonderful and not everyone has a healthy support system.
A discussion about a fictional show (Supernatural) helped me to be able to find a little peace with myself about something I’ve been struggling with for quite a while now. That isn’t a small thing.
I’m 52 years old as of today. I am certainly not a horny teenage girl. I may be a “frustrated, unhappy woman,” but it isn’t in the sense that most people think of. I don’t expect to have Prince Charming ride in and save me, nor do I even want that. I just want to get things paid off and not leave a huge mess behind for my son. I want to leave something behind to help my son out when I’m gone. I want to be able to find some peace when my time comes. Those are the things I want, not some fairy tale romance.
I will always defend fan fiction and will never ridicule someone who takes comfort in an alternate world.
