OctPoWriMo 2019: Day 28: Broken Pieces

Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay

I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you, Sunshine

You see, I'm feeling discouraged today

You see, my obsessive-compulsive, bipolar, attention-deficient brain

Is not complying with this idea of acceptance

You see, my quivering fuckery of a personality is feeling anything but precious

Some days she can fool herself that she's healing

That she's regaining her strength

Today is not that day

And tomorrow isn't looking so hot either

Do not come 

To my run-down, battered, dilapidated, war-torn house in the bad part of town

Looking for a bright beacon of light

Or some fucking Hallmark Channel story about the horrible old hag

Who was cured of her mental illness

And suddenly became young and pretty

You will not find her here

On the wrong side of the Cosmos

Swilling her bitter bitches brew

Wondering if today is the day when she walks off down the road

Into the cold

And lets nature take its course

Like it should have long ago

I have some bad news for you, Sunshine

Today is not that day

And tomorrow is not looking so hot either

All bad things must come to an end

But today is not that day

Maybe tomorrow

Who the hell knows?

In the meantime, I sip my bitches brew

And try to kill off the remaining feelings

Wherever they may hide

Deep inside

The toxic moonlight bipolar negative blacklight supernova

That lies at the very heart of me

~Cie~

Haibun: To Save Sharalima or Burn Down Manderley

I am hoping against hope that I will stick to the promise I make here, but I am nothing if not inconsistent. 

I need to make a promise to stop writing and stop it for good.

For me, writing is a fucking waste of time, and promoting my writing is a waste of money. I don't know why I keep doing something which has been a proven failure just because my writing abilities were always above my grade level when I was in school and I tested in the highest percentile on my SAT scores in English. I later tested out of my basic English courses with the CLEP test. So the fuck what? This only means that my reading comprehension and basic writing skills are somewhat higher than that of the average bear. It doesn't mean that I can write anything with popular appeal.

The thing I do which makes the most money (and the less than $10,000 I made last year doing it shows that it isn't exactly lucrative either) is delivering food. I don't mind delivering food, although I can't say it's exactly fulfilling work. However, what I should be doing is delivering more food, not wasting my time writing shit that has zero popular appeal and thus zero money-making potential.

I realized after spending thousands of dollars to publish two failed books that my writing lacks popular appeal. I told myself that henceforth I would do such writing only for myself and perhaps share it with a few fellow bloggers. If anyone liked it a little bit, fine. If no-one liked it, also fine. After all...

So, realizing that I am never going to make any money off my beloved craft, I opted to also start collaborating on Kindle smut projects, because, apparently, some people are making a living doing this. I've been doing it for almost a year, and a book gets sold here and there, but it comes nowhere close to making me a living. The only saving grace is that at least I'm not spending thousands of dollars on a POD publisher to spread smut around.

In February, I participated in a writing contest on the Write-Edit-Publish blog. I told myself I didn't care if my piece won or not. I don't write to win popularity contests. I told myself that I was writing because MY STORY DESERVES TO BE TOLD!!11!!!1!1 I told myself that I wasn't even going to read the post where the winners were announced because I knew I wouldn't be one of them. My writing is too weird, too lacking in popular appeal, too "ME." But then I went and read the fucking post anyway because WHAT IF I DID WIN THIS TIME???? WHAT IF I FINALLY FOUND ACCEPTANCE FOR WHAT I DO???? WHAT IF I HAVE GAINED A MOMENTARY FLASH OF FLEETING POPULARITY WHICH WOULD VALIDATE MY HERETOFORE WORTHLESS SHITPILE OF A LIFE????

One doesn't have to be a fucking clairvoyant to predict that no, I did not win the contest. I wasn't even an also-ran. My story's title appeared on the list of participants because it didn't break any cardinal rules. I wasn't surprised, but I was, nonetheless, very disgusted and angry with myself for participating in the first place, full well knowing that I would never be ONE OF THE WINNERS. 

Losers don't win, Cie. Get that through your thick, shit-filled head. LOSERS DO NOT WIN! And you, Dumpling, are the dictionary definition of LOSER.

There I was, doing that damn thing that I thought I'd moved beyond, hoping for acceptance and approval, hoping for a pat on the head and an Attagirl when the truth is, down inside I'm still the unwanted kid whose "friends" only play with her because their parents tell them that they have to. I'm still the kid watching her "friends" walk together up to the old gravel pit behind the faculty housing at the college where my father taught after the same "friends" had told me they were busy and couldn't play that morning. 

I'm still the same stupid kid who took the shortcut and beat my "friends" to the pit and hid in the hole until they came by and expressed surprise at finding me there. For once in my worthless shit stain of a so-called life, I had a moment of bravery. I called them out on lying to me and ditching me. They followed me back down the path, telling me that plans had changed, that their parents didn't need them to do the thing they'd told me they needed to do. I said that they didn't bother lying to me and kept walking.

They continued begging my forgiveness. They didn't want to get in trouble with their parents for being rude to me. I was so desperate that I let them convince me that we were still friends. Not sure how we could still be friends when we had never really been friends in the first place, but I convinced my sad, lonely, pathetic self that my "friends" were telling the truth. 

My "friends" forced themselves to play with me for about 20 minutes, and then one of them looked at his watch and said it was time to go inside and watch a TV program. I asked if I could come to watch too.

He said no because his parents told him that he and his sister couldn't have anyone over that day. I accepted that explanation and asked what the TV show was called.

"It's called mentally retarded," he said.

Then Jason and Marty, who was not a member of Jason's family, went into Jason's house.

No matter how hard I try not to do it, I still end up turning back into that pathetic kid who nobody wants to play with. I'm tired of having her come out. Every time I allow her to do anything, she just fucks up my life. She immersed her loser self in fictional worlds, which, I suppose, is where the whole writing thing comes from. She's stupid and a bore, and I want to kill everything that ever meant anything to her so maybe she'll finally fucking go away for good.

I was watching the Midsomer Murders program, and in one episode, a romance author named Delphi Hartley has run out of money and is being forced to sell the home she's lived in all her life. She throws the manuscript to her latest novel in the fire because, as she says, "I love my characters and my stories, but if nobody wants to read them, why should I write them?"

It has been proven to me time again that nobody wants to read my stories. I JUST NEED TO FUCKING STOP!

I really should delete my writing. All of it. Every single word that I've written in the past 30 years should be deleted. I should delete all of my blogs. Any writing done on paper prior to my moving pretty much exclusively to writing on the computer should be burnt. I should not leave a single remnant. I need to stop writing and eradicate every trace of ever having done so. I need to stop lying to myself.

I am having difficulty pulling the trigger on deleting these files because I am nothing if not a wishy-washy lameass loser.

I dreamed that an angelic being came to me. She had long blonde hair in braids and a robust body type like the Valkyries in productions of Wagner's "The Ring" where having a full body type isn't seen as a character flaw. She said that her name was Tarka and that she had come to tell me that I should save Sharalima. I knew that she was referring to the world where my stories were born, even though I have never used that name myself.

I don't know if Tarka is an actual "supernatural" being, or if she is merely brain sweat. I want to believe her, but I honestly think it is far too late for me and that Sharalima is nowhere near as precious as she makes it out to be. Frankly, I think it has no value at all. I think it is time that I torched it and all its locations and creatures the way the wrathful Mrs. Danvers torched Manderley. 

I think that it is time for Sharalima to be buried by time and dust. No-one will ever miss it.

Never a winner

Not even good enough to

Be an also-ran

~Cie~

Note:

I put the word "supernatural" in quotes, because even though I believe in the possibility at least of those things that some people would label "metaphysical," I do not believe in the supernatural. Everything, including any ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties that may exist, is part of the natural order.

The Cheese Grates It: Fucked to Start With

This will be a long, rambling mess and probably shouldn't be read by anyone

It has been a while since I've worked on my stories. I may again, I don't know.

I used to have an organized plan, at least as organized as I can get, given that my brain works like a spider on drugs.

I think my thought patterns most closely resemble either the Peyote Spider or the LSD Spider. The web appears normal at first, but on closer examination, it really isn't. 

My brain does not work like yours, oh, Nice Normal People who are so Nice and Normal. And it never will. I was fucked to start with.

Fuckd to Start Wit is the title of a book written by a friend of mine, the late Walt Cessna. He said I was the one who encouraged him to write his book. It is well worth looking for a copy. 

Walt was an amazing photographer and a compelling writer. Problems with addiction tended to sideline him throughout his life. He was a gentle soul. He passed away from complications of AIDS two years ago. The world lost a good person, and, sadly, being the cesspool of horrible that the world is, it didn't know or care.

It will be no great loss when I go. I'm already aware of that.

For years, people tried to change me to make my brain weave normal spiderwebs, to be able to write nice, normal stories for nice, normal people instead of tangled webs of subplots guaranteed to make normal people wail and gnash their teeth and belittle and berate what spews from the hell-hole that is my imagination.

For years, I belittled and berated myself for being unable to be Normal: to work normally, write normally, think normally. 

There Are Drugs. Drugs that can make you less "you," I have been told.

I tried the drugs, and they did not work the way I was told they would. They did not make the depression go away. They made me Manic and Psychotic. Instead of being a functioning weirdo, I was a fucked-up weirdo earning myself a one-way ticket to the Loony Hatch. 

Fuck your fucking drugs.

I know it would be easier for the world if people like me would just play nice, if we would just pass for normal and keep our fucked-up thoughts and emotions to ourselves. Barring that, we could just agree to be permanent patients in a mental health facility or group home, compliantly attending meetings that do absolutely nothing, obeying our masters, completing the tasks they give us, staying out of the way of Normal Society and Nice People.
Fuck "normal society." These days, "normal" is a sociopathic bully who takes to Twitter to rail at his "haters." "Normal" is a monster who pulls the wings off flies. "Normal" is callous and uncaring. I want even less to be "normal" than I ever did before.
With my writing, I tried to remove all the subplots. My writing became boring to me.
When I write something, I am in the mindset of Dr. Frank N. Furter. I DIDN'T MAKE IT FOR YOU. I sometimes share my writing because I'm stupid enough that sometimes I want validation for my shit. That's stupid, and I know it's stupid, but I sometimes fall into that old trap. I'm 53 years old, and I still fall into that trap. I know how stupid and lame and pathetic that is. I know it, and it still happens. This makes me stupid, lame, and pathetic. I know that too.
With my main story, I used to be more "organized" with it, inasmuch as a peyote or LSD brained spider can ever be. I worked on it most days of the week. I had folders and documents for each of the subplots. Then my life went completely to hell, and what little semblance of organization there was went right out the window.
I decided that any writing is better than no writing, and, if I'm able to retire before I end up fucking dead, I might start organizing it then.
I was going to say "dead or in a nursing home," but that second one will not happen. If there is a real threat of it happening, I will off myself. I worked in long-term care for 25 years. I will not end up in one of those places. Like Stephen King said, sometimes dead is better. This is definitely a case where dead is better.
I am in a bad place right now. I earn about minimum wage, which is not enough to survive on. There is no "doing better." My physical and psychological problems insure that. I can do the work I do, but it takes a toll. I'm hungry a lot of the time. I can't eat regularly even though I should because I have diabetes. No, I don't qualify for aid because I won't liquidate my few assets. I want my son to get those when I go tits up. He's going to need them. I do get Medicaid.
A society that treats its working class like a steaming pile of shit is a failed society.
I may be a steaming pile of fail on a personal level, but our society is failing way harder than I am.
The point being, I don't give a flying fuck about anyone's "constructive" criticism to try and make my writing "better." I'm not trying to get this shit published into a book. I'm just trying to express it.
The recent criticism I received wasn't even particularly harsh. Honestly, a fuck I don't give. It was just poorly timed, one of those straws that broke the camel's back kind of thing.
People don't take into account that in a forum like this, people are writing for different reasons. Some are gunning to be TEH FAYMUS AUTHUR!!!!!11!!!!!!!!
I used to believe I wanted to be TEH FAYMUS AUTHUR!!!1!!!!!!!1
I found out that I really don't. What I wanted was affirmation and security. It's better to try and get those from something that I'm not emotionally attached to, because when someone takes pot shots at things I'm emotionally attached to, I tend to go into a tail spin because my life is such a steaming pile of crap in the first place. Because I'm fucked to start with.
Five years ago, I was in yet another really bad place, not so much financially but definitely on an emotional level. I couldn't work on anything featuring original characters. I just didn't have it in me. The only thing I could bring myself to write was Aliens fan fiction in my own weird style. No way I was trying to get that shit published. I was just sharing it with a select group of friends.
To show that you can't trust anybody to hold you up rather than kick you when you're down...
One of these friends told me that people write fan fiction because it's easier to work with "shell" characters than to try and come up with anything original, and that fan fiction tends to be the domain of "broken" people.
Well, she hit at least one nail on the head, but, other than that, she only succeeded in whacking me repeatedly.
I am broken. I was broken early on. I came into this life with a broken brain. When I leave, I will be entirely broken, body and soul.
I think every day about pulling the plug. I am accomplishing nothing. I will never be okay. I don't think anything will ever be good or right.
I think I stay around for a couple of reasons.
One is the fact that my son needs my help. He's broken too. He's high-functioning autistic and has problems with anxiety and depression. He has a degree of agoraphobia. He has never been able to work.
Like me, he "passes for normal." My mother always says there isn't anything "wrong" with him, implying that he needs to just needs to "pull himself up by his bootstraps," "man up," "put on his big boy pants," and all that sort of crap. No, Ma, there isn't anything "wrong" with my boy. He's just a big ole square peg, just like his damn worthless mother. Only he isn't worthless. He's very intelligent and has a desire to do good. He'd be an amazing employee, if there were an employer that was willing to work with his not-normal psyche.
I'm pretty hateful to myself a lot of the time because it is literally impossible for me to be normal.
Writing is an escape hatch for me. I sometimes think about not sharing my fictional works publicly anymore because I really can't stand having people taking pot shots at it when I'm hanging on by a fucking thread and it's my one very frayed life line. On the other hand, I do miss the times when people say nice things about my work. Sometimes that can quite literally mean the difference between a good and bad day.
Which makes me a complete and utter loser. I know.
I'm going to end this bloviated blather with a favorite song. This one's for you, Walt. I hope you're at peace on the other side. I love you.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Cheese Grates It: FML

Image Source:

wallpaperfo.com

The Cheese Grates It:

FML

content warning:

suicide ideation

I honestly hate writing about myself, which is why I deviated from a recent prompt and made it an alternate reality of a character instead. However, at the moment I feel the need to share a few things about me and why I continue writing even though I long ago took the dream of becoming a renowned author out in the back alley and shot it.

I recently received criticism of my work being merely a conversation between two talking heads. Well, I guess that's what it is. Often when I'm doing my writing, I've finished working a shift delivering food in rush-hour traffic to nickel-and-diming customers who think that fifty cents is an appropriate tip. Hint: fifty cents was a crap tip back in 1986, when I was delivering pizzas. All told, I average about ten dollars an hour.

My financial situation is precarious. I need to set aside $1000 to get the water pump in the car I prefer to make deliveries in fixed. The whole time I'm driving I'm hoping that something doesn't happen to my personal car.

I know the conventional wisdom is "just get another job," but that isn't as simple as it sounds. This is literally about the only work I can do at this point.

My physical situation is far from good. I used to be able to work physically demanding jobs, but my diabetes has deteriorated to the point where I have problematic activity intolerance. When standing for long periods of time, I tend to become weak, dizzy, and confused.

"Aha, clerical work!" many of you will say.

Sadly, not so much. My brain is stupid, and when I work the kinds of hours where clerical work tends to be done, I become depressed to the point of non-functional. I've tried to do this numerous times in my rather long life, and the result has always been the same. Clearly, I was not made for life on this planet.

A year ago, I lost a reasonably well-paying job where I was making approximately $40,000 a year. I was working as a homecare nurse. My diabetes was getting worse and I was very sick with a severe respiratory infection. The company reasoned that I could continue working because the patient I was working with was the one I'd contracted the infection from, therefore, they believed, I couldn't re-infect him.

I was fired from that job because I fell asleep during my shift. This was not a light drowse where one wakes when one's chin contacts their chest. This was a deep, dark, dreamless, sleep-of-the-dead kind of sleep. There is a pretty good likelihood that I had a TIA at that point. I don't remember falling asleep, but I was asleep for about 20 minutes. I woke to see the patient's father sitting on the patient's bed, glaring at me. I didn't hear him come downstairs or into the room. I left and was fired the next day.

I worked briefly for another homecare agency with a patient I'd worked with previously. This patient ended up in the hospital and never came out. The agency never found me another case. At that point, I tried working as a rideshare driver. An idiot stoner kid backed into the rental car I was using. Lyft took so long to resolve the claim that I wasn't able to drive for a month. The rental car agency never reimbursed me for the unused week on the vehicle. I was out $1000.

I tried going back into long-term care, but found myself physically unable to keep up with the demands of the job. I became weak and confused when my blood sugar dropped and I was unable to take a break. Long-term care does not tend to allow for breaks for its employees. 

I then tried working for yet another homecare agency and discovered that I could no longer handle the physically demanding part of the job.

I worked delivering groceries for a while and ended up with a permanent injury to the median nerve in my left arm. This service promised delivery within the hour. Instead, I would often be greeted by an angry customer demanding to know why their order was three hours late. Customer service never contacted them. They let the driver deal with the unhappy customer. I had severe calf cramps because of having to climb stairs multiple times during the shift. The injury to my arm came about because of having to carry heavy loads throughout the shift. There is now permanent numbness in my left hand. At least I no longer endure agonizing pain in my left upper arm, which I did for about a month.

My anxiety levels are through the roof. I browbeat myself into going to work. Most days I wish I'd just die. Conversely, I have night terrors where I wake up with my heart pounding, thinking "please don't let me die like this."

Antidepressants, the darlings of the psych industry, don't work on me. They make me manic and psychotic. Benzodiazepenes, another darling of the psych industry, have a paradoxical effect. They tend to make my heart race and to cause panic attacks. The exceptions are Xanax, which has a heavy sedative effect and then makes me suicidal, and Valium, which makes me stupid. I mean really stupid, like two plus two equals three or something stupid. 

To counter my raging insomnia, I take a low dose of thc plus cbd. It works better than Valium (see thick as a brick stupid) and better than drugs such as Ambien and Lunesta, which cause me to sleepwalk and do things like pee on my car tire at 3 AM. I was given a medical marijuana card for the horrifying pain in my arm and to help with my glaucoma. What I use is actually recreational edibles and tea, which has a lesser potency than medical grade marijuana. It doesn't get me high. It acts as a mild sedative and has none of the crap side effects of pharmaceutical medications. However, there are certain jobs I can't even think of applying for at this point because of my use of a very low dose of thc for a medical problem. They'd be fine with it if I were fucking my head with Ambien, which makes me do weird shit and wake up tired, but a tiny amount of THC makes me a non-functional hop-head, apparently.

This was my response to the person who decried my writing as being merely a conversation between a pair of talking heads:

I take it from your other criticisms that "quite interesting" means "I hate it." That's cool and all.
The words weren't randomly bolded. It was to keep up with the Wordle prompt, to remember that we had used the words.
Honestly, I'm kind of brain damaged and stupid. I work at a menial job earning about minimum wage. I write when I can if for no other reason than to keep some aspect of what I believe myself to truly be alive. With a little help from my friends I am able to do this.
Maybe I'm fated to just be a giant talking head, much like the Face of Boe in Dr. Who.
Sorry my work didn't meet your exacting standards.
I probably won't participate in this particular prompt again. Really, the only reason I do is as an exercise in constraining my word count because I tend to be overly verbose in my so-called writing.

Note: the bolded words were my bad. I forgot that most people on the Weekend Writing Warriors prompt would not also be using the Wordle prompt.

Honestly, the shitty writing would also be my bad. Gem and Tempest aren't to blame. They were only trying to support me.

The truth is, I feel like killing myself most of the time and already would have if it weren't for the fact that my son seems to still need my help. Here are some things I don't need to hear regarding that statement:

"Go to the emergency room."

If I went to the emergency room every time I experienced suicide ideation, I'd have to live there.

"Get counseling."

It doesn't work. I could probably benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy, but county mental health doesn't tend to provide that. County mental health gives you counselors who frustrate you to no end because they are used to dealing with people who have severe psychosis. I only have psychosis when I take antidepressants or prescription pain medications. County mental health counselors are no help to people who see the reality around them all too clearly and know there's nothing they can do to extract themselves from the steaming pile of suck that is reality. So, they write stories involving talking heads because it soothes them for a moment to do so.

"Get on medication."

See "that shit makes me manic and psychotic." Except for Prozac, which left me emotionally flatlined, staring at my arm, and thinking to myself "maybe I should cut my arm to see if I can still feel anything." This wasn't the normal, self-loathing drive to self-injure that I've dealt with all my life. This was a case of wondering if I could still feel anything at all.

Sorry, folks. Pat answers don't work on me. I'm special like that.

Actually, I'm not particularly special. There are a lot of people that the pat answers don't work for.

I have a lot of thoughts about how society could improve to make sure everyone has a decent quality of life. One of them involves not treating the working class like shit. Most people in the working class aren't "less intelligent" or even less educated than people in white collar jobs, and, even if they were, why should they be treated like shit?

We need universal health care so people like me can stop playing the shitty balancing game of having to keep my earnings under $800 a month so I don't lose Medicaid. 

We need a universal stipend. The idea that people would stop working if they were receiving a stipend is erroneous. Most people want to work in some capacity.

In any case, I probably won't officially participate in the Weekend Writing Warriors prompt again. It seems to be a place that isn't for people like me: people for whom writing is a survival tool.

And now, I guess I'll get ready to get out there and get nickel-and-dimed to death once again. Perhaps there will be more from the talking heads who are my characters later. Color yourself oh so lucky.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~