Author: auntygreens

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Happy Holidays!!!

I am having such a wonderful day.  Jana did a really good job with my tat yesterday.  I don’t have a pic of it yet, and that’s okay.  I know it’s there.  Feels good to get a wonderful memory commemorated.

We had a wonderful visit.  On a day that is normally crappy for me, with the three deathversaries of my kids that happened in December, 23rd, 22nd, and the 10th- the second, third, and eighth, I got to spend an awesome afternoon with Jana and her daughter.

It was amazing.  Two whole games of Go Fish.  She did not, however, want to learn how to play “52 card pick up in your face.”  I got to see her line work and hear about her newest plans to become an art teacher.  Massive ticklefests.  Giggles.  Poor Sky couldn’t breathe by the time I was done.  Love that little girl!  What a spectacular heartshine she has.

For a holiday I used to dread, since our uncle had rightly sent us a card a few years back:  The front has a picture of a largish family, dressed in the seventies, and the caption reads:  “Christmas with the family.”  Inside, it reads, “Adjust your meds appropriately.”  I love the sarcasm of that, especially with how true that was.  So hits my funny bone.  But this year?  None of it.

Hang on a minute.  Phone’s ringing…

Right now, I am on the phone and my sister is discussing a prank with me.  One to play on a friend.  AWESOME!  She hasn’t plotted one of these with me in almost forever.  I can’t think of a BETTER Christmas present.

Heh.  Recon snowmen.  We threw out the first couple of ideas.  Friend is going to work shortly.  LOLOLOL….

 

Love it.

My cats have been bouncing around ever since I woke up this morning.  Wrestling matches on the bed, three games of Zoom up the stairs, and one of them pretended that the Christmas Tree attacked him and began chirping all over the place.

Tomorrow, we’ll do the holiday like when we were kids.  Pajamas.  Cartoons.  French toast.  Sure beats the heck out of our other family tradition of extremely fancy dress and stuffing 30+ people into a small house.

Board games all day.  I have a half a duck for dinner, and almost eight pounds of potatoes that will all be mashed up.  (I can see Shepard’s Pie in the near future.  The very near future.)  Acorn squash, corn, peas, parsnip strings, cinnamoned squash seeds, popcorn.

I went to the store today.  Had to.  I miscounted the cat food and there would wind up being a mutiny here if I didn’t rectify that.  But I am glad I did.  I met a very nice police officer doing his duty in the parking lot.  Brave man.  Very pleasant to talk with.

Even though the store was chaotic, and I had originally no plans to visit the Realm of No Return, I ran into an acquaintance of ours who’s stepson, a marine, was able to come home for the holiday.  She got sent to pick up extra supplies, due to the football game going on.  But her smile was so bright and happy that her step-son was home, and the visit with her new extended family.  What a gorgeous smile across her face.

My heart is full.  Laughter.  Love.  Fun.  Practical jokes.  Looking forward to games with my sister and our annual viewing of Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas and the cats winding up with maple syrup on at least one tail.  Such simple pleasures in life and it doesn’t get any better than that.

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Super excited today.  Going to see Jana for a new tattoo and to view the basic sketch of Ash’s book cover.

Days with Jana are always full of laughter.

The tattoo is for one of my recent movie moments.  A moment of clear understanding between myself and another person.  A rarity for me.  This particular one is sort of a kicking off point.  A line in the sand that I refuse to cross again.  I’ve hit that particular cross road, oh, only about a hundred times.  It was the when and how it was said that just put the icing on my cake.

Stories… I had this post all set and half-written in my head that I was going to continue answering the questions about why I write and what I do at night after work.  Well, I decided not to write that one, but this one instead.

MASH and Hogan’s Hero’s will always be two of my favorite shows.  They are my go-tos.

One of the aspects of my mother that I will absolutely love is her gift of laughter.  I did watch it slowly die over the years and, this morning, I think I have a better understanding of why.

I do remember a lot of good-natured teasing when I was young.  Ice cube wars between her and my sister.  Changing the salt and sugar around in the kitchen.  Dying the milk green.  Mom and her stuffing everyone’s shoes with leaves on a Girl Scout outing.  Or painting everyone’s faces with ketchup in the middle of the night.  Goodness, there were a lot of screams resounding in the woods the next morning.

I remember once that I took my rubber bat and hung it on a piece of fishing line.  Placed the bat on the door to the bathroom so it would drop down when the door moved.

I giggle at that one a lot.

She pulled back pretty hard when I turned twelve.  Into herself.  She was very tired.  Out of respect for her, I let it go most of the time, but, now, as I am feeling what I am, maybe I should have reached out more.  Not that there wasn’t affection, or teasing.  Mom used to crack me up at times.  It just fell out of our daily routine.

It also fell out because my ex and I had vastly different senses of humor.  He did not care for practical jokes.  While I don’t care for most surprises, and I don’t like mean jokes like scaring the crap out of someone, I do enjoy a good one.  I love stupid jokes and I very much enjoyed shrink wrapping my sister’s car with multicolored tablecloths.  My friends, when I was young, had a massive practical joke war that lasted well over two years.

I do build amusement and humor into my day.  Mostly with the cats.  And over the past three years, I’ve tried like anything to put that sense of mischief back into my life.  I’ve lost some of the spark and skill at it.  But mostly?  I don’t have that person to “bounce off of” anymore.

That’s okay.   I’ll get that back.  And that is part of why I write.

Back to MASH.  There are two episodes that I absolutely love.

One is the episode when Colonel Potter joins the unit.  At the end, Potter, Hawkeye, and BJ are getting drunk in the Swamp and they begin to sing.  There is a moment, right at the end, when the voices harmonize.  Love that moment.

The other episode is “Dear Sigmund.”  I just love Sidney Freeman as a character.  His willingness to participate in jokes.  To incorporate that into his therapy and observations.  That he plays (another episode) imaginary basketball with Hawkeye one night and he just goes with the flow with Klinger’s outfits.

Freud said there is a link between anger and wit.  Anger turned inward is depression. Anger turned sideways is Hawkeye.

“Margaret’s an interesting woman. On the outside all discipline and strength, and on the inside six kinds of passion looking for an exit. Some people will not accept pain. They just refuse delivery.

I guess what draws me to these people is that faced with aggression in its most brutal form, they have regressed to a state of antic of not lunatic pleasure. There has been a rash of practical jokes lately. Who ever the perpetrator is, he or she is becoming a folk hero. Rank makes no difference. No one is safe from the mad joker. … If there is a way to preserve your sanity in wartime they have found it. The slide their patched up patients into the evac ambulance like loaves into a bread truck, and yet they never forget those packages are people.

I love the practical jokes in this episode.  They may be simple.  They may be complex.  But watching this takes me back to those happy memories with my mom and sister or to others with my friends.  Mom made rules as they were needed in the house.  Mostly out of things that she instigated and not expecting the creative force of two daughters coming at her, becoming overwhelmed.   “No pea fights” is a good example.  Over the years, that slowly evolved into no food fights in the house and no food inside balloons.

That is some of the glue that holds Jordan, Oak, Stew, and Gabe together.  What keeps Ashley going.

I don’t know where some of the things in my books come from.  They have become jokes between my sister and I and she will text me one of our catch phrases, like “Pickle” or “Twinkle Toes,” that come from scenes in my books.  I love watching her amusement come out when she reads one of the passages.  She says I absolutely love to torture my characters and yes, this is part of the fun of being a writer.  Poor Duncan.  All I have to say.  Poor, poor Duncan.

One of the things I have learned is that I can’t necessarily plan those things out.  If I do, I wind up trying too hard.  Not as funny that way.  Or it falls flat.  There are people I have met, since my breakup, that … oh, shit, it’s a bad idea to put us in the same room.  A very bad idea.  The world becomes a lot less safe and I expect that some sort of something-stuffed balloon would be involved at some point.

I hope someone gives you the gift of laughter this holiday season.  I know I have been enjoying the cats inspecting our tree, which is bolted to the wall.  I have deliberately laced the floor with kitty caltrops (their toys) to help encourage the chaos…

 

 

 

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There are lots of reasons why I write.  Lots.

But I’ll tell you a “secret.”

There are things in life I’m passionate about.  And the number of them has significantly decreased over the years.  This is normal.  Happy to say that.  VERY happy to say that.

I think one of the best “pair” of changes, directly related though 2 decades apart, was accepting the changes I decided on in therapy as whole.

I state that my ex and I fought a lot.  We did.  It’s why I accept my half of our relationship not working.  I stayed in it too long.  He may have been ____, but I chose to stay.  And I don’t consider that as me calling myself an idiot or a survivor or anything like that.  I called him on his shit all the time.  That was both me standing up for myself and me not walking away when I should have.  I accepted less and less as normal.  I gave up on a lot of personal choices.

I think what frustrates me the most as a person is speech.

When I speak, a lot of people have a hard time understanding me.  I state… well, not facts, as they are my impressions of what I consider to be facts.  To me, it is what it is.  Good, bad, healthy, unhealthy.  I’m pretty direct.  Over the years, I’ve learned that the personality some would call “thug” or “raw” doesn’t suit me.  I prefer cushioned honesty.

I’ve also let go of a lot of things that used to get under my skin.  I don’t let them bother me.  Sort of like a brick wall inside.

And that question of “what do you want to be when you grow up?”  That one used to drive me nuts.  Like a blank slate inside.

For me, speech with others can be… difficult.  If I hear someone say, all the time, “I need better people in my life” or “I want ____,” well, in my mind, DO it.  Do what it takes to get there.

A lot of my frustration comes from people who think they are being polite when, really, they are putting the onus on the other person.  I know of people who have to ask questions before they can tell me what they want from me.  It becomes a tug-of-war.  My point is, good or bad, just get to the point.  I wind up getting to the point where I fall back into that “raw” state, where my life becomes a task list and I wind up treating EVERYTHING like it, because it’s too bloody irritating and I shut down.  To me, that’s like another ex I had.  One who, from his own insecurity (not a stalker), had to follow me EVERYWHERE.  Before school, after every class, call me when he got home, after dinner, before bed.  When we were together, in the same space, even to the bathroom door.  He was so happy with our relationship, and that he had someone in his life that did give a crap about him, he had no clue how smothering he was becoming.

I found out I’m that way with subject matter.  Fields of study.  Where my brain says- okay enough.  Why I’ve never been able to answer that “what do I want to be” question.

The therapy reasons why may be plentiful.  But I’m happy to say that those have decreased.  Significantly.

I’m able to be curious and learn.  Free-style learn.  As in depth or as shallow as I wish.

It’s also my way of making those magic moments.  A cool image in my head of a flopping fish.  Or what would a kayak look if it was lodged in a tree?  What does old cloth smell like?

My sense of humor is rather simple.  Or inane.  Or on the twisted side.  Most of it comes from my mother.  Her joy.  Watching her laugh at our cat deliberately knocking things over.  She loved to enjoy other’s excitement or enjoyment, and it didn’t matter very much what the source was.

I remember a day when we both played hooky.  Her from work, me from school.  It was after her knee shattered.  My own legs were messed up, still, years after having been straightened.  We were both in pain.  One morning, she looked at me and said (and this is the only time this happened), “The gimp patrol should have a day off.”  We drove around for a couple of hours.  Wound up at a park.  Something my immediate family did on weekends.  Mom and I both had canes at the time.  Eventually, we came to a bench, and without speaking, we sat and watched the squirrels run around.  It was one of those days, where neither she nor I could look at each other without bursting out laughing, because one of those little buggers had found a twinkie and there was a massive, five-way free-for-all amongst blobs of bobbing grey and one streak of yellow.

See?  That is a story.  One of my stories.  A day of laughter and amusement over something simple, between mother and daughter.

Would most enjoy that?  Probably not.  Yet another animal story.

So what?  It’s something I love and cherish.  For what it was and what it wasn’t.

I think those are the bubbles between people.

When I write, that is, in essence, what I try to create between characters, in one form or another.  Or between a character and a place.  My own life is rich with those stories, good or bad, and I don’t step away from them being inside me or making up who I am.  It’s what I remain open to.  What I also connect with in books that I read.

So while I do work out the drama of unresolved conflicts, it’s also that acceptance of accepting.  To uncomplicate.  To be able to turn to someone I care about and say- hey.   That’s the real passion inside me.  And not all the ins and outs.  What my inner light is about.

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Back to writing…  Laws, social and legal, are important to world building, when you’re coming up with an environment for your characters to live within.

Let’s talk about legal laws first.  While we, in most “developed” nations, enjoy a lot of protection from them, most laws are the exceptions that we “live by” to prevent “bad.”  I say those parts in quotes for a reason, but it’s a lengthy definition.  (While I don’t believe in anarchy, or necessarily libertarian-ism, there is a Facebook page called “Do no harm, but take no shit.”  I love this phrase.)

Our laws and commonly accepted ideals are difficult to maintain.  To allow freedom while at the same time providing safeguards.  We have legal notices everywhere.  It seems to me that you have to be both a lawyer and computer programmer to do just about anything these days.  And, what’s sort of weird, living in the US, is that we have a huge country, governed by many of the same laws.  Our states are larger sometimes larger than most countries.

This is something my sister and I talk about a lot.  Especially about cars.  We have awesome technology that’s been developed that help people to parallel park, where the car does the work.  I can appreciate the innovation of it while deploring it’s use.  The same with cameras all around the vehicle.  Sure, helpful.  I can see where it’s helpful and useful.

As I’ve been in car accidents, I can see and acknowledge that those new technologies can be wonderful additions.  Same with remote starters, computers that pump your brakes for you under certain conditions, the sensors, etc.

What bothers me is that those technologies become overwhelming.  It takes away the skill of the driver, application and development.

Here’s both a social and legal law.  Spousal abuse is one of those hot buttons.  I personally don’t believe this should, 99% of the time, be acceptable.  Legally, assault is wrong.  The common norms of our world, it is wrong.  Legally, it is actually NOT an exception to our common way of life, as you hear many, many stories about it.  I personally would never want to be in a relationship again where I was battered.

There is one situation I know of where my own personal preferences fall by the wayside.  When I was young, I learned that one of our neighbors was a battered wife.  I asked my mother why she never called the police.  Her answer was that, while assault of this nature is, for most of us, inherently wrong, what the wife had lived through before her marriage was so bad, that getting hit a couple of times a year was okay for “Linda.”  That putting Linda in a lifestyle where there wasn’t that male authoritarian lifestyle from her husband was worse than being hit.  I fought against this concept for a long, long time.

What I came to understand, as I grew up, was that Linda’s own childhood  was horrifying, with no one that loved her, cared for her, stood up for her, or helped her in anyway, and she had numerous visible scars to show for it.  While my own was pretty bad, in some ways, in others, it wasn’t.  I had a mom.  A real mom that went without food for me and in her home, I was loved with the best of intentions.  Linda never had that.  She loved her husband very much.  He took care of her, their two children.  Fed them, clothed them, and Linda didn’t work.  “Bob” loved his wife very much.  He didn’t drink, gamble, cheat, or anything else like it.  While I would never actually condone Bob’s actions, I can understand why Linda was happy.  In her world, she was relatively safe, never went hungry, always had clothing, two wonderful adorable children that Bob never laid a hand on, and a beautiful home that she cared for, daily.

Linda wasn’t capable of standing on her own or being without her husband, who had stopped most of the insanity of her previous life, quite literally.  It’s the one exception, even with other couples I have seen or heard about who live similarly, that I can understand.  She was happy.  And in her case, and hers alone, I wouldn’t remove her from her chosen lifestyle.

I mention this because of one my favorite TV shows is Criminal Minds.  (Yeah, that’s a real stretch there, right?)  One of the things I look at, inside the show’s mechanics, is that there are episodes where we completely understand WHY someone commits a heinous act.  That there are differences between a sociopath, a psychopath, a narcissist, and someone who’s just a plain old jackass.

There is a quote from an episode called “Natural Born Killers” that I absolutely love:

     Aaron “Hotch” Hotchner: You were just responding to what you learned, Vincent.

     Vincent Perotta: You said, “some people grow up to become killers.”

     Aaron “Hotch” Hotchner: And some people grow up to catch them.

When you are building a world, some of the hardest questions you have to answer are the same ones we have to answer for ourselves, on a daily basis.  What defines a child?  An adult?  What aspects of sex is acceptable?  Of violence?  At what age?  In what circumstances?

When you have two or more people interact, having them match 100%, 100% of the time is beyond belief.  Thus, you have conflict.  And how those people resolve that conflict is the story.

I talk about bubbles of varying degrees and types of intimacy a lot.  Especially with writing.

Anther CM episode deals with two men who find and share the same needs.  There is joy at finding another of their “kind” to interact with and enjoy the same experiences, sharing.  Two rapists that turn into murderers.

What I want to say here is that the same words used to describe a natural, accepting, healthy relationship can be used to describe a destructive one.  It is the intent of action and depth of it that changes the meaning.

Loyalty is defined as:  faithful to one’s oath, commitments, or obligations.  To not give up on another person or a cause.  Normally, in our culture, it is an aspect of personality that we cherish, hold as a measurement of character.

What would you say to a spouse, who took a vow to honor and protect their significant other until death, who remained in an abusive relationship?  They honor their vows.  They are loyal.  Even if the other is or does not.

What would you say to a spouse who, while they live with, take care of, love, support, and cherish their significant other who was permanently paralyzed, has a sexually intimate relationship with another, with their spouse’s blessing and permission?  With this person be disloyal?  Would the spouse who is disabled be within their “rights” to deny this relationship?  Should they separate, and if they do, is the spouse who is not disabled considered to be a selfish jackass?  Would remaining together in a marriage where the needs of both people are not being met be considered loyal or harmful?

It’s an incredibly complex situation and how people answer it is vastly different.  What is right.  What is wrong.  Some would say that, under those circumstances, an open marriage is acceptable.  Some would say that the physically whole spouse made a vow for accepting the other person, no matter what, and that stepping out of it, even to meet their own human needs, is wrong.

So when you are world building, writing becomes about culture.  The odd.  The bizarre.  What is acceptable.  What is not.  What dreams someone has.  What are legal laws and what are social laws.  These help define what happens between two or more characters.

Then we get into more personal issues.

Take Deanna.  Deanna is an alpha female.  She is hard working.  Not quite Type A.  She is devoted to her family, though they don’t realize it.  She gets up every day, sees to everyone’s needs, gets dressed with some personal hygiene in mind, and runs a business.  Comes home and does it again.  Deanna is currently unattached in a romantic sense.  While she is compassionate with people who don’t have the capacity to do, she respects strength.  She also does not appreciate someone taking over her life.  Enter in Ralph.  Ralph, seeing her daily preferences, stays quiet about what he enjoys about Deanna.  Never speaks about what he would wish.  Until one day, an opportunity comes.  A mistake is made.

Deanna is tired inside.  Tired of waiting around for other people.  Tired of doing for other people, even though that is who she is.  What happens between Ralph and Deanna goes very, very wrong.  Does it get fixed?  Does it become happiness, in the end, where they work out their differences?  Can they work out their differences?  Can Deanna accept that the quiet happened out of respect for her?  Does she get angry about, yet again, having to pry or have someone else make the decision for her, in another way, without talking to her first?  Is she tired of having to talk things out first?  To plan?  Can Ralph understand where she is coming from?  Is Ralph capable of speaking, in the first place? Would he want to?  Would he prefer to stay in the shadows of Deanna’s life?

What would happen if Deanna and Ralph were serial killers?  What would happen if they were black and white, in the Civil War Era?  What would happen if Deanna was married?  What would happen if Ralph was twenty years her junior?  Ten?  What would happen if Ralph had just buried his wife?  What would happen if Ralph had just lost his job?  What would happen if Ralph had an incredibly abusive father who told him repeatedly to never speak of emotions or put himself forward?  What would happen if Deanna couldn’t take one more time of not having her needs met, without having to sort things out for the people around her?  Maybe she’s tired of dealing with overly nervous, wishy-washy people and sees that silence as yet one more straw, one more hoop that she has to jump through and Ralph is sick of dealing with yet one more pushy person in his life, even though he respects and even loves Deanna?

So the question remains- what circumstances would be the end result?  Do they remain friends?  Do they have an open relationship?  Do they live happily ever after?  Are they serial killers who meet each other and decide to hunt and kill together?  Are they “normal” people who decide that, once the bubble is popped, they can not be near each other?  Are they normal people who decide to have a monogamous affair and enjoy each other for the time they can, knowing that, at the end, they will both be better off without the other and it would be worse if they had never given themselves a chance?  Do their families keep them apart?  Does time?  What effort do they put into it.

Sound a little exhausting?  It can be.

But for me?  Writing is this and more.  I get a scene or a what if, in my head.  It’s my choice what happens with Deanna and Ralph.  There are no right answers.

So it comes down to what scene is going through my head.  Do I want Deanna and Ralph to be happy?  To suffer?  To be both?

Let’s take another scenario.  There is a traffic stop.  A four way.  There is a school crossing guard that stands there, three hours in the morning and again in the afternoon.  In the middle of the night, Detrick is high as a kite.  He wants money for his next score of drugs.  He currently has no clue where he is.  Elena, the crossing guard, sees footprints in her area every day.  She knows that this particular set of prints is normally there every Wednesday morning.  She’s reported it, careful that her children aren’t prey for a particular brand of nasty.  Nothing ever comes of the reporting, even though the police have done their drive by’s.

So, does Elena ever find out of Detrick is?  If yes, does she help him get sober?  Does she take the time to get to know him?  Does Detrick know that Elena, even if he doesn’t know her name, sees the pattern of his late night break-ins and robberies in the area of the school.  Can he keep it together long enough to protect himself from being caught?  Does he try to get Elena harmed, discredited?

What time frame is the book set in?  Is it modern day?  Is it in the future?  Is crime rate in the area bad anyway?  Are the cops on the take?

So while these ARE interactions, Linda and Bob, Deanna and Ralph, Detrick and Elena, it’s the setting and culture that changes the possible outcomes.

The funny thing, in Deanna and Ralph’s and Detrick and Elena’s situations, those are background characters I have in my Haven Point series.  Characters you would never read about, except maybe as a passing mention.  I know about their lives.  Their personal pain and what’s going on with them, so that when Drew or Jaimie or Aunt Jesse see them in passing, I have a running history to mention, if it’s needed.  And, I have my head in the head of the murderer in Lamp Light- the person’s thoughts that are written out.  Why they are in pain, why they think the way they do.  I know what’s going on with Zack’s history.  The girlfriend of Logan’s son.

As a writer picks and chooses these characters, the ones that make up the background, one might find that there is a second or tertiary story line going on that frequently pops into mind.  That is a story that needs to be told, even if briefly, along with the main theme or plot points.

So for my cops, Drew and Jaimie, their main story line is how do they deal with the laws of being a cop, what to let slide, what to be a hard ass about, how they deal with Deanna, how they deal with Detrick.  What would they do if they met a couple like Linda and Bob?  What would they do if they had to deal with a wife who was sleeping with a neighbor, with her husband’s permission, because he was stuck in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down, that was assaulted for being a harlot?  What are those other stories out there that would affect Jaime or Drew’s own daily lives and decisions?

As I write, I get cool scenarios in my head.  Sort of like cool CGI special effects in a movie.

Detrick, running and high- out of his mind, runs into Deanna, who looks a lot like Elena, though those two women have never met.  He is running over ice covered sidewalks, in the trees.  He can smell pine and he is taken back to his father’s house.  Pine floor cleaner.  What he used to get high on to deal with the complete lack of interest from his male parental unit.  Pine… A slightly chubby woman with sandy brown curly hair is out, walking.  Is it her?  Is it the woman who can identify his boot prints?  He’d been so careful.  So careful.  Around the houses.  Only going in those that left the door unlocked and used salt on their back walkways.  Nothing to tie him… Fred said he wanted more stereos to pay off his debt… She is there.  She is there…  One quick cut and he would be safe.

The next morning, Ralph, wanting to see Deanna, brings her coffee.  To find she is not at home.  But he hears the radios from a cop car several blocks away…

Here’s another potential scenario.

“Thanks for meeting me,” Elena says, as Ralph sits down in the booth at Bogie’s Diner.

“Sure.  Mind telling me what this is about?”

“Well, what I’m about to say is going to piss both you and Deanna off.”

Ralph, having already ordered a cup of coffee from the pregnant teenage waitress, nearly got up.  “Not sure I think you should be sticking your nose in there.”

“No.  I shouldn’t.  This isn’t my problem, even though Deanna is my cousin and I barely know you.”

Irritated, he sits.

“Look.  I’m here to tell you that you’re acting like a dolt.  Like a fourteen year old.  Just fucking tell her how you feel.  She isn’t going to wait around forever.  She can’t.  And you two are screwing each other up.  It may not be what you want.  May end in disaster.  You two don’t even have to wind up in bed together or in any sort of romantic relationship.  But if you don’t deal with it, some how, it’ll be a black hole inside you both and I don’t want to see that happen.  A good friendship that could be solid.  Instead?  This constant disappearing act that you do?  It’s ripping Deanna apart.  I know her better.  I know she’s got a lot on her plate.  She’s never going to ask for what she needs until she has a reason to.  You have no idea about her life, even if you know some of the details.”

Ralph looks into his coffee mug and remains silent.

“Well, that’s what I had to say.”

Elena gets up, pays for her meal and Ralph’s coffee.

Later that night… Elena’s body is found, throat slit, in an ally between the Laundromat and the consignment shop…

So you see?  Elena will die at some point.  Detrick’s drug infused paranoia is getting out of control.  Jaimie and Drew will be investigating, find a receipt for Bogie’s Diner in her pocket and go to ask the pregnant teenage waitress if she remembered if anyone was with Elena that day.  Ralph might just become suspect number one in Elena’s murder.

Now, Elena, in my Haven Point series, isn’t actually going to be murdered.  Something bad will happen to her and I already have that plotted out.  Part of my job is to figure out how to get the scene to actually occur, witnesses, other characters in my world of Haven Point, reasons, thought process, and actual depth of who those characters are.  Ralph, in that second scenario I wrote here, is already pissed off and irritated that someone stuck her nose into his personal business…

That is part of the laws, legal and social, and the what if scenarios.  Ralph’s gotten a message from outside of himself to shit or get off the pot.  Jaimie and Drew have come from a scenario dealing with the “cheating” spouse’s assault.  Jaimie will not speak to Drew, her partner, about situations going on in her head.  Do any of the day’s occurrences change her mind?  Would it, if she were watching an episode of Criminal Minds?

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I get asked a lot of questions about what I do at night or how I survived what I did or why I write.  And I’ll probably write a lot of these posts as answers.

I can tell you one of the reasons I loved my ex so much was his capacity to tell stories, improv.  He was awesome at coming up with believable, interesting characters at the drop of a hat that you just wanted to interact with.

What?  You thought that, after all the horrible things I’ve said, there was nothing good to the man?

Here’s the deal on that, and yes, it is directly related to why I write.

I’m certain that our relationship wasn’t easy on him.  No relationship is.  Part of why I stayed with him is that my family convinced me that I was too hard to live with and at least this person loved me.  Well… love isn’t enough.  It can conquer all, as it’s said, but it takes a person who’s willing to live that way.

What I loved about this person was who he was inside the bubble of “us.”  That bubble popped.  Repeatedly.  When we first started talking, it was… I won’t say magical.  But we spent hours on the phone talking.  Sometimes 10 or more.  Living with someone who has PTSD isn’t easy, on top of living with another person.  His own fears, his own problems, his own disasters, his own pain.  That was a major part of our failure.  I know I stepped on his own preferences.  Some out of my problems.  Some out of my lifestyle preferences.  And we fought.  All the time.

What I would say to this person now is that my face was not supposed to be his mirror.  My life was supposed to part of his own, an important part, but not an extension of who he was or his identity.  That bubble was never supposed to be my cage, nor his, if he felt that way.

I say these things gently now instead of in rage, lashing out in the pain of having that bubble pop so many times.

I can say these things now, this way, because I have reconnected with enough of my outside life, inside my head.  I can say these now because I have spent the time exploring.

For some people, their “art” is quilting.  Or drawing.  Or how they make a pie.  It’s the expression of passion that I am attracted to, in many ways.

I remember sitting with my Grump, listening to him tell stories about his own childhood, in his dry, factual way, with barely a hint of humor underneath, as he explained how they put someone’s outhouse on a roof.  Me?  I’d be giggling in laughter.

My mother was the same.  We had this hideous, green, scratchy, three seat couch when I was little.  We lived in the country at that point.  I sat with her, learning to count with coins on the living room table.  With her, on the couch, learning to read, well before school started, and I had this book about, yes, a chicken, (never realized how much chicken influenced my life, but hey, it’s a trend now), named Lucille, and I absolutely insisted that the name be pronounced “Luckily.”

I’d listen to stories about Grump’s childhood home.  About how they had a massive chicken farm and how “The Egg and I” was so similar to our family’s history.  Parts of it anyway.  About how my mother hated gathering eggs, but it was one of her chores when she went to visit her own grandmother.

I’d listen to stories about how the feuds between family members got started and the psychology behind it.  (Okay, this one isn’t pleasant.  I’ll admit that.)

After we moved from this country apartment, my mother, sister, and I lived in suburbia.

I can’t remember how old I was, but, again, somewhere between the age of 6 and 10.  I had a box someone gave me.  Like one a dryer or washer of some sort would come in.  This… this was my space.  My “fort,” if you will.  Especially since I was so tiny.  I had painted it, inside and out.  Cut windows.  Cut a door.  Outside looked like a house.  But the inside, if memory serves, I had painted to look like the night sky.  I kept my Bobbsey Twin books in there.  A pillow and my softest blanket.  Stuffed animals.  And in this fort of mine, I read.  For hours.

I read “To Kill A Mockingbird” and, to be honest, I’ve re-read that book more than two hundred times.  Before some of the head injuries, I could recite most portions of it by heart.

While I know most people feel that the book is about racism, and it is, I also know it’s about hatred on so many levels.  It’s also a book about acceptance and how one person can change the lives of so many others.  It’s also about the frailty of human nature.  It changed my life, so many times, each time I read it, and that capacity was born in this cardboard house, along with the philosophy and children’s books I had also read at the time.

As I grew into a teenager, I had the capacity for a nearly photographic memory.  And for speed reading.  This was before the head injuries made that nearly impossible.  I read 20-40 books a week, most weeks.

Stories rarely get old to me.  Aspects of them, maybe.  Writing styles, definitely.  I have my preferences and they have changed a couple of times.

But characters… they are like old friends to me.  Even with the memory and reading speed I had, I would go back (still do) and re-read.  Visiting.  Seeing Boo Radley in my mind and knowing, somewhere, in Scout’s mind, neither she nor Boo would be alone, though they never saw each other again after the end of the book.

My opinion of the Bobbsey twins, of course, changed as I grew.  What was originally fun, I made sarcastic comments in my head about how… stick stuck up the ass they were.  But that is the way of things.

I love movies and TV for the same reason.  If there is one I like, I will re-watch it.

I have my stories.  My personal stories.  Experiences that are innocent, humiliating, humorous, or extreme.  It’s why I don’t fear getting hurt.  “Life is pain,” as it’s said in The Princess Bride.  Why I don’t have many regrets.  I’ve fallen on my ass lots of times.  Tried to make relationships, (family, friends, lovers, pets), work and failed at it miserably.  I’ve tried too hard at time and waited too long on hope at others.  Wisdom doesn’t come from waiting until things are perfect.  It comes from experience, good or bad.  It isn’t that I seek to be hurt or fail.  It’s that I accept that pain is part of life.  Somewhat because if you read a book that has no adversity in it, it’s rather boring.

I think, if you find someone that you can create that bubble with, even if it does pop, you should.  Why I can love people that I don’t particularly care for.  I know my preferences, even if I know that person is going to cause me pain or drive me nuts.  I’ve learned to steer clear of specific personality traits.  Wisdom again.  Knowing that the end result would be disastrous or what’s going to completely piss me off or force a fit that would cause damage to both people.  But mainly?  People are people and they are going to do what they do.

If it works, it has to be a combination of being open to the unexpected and odd, as well as directly speaking and making decisions to choose those opportunities that spring up in a way that fits both people.  Just walking around bumping into those special moments isn’t enough.  Why people lose out on their opportunities.  Ways to make their life better.

The person who misses out on having loving people in their life who would enrich it because they are waiting for perfect or ideal or that they are too afraid to reach out.  The person who gives up on themselves because they accept too little of their needs being met.  The person who doesn’t take the job.  The person who waits for a resolution to present itself for only one opportunity before moving on to the next.  The person who holds on to a grudge for nearly forever and fixes it at the end, instead of living the life that could have been better, sharing experiences with the person they are irritated with.  The person who pushes away everyone else in their life solely for the approval and acceptance of a parent that will never see them as a whole human being.  The person who thinks that commonly defined sense of intelligence is the only way to solve a problem.

While these are all stories, common ones, I have trouble living this way.  I see all those wasted opportunities, know I have lived them.  Writing gives me an outlet.  To say “so what?” and “what if?” in the ways that would find an opening, instead of a reason to not do.

I do a lot of research.  Indulge my curiosity.  I leave myself open to learning and living, even if I don’t always leave myself to be open to people all that often anymore.  Books create that bubble.  Characters.   Circumstances.

And while I do get paranoid a bit of having some official come into my house and see things that could be very bad for me- the books on poisons, the internet history of the graphic details of brutality, the target board of pressure points someone could stick a knife into another person, in addition to opening up in this blog about my personal history, it’s part of learning and or my own personal healing.  Not to literally cause harm to another.  People rarely chose to do something because they think it’s a mistake.  They may know it’s wrong and enjoy the twist of it.

With the violence I have personally experienced, putting my head into the mind of a killer or someone who wishes to cause harm isn’t difficult.  Actually doing those things would be.  I have to think like that person.  Sometimes, I have to find a way to physically perform those tasks.   What it would look like if someone was thrown down the stairs?  What would crash?  How does the arm that gets caught in a newel post twist?  How does someone swing if they’ve been hung and left for days?  I have a three foot tall Sylvester stuffed toy that I use for these things.  Dollhouses that I can set up for crime and look through the tiny furniture or windows, to see what a potential witness would or what the person who would be breaking in be able to view.  Because, let’s be honest, a cop that has no crime to investigate is pointless.

The cool aspect of my research is all over my house.  A DIY desk that has homemade generator parts on it.  Containers I have chosen for my kitchen, to keep out mice and insects.  This was a massive research project for A World of Novo.  And it changed how I live.  I walk into my kitchen now and see jars that Elizabet would see or Bryn would use.  I know how to make beer or vodka, even though I’ve never actually fully done either.  I know how to make a clock and my hand tools are all over the house.  It’s the other reason, other than my pets, that I don’t have normal, traditional rooms.  I have workstations.  Where I quilt or see how to use a fish tank to hydroponically grow food.  How I’ve been able to deal with the erosion and soil problems around my house with composting.

My sister sometimes “walks” into these simulations.   It can be quite humorous.  When I was shooting bow, retraining myself on how to use substandard equipment in a crouched position, the top tip would bang into the wall.  While she was safely in her own half of our duplex, the noise echoed throughout the entire building.  I still giggle at the conversation we had afterwards.

So, while I write, and experiment, and set up scenarios, it’s also what I remain open to.  The stories.  Experiences.  Life.

 

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Well, I fell on my ass a bit there, didn’t I?  And off the wagon with a little bit of overgrooming and I did wind up buying a pack of smokes after a week.  I’m still proud of myself.  I handled so much pain in the past three days, all across the board, without completely shutting down or getting too sucked into it.

I’m still on my Billy Joel kick.  Speaking from my heart.  To my heart.

Days like these, tons of memories come back.  Shame.  Misery.  Loathing.  Anger.  Frustration.  They are like acid on the wounds that never close.  I wind up chanting- “Let it go.  It doesn’t matter, let it go.  You can’t change it.  Let it go.”  Most of the time, it works.  I’ve got lots of little meditations or chants like this to help me deal.

Being open to people is hard.  They will hurt you.  Will.  That’s part of loving them and accepting them.  So, here’s the deal.  For me, it’s the intent I see as to whether or not I get crushed inside and how intense that crushing is.  On top of how often it happens.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”  I fully believe this.

What’s going on in the back of my head at the moment is a memory I have of my shy mother standing up for me.  Outside of our family, she was ferocious in a graceful way.  What she saw on a daily basis- people not thinking about their actions and the damage it can cause… well, unfortunately, she brought that home  and internalized a lot.  It wound up crippling a lot of what she allowed herself to do or be capable of, within our family environment.  It taught her fear and she lived it.  Every day.  On top of the horrific experiences with her husband, my father.  She had too much of a conscience, to the point where she stopped being.  Where she stopped me from being.

This particular memory, though… it is a precious one.

I was young.  Perhaps eight.  Perhaps twelve.  I can’t honestly remember.  I had received a set of watercolors for my birthday, the brushes to go with them, and some pre-printed mat boards.  The ones where the pictures are already drawn in lines.

Water colors are not supposed to normally have sharp edges.  The drying of pigment saturation is supposed to give shading and shapes.  Brush control and amount of pigment…

I was in the sunroom of my grandmother’s house.  Playing with my birthday presents.  Making pictures.  Mom, my sister, and I went to a lot of museums in those days.  My mother’s joy with art.  The joy.  I can still see the joy on her face looking at impressionists.  The joy on her face when we were out in the woods and I would wind up covered in mud or my sister in grass stains.  All of it was exploring our world, in it’s beauty, inside, outside.

My grandmother, on the other hand, was an artist.  Of sorts.  Not one that you would see in galleries or anything like that.  The typical high society lady, of the era from her own childhood, where women painted, drew, played the piano, etc.  She was my teacher, in a way.  It should have been a share.  Should have been.

Mom came home from work, right in the middle of my grandmother berating me for going outside the lines on the mat board with the water and the colors I had chosen were all wrong.  I had hunched in on myself.  The joy that my mother was trying to teach me, share with me, died so many times under the perfection my grandmother tried to mold me into.  That day was no different.

Before someone thinks of this as some rich chick bitching about how hard life is, let me say that while my grandmother had money, we did not.  My mother walked away, for the most part, from that life and I have always been grateful that she did.  There were several days she went without proper meals so my sister and I could eat, and several needs of her own that she did without for us.  We were taught, in my mother’s home, to cherish life.  To live simply.  To enjoy the complex and the simple.  To be self-sufficient and to see all the wonders around us.  Like her own childhood had been, with her own father.  My grandparents, though they loved each other, were polar opposites.  Grandma had her own maid as a child.  Grump, on the other hand, lived on a farm and slept in the same bed with more than half of his brothers.  He worked hard for his family and wow, what he became is a way cool, interesting story (and not into the family business of psychology).  Grump very nearly gave Grandma back the lifestyle she’d grown up with by the time he retired.

That day, with the watercolors, was the day most of my remaining innocence was ripped away.  With everything I had been up to by that point, the abuse, violence, molestation, that day was too much to bear.

My mother said one sentence to my grandmother.  That it was my choice what I did and she had no problem with me going outside the lines.  There was anger in her thin, erect form.  For me.  On my behalf.  They went elsewhere to speak as I continued to sit with my paints.

I overheard their argument.  It was then I learned that all the opportunities and classes my mother presented to me, to have fun and some sort of a normal childhood: art, piano, violin, gymnastics, dance, tap, ballet, swimming… all of it.  Most of it was paid for by my passionate grandmother in order to fix what she saw was wrong with me.  Physically, from the birth defects, and mentally, with the little they knew that had been done to me by my father.  The gifts weren’t gifts.

While I know my grandmother loved me, it was her driving need to have the perfect family that produced those experiences.  Not love.  Of all her children, my mother was the least type A.  Grandmother’s denial of who other people were was at the heart of most of her interactions.  Whatever didn’t fit her mental image of ideal.

The real gift my mother had been trying to give me was harshly dented.  I learned that people are usually quite selfish in what they do for others.  But that day, I also learned two other things.  One, that my mother was, sometimes, willing to bend her own pacifistic moral compass for me when it wasn’t life or death and two, what it cost to remain with the family in order to at least attempt to give my sister and I what we needed.

I love her even more for it, despite the damage caused by buying into family bullshit.

My anger with Mom, for the most part, has been that she stopped seeking that joy.  She was so tired.  Inside.  And she refused to get herself the help that she needed or to do the harder things to learn to live free again.  This is how I learned to step on myself.  The overbearing, harshly critical, opposing ways of my family.

I mention all of this because I don’t normally care for surprises.  This is why.  What was shown to me at so young an age was that they are rarely gifts meant for me, but are built up in someone else’s need.  Many, many things were done to me that I had little control over, little say in the matter, little way to object.  Rape, beatings, food, gifts.  It is all one and the same in my head.  It is the intent I look for.

The past week?  Someone I care greatly for who is incredibly well meaning, telling me that one pain I have is not personal.  Guess what?  Most of what was done to men wasn’t personal.  It had nothing to DO with me, even though I was the object of the circumstance.

My grandmother’s gifts had nothing to do with me.  They were  her way of obtaining that blond haired, perfect child.  And the violence from my father had nothing to do with me, either.  I was simply the means to destroy my mother.

That is what I have been facing down the past couple of days.  It isn’t a question of speaking it out loud.  “Getting it out.”  When your wounds are constantly reopened by the people you love, that care about you, you can not heal, so speaking it doesn’t help.

What does help is when that person who has caused you damage listens.  I was very angry with someone, held on to the anger instead of turning it in on myself again, worked it, worked through it by simply feeling it, then spoke.

She listened and I do not think that two parts of the problem will ever come back.  She makes an effort to see, even if she will remain what I feel is self-serving and overly stifling.  Because she knows what I gave up for her.  Because I know she does love me, without understanding me very well.  She is one of the few that at least tries, and that is a gift worth accepting and remaining open to receive.

She is also one of the two people in my life that have managed to surprise me in a good way.  A Christmas gift that I had not picked out for myself or put on a list, one that was simple, not overwhelming, not in martyred self-sacrifice or hardship, one given without guile, one I would have picked for myself, from someone who has done the same kind of damage my Grandmother did.  The gift, the real gift.

That is what I held on to, with the other damage this person did.  A cherished memory from three years ago.  A moment of clear connection without drama.  Only joy and happiness.

So while I have fallen on my ass, and off the wagon, I am back up again.  Dealt with the memory of violent harshness- physical and emotional- within my head without causing harm.  And I am back to feeling the world can be better than it was yesterday.

 

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Okay.  So, what’s happening right now is- was half the point of starting this blog.  PTSD.   At the moment, I’m crashing and I’m so fucking proud of myself.  I actually feel hungry, so I’m making something nutritious to eat.  I’m not standing in a blistering hot shower.  I’m not overgrooming.  I’m not cutting into my skin.  I’m not running for a pack of smokes.  This is all good.  I’m frustrated and angry.

I’ve had several small good things happen lately.  I’ve been happy.   I may have another piece of the puzzle for when my brain chems go off.  Lack of folic acid.  I’ve had a medical condition for 10 years now.  Somewhat on the serious side.  I know where some of it stems from, family issues and shit from my past.  I had a severe vitamin D deficiency for a long time and I’m almost permanently anemic.  So, the folic acid issue is a pretty good bet.  So far, it’s been making a massive impact on my outlook.  Noticeably, like only two other treatments in the past 10 years.

My therapist, from when I was a teenager, was awesome.  As I’ve stated several times.  Same as the doctor I currently have for medical stuff.

That I am hungry at the same time as being royally angry right now is a good thing.  I actually feel hungry.

I know the person who tried to talk to me earlier meant well.  But let me tell you something.  When your voice has been muted repeatedly over the years when you say – “hey, I’m hurt and pissed off about something that I actually should be hurt and pissed off about” and the person you talk to tries to reason away what you feel, even though they mean well, it fucking sucks.

I’ve only said this a million times.

You learn in therapy how to tell the difference.  When you’re actually hurt.  Deep down hurt.  This was really fucking hard for me, coming from a whole damned family of psychologists and therapists.  They use logic (and yes, that is one of my red-bull red-flags waving in the air hot buttons) to explain, once again, that no, it’s not me and what happened has, yet again, nothing to do with me, but the lack within the other person.

So the fuck what?

Doesn’t change my pain.  Doesn’t mean I deserve to get treated like shit.  And the person who is telling me that there might be a reason the third person acted the way they did, while well meaning *another waving red flag*, yet again demonstrates that I don’t mean shit to them, either, because I’m being told, once again, that what I’m feeling isn’t anywhere near as important as the cause of the problem.  Gee.  Wonder why I’m numb half the time…

You know what?  I don’t deserve to be pushed aside because someone else is afraid.  ‘Cause if I can sit here, right now, and face down my worst fears and not do any of the bad habits I’ve done in the past, face down the pain threatening to take me over, face down the memories, face down the millions of times I’ve been verbally and psychologically been silenced by my so called adoring family, face down the sheer number of times when my own needs- not wants, not little pecadillos, not hey that would be cool- have been pushed aside because someone doesn’t get that while I don’t need much, I’m still not a fucking rock, face down not shutting down, face down the black hole I still feel inside no matter how whole and happy I can be, I don’t think there is a single person out there that has the right to tell me to suck it up simply because, yet again, it wasn’t personal.

And tomorrow, I will get back up, get out of bed, face the day, as though tonight never happened.  As though the person I spoke to tonight didn’t say those things that treated me, once again, as though I am less than human and don’t have the right to have my own feelings, which is why I was hurt in the first place.  The sarcasm is dripping in the back of my head- “thanks so much for compounding the problem.”

So, instead, I am going to be proud of myself for eating and not doing all sorts of fucked up shit to myself.  I am going to watch Tim Minchin’s graduation speech again.  Let it inspire me.  And anyone out there with PTSD?  You can get through it and be your own damned light.  If you haven’t ever seen this speech, WATCH it.  It’s become another one of my movie moments, healing up a lot of stupid, fucked up drama from my family.

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What an AMAZING day I’m having.

There’s only two things that could make this day any better.  And no, I’m not including the fairy god mother who could wave her wand and go: poof! with my entire house and get it reorganized.

I stopped into the store where Survival: Heaps has been on the shelf.  It’s been two weeks.  Three copies sold.

I want to throw up.  Really.

It’s been a drama week for me.  Full of heart break but these past twenty four hours?  I keep getting slammed in the forehead with good things.

I’m not a cryer.  I don’t have complex emotions.  Deep ones, yes.  What I feel, I feel completely.  I usually don’t feel much.  Not that I don’t let myself.  I just… don’t.  Last week, I took my balls in my hands and attempted to do something I just figured out.  While that didn’t work out so well, and I’m okay with that, I have that same “need to puke” feeling right now.  The same feeling when my first book sold and the entire circumstances around that.

I walked into Play the Game, Read the Story and saw that there was only one copy on the shelf.  One.  I had left four for sale.

This.  This is the moment.  Just like when my first book sold.  My heart is so damned full right now, I am on complete overload.

I woke up earlier this week knowing that, while I was in pain, my heart had finally healed from years of neglect from my ex.  I had an experience that blew me away and showed me that I am completely capable of being human again.

Today, I learn my game sold.

Today, I braved 690 in Syracuse, after my head was blown off at the store and got lost.  And for anyone that knows me, I get lost a lot while driving.  I made it through an entire construction zone at speed.

Today, I did get lost three times in Syracuse and made a lot of wrong turns.  But I found every store I was looking for without too much difficulty.  I made it to Natur-Thyme and bought my favorite roasting grounds.  I made it to Michael’s and found an adjustable stand for my counted-cross stitching so I can do my thread work.  My rooms upstairs are ready for building into my play and crafting rooms.   I saw a hawk on the power lines on my way home.

Again, for anyone who knows me, I have been teased for a long time for usually missing animal sightings from the car.  So this was a big deal for me.

Yesterday, someone who I care about and cares about me back took care not to hurt my feelings over something I am sensitive about.

I am shaking and happy and really, there’s only two things that could make this day any better.  So much that I probably will wind up puking by the time I try to go to bed.  So I am going to take this energy I’ve been blessed with and put it into the upstairs and keep going with the goodness…

Blessings, all!