What 51 looks like.

Dark Osmosis

Gloomy moments. Light moments. Sink into despair. Recognizing it can't end like that. Is this what it all has funneled my life down to? No. It has to be better. I'll miss something. Something I hadn't remembered. Something I'll have to look forward to. If only I could get over this sense of despair. Can't end it now, otherwise, what was the point of this life?

I don't have a long-term focus on any one thing. Just financial survival. I'll learn how to do something I think I can grasp. But sometimes there's just no getting it. Then it makes me feel sad, stupid, despairing. Can't move forward to feel valuable, if I'm emotionally sunk. How does one get past feeling worthless?

Society says, 'Take pills.' I did take pills. I felt no difference. ‘Get therapy.’ I was in therapy. Cheap therapy. The triage-secretary who check-marked a verbal questionnaire was less than half my age. Couldn't I have just marked my own (very) personal history, and saved my falling apart in front of her? She wasn't even facing me. She had her back to me as she asked me if I was sexually molested. I started weeping as I answered.

She moved on to a new question. Did I drink? No. Was I a drug-user. No. Am I involved in an abusive relationship? No. Have I had thoughts of suicide? Not for really long time. I don't bother explaining why to someone who can't be bothered to face me and my despondency. Suicide isn't an option for me, only because I fear God's wrath on the other side. What if I were to 'end it all', only to discover what's waiting for me is a thousand times worse that what I have here in Life? As sad as it is.

So, I keep breathing. Keep existing. Keep searching for what I can do to make me content. I gave up on happiness years ago.

The few moments of joy I feel is when one of my nieces says something funny, cute, sweet, or imaginative. When they seem eager to share something with me. They include me, despite a society that simply doesn't tolerate obese women in wheelchairs.

That cheap therapy secretary could've deduced what my 'self-hurt' was. If she'd actually faced me, the answer was there. The molestation manifested itself in obesity. Obesity was my safety-net from lecherous people. What person wants to touch a fat chick?

Fat people recognize the camouflaged nastiness, intolerance, and guileful dismissiveness in others. When we’re ignored, it's society-sanctioned incivility. When another purports, "But my best friend is a fat girl/guy," we're being lied to. Your best friend is the one with whom you cut down the 'fat friend' in their absence.

Remember the 'D.U.F.F.' you had in your social circle, in order to (supposedly) 'weed out' the shallow people from your potential friend group? The D.U.F.F.'s already knew what you were up to, didn't like it, and were quietly planning to dump you. A week later—if you even bothered to notice—you were 'Unfriended' on Facebook.

Did you really think fat people were desperate to be in your friendship circle?

Of course not, because fat people are always smarter than you. They live on a steady diet, not of Ding-Dongs and Doritos, but on human reality. Reality was never a dumb-ass, one season-only T.V. show to them. Reality was their Einstein-level of education. We got our Master's degrees in human ugliness via rolled eyes, disappointing sighs, hidden looks to other friends that said 'Oh my gawd, are you kidding me? Why did you think I'd find her/him cool?', or simply walking away when we were speaking to you.

We might laugh at your jokes at social events, but that's just an acceptable prompt to avoid the awkwardness that you're not showing your true colors. We're the translators of your pseudo soul.

Yah...I'm the 'Fucking Fabulous Fat Girl'. 

https://cofyjunky.tumblr.com/

Write crazy...edit crazier.

     A few sips of coffee in the a.m. and writing. 

     Geez, does anyone make any caffeinated sense at that hour? I know it took me two minutes to type these few lines. My radius, ulna, and phalanges will feel boneless until halfway through my second cup. (And don’t be impressed that I knew the proper names for the innards of my arm and fingers; I picked those up from episodes of BONES)

     I’m probably the worst writer in the morning, though other writers have told me that those brain-dead moments in the morning can be the most productive; your brain’s not exactly sieve-like, and you never know what you’ll come up with unless you just do it.

     Personally, the only thing that comes to mind is Hemingway’s quote, “Write drunk, edit sober.” 

     But even with the brunch hour fog I’m attempting to keyboard through, I’ve always kept in mind the collective advice of my writing class professors; just write. Write and write and write…and edit later. 

     So I write. Whether or not it makes any sense. I don’t just want to do it. I need to do it.

In 'Letters to a Young Poet,' Rainer Maria Rilke had been asked advice by a novice writer. Rilke wrote back the young bard that, though he was flattered, his advice would be futile:

“There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.”

     Um…well, unlike a journalist who covers a Middle Eastern uprising fraught with peril, I’ve never felt the need to risk my life for my writing—short of writing a memoir. 

     I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve lived in a country where I can write any old thing I like and publish it within a blog without threat of Infidelism. (And being the Gemini writer that I am, I took a moment to verify that was even a word. I’ve looked up eight websites, and so far, they can only tell me how many syllables are used)

     There are days where I do need a good prompt. The ‘dictionary-flip-word-prompt’ I practice is when I’m especially grasping to write but have no clue what to write. Other times I fall back on writing or editing my woefully unfinished manuscripts. Does that make me the ‘tortured artist’? No idea, really. But it’s fun to be thought of as an ‘eccentric writer’. 

     I think even the word ‘eccentric’ is widely known as allowing any number of idiosyncrasies some of us just can’t help. My colleagues have had a chuckle or a head-shake over mine:

* Consuming only cold-n-crisp veggies, as I find steamed to be nauseating.

* Liking the color purple but refusing to wear it.

* Clipping Sunday newspaper coupons for things I’m so sure I’ll buy, but never do.

* Rum-n-Coke? Try Rum-n-Dr. Pepper. 

* Only being able to sleep for five hours at a time.

* Typing, and printing my Last Will & Statements, three hours before going into surgery.

* Reading the first one-hundred pages of a great book, but putting it down, close by, and not managing to finish it.

* Keeping four flash-drives that all hold the same information, because I’m paranoid about loss, destruction, or accidentally-deleted files…what writer doesn’t dread that?

     Personally, I think our eccentricities keep us interesting beings. Artists, musicians, photographers, writers…we’re all adventure-seekers in our own oddball way. Typing my way through a rainy Oregon morning, consuming my second cup of coffee…is that eccentric? Is it eccentric to have completely changed the theme of this post halfway through? 

     I’m not sure, but maybe I should reverse Hemingway’s advice: write sober, edit drunk. 

'Law & Order' spoiled me.

Work slows, and you try to look busy. I’m in a ‘hurry-up-n-wait’ moment. “Hurry up and wait,” a judge in Pascagoula once told a room full of potential jurors. I was one of them. Anyone needing to justify getting out of jury-duty approached the bench; small business-owners, work-from-home-moms, their toddlers as their props, dressed in their most adorable Baby Gap. The cuter they were, the better their chances Mommy would get to stay home, on the phone, staring at the computer-screen, talking important words to another adult, reassuring words of business-promises kept.

I have no toddler. I’m indifferent to toddlers. I don’t really care about jury-duty either. I get yanked for jury-duty. $25.00 a day. I listen to lawyers present their case. But they’re not interesting. T.V. lawyers are interesting. Real lawyers aren’t. They talk to the jury box like they’re dotting their I’s and crossing their T’s. They ask questions, judging if they want you deciding their client’s fate. ‘Am I invested in seeing their client found guilty/innocent, responsible/not responsible, dangerous/not dangerous’, etc.

The endless voir dire session starts to make me slump in my seat. Fatigued, bored, eye-lids start getting heavy. And the attorney’s only on the third potential juror. I wish the judge would allow me to read a book until the lawyer gets to me. I’m not invested in listening to a potential juror tell the lawyer if he was satisfied with a car insurance company’s outcome about a fender-bender that segued into back problems, hospital visits, loss of employment. The surly-faced, elderly woman in the wheelchair at the plaintiff lawyer’s table is quiet, sitting next to her husband, and listening to the defendant’s lawyer drone on and on.

Two days later I call the 228 number to find out I’ll no longer be needed as a juror; the case of the fender-bender settled to the plaintiff.

This wasn’t worth $25.00 a day.

Opening that vein.

Write. Write free-write. Ideas come. Eventually. Even stories that halt and get stuck. Like elevators. And stories about elevators. You get stuck. Get unstuck, or you’ll be stuck writing in the back of a steno-pad about how stuck you feel about your writing. Write to breathe. Write about anything. Breathe. Write. Itch your brain, even if it doesn’t make sense in the moment. There’s no joy unless you feel the pen in your hand and watch the ink flow onto paper as you breathe writing. Writing is life. You want to live. 
Coffee! I smell coffee. What a glorious scent. Even when you don’t want to consume it, at that moment. Because you’ll need to sleep, eventually. Don't get distracted. Work, write, coffee, sleep, type, write, think. Breathe! Write. This makes no sense, and yet you don’t care. You must write the way you must breathe.

Yop...that's 'Elephont'...