Things You Need When You’re Sad
This is a new favorite page for funny-sad-thoughtful-silly-and-sometimes-mildly-dirty-stuff. This one hit home, so I thought I’d share. 🙂
Song
what good are words when I can’t even tell that the mind in my head has gone numb, I can’t taste the world, I can’t feel the pain, I sing while I sleep, and they come.
I can’t feel at all, or maybe too much, an overload bearing me down, I try to distract, to make a new track, but I sing a sad song, just a clown.
the words come at night, at sleep and at play, they dance and they sing through my mind, I sleep all the day so I don’t have to hear all the people who try to be kind.
they can’t understand, they can’t feel the pull, the rhythm insistent and clear, they say write it out, just put it down, and they don’t know that’s just what I fear.
what good are words when I can’t even tell that the mind in my head has gone numb, I can’t taste the world, I can’t feel the pain, I sing while I sleep, and they come.
Fear
I need to make it clear,
the deadly way I feel,
that all the while I’m here,
this world is not quite real.
The floor beneath my feet,
the walls that box me in,
the voices on the street,
the screams beneath my skin.
My eyes within the glass,
my heart within my chest,
my too abundant mass,
a long unwelcomed guest.
I strain to breach the wall,
to shatter all the lies,
but still the wall stands tall,
and the world wears its disguise.
My fight will never end,
my dawn will never come,
my signal never send,
my voice is locked, and dumb.
The words come from my mind,
and from the deepest well,
and every line is signed,
with love, to you, from hell.
Writing practice: 5 minute stream of consciousness, subject: School Days
walls of shattered glass scribbled with lipstick hieroglyphs, an ancient language of rage and hate and pain and love and other unsavory things above the surface bearing eons of genetic markers in smears of blood, tears, sweat and skin, a history of life contained within four walls. in the halls, scattered floes of paper, lines dripping down the page, clumped and lumped like biology experiments gone wrong, any moment wait to see them raise their monstrous heads and roar the power words of Trigonometry or Calculus until the walls drip and show the secrets of the Universe…or the library, whichever comes first. metal coffins line the walls, lids sagging open as if hungry for more young flesh, for the scent and taste of …teen spirit? empty chamber, with sagging scuffed marked and pocked wooden floors, still echoing with screams and moans and cheers and sighs, with bounds and rebounds, falls and recalls, and buzzers ring. above, sullen light flickers and crackles, dust-covered tubes hanging, some dangling almost to block the path, almost to mark the path, to show the way to yet another hall, another bleak perspective. tumbled tables, legs in the air, helpless dinosaurs tossed across the tiled room to land where they will. phantom scent of grease and mystery, of hunger and appetite denied, leads to the chamber of horrors, each counter scarred and marred by generations of vessels slammed ringingly on their surfaces, and giant utensils whipped and dragged and slicing into vegetable matter and flesh alike, indiscriminately.
Letter to Lauren (personal journaling, not important)
This is the letter I just emailed to my caseworker to explain how I feel about my little Kia Soul, Firefly. She is my life…and with all the haps recently, she is my biggest burden. So, read if you want…I just wanted to get it down and saving it didn’t seem like enough.
I just want to try to help you understand what I feel about my car. I know you can’t fully understand, because to you, it’s just a thing. Like your phone, or your house, a thing you can (and recently did) get rid of, if it becomes inconvenient, or you just want/need a new one. I get that. I’ve never been there. Ever.
As a kid, oldest of 6 with a low-grade military salary to live on, if we got something it was something we’d better count as permanent until it broke or wore down so badly it wasn’t worth keeping. TV, car, toys…anything.
Then as an adult…first with only a fast-food worker/minimum wage salary that wasn’t enough to let me do more than sleep on my parents couch in their house full of bugs and so many rats I could listen to them war and mate in the walls all around me all night…no AC, in Florida, just a huge box fan with so little motor I had to have it in bed with me to get any relief from the heat…years of that.
Then on 4 yrs. of $25 a week welfare, living on -other- peoples couches, or in shelters (thank you YWCA) and going through disability applications and denials over and over and over again. Finally won, and bought my fondest dream…a little RV, for $7,000. I thought I could have a home and a vehicle in one, travel all over the country, sell things…live the freedom/nomad life I dreamed about. Only problem is, 7 miles to the gallon. Cost to park. Cost of utilities…including dumping the toilet. Ended up back at my parents, parked illegally in their driveway, sucking up their electricity and using their bathroom, until I managed to sell it, luckily for exactly what I paid for it. Minus the upkeep, obviously. (Gentleman that bought it paid in cash. $7,000 worth. In a baggie. >.<)
From there count 10 yrs. or so of living on less than minimum wage disability, in housing units or shelters, back and forth from across the country to “home” with my parents.
Then I met my one and only love, Sam, and moved to live with him and my best friend Becky in Sacramento for two of the best years of my life. Also two of the worst, as I was diagnosed with severe rheumatoid arthritis soon after meeting Sam, and went mostly untreated all through that time. I drove regularly during that time. Neither Sam nor Becky drove. Sam owned a 10 yr. old Suburban, huge clunky black thing, that I needed a step-stool to climb into, and had almost no power steering…lots of fun with RA swollen hands and shoulders.
Then I became insane enough that neither of them wanted me around anymore, and I ended up back with my parents…in the back room of their (manufactured home) trailer, half filled with my moms fabric collection and file cabinets and shelves.
And then I got my car. And alright, I was stupid to want/get a new car. I just thought that for once I wanted something new. Something mine. Something that I didn’t have to worry about it breaking every time I got in it, and worry what was going to fall off next. I thought I deserved this…and since I could have it…I got it. I was so insistent on getting it that I let them talk me into paying more than half of my disability paycheck every month for a payment. But I paid it. All but a very few times, for a year.
And then all the new stuff happened…and it’s all gone pear-shaped, and I have no idea how it’s all going to work out…but it is. It has to. Because stupid or not, it’s my car. And everytime I hear you say “You are going to have sell the car!” I hear “Wow, shame you had that kid when you couldn’t afford it…well, you better sell it, and get a dog or something that costs less.” Ummm…no.
So all that is to say that she, Firefly, my car…is my freedom. I know everyone says that…but everyone hasn’t been deprived of that freedom their whole lives. Everyone hasn’t been dependent on someone or something else, tied to someone or something, powerless and broken, for all their life. I have. And now I have my freedom. I have my other half. I feel whole and safe and yes, sane, when I’m behind that wheel. I feel like a real person, not some fake adult, but me. Just me. My music, my decorations, my life is in that car. (Now if only she had a bathroom, she’d be perfect…;p)
I know you’re worried. It’s your job to be, and you do a very good job. You’re a great caseworker, and I can tell you I’ve had many. *hugs* All I can say is I’m worried too…but I am apparently not going to let this break me. It’s going to be a -long-, -long- year…but I can do it. With help, I can do it. And yes, I’m depressed…and stressed…and all the physical mess that goes with the above…but I’m handling it. I promise. No more talk about pills or other self-destructive things. Apparently those won’t work for me anymore. Not sure why not…maybe it’s just that I finally hit my worst nightmare, Authority Figures hostile toward me for nothing I did and nothing I can do to fix it…and now that I’m here, I find that it’s only horrible…not world-ending. I guess that’s it. So yeah, that’s what I wanted to say. *hugs again* Oh, and thanks.
KC/Meg/Jessica
Falling
the walls are filled with pretty things,
bleeding hearts and diamond rings,
tables floating in the air,
and no tea pouring everywhere,
and marmosets with crumpet heads,
and queens that grow in flower beds,
pictures of the world I pass,
reflections of my looking glass,
a single chair rocks all alone,
and still I fall, a tumbling stone,
polished surface clean and slick,
so nothing thrown can ever stick,
and no one holds me as I fall,
I slip away, I hear them call,
and yet the walls grow longer still,
why does it take so long until
I fall onto the ground below,
to watch the tables shrink and grow,
and see the doors that come to play,
and laugh at me and fade away,
as the floor fades into mist,
I spit at them and shake my fist,
but still I fall into the hole
that seems to have no final goal,
except to fall and fall and fall,
and never reach the end at all,
the walls are filled with pretty things,
bleeding hearts and diamond rings,
tables floating in the air,
and no tea pouring everywhere,
and marmosets with crumpet heads,
and queens that grow in flower beds…
Fiction Relay #27: The Suzi Saga
This is part 27 of the Fiction Relay serial story, following the adventures and misadventures of Suzi and those she impacts. To read the rest of the story, or just see a summary so far, go here. To see who is crazy enough to play this game, and see how you might join the insanity, go here.
Ok…keep in mind that I’m writing this late, and a bit…distracted, so be patient with it. There’s a -teeny- bit of backtracking, but not that much, promise. ;p
Melissa is strangely subdued as Sam and Ephraim wrestle her into Ephraims cuffs and drag her back up the hill to the lab to put her in one of the cells for safekeeping. Keeping herself contained, whats left of her sanity curled around the secret held deep inside…the treasure she stole from the bitch’s daughter. In her mind, deep inside, the voice whispers old commands, old orders, and she takes dark joy in squashing them, silencing the whispers with a slash of thought, a whip of power. Now she is the one in charge…the one with the power of life and death. Now they will all see. They’ll find out who the important one is. The one who should have been. As she hears the footsteps fade into the distance, crossing from the stone floor of the cavern to the soft earth outside, the impulse breaks free, and she begins to laugh…a mad, manic laugh, on the close side of hysteria, that rings in the stone-walled cell like a bell.
Ephraim shivers as they leave the lab, a flash of vision crossing his mind. Again, the triumphant gaze of a dead man leers at him before morphing into the figure of a desperately weeping Melissa…curled at the feet of a humongous statue of Suzi/Meghan. Shaking it off, he continues toward the house with Sam.
Meanwhile, miles down the road, Suzi…no, Meghan…leans her forehead against the cool glass of the rigs backseat window. The driver, having noticed the dark circles under her eyes and the slumped posture of exhaustion, suggested that she take a nap in the back, on the small bed/seating area. So far, however, sleep has eluded her…so she stares out the window into the distance, although the scenery does not impact her view. Her mind is full of memories…thoughts of her little girl…her little Samantha…Sammy. It’s been years since she thought of her, since the memory wipe she’d performed on herself to protect the child. Now she stares out the window, into the deepening dusk of the mountain road, and sees instead a pair of brilliant blue eyes in a pixie-like face…blond curls she inherited from her father, and tiny size from her mother. She wonders what happened, how she is doing…what she looks like…and whether she could ever forgive her for abandoning her, so long ago.
Further down the same road, a slim figure hunches over her motorcycle, to cut wind resistance, all senses alert for a taste of her mother. For that elusive feeling that is Meghan…the arrogance of the truly powerful, accompanied by sheer competence and grace. But as at the lab, she gets no trace. Only a fleeting glimpse, a whiff, of the mask willingly put on, the face she lives behind…Suzi. All sweetness and light, confused innocence…Blue shakes her head in disgust. Once she finds her, once they are together again, she will make sure that the Suzi personality is shattered, stripped away, leaving only Meghan…only the one person more powerful than herself. Once she rejoins her mother, and they are able to work together…she shakes her head. What can’t they do? Certainly not bow down to the Club any longer. Maybe they’ll just take it over…or destroy it entirely. And Ephraim…and Sam, her father? Well, they’d be useful, in a weak sort of way. Their powers are nothing, compared to Meghan at full capacity. Let alone Blue and Meghan working together…these thoughts comfort her, and accompany her down the winding road, as she moves unknowingly farther and farther away from from her goal.
Back in the lab, Melissa sits on the floor of the cell, making herself as comfortable as possible on the cold stone. What she is about to do will require her full concentration for success, so clearing away all distracting bodily messages is essential. Prepared, finally, she bows her head, reaching deep deep inside, reaching for the flickering spark that is her newly borrowed treasure. Carefully, she pictures herself holding the tiny spark, and mentally “blowing” on it until it blooms into full strength, a white-hot fireball in her mental “hands”. Gritting her teeth against the pain of the fire, feeling her mind scorched and battered by the strength of the power…but her desperate concentration holds, and she is able to shape the fire into what she needs. The tiny white phoenix sits in her “hands”, sparks flying off it in all directions, egg shell bits made of pure white stone all around. Grinning, she leans down and whispers to it, giving it concise directions…and as it glows a bit brighter, a bit hotter, burning sparks flying and alighting on her skin…it lifts off and flies away, through the door and down the hall, searching. Riding with it, mentally, Melissa directs the creature until it reaches its destination…the recently deceased body of Raj.
Melissa laughs in triumph…a strange sound that seems to come from two throats at once. Giving the little phoenix a mental push, she watches as it sinks into the dead mans chest…and gloats as it begins to rise and fall, despite the bubbling of the blood at his slit throat. After an endless period of waiting, she laughs again, a much more normal sound, as his eyes open, a look of confusion in them. Tugging an invisible cord, she watches as the corpse stands, and makes its slow shuffling way toward her cell.
And with that, it’s on to Dawn! Have fun! *insert evil laugh #34, the “Evil Dictator”*
St. Augustine Light House
I used to live right down the road from here, could walk to the park/boat dock at it’s feet…just thought I’d share some Spring-in-Florida goodness. 😉
kyotzeta 