Saturday: Author Crush Day

No, I will not be crushing an author tomorrow. I will get to be in the same room as one of my two author "crushes". I typed about them in a meme not too long ago but I'll mention them again today. The two lucky ladies are Frances Mayes of "Under the Tuscan Sun" fame and my Saturday crush, Laurie Halse Anderson.

Now LHA may not be a household author name among adults but she is huge in the young adult world. I'm not just saying that either. She's a real author with a capital A at the beginning. She is coming out with another new novel on the 18th but she will be at a tea (yes, I am going to a tea!) on Saturday in my little hometown.

LHA happens to live in my little hometown. She's from the local area but she now lives down the road from my bio-dad. She names her town of residence in her books but I don't expect most people would go looking for her. There just isn't much there in my hometown, no hotel or motel, and just a few traffic lights but they are getting a Dunkin Donuts! BJM's brother has also opened a little restaurant out of the hopefully-soon also opening bowling lanes.

So LHA has been a hero of mine for about two years or so. I got to talk with her on the telephone once because she knows my dad and she said I could call. She was so gracious and let me ask all the questions she had already answered on her website. I was so enamored and excited to be talking to a real live AUTHOR that I almost wet myself.

We're also "friends" on Facebook and I read her blog regularly.

My family might be going with me and I need to break out a pair of PIPs. Thankfully, LHA is wearing jeans so mine won't be conspicuous.

It's a deal, too, at only eight dollars for a family ticket. It's a benefit for the local library. The local Historical Society is also dressing up in 1770s type clothing. That goes along with the theme of the tea which is about LHA's latest book of historical fiction. That book is called "Chains" and is about a female black slave owned by British Loyalists. She tries to help the Americans and is punished for that by her owner but she escapes by the end of the novel. That's where the first part of the trilogy ends.

I'm really looking forward to listening to her talk. I'll let you know how it goes.

(By the way, here is a shout out for my girl GP whose feet are almost mended.)

Random and reality

First the randomness, but a highly important bit of info. My wonderful pal AW, aka Abracadabra or Scrapbooking Queen Extraordinaire, ran in the Walt Disney World Marathon last weekend. She was nervous and worried before she went and I, trusty and helpful blogger genius that I am, told her what a great time she was going to have and how wonderful the experience would be.

I was completely correct and Abracadabra finished right on her finishing time goal and she did not have to potty or poo on the side of the well-groomed paths through the kingdom of Mickey Mouse. You went, girl!

Reality:

Writing on my separate space seems to be helping me in the head area. I haven't written for a few days on there but maybe I will after being on here.

My dad was supposed to have his fourth heart cath to open a blocked artery on Tuesday but it couldn't be completed. Not so good news.

Then he had another heart attack on Saturday afternoon which necessitated his trip to the hospital by ambulance. This meant me driving over to my mom's house so we could drive out to the hospital together.

I don't live that far away but I was slowed down behind two snow plows, one plowing after the other. The last time I was driving to and fro their house I hit and killed a dog who just ran out into the road as I was coming around the curve. This time I was almost to my parents' home and this giant truck hauler thingie just pulled out in front of me. I couldn't stop in time on the snow so I he ran into me. I smacked my car near his back tires and I was stuck. I couldn't even go in reverse and thank goodness the person behind me didn't rear-end me.

The guy got out of the truck thingie and I put the window down and told him to check for damage. He said there were some scrape marks and I said I had to go, that I was on my way to the hospital. I was literally right around the corner from my parents' home.

I'm starting to sense a freakish pattern here and I am wondering if there is some message I am missing. Feel free to interpret it and let me know what it is.

New stuff, finally

Sorry that there hasn't been much to read on here for a whole week. I have started to do some free writing on the computer that is saved separately from this blog to try and get some really personal issues out. What follows is part of that, but it's mostly about food and pants after a bit of serious thinking.


How do you feel growing up never being trusted, being made fun of, doing all the wrong things, desperately wanting to be loved and yet ignored except as a servant girl? Maybe you don’t. Maybe that’s why I’m so small and so big at the same time. Maybe God made me small so there would eventually be a tipping point where I couldn’t be filled with hatred and anger and sadness and fear and depression anymore. Instead I grew bigger and wider, holding all those things in.

I’ve been to the grocery store and purchased some foods that are not on my Special K list and we’ll see if I can eat them in moderation. There is always tomorrow, there can always be more food tomorrow.

In a way at the grocery store I already felt a tiny bit better. I did not go nuts and load up my cart with tons of junk. I picked out a few things. I felt in control.

PIP = Pants in public

I have to also get eating, rather overeating/binging under control so I can wear my pants in public instead of sweat pants. Every pair of pants I own, including my fat pants, are too small. I take the various pants out of my closet and wear them at home for a while to get them to the point over a few days where they can be PIP. I still go outside in sweats but not my shorts that fit; three pairs of shorts fit me but not real pants and I live in a place where it starts to snow in October and keeps snowing sometimes in April. There shall be no shorts outside here.

So you see I am a busy gal here with the whole pants issue and trying to relieve myself of so many of the burdens I've ingested and now want to expel. Pretty graphic there in your head, huh?

Thanks for stopping by and have an awesome weekend.

Early poetry is painful

I've written here before about my issues with weight and my family while growing up. Here's a poem from half a lifetime ago, literally (age 19 from my current age of 38). As I read it now I see the pain that I felt then.
______________________________________________________________________

Love Me

I starve myself
because Mommy and Daddy
don't love fat, ugly, stupid girls.

I play the game with my life
but no one can win.

Twice
they've put me in the hospital
and filled me up with medications
to make me feel less anxious.

Nothing works.
Not their pills,
not my mind.

I only want
to please my Mommy and Daddy
even if it means
that I lose myself,
fade away,
and become nothing.

I don't care if I die
if only
someone would love me.
____________________________________________________________________

I used to be really good at self destruction. Self harm was what I was all about starting in about fifth grade. I had one of those families where everything had to look good, but I never looked good. I was fat and had glasses and I could never keep my hair looking nice. I was shy and hoped that if I was quiet then no one would notice all my imperfections. Fat chance.

I was scared of trying anything new because I felt so inferior all the time. I wouldn't try out for chorus and I was never a Girl Scout. I just read and played by myself because we lived mostly in the country. I would get lost in books because books didn't require that you look or act a certain way. Words that I read never hurt me in the same way that spoken words did.

I recall sitting in the back seat of the family car in sixth grade sobbing to myself as my parents drove around. I couldn't explain why I was so unhappy except that I knew I was a square peg in my family's group of round holes. I could cry without making noise and the tears would just flow into my jacket or shirt sleeve.

I know all this cr@p makes you stronger but I still haven't learned the lesson from it all. What was I supposed to learn?

Being fat doesn't make me happy, sticking my fingers down my throat doesn't make me happy, killing myself to be thin through starvation and pills doesn't make me happy. I've chosen all the wrong men to be in my life so that isn't the lesson. MS is a pain in the rear which just makes living harder. Depression has been my longest companion along with not being thin.

Maybe the lesson is that life is about riding the waves. Sometimes you're on top waiting for the wave to break and sometimes you've just run into the shore. Life is cyclical. Feel good, then bad, then pain, then a glimmer of hope, and sometimes sunshine and repeat?

My first writing assignment in college

What follows is my first ever writing assignment turned in to Professor William Smart at Sweet Briar College. I unearthed it Wednesday evening as I was cleaning and organizing for Christmas Tree Thursday.
____________________________________________________________________

How many times have I started this? Each time I get a couple of sentences down and then I erase them. I like how computers can do that, just erase it all as if it had never been there, never been written.

There are plenty of periods in my life that I wish I could cut out and throw away as if they had never happened, but that doesn't work unless you're hooked up to a keyboard. It's funny that I should even be sitting in this room, with all of you, listening to this. You're thinking to yourself, "Who wrote this? Is this chick on Valium or what?"

Nope, no need for sedatives now. I've got a lot more control than I used to have. There's no need to try and hide anything now. No one can take away anything from me, no one can tell me how to feel or how to think. You see, I'm not even supposed to be alive. The doctors never thought, my parents never thought, I never even thought, never believed that I would be alive.

If you had told me five years ago that I would be here today, sitting amongst all of you, trying to write something, I would have laughed in your face. I know a lot about pain but I also know what it's like to survive even though it hurts, even when you don't care anymore, even when you don't want to survive. I may not look like much but give me some time. Think of me as the carbon that comes before the brilliance of the diamond.

Did you see the move The Dead Poet's Society? Remember what Robin Williams said? Carpe diem - Seize the day. Valuable piece of information there. It's partially the reason why I'm in this class. I've wanted to be a writer for some time now, about seven or eight years, and I decided to give it a try.

So here I am despite some strong opposition from some parental figures, despite my own self doubts. if I don't try now I know that I'll look back on my own self sabotage and say, "Where the hell was my brain? Why didn't I at least give it a shot?" I could never forgive my cowardice if I didn't at least attempt to put out some good pieces for this class. If I fail, I fail, but at least I will have tried and that is what is important. For a long time I thought that everything had to be perfect but I have learned to see that there is some beauty in everything and you just have to take the time to look around and find it.

I think that I'd like to be a writer but there are so many people that say that, that they want to write. For me, though, it is so much more than that; it's like I need to write. Writing is more than just a way to make a living, it is seeing and believing in others, in ideas, and most importantly, in yourself.

Writing is my joy and my pain, my cathartic process of healing and mending. I learn from writing and I write about what I have learned. Writing lets me think and wander and dream. It allows me to reach new heights and cross into places I've never been to. With it I can create whatever I want.

Writing allows me to become free from all of the boundaries and biases of everyday life. And it doesn't matter what anyone else says or thinks because it is my poem or my essay and if it makes me happy then there should be nothing more to strive for. Yet, I continue to want more. I want people to read what I've written and feel something. I want a response. The best feeling is letting someone read one of my pieces and have that person say to me, "Yeah, this is good, I liked it because ..."

Writing is freedom and control, love and hate, dreams and reality all at the same time. Writing is what I love and what makes me happy and that is why I do it. I love the way I get an idea and the way the words flow out swiftly while I scratch my pencil across a piece of paper. That is writing. It's taking a chance, exposing a piece of yourself for everyone to take a stab at. It's not wanting to end something until it is done 100% and to the best of your abilities. Writing is sharing and expanding and feeling and caring. I want to write more than anything in the world. Few people can understand that but I know what I want and writing is just that. Writing, if it could be personified, would be my best friend. It listens and grows with me and never betrays me. Once you have understood that, then you can begin to comprehend what my life is like.

I am only 19 - no longer a child but not really a woman. I am on the brink of the world, the precipice of a vulnerable reality. They say that all you need is a dream and I have one. Even though no one else may support me, I have to at least try and see if I can do it. I have to have the strength and conviction in myself because there is no one I can siphon that from. I have to believe in myself and be willing to fight for what I want. This is my life we're talking about, not a play about Willy Loman or Juliet Capulet. The curtain comes done only once for me.

You wanted to see inside my head so here it is. A very intricate piece of machinery, the brain. The TV commercials say that it's a terrible thing to waste.You know what? I believe them.
____________________________________________________________________


I sat in that first creative writing workshop after hearing this piece read aloud by my professor, my soul exposed to a group of strangers. I recall the looks of the women around me listening and letting this all soak in. They commented when the professor was done and he asked if the author wanted to reveal herself.

I didn't then but I am now.

One more tiny piece to finish this memory; the only thing written at the end in form of a comment were these words, "This is the beginning."

Nineteen years later, it's part of another beginning.

The power of the (um) pen ....

When I was in middle and high school I kept journals in spiral notebooks. I filled them with lots of poetry, mostly angst-ridden and hostile stuff, lists of my imperfections according to others, and letters to people explaining why I did what I had planned to do.

I still have some of those notebooks. When I open their yellowed pages it's painful to relive those memories. There's that saying about time being a great healer but I'm not so sure about that.

Certain moments you take, burrow down deep, and try to keep buried. I don't know if you ever really forget those times when you were hurt so viciously and purposely by people close to you. You may not dwell on them daily but those memories still exist.

Writing what I do is part of the freeing element of those younger years when I was all wrong. Then, I had to keep my writing hidden under the bottom drawer of my desk.

Now, I write freely at a venue that anyone could stumble across, if they knew where to look. It's dangerous to be so open when at any time those parental figures could find and read this. I'd love to be able to say to my parents that I write this thing called a blog, people read it, and some of them even enjoy it and look forward to my new posts.

I'd love to say that to them, but I won't.

The reality is that they wouldn't read this because they think this writing of mine is silly, frivolous, and stupid. They travel the world wide web only to snare information about Las Vegas, Iraq, and my siblings. They wouldn't dare search for anything that has to do with multiple sclerosis or with me.

Maybe that's okay. You can't change people or the past.

I can expose my messy stuff to the light of computer monitors. I can write and not hide it, even though I don't post my real name (or my picture anymore). I still have journals which I hope no one reads because I was fairly wild for years after I left my wasband and waited for my divorce to be final (and for several years after that).

I have a personality that is somewhat bent on self-destruction. Growing up in their atmosphere led to the belief that I had to find a way to disappear.

Years later I can now see that I don't have to cease to exist because someone else isn't happy with me. I can just pick up a pen or type away on a keyboard and let myself come pouring out. I don't have to hurt myself or change myself because I'm all wrong.

I may not be perfect, and there are parts of me that I want to change, but I am not all wrong. I'm just not anymore.

A little bit of this and that and the gift of blogs

This is a quickie because it's Friday night and I am doing NO school work until sometime tomorrow afternoon. I am also on the cusp of experiencing the thrill of sleeping past 5 a.m. and not using my alarm clock. For two whole days, mind you. (It's the best bit of crazy I can do with no man, no booze, no illegal drugs and such, along with MS.)

I had a great shrink appointment today. A good shrink is worth his or her weight in gold. I seem to finally be coming out of my deep, dark, filthy, black hole of depression life. I like to believe that all my morning meds are starting to peak and work at their optimum ability and the upping of my anti-depressant a few weeks back is really making me not want to harm myself.

I have been down that road, starting at a very young age. I recall crushing, smothering, painful depression when I was a fifth-grader.

Numerous suicide attempts when I was younger, scars both invisible and visible if you know where to look. A family that told me that my view of the world was wrong, that my feelings were wrong, that my experiences were as they told me, not as I recalled living them.

I learned at an early age to become withdrawn and to isolate myself in safe places like books or my few friends' homes. I loved to read, loved to ride my little yellow banana-seat bike to the public library of my tiny village. Books never hurt me, made fun of me, chastised me, placed me in a hole where I didn't fit. Books were provided trips to places and families I couldn't be a part of, gave me an escape to a land where I wasn't fat, or ugly, or in the way.

That is probably why I so enjoy the opportunity to write now. It's as if a forbidden fruit has finally been plucked and savored! How long have I stared at the tree, watching, hoping that the fruit would fall to the ground and I could swoop it up and carry it off secretly?

The answer is that I waited far too long.

I'm a prosey writer, too many words, too much of too many things, but there has been so much hidden away for years and now I am free. The words are like blood or oxygen, nourishing my soul and my body. It's like breathing deeply for the first time on a spectacular autumn day with your face turned up to the sun's rays, kicking up bundles of brilliant leaves with their yellow, orange, red, and brown.

Writing what I have these weeks, as openly and honestly as I have is my gift to myself. It is what I saw, what I lived, how I live now.

We all have our stories to tell, that's what makes so many blogs fascinating. If you write one, read one or both, my hat is off to you. It means that you also have found the gift of words and you bloggers, you choose to share it with both people who know you and others who are complete strangers.

I suspect if the people I worked with read this blog all the time they would view me differently. I have so much submerged that is never mentioned that there is no doubt that they would be surprised. I'm the iceberg in the teachers' room.

Global warming may be starting to thaw me but I'm okay with that. I'm just so happy that I have found my words again. Thank you for reading.

How Messy is it? The road back to writing...

I come from a family where presentation is everything. You should look a certain way and act a certain way and live a certain way or else there will be blood. (Okay, maybe not blood, but you get the idea.) I've finally come to terms with the fact that I can't do that. I don't know many people who can thrive within boundaries given to them by someone else.

One of the many pieces of my life that I compromised over the years was writing. I wanted to be a writer, or more specifically a real writer, someone who would be published. I started to write poetry when I was in fifth grade and had some poems printed in a local paper. I branched out in to short stories and more detailed poetry (that didn't have to rhyme) as I grew older and passed through my high school years.

I had an opportunity in high school to be part of a career explorers' group that focused on journalism writing. They met about an hour from my home. The chosen few were grouped together to work on material for a much larger daily paper. My parents said, "No, it's too far away and a waste of time." End of story.

Then college beckoned, which is a saga in itself, and away I went. I was told that in no way would I be allowed to have a major that had anything to do with writing. It wasn't the type of career that would ever bring me money. It wasn't a good enough career. They weren't paying for me to learn more about the one thing that I had loved and sustained me for years during a rough adolescence.

I went to college and I dutifully did as told. I majored in International Affairs and minored in Spanish and History. I went to a wonderful college, one that you've probably never heard of but it was wonderful anyway, called Sweet Briar College in Virginia. I did exactly what I was supposed to do, for the most part.

In four years I never took an English class as I had tested out of Freshman English.

I took two creative writing classes in four years. They were probably the best classes of my life because I was able to do what I loved most. I wrote and shared with my classmates (anonymously, the beauty of it all) my writing and received feedback from them and my professors.

As a matter of fact, I have this bulletin board hanging on my apartment wall that contains sundry items that are special to me. One of these items comes from my college years, a hand-written note from a professor. It's dated 5/23/90.

"Your best pieces were the last two - "The Softball Game" and "My Daddy". You have talent & I hope you'll continue to write."

Two sentences from a man who no doubt has long forgotten me. Two sentences that have been hanging on that board for eighteen years. Two sentences that make me think that I can do this thing that I was told not to do many years before.

Eighteen years later I started to write, for me.