TV Shows I've Fallen For this Autumn

I am currently watching a number of shows that I deeply enjoy and there are a few I am still waiting on their new season to begin.  This could also explain my productivity problem.  Here's the list:


Agents of Shield
American Horror Story: Freak Show
How to Get Away with Murder
Gotham
Castle
10 Things You Don't Know (with Henry Rollins)
The Black List
Forever
Criminal Minds
The Flash
Graham Norton Show
Rehab Addict
Ancient Aliens
In Search of Aliens


I am waiting for the new seasons of:


Longmire
Justified
Game of Thrones
True Detective

It's Been a Long Year

I cannot believe that there are less than two months until the end of this year.  I'm not sure where all the time has gone to.  I know that as a family we have been very busy. Indeed, we have gone places and done things (which I will post about here before the end of the year) but there's this sudden feeling of waking up and wondering, "How did I get here?"

The winter was brutal, it seemed to me.  Though I know that there are those who had it far worse.  It was like it sucked a bit of life out of me.  I was trapped inside much of the time and could have been reading or writing or quilting.  Yet most of the time was sucked away by watching full seasons of shows my husband or I had only just discovered.  It was so easy and passive.  Much like opening Pinterest on the computer and then somehow disappearing into it for hours, which I have also done this year more than I care to admit.

I hope to right myself on a better track in the coming year with habits I have noticed from successful authors that I follow on Twitter.  Although, sometimes I do wonder, with all they have going on, when they sleep.  Do successful authors sleep?

Enough procrastinating.  I need to wake up and get down to business.

In Response to #YESALLWOMEN on Twitter

After the recent shootings involving a man who was upset that women didn't find him attractive, etc, the hashtag #YesAllWomen popped up on Twitter.  I read several of them and retweeted a few.  In my lifetime I have had the misfortune to encounter a number of men who had the notion that my life and my body was not my own to command.  I have PTSD (most likely for the rest of my life) due to the most horrid of these encounters.  I wrote the following poem about one of these encounters more than 10 years after it occurred because I simply couldn't deal with it until then.  In light of the #YesAllWomen hashtag I felt compelled to share it here.

Bobby's Night Out

-copyright 1999

Bobby had the devil’s eyes
Bluer than any fair cloudless sky
He smiled and tried to pull us girls in
But his thoughts were clearly full of sin
I had flirted I must admit
But I never asked to be made to submit
Bobby disapproved of my friend Rick
This was because Bobby was a red neck
He told me as the tape unwound
That Rick wasn’t the type I should be around
Tape that bound my little hands
Bobby showed me how he was a man
And the things I should do to please
As I tried to beg for my release
“You don’t need that nigger,” he said with a grin
I pulled away. I wanted it to end.
His blue eyes clouded over
I wished that I could run for cover
Angry that I pulled away, he yelled
“See it wasn’t that bad!” No, it was hell.
But I was smart and I stayed quiet
Though I was scared and my mind a riot
The tape that held me was unwound
But the words he spoke kept me bound
“Stay with your own kind,” he said,
“the only good nigger is one that’s dead.”
So I walked away that night
With my life I made my flight
Away from Bobby and his tape
The memory of which my nerves still grate
But in my shame I left behind
Rick, my friend, who’d been so kind
I left them both for fear of worse
Of all that happened that night to curse
I regret that I fell to pressure and fear
I regret that I walked away from someone dear
The past I cannot change
My future though is yet to be arranged
I can walk away from him
With the devil’s eyes and sin
Away from the prejudice and the pain
His views are what will now be restrained
This senseless act of violence
Is not a hate crime that will leave me silenced
I will chose who is MY own kind –
I will walk in truth and no longer be blind.

Absence

The snows and temps this winter were extreme. I had 2 feet of snow on my lawn at one point!  To say that I'm not used to this kind of weather would be an understatement.  I know that I suffer from seasonal affective disorder. I get withdrawn and although I am inside and have the time to do stuff, nothing gets done. It's like my body actually does want to hibernate in some weird sort of way.  I didn't even read as much as I usually do which is saying a lot.  I did, however, watch whole seasons of tv shows with my husband.  This is a short list of those shows:

All of the seasons of Boardwalk Empire
All of the seasons of Deadwood
All of the seasons of Justified
The first 4 seasons of Dexter and some of the 5th
All of the series The White Queen
All of the seasons of Game of Thrones

I'm sure there are some things that I left out. Obvious there was a lot of tv watched. We sat in front of the fire just watching them together.  I'm not sure if it meant as much to my husband but it certainly did to me.  To just sit there relaxing, snacking, watching, and then discussing the shows.  It was nice quiet time in a way.

The weather is getting warmer, sunnier. The plants that survived the winter's harshness are beginning to come into bloom.  Yet, I'm still waiting for my muse to come back to me. In the meantime, I've started reading again, although in a spotty pattern. I can hope that everything will eventually come back on track.

New Years Themes 2014

New year’s eve and day are a time of reflection. I returned home from the holidays ready to start the year doing a hundred things. Catch up on so many things. Start and finish a number of projects. Instead I slipped on the ice the first day back and haven’t been able to do much except make a list of the books I’d read in 2013.

While shopping on my first day back (before I slipped) we bought black eyed peas and ham hock – a southern tradition for ringing in the new year. We also bought corned beef and cabbage which seems to be some northern tradition. Since we are now transplants to the north we thought we’d give it a try (not bad, really). I hope that it actually does bring us luck – we need it!

Despite slipping on the ice and injuring my back, hip, shoulder, and elbow, I absolutely made sure to have all the laundry washed and put away. I couldn’t remember if it was New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day that you aren’t supposed to wash on, but I wasn’t taking any chances after I slipped. The tradition is, whichever day it is, if you wash clothes on that day then you’ll be spending your year washing clothes for the dead.

Usually I also have the Christmas decorations down by New Year’s Day as well. It’s not that I’m following any tradition especially. It’s more like I’d prefer to start the year with at least that part of my slate clean.. Not so much this year. Aside from the injuries, I also need to sort through it all before I put it away. Must downsize, consolidate, and conserve before letting go of the holidays due to the storage limitations. I’m hoping to get it all put away soon though.

I did write out a list of New Year’s resolutions and a list of New Year’s “to do” items. Lists I can make it seems. The mind continues when the body fails. I can only hope that this year will actually improve physically and otherwise.

BOOKS READ IN 2014

Dead Until Dark
Living Dead in Dallas
Club Dead
Dead to the World
Dead as a Doornail
Definitely Dead
All Together Dead
From Dead to Worse
Dead and Gone
After Dead
Bedtime Stories for Children You Hate
The Ancient Alien Question
An Uninvited Ghost
How to Give a Cat a Bath
The Name of the Star
The Madness Underneath
A Secret Rage
The Ghosts of Kerfol
Charlotte Figg Takes Over Paradise
Dr. Who: Nothing O’Clock
Ghosts from the Past
How to Talk to Girls at Parties
In the Tall Grass
Night Stalks the Mansion
A Shade of Vampire
Throttle
Twittering from the Circus of the Dead
UR
Sandman Graphic Novels Volumns 1 - 6

There were also numerous books I started reading but didn’t get around to finishing.

2014 NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS

Spend more time creating than sleeping.
Keep the house clean.
Exercise for at least 1 hour a week.
Reduce the amount of clutter in house.
Get all paperwork filed for son’s assistance needs.

The Eyes Have It

Most of the time when I look in the mirror I see the aging face of a forty-something mother of two.  One who can see many mistakes made on the road o this life getting to this point.  The face of a woman lined with every regret she's known, every disappoint felt (mostly with herself).

Now and again the reflection in the mirror has the eyes of a teenage girl who holds vast dreams.  she sees beauty in simple everyday joys.  her greatest joy being creating nothing from thin air.  She started doing it as a child, creating vivid ever changing landscapes full of people different from those she knew in everyday life.  This was her escape.  It was an escape from every form of pain she knew.  She could use this form of escape even when she couldn't open a book.  Sometimes especially when she couldn't.

Sometimes when I see her eyes she's happy, usually over some simple amusement.  A baby laughing.  A favorite old song on the radio.  A sky filled with more stars than she ever remembered seeing.

Other times her eyes are begging me to remember.  Remember not the pain and suffering but the defense mechanism they triggered.  Remember the joy of creation.  Remember the dream it spawned of doing this every day for the rest of her life.  To make this her life.

She pleads with me.  Yet I feel divided as one whose soul has been split to walk down separate roads.  I look away partly because her pleading breaks my heart but mostly out of fear.  Life caught up with me, overtook me, pushed me to believe that failure was worse than death.  I separated myself from her by taking a different name.  My life was severed.  Here lies the girl who dreamed.  Here lies the woman who lived.

Still, when I see her eyes I know what's she's saying:  "Life without truly living avoids failure but is its own kind of death."  I never wanted to die.  Not like this, letting the fear overwhelm me.

Escape is found more easily in the digital age.  But damn if those eyes don't call me back to an earlier escape.  An escape more pure and sweet than honey.

Suicide Prevention Month

September is Suicide Prevention Month. I think it’s important that I share this in case it might help others. Without encouraging words from others when I was younger, I don’t know if I would have made it this far.

For most of my life I have had issues with depression. I remember even as a child that I would feel unreasonably sad. This led to tantrums/acting up which led to punishment. As a teenager the depressive episodes only became worse. This may have been partly chemical/hormonal but also because of all the trauma I was dealing with in my home life (abuse). I didn’t know at the time that it would be a life-long battle. Back then I really thought that once I got out of the situation that I’d be able to live happily ever after. I held on to this hope into adulthood and marriage.

Once I began having children, I knew I had to do something about my depression. Happily ever after wasn’t completely working out. My husband and I would vex each other with our clashing baggage. I entered therapy for the first time when I was pregnant with my daughter. I wanted to deal with the depression so that I could be a better mother. It did not go well. The therapist basically told me that I needed to “just get over it” (the abuse and the depression).

When my daughter was one year old I tried again. This was the early 1990’s and there was actually much attention and coverage of the suffering/issues of those who had gone through abuse as children (physically, sexual, etc). Axl Rose was on the cover of Rolling Stone with an article detailing with the abuses he had suffered and how he was getting therapy for it. Tori Amos was the first spokesperson for RAINN. She wanted to help others after releasing the song “Me and a Gun” about being raped. However, the downside was that Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)/Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) was an in vogue hot topic at the time and hugely over-diagnosed. This is unfortunately what the second therapist I visited tried to talk me into. He worked through the university we were attending at the time and I’m sure he thought I’d make a great source for some scientific paper. I left after a few sessions.

I tried therapy again when my daughter was three. This time I tried group therapy as well as individual therapy. It was much more beneficial. The individual therapist concluded that I did NOT have DID/MPD and helped me through a few of my issues. The group therapy also helped me work through a number of issues but, most importantly, I didn’t feel as alone or as crazy.

Still, with all this therapy to improve myself in my 20’s I still didn’t pick up the pattern. I still thought somewhere out there I could reach my happily ever after if only I could just work through all the debris from the abuse. I was blind. I needed time to mature and perhaps to heal more as well.

I’m older now. I look over my sporadic journaling and it’s rather dark. I seem to write/journal more when I’m depressed. If someone were to just view these journals, it would seem that I’ve never known a moment of peace. That is, however, not the whole story. When I am not depressed (or angry) I can know some measure of happiness and can be extremely productive.

It’s important at this stage in my life that I can identify this pattern of depression. I know when it’s sliding over me. I know better what to do to protect myself. I can somewhat block it from coloring all of my life/my memories with bleakness. Most importantly, I know that it’s not going to last forever.

I have heard the saying about suicide, “Don’t solve a temporary problem with a permanent solution.” When you are in the throws of depression it colors everything as bleak. When I was depressed, if I read my journaling, it all looked very permanent – like moments of happiness were when I was just fooling myself. I was lucky I never did do myself permanent damage but I’d be lying if I said there weren’t some close calls.

I hope through this honesty I may help someone else out there. I have come to benefit from the honesty of others on the net such as Jenny Lawson and Allie at Hyperbole and a Half. Thanks!

Suicide Prevention Resource Center