grateful and weary

Today I received a card from EB about Cassie.

It really meant more than I can write in words.

My mom got the bill for the euthanasia as she was going through the mail this evening. She broke down.

She said today, "I hate your father for what he's doing...he didn't give us any time to grieve". And she is right...Jon is so ill at this point. He poisons everything he touches.

I have decided I'm shipping off to Brooklyn, my plane leaves Monday night. I'll be pretty devastated to leave my mom and Emma, but I need to do this for the both of us. I need a job and I need money, and I don't have either here in California. I'll miss Kat very much, too.

I'm strong. I don't really have a choice.

I love you, sweet Cassie.

happy birthday, j.k. rowling!

I loved the Harry Potter series. I read the initial book when it first came out and I've looked forward to the new books each year for seven years (and, since my birthday is July 23, I always received the book for my birthday and I looked forward to it each and every year!). It's funny to me since the actor who plays Harry in the films and I share a day of birth as well. I must say I was not into the movies until later and I still adore the books even more than the films made based upon Rowling's amazing plots.

As an English major, I've listened to a lot of people trash her as a writer. I have to set my foot down and disagree with them. Her plot is so complex, yet everything works. I respect the television series Arrested Development for the same reasons. Plus, she's achieved so much success as a writer...and she's a woman. Pretty damn inspiring! So here's a piece from The Writer's Almanac for today's date:

It's the birthday of children's fantasy writer J.K. Rowling, (books by this author) born Joanne Rowling in Yate, England (1965).

Rowling grew up in rural England. She tried writing a couple of novels, but never finished them. One day on a cross-country train trip, the idea of Harry Potter just appeared in her mind. She didn't have a pen to write things down, so she said: "Rather than try to write it, I had to think it. And I think that was a very good thing. I was besieged by a mass of detail, and if it didn't survive that journey, it probably wasn't worth remembering." As soon as she got home, she started writing what she did remember.

But her personal life was falling apart. She said: "A mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. … I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."

It took J.K. Rowling awhile to find a publisher for her novel, but finally it was published: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (published in the U.S. as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone). It started with a print run of 1,000 copies. The last book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007), had a first print run of 12 million copies in the United States, the largest first printing of any book in history. Altogether, the series has sold more than 400 million copies. She said, "I would like to think that readers enjoy my stories because they are simply good stories."

The father is deeply disturbed. I shall write tomorrow about today's events. At current I am pretty fatigued from a day full of entropy.

I love you, sweet Cassie.

I love you, Cassie.

So bad idea to take my mind off of shit hitting the fan in real life by watching a horror? film (The Haunting in Connecticut).

Yeah, I had to stop the movie halfway through because I kept hearing things in the house. The lights are on all the way in my room (I have a dimmer, and usually I keep it in the lowest position as I read/dick around on my computer before bed). Okay, and I definitely just heard something again. I know the AC acts up sometimes, but I'm seriously kind of freaked. And by kind of I mean really.

So yay! Another ten points added to the genius fund, fuck me.

Now not only is my mind on my family situation but now I'm having visions of the father bending over me, scalpel in hand, carved words imprinted all over my body.

I would say never again, but I've so done this before. I try to watch scary films in my worst funks, because I think that the experience will scare me straight (har har har). I think the worst time was when I was in my dorm room my fifth year of college (don't you love how I can't possibly refer to the six years I spent as an undergrad like normal folks do--"My senior year...wait, I mean the fourth...yeah, and then the super super senior year..."), and I elected to watch No Country for Old Men when my roomies all went out to a party. Oh yeah, brilliant idea. I was practically pissing myself and I barely made it to the halfway point before I had to shut it off, at which point I tried to distract myself from the pissing pants type fear that was taking hold--finally, I was too sleepy to do anything about it.

Happy happy joy joy.

I would say never again, but that old genius fund can't ever be full enough.

wow, my life is a crappy lifetime movie.

The father terrifies me.

Today my mum called the police. They came out to the house but it didn't do anything. If anything, it made things worse. After they left, the father said, "You're gonna be real sorry you did that".

The father told me he was having sex with men today. He also said he had sex with women before. He said he told my mother three years ago that he could have sex outside the marriage since she was "fat".

The father's soul is very troubled.

I know Cassie is in Heaven, and I miss her every moment--but I do not know if the father will go there.

I've had nightmares about him for years.

He truly scares me.

I do not understand why the father does the things he does.

I sat in my bathroom, vomiting into the toilet after the father told me what he had done. He came into my bathroom, inches from my face, telling me it was my mother's fault, that she was fat and he should have known because of my grandmother. Tears streamed down my face, and he continued to rant.

It is hard for me to see someone in so much pain, so much suffering, and I cannot do one thing about it.

If people don't ask for help, or don't accept it (in the case of the father), they won't get better. The father said he would be with another woman who was nothing like my mother.

The father has terrorized for years.

I am simply unafraid of him anymore. The only thing he has is money, and lots of it. He is a miserable person, and I become miserable when I am around him, and in turn think less of myself, and disrespect others.

So I am moving to Brooklyn.

Yes, it's a risk. But it's one I'll have to take.

I just need my mum to be strong and emotionally stable through all of this. That's the one thing that's kept me here for so long.

Hello, New York.

Goodbye, the ex-father. He doesn't understand that before he "shut me out forever", before he said "go to hell", that I already cut him off for good.

As far as I'm concerned, I do not have a father.

I can't even write about how much she means to me, there are no words.

I awakened today, I ate, I crapped. But it's all just going through the motions. I don't want to feel, so I numb out. I watched hours' worth of Breaking Bad today. I can't think, anytime I walk around the house I see her, I have been in that room cradling her at some point. I see her dog bowl, the little blue collar with blue rhinestones I bought her a month ago, the spray I got for her so she'd smell good, the way I'd make up our bed on the floor of my bathroom when she could no longer sleep on my bed with me, the blue water bowl...Today there was a point where I just wanted to throw back my head and howl. Can she hear me when I tell her I love her?

I am drowning and I don't want to fight, I want to sink to the bottom and get to hold my baby again. I only want her. I only want my best friend in the whole world. Nothing else matters.

Couldn't sleep till 2 last night.

I was with her every second of the day when I was home.

It's hard losing Cassie when she gave me 15 years of pure joy.

My heart is so sad.

I know she is in Heaven and free from pain, and I'll never forget that she did not suffer here on Earth.

I love you, my sweet Cassie.

my sweet, beautiful Cassie is an angel now

My heart is raw and sore. At 4:20 pm, I went to the vet with the family (minus Emma). I held my baby sister's paw as she went to sleep. Her soul left her body and I know she is in Heaven.

Selfishly, I miss her so very much. I spent my days with her by my side. We did everything together. 15 beautiful, happy years.

I miss her so much. I don't know what to do, what to feel. I miss her so terribly. My sweet little angel.

I didn't want her to suffer, and a part of me is so happy that she did not live in pain, that she went while she could still eat her favorite food (ice cream).

There is a part of my heart that is hers forever.

She was everything to me.

I wish I could have gone first. Oh God I love her so much. I just want to cradle her but she's gone from this place. I miss her, God I miss her.

I love you, Cassie Marie.

Death Cab for Cutie--What Sarah Said

And it came to me then
That every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time
As I stared at my shoes in the ICU
That reeked of piss and 409
And I rationed my breaths as I said to myself
That I'd already taken too much today
As each descending peak on the LCD
Took you a little farther away from me
Away from me

Amongst the vending machines and year-old magazines
In a place where we only say goodbye
It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend
On a faulty camera in our minds
But I knew that you were a truth
I would rather lose than to have never lain beside at all
And I looked around at all the eyes on the ground
As the TV entertained itself

'Cause there's no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous paces bracing for bad news
Then the nurse comes around and everyone lifts their head
But I'm thinking of what Sarah said
That love is watching someone die

So who's going to watch you die
So who's going to watch you die
So who's going to watch you die

my beautiful little girl

I think Cassie is dying.

I've been with her the whole day. I held her on my chest in bed for a long time. She felt so light, it was as if there was nothing there at all. I got her to drink some water, to eat some vanilla ice cream this morning. She didn't look good, and I want her last time on Earth to be full of her favorite things.

She looks so tired. I told her it was okay to go if she needed to; I stroked her head for what felt like an eternity as I whispered, "Go to sleep". I told her grandpa would be waiting for her in Heaven, that she has nothing to fear. I prayed to God that she doesn't suffer, and that she dies so that she doesn't have to be euthanized in the vet clinic, a place she always feared and hated.

I love her so very much. She is my heart, and I don't want her to suffer. She's a little angel. Cassie taught me how to love.

guster and shit

Today I worked hard to keep it together.

A la Guster.

I watched Coraline. I imagine a better life with the other father and the other sister with buttons for eyes, but I cannot fathom this dream would make reality any rosier. I'm not more appreciative, and in fact the more I fantasize, the more I wish I could stay there forever.

The internet at the house has me royally pissed at current. This is it for now.

practice

I am pleased with how this daily posting is going thus far. I'm remembering to do it, now I have to try and work at it. This means I can't just do it to do it as I have been.

But today I shall because I'm tired. I worked out in the garage. I've given like two carloads of things to Goodwill (minimum). It feels good to do this. I feel lighter.

Speaking of light, my sister is home. Joy. I say out loud to myself, "White light". At McLean, nurses used to joke about imagining this light surrounding you when you worked with difficult patients. So I picture this white light surrounding me, such that she cannot touch me, she cannot penetrate my shield. It takes a lot of practice when I'm around Jessica.

dancing in the dark...not a la bruce

Okay, I know it's 12:15 am, but you should check out Imogen Heap's single, Canvas. Some of her lyrics are here:

Slow heart
Dark way
Down Love
Black Canvas revolve within,
You understand



Fragile,
Earth-way
Cracks in the temperature,
Keep it cool to give



The more you look, the less you see,
so close your eyes and start to breathe,
you said yourself,
this wasn't easy

This song takes me someplace else. I've always loved lyrical, a style of dance that marries jazz and ballet, and I love it because I think the movement allows for fuller expression of emotion and greater range of musicality than do either ballet or jazz. But I'm sure loads of professional dancers could argue that point. Perhaps it was my own limitations in dance that created this, or that the songs used for lyrical dances gave the body a means of expression that songs created for jazz or ballet routines did not.

Anyway, I think this song is really quite beautiful. I got up and started dancing in my room, with only the faint light from my computer screen and the bathroom light illuminating patches of wood floor.

My body felt so raw, so good. I fully recommend experiencing the body in this way as a wonderful way to end the day, especially to this kind of music. I've had years of dance training, but I'm definitely out of shape and less technically inclined now...so I say just let your body take you where it wants to go. Who cares what you look like? I have been emotionally and physically stagnant for too long, and I'm noting that as I open myself to creative outlets I used to rely upon my spirit begins to grow brighter and stronger. It is as if cells in my body are coming to life, or transmitting this sensory experience that the body in its potential state could not perceive.

So I say let art, be it music, dance, paintings, words--whatever it may be--let it take you outside of your comfortable existence and bring you someplace unfamiliar and unknown. Mmmm it is glorious.

24

Mmmm, today I experienced an absolutely lovely birthday. It was very special, very relaxing. I am big into family time--I'm not much of one to go to clubs or drinking, so it made sense that I spent the day in the company of my mum and the dogs. I had my favorite Chinese takeaway for dinner. But the best bit was just being with my mother and my wonderful puppies. I am so blessed and I just have so much love for my girls. And I received well-wishes from so many people, I was so touched.

Thank you, God. Thank you for 24 years on this wonderful planet, thank you for this love that I am able to experience, to receive and to give.

I am filled with peace on this day. I am truly grateful.

little Hayley

I have a lot to write about tomorrow, but I just wanted to write a quick word. Today I had some "body work" done (massage-ish, but my energy was also read etc)--it was awesome.

Also, I watched a few minutes of Hayley's Story on TLC. This young girl, Hayley, truly touched my heart. She was wise beyond her years, and she was so very strong. Haley suffers from Progeria, a condition which basically causes her to age at an extreme rate. Most of the children suffering from this condition die by their thirteenth birthday. Her family was so amazing--her parents were both so very strong and you could just see the love they had for Hayley pouring from their eyes. In the bits I viewed, Hayley did not say she was angry with God. She didn't say poor me. I viewed a little girl living her life with a smile on her face.

Children are truly amazing, amazing beings. They are not young adults. Their anatomy and physiology is different from yours and mine, let alone their emotional and cognitive development. They possess a knowledge I lost somewhere along the way. When in hospital, I often note that the children do better with a poor prognosis then their parents do. They're so tough, and they're really never given enough credit by society. When things go awry, children have shown me time and time again that they are incredibly courageous and hopeful.

When Hayley was going to a friend's funeral (her friend died secondary to complications from Progeria), she had her mum put on purple eyeshadow and she wore a purple dress. She was only eight, but she said she hadn't cried because she needed to be strong for her family. She wrote her friend a letter, telling her she'd see her in Heaven.

When you grow up, do you forget what the point of everything is? I want to love as purely as Hayley did, I want to remember to have faith. I want to heal people and remember to be compassionate always.

God bless Hayley. She is a true hero and role model for all of us.

Her story was so neat, so inspiring. Should I go into pedi?? Hmmm...

oh to be nearing 24

Snow Patrol's "Somewhere a Clock is Ticking" is hauntingly beautiful; I've been listening to it on repeat.

Gary Lightbody's voice is amazing, its so vulnerable and commanding at once.

I love being up this late. My chin's against the pillow and the computer screen is dim, the fan is purring in the background. My mind is fuzz, the crackle of the black and white Spackle on the television screen when cable's out.

The twilight zone, a false sense of security. Too tired to feel the darkness of the day, heart too light to sink between the sheets.

Tomorrow is the day before my 24th birthday. 24 has an old feel to it, like a loved t-shirt that's wearing thin because I've worn it so much. I miss the days of The Velveteen Rabbit and the Como Zoo and forts and don't-touch-the-floor and thinking my parents were happy, that they were young gods, before they were small and bloodless.

the writer's job is to tell the truth

Yay! Happy Birthday, Mr. Hemingway!

I love the six-word memoirs at the bottom--From Garrison Keillor over at The Writer's Almanac:

It's the birthday of Ernest Hemingway, (books by this author) born in Oak Park, Illinois (1899), the Nobel- and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of such books as The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), and The Old Man and the Sea (1952).

Both U.S. presidential candidates of 2008 cited Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) as one of their favorite books. It's about an American teacher, Robert Jordan, who volunteers to go fight in the Spanish Civil War against Franco's Fascists. Robert Jordan is wounded in battle and contemplates shooting himself with his submachine gun to end the intense pain, but when the enemy comes into sight, Jordan does his duty and delays the approaching Fascist soldiers so that his own comrades can escape to safety. And then he dies.

John McCain wrote a book in 2002 called Worth Fighting For, a phrase taken from Robert Jordan's dying monologue. McCain writes about how the character of Robert Jordan has always been dear to him, from boyhood through the time he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. McCain said about Hemingway's fictional character: "I knew that if he were in the cell next to mine, he would be stoic, he would be strong, he would be tough, he wouldn't give up. And Robert would expect me to do the same thing." During the campaign, Obama told Rolling Stone magazine that For Whom the Bell Tolls was "one of the three books that most inspired him."

Hemingway committed suicide in 1961, shooting himself in the head with a double-barreled, 12-gauge shotgun, while wearing a robe and pajamas in the foyer of his Blaine County house.

He had a turbulent personal life. He told people that he despised his mother. He had been married four times and involved with many other women. He was often unkind to other writers whom he knew, and wrote vicious portraits of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein, which were published in his memoir A Moveable Feast.

His memoir was actually published posthumously by his widow, Mary Hemingway, in 1964. She edited extensively the memoir manuscript, patching stuff together from various sources. She included things he'd explicitly stated that he didn't want published, and excluded other parts of his unfinished memoir manuscript.

This month, July 2009, Scribner is releasing a "restored edition" of Hemingway's memoir. The new edition is edited by Sean Hemingway, the grandson of Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline, a woman who was much maligned in the edition of the memoir edited by Mary, the fourth wife.

Sean Hemingway is a curator at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he has edited other anthologies of Hemingway's writing. He is including parts of the original manuscript that Mary had cut out, passages that he says show his grandfather's "remorse and some of the happiness he felt and his very conflicted views he had about the end of his marriage" to Pauline. The new edition, he says, is more inclusive and portrays his grandmother in a more sympathetic manner. Sixteen thousand copies of the new edition of A Moveable Feast are being printed in the first run, and Scribner is also releasing new editions of all of Hemingway's novels with redesigned covers.

Hemingway said, "The writer's job is to tell the truth." In A Moveable Feast, he wrote: "I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, `Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say."

There's a legend that Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to create a six-word story, and he said, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." Inspired by this, an online magazine invited readers to submit their own six-word memoirs, a collection of which was published by Harper Collins in 2008 as Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. Six-word memoirs include: "All I ever wanted was more" and "Moments of transcendence, intervals of yearning" and "They called. I answered. Wrong number."

more books

More books to remember I gave away...so I can buy them back later in life?

Nicomachean Ethics/Aristotle
Vox Compact Spanish and English Dictionary
Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary (because I happen to like my Mosby's better)
Fundamentals of Nursing: Caring and Clinical Judgment/Harkreader & Hogan
Reading, Understanding, & Applying Nursing Research/Fain
Maternity Nursing/Lowdermilk & Perry
Microbiology: A Human Perspective/Nester, Anderson, Roberts, & Nester
Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations/ed. by Suzy Platt
Fraud/David Rakoff
Essentials of General, Organic, & Biological Chemistry/Stoker
Cultural Diversity in Health and Illness/Spector
Love in Action/Thich Nhat Hanh
Metamorphoses/Ovid
The Prince/Machiavelli
The Communist Manifesto/Marx & Engels
Confessions/St. Augustine (Chris would be sorry, but man do I love to hate this)
Snow/Orhan Pamuk
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers/Gibaldi
Antony and Cleopatra/Shakespeare
Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond/Cheadle & Prendergast
King Leopold's Ghost/Adam Hochschild
Ballet 101
Walden/Thoreau
Maus II/Art Spiegelman
Fundamentals of Nursing: Human Health and Function/Craven & Hirnle
Understanding Pathophysiology/Huether & McCance
Everything is Illuminated/Jonathan Safran-Foer

the child's hour

The days meld together like the crayons
melting on the radiator in that play.

It is 1:11 am and the shimmering cloth of memory
is threadbare, the thick down of need

settling in its place like fingers
of fog invading the bluest bay sky. I am alone

with my words and the perilous labyrinth
of self-pity. My lover sleeps thoughtlessly

3,000 miles across from me and my toes
whimper, mute bloodless slugs at the foot

of the bed. The salt-tinged wind and the doe eating petals
from the rosebush--the warmth of day

is forgot. The father's infidelity invades, murderer
of sound sleep, all angry thrusts and heaves. The mother's

sleeping pills the only gateway to peace in the moment.
And I am the lone she-wolf howling

to the moon: come nearer, be still. Here, there is only that play,
only the traces of remembrance like lifted prints

that will never be matched to anything. That play,
that thing the father did, that way the mother looked,

the numb blue the daughter saw when she washed
her hands at 1:21 am and wondered where she was going,

where she had been, why her dewless eyes were cracked and
bleeding when no tears traversed there.

In the night it is only a dream, it is a far-off nightmare
or a film and I am the spectator, I see the

daughter hiding herself in blankets, tucking
memories into folds of sheets.

There is no water here, only miles of desert,
endless stretches of drought.

in memory of frank mccourt

RIP Frank McCourt.

I remember my junior year of high school I took this English elective about the art and craft of memoir. We read Angela's Ashes, and I was like wow, this is what I want to do. I want to make people feel without manipulating them, to make something so vivid a different existence is real to you for those moments--I was allowed to feel deeply and to feel because that reality moved me to tears, not because McCourt said oh, pity me please. I cared about those characters, about that little boy.

He was 78; I am glad he is not suffering any longer.

I hope my grandpa gets to meet him in Heaven. My grandfather loved to meet new people with amazing life stories, and Frank McCourt certainly had an amazing life.

Okay, I know I've already established I'm a little eccentric.

I have this thing about keeping up with people who were in writing workshops with me in college, the ones who I thought could really make it. This era invites keeping tabs on people you aren't actually speaking to, what with the coming of facebook and myspace, and I take full advantage of it as creepy as it may seem.

A part of me does not want to give up on my creative writing (well, all of me), and it really inspires me to see what the most talented kids are doing, where they are.

Anyway, I visited this one kid's blog, and let me tell you, I was so envious. He was recapping his recent travels, in which he drove cross country with friends, exploring cities and cultures across the States. I was full of envy initially, and self-pity. How cool would it be to explore nature like that? To just abandon all of this mental anguish and selfishness and empty myself of me in the great outdoors?

But then I was like, you know what, I have a pretty great thing going on, too. I'm exploring in my own way. Fuck, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't still a wee bit jealous, but I'm happy for him. He's still a good writer. Short and sweet, but captivating.

I always admired Raymond Carver and Hemingway. Of course I'm the polar opposite, but I'm learning to cut and crop. Just not here.

Today when I awakened I was pretty excited. Okay, it is nerdy, but each year, I get so excited when my birthday week has arrived. I log onto The Writer's Almanac that Sunday and I head to July 23rd. I love the suspense (I was never the kid to unwrap Christmas presents ahead of time--the surprise is everything, in my opinion), even if I do check to see if some small oversight allowed my week to be published ahead of time. Of course this never happens. Once I check the page, there's usually some disappointment. I liked "my" poem this year, though. I enjoyed it, though I wasn't knocked out by it or anything. I can't say I thought the selected fellow birthday sharers or events occurring on my birthday were all that entertaining, but each year it's something to look forward to.

I'm not so self-centered as to only frequent Garrison Keillor's site on my birthday, mind you.

Yesterday was nice. My old friend from undergrad, Joe Guenzer, came over to the house in Marin, which will go on the market soon. He and I met freshman year, we were both in band (I was on the dance team, he played the sousa); we both lived in Keyes, a frosh dormitory, on the same floor even. We were both bio and premed I think. Now of course I'm envious (good heavens, do I detect an alarmingly gross pattern?) because he's going to be a third-year med student. I would be if I hadn't gone and pissed the first few years on my college existence away. I was a trainwreck the first few years, but I think I had it coming and I'm all the stronger (certainly all the more certain of what I like and what I don't, of who I am) for it.

Anyway, I need to stop kicking myself for my past mistakes, and focus on the present. So Joe's a med student, and it was absolutely thrilling to be able to talk to him about his experiences. He's currently doing his medical rotation on a tele floor at St. Mary's in San Francisco; it's his first inpatient rotation. Oh my gosh, how I would love that (not tele specifically, but to be there 65-70 hours per week including working on-call in admitting on the weekends...oh wow!). He interacts with the patients alone, though they are under supervision by an actual MD, of course. But it's so amazing. Did you know they can thread a catheter through the femoral and run it to the liver in order to deliver chemotherapy to the specific site in order to target mets? I mean, what science can do for people nowadays...Joe said he had this patient, this older woman who was married, and her condition looked terminal, the prognosis, poor...and though she couldn't really communicate secondary to tumor removal on her face, her husband just adored her and was doing everything he could for her, including communicating with and for her. I just love patients like that.

And I love the ones who haven't a soul in the world, too. I don't discriminate...I might even look out for the ones without friends or family even more, since those that have some support don't need as much looking after as the ones who don't.

But it's those stories that give me hope, that tell me I am pursuing the right path, reminding me of why I want to be a doctor. And that's why it was so amazing to talk to Joe. We went on this great hike, up my hill and down it so we overlooked the Golden Gate and the Richmond Bridge, and then down it, along Tiburon Boulevard and the Bay, back up. We were sweating bullets when we arrived at the house; honestly, I felt like I had just jumped in a pool. But it was so beautiful outside, oh I had a great time. And I love learning doctor stuff--like what the lab values on the grid signify (he taught me the CBC ones, Chemistry, Clotting...).

It's just wicked cool stuff. It makes my brain excited.

I am also excited that I might be surrounded by people who are body nerds like me. In pre-med, I felt a bunch of the kids weren't doing it because they loved it...they were super competitive and focused, but passion was not the driving force. In med school, you're in--Joe says people are less competitive and more supportive. It's hard for me at times to be talking about what turns me on with people who are in to different things...like anatomy and physio was so amazing for me. And I just went to the Marine Mammal Center in the Marin Headlands and saw a vet and a vet tech doing post-mortems on some sea lion pups...they were split down the center, but their insides were gorgeous. And I feel like a bit of a side-show freak at times, because I'm not sick or a serial-killer wannabe or anything. I love animals and I've been known to tear up and say a silent prayer to God when I see a dead animal on the side of the road...but the body is truly incredible. It honestly blows my mind. I have all this sensitivity and compassion inside of me and couple that with a penchant for short stories and medicine and I guess you've got a future doctor/writer in the making.

I mean, hello William Carlos Williams.

Oh gosh I will be on top of the world when I get into med school. I will be excited beyond belief when I can actually start to help and heal people, and also support them when their bodies can no longer mend.

Yay yay yay I can't wait to be a med student!!!

On the floor in my bathroom on my makeshift bed next to Cassie...will write more tomorrow, so sleepy...

books i'm giving away

This is just for me...books I'm giving away from my childhood/adolescence/young adulthood:

hairstyles of the damned/joe meno
the facts speak for themselves/brock cole
charming billy/alice mcdermott
like the red panda/andrea seigel
reading lolita in tehran/azar nafisi
double decker: double act and bad girls/jaqueline wilson
cheaper by the dozen/frank gilbreth jr & ernestine gilbreth carey
belles on their toes/frank b.gilbreth jr. & ernestine gilbreth carey
i know why the caged bird sings/maya angelou
the godfather/mario puzo (the one book that I don't think is better than the movie!)
cat's eye/margaret atwood
max's choice/cr. by francine pascal
the robber bride/margaret atwood
bridget jones's diary/helen fielding
the count of monte cristo/alexandre dumas
sense and sensibility/jane austen
galileo, science and the church/jerome j langford
dancing on the edge/han nolan
the norton introduction to poetry/j. paul hunter
priestess of avalon/marion zimmer bradley
ten poems to last a lifetime/roger housden
alias grace/margaret atwood
the bluest eye/toni morrison
the complete short stories of mark twain
falling leaves/adeline yen mah
the miracle worker/william gibson
the grapes of wrath/steinbeck
mythology/edith hamilton
the beford introduction to literature/michael meyer (::sob::)
lord of the rings/tolkien
wicked/gregory maguire
a man without a country/kurt vonnegut
wuthering heights/emily bronte (i had two;))
man's search for meaning/viktor frankl
three cups of tea/greg mortenson & david oliver relin
the best american essays 1995/jamaica kincaid ed.
the best american essays 1999/edward hoagland ed.
the best american essays 2000/alan lightman ed.
tennessee williams' letters to donald windham 1940-1965/ed. and with comments by donald windham
awakenings/oliver sacks (and I just told you to read him...I want to keep it, but I have to get rid of a ton of my stuff, and I'm keeping one of his books...it's like I hated to give up part of my Atwood collection, but I have to because I haven't any place to put these mountains of books)
anne sexton: a self-portrait in letters/ed by linda gray sexton and lois ames (ugh!)

Over the years, I've lost countless books to friends, lending them to borrower's. I don't mind that so much, I suppose. But it's hard for me to let go of my books. I know it sounds silly, but when I was growing up, my books were my friends. I moved around so much, it was easy for me to find security and safety and lose myself in them. Fictional characters could be invisible friends, they could know the loneliness I felt, I could relate to the things they felt. So if I hoard anything, it is books.

In fact, I gave away loads more than I have listed here...my mother has made a few trips to Goodwill today alone.

I am donating them all to Goodwill, so I know my loved books will be in good hands. It is just damn hard to let go.

I want to have this list so when I have a job and make my own money I can buy some of these books back one day. More than anything I want to have a library, this massive wall of books, in my home. I want to have a sanctuary of sorts.

night terrors

Now I am having a lot of trouble trying to identify what I am feeling toward the father and the sister.

The sister is very angry with both my mother and me. She thinks I am going off to New York (I may or may not--the original plan was for me to go, then the father promised he would work on the marriage before I found out from his computer history that he was engaging in homosexual acts with other men, and so I decided to stay...but what with all that has recently gone down, I'm not sure if this will be good for me) to run away and leave her with the mess.

Now I have a huge problem with this. The sister, like the father, is selfish. She was informed that certain things on the father's computer were indicative of a major betrayal, but she said she did not wish to know about such things. The sister is a coward, and the older sister has historically done all she (I) can to protect her from hurt and harm.

Now she's just pissing me off.

I guard this deep, ugly secret from her, I try to let her have her relationship with the father and not say anything negative. But she is currently making herself the martyr. I have a big problem with this latest act.

The sister is self-absorbed and always has been. She has poor relationships with extended relatives, and she spends more time with boyfriends (and she has never had a serious one) than she does with her immediate family. I have comforted her during just about every trial and tribulation. But I have had it.

How dare she be angry with me? How dare she support her father who is in need of emergency psychiatric care? Does she understand anything whatsoever about psychiatric/mental illnesses? No, she just knows what she wants (the father's money), and she does not want to fall out of favor, lest she be cut off.

Cowardly cowardly custard, the sister.

The father is still a terrorist.

Do you have nightmares each night? I do. Do you daydream that your father will kill you and your mother? I do. Do you sometimes think it would be easier if he fell over and died of a heart attack like his father before him? I do, as awful as that might sound to you.

I have compassion for people with mental illness. I want to be a psychiatrist. But the father is pretty sick, and this makes him pretty evil. And he won't get help, no matter how many times I ask.

I know it shall get worse before it gets better.

The police chief even knows about the situation. He said he had met my father and worried he had a chemical imbalance. I hope we never have to need him at our house.

The father is coming to the house on Saturday. He says he will do as he pleases. Today he writes a man who posted an ad on craigslist, wanting to suck dick and 69. So he will live under the same roof as me and my mother and he will go out and fuck random men and he will come back and possibly hit me again and I will not know what to do.

I am 24 and I feel so old and tired. I feel like I want normalcy, some calm, but I don't know if I'll ever be able to attain it.

I want to fly far, far away from here. I want to be all air and light, to float above this hell.

I want to be free.

God, please help me, please save us from this nightmare.

a list from mcsweeney's

Titles From The Baby-Sitters Club: The College Years Series.

BY GRACE DOBUSH

- - - -

Claudia Goes to Class Wearing Sweatpants With Words On the Backside

Kristy's Softball Friends Don't Buy it That She's Dating a Dude

Dawn and the Unpaid Internship

Stacey Unsuccessfully Hides her Purging

Mary Anne and the Free Credit Card T-shirt

Dawn Gets Into a Heated Discussion On Post-structuralism

Mallory and the Trouble With Unaccepted Transfer Credits

Claudia and the RIAA Subpoena

Mary Anne Narcs On Her Roommate

Gosh knows why, but I used to read the books in The Baby-Sitters Club series, so I thought it would be funny to post this list from McSweeney's.

going to bed...more tomorrow...

tuesday afternoon

Today I had a psychotherapy appointment. It went well, and I feel markedly lighter.

I'm sleeping beside my little Cassie, and my heart is at peace.

I love you, God. Thank you.

narcissistic personality disorder

I just had a conversation with the father.

He told me he neither needs nor wants anything from me.

He told me to get out of his house.

I feel so alone. I feel like no one can understand to live with a parent suffering from narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). Do you know there is no treatment? That these people don't get better, but rather progressively worse as time passes?

I know the father is fully capable of cutting me out of his life for good. He stopped talking to his only brother when he was 17, no joke. People with NPD don't feel empathy like you and I do.

My dad needs help. Sometimes I get angry with God because I've prayed for him for so many years and he just keeps growing worse and worse. Maybe I should spend my time praying for myself, that I have the strength to get away from him and not need his approval.

The father doesn't love me. The father doesn't love anything but himself.

I would have been better off if I never knew the father.

He thinks because he financially supported me he should be my idol, I should stand before him in awe. And that he can kick me, he can tear me down and call me crazy and he can threaten to do whatever he pleases and I'll take it.

I have for so many years. I have been suffering for so long. I was thinking, God let this happen--but I realize that I did, that by staying and taking his verbal abuse and by believing in it that I gave the father power. God has probably been watching, waiting for the day I am brave enough to break free.

If you want to read about what my life is like, you can here: http://narcissistic-personality.suite101.com/article.cfm/parents_with_npd

no eye, no heart drops from its monstrous socket

Today's poem is by Sarah J. Sloat

Curtains

For weeks I have been waking up
in the living room curtains,
their shrug and frump,

and there
I have not met a single person.

In the folds where I am rolled,
some mornings I have seen the Andes,
strands of wax, and in the stitches

once I made out a line of ants
carrying their minute burdens.
Everything that appears possible

can be turned into something impossible.
If a face appears, if I recognize a posture,
I raise a hand to flatten it.

A tassel bunches the damask
like the tie of a robe,
but when it’s loosened

no legs fall out, no eye,
no heart drops
from its monstrous socket.

-----

Sometimes (these days) I write something and when I awaken the next day, I am dismayed to feel that slipping of feet, the loss of ground once stood.
Sometimes I feel like I should be feeling something true, something deep like the Pacific. Instead I'm standing head above water in the shallow end of the pool.
It's the pool and not my pool because this house was never mine at all. It was the father's, not my father's. My mother said today, "It's like you're thinking about it clinically" when I was speaking about the father. That distance, those words. It is the heavy thud of waves crashing upon the dykes--nothing can seep through, not even the dullest thorn. It is a story, it is a film. It is not my life sometimes, but her life.
I convince myself I am good at this adaptation, that my daily routine lacks stability and so does my life. I was a nomad, I have no town to call home. My home is an unhome.
I always wanted to meet Francie Nolan. I thought before we were the same. Her dad was an alcoholic who didn't get better. She loved books because they gave her life color, some beauty, some way of finding it growing up through the cement, an umbrella tree against all odds.

Sometimes I stay locked, all potential energy. Sometimes my feelings are put on hold, a receiver I meant to pick up but I keep finding other things to do till I forgot you were on hold in the first place.

I love you, God.

Sometimes I feel small.

Also, there was an Amber Alert on television. A one year-old girl in Novato was kidnapped by the father who beat her mother's head in with a baseball bat till her soul went someplace my eyes can't see. I pray the police find her safe and sound and that she never remembers seeing the things she saw and that someone good takes care of her and she knows that her mother loved her but it's not the only love she'd ever know. Please let her be alright, God. And let her mother be free from all suffering and pain, and be waiting for someday when she'll be reunited with her baby.

Saturday Night

Headed to bed, just wanted to keep to my routine.

It might not seem impressive to you, but just that I can remember to do this each day is some kind of wonderful...I think I give up on myself too much--I never used to do that as a kid. I was this crazy little spunky go-getter, always up for a challenge. I want to find that within myself again, because it feels good to demand more from myself and then deliver.

thoughts on one of the x chromosome donors

I am still standing straight. At this point, I'm convinced it would take quite a lot to knock me down. I've certainly had my practice at this;) I'm pretty sensitive, and a small thing can get me down I suppose, and I don't know if it's my defense mechanisms or what--it seems like things that impact people in an emotional way (e.g. a death in the family, learning your dad is gay and having affairs with gay men he meets off of craigslist) seem to affect me in a different way.

The one annoying part is that my dad has called me crazy several times, saying I'm depressed, that he needs to move from his house and come back to the one I live in with my mother. Little does he know, I know all about his dirty little secrets, and I have no desire to live under the same roof as him. He says I'm depressed because I still don't have a job and I haven't worked on my med school secondaries like I should be, but I'm still a bit immature in that the more he nags at me to do something, the less apt I am to do it. And the whole thing is so hypocritical. I know no one ever said life was going to be fair--I'm not calling that wonderful fact of life into question. But when you see this person who makes up one genetic half of you, this person who laughs sardonically at my mother, calling her fat and all sorts of horrible things (when she's recently lost 70+ pounds), this perpetrator of years' worth of domestic violence, it really makes you sick in the pit of your stomach. And every day I have to tell myself, you're nothing like him, Katie. You're compassionate, you are kind; you are a strong woman, and you will never let him drag you down. I think a big part of the problem is that my dad has narcissistic personality disorder, which you should look up in the DSM-IV. Not only is my dad unwilling to seek psychiatric help, the prognosis for these individuals is terrible--medications don't really help, nor does psychotherapy. They just pretty much live these horrible ugly lives wherein they need to put others down and put themselves up.

A part of me is afraid that my sister might have this, too. And to be honest, though I wish to be a psychiatrist and work with patients who are seeking help and want to get better, I don't wish to live under the same roof with people who have zero self awareness and don't care how much pain and hurt they inflict upon others. It's sick, and I don't want to run the risk of becoming that way, too. I want to stay healthy.

I think moving to New York would be the best possible thing I could do for myself, yet I'm terrified when it comes to leaving my mother behind. My dad is pretty sick, and I don't think he means to be evil deep down, but the sickness makes him that way. Sometimes I daydream that my dad will snap and murder my mother, then murder me.

the moment between the darkness and first light

The Place I Want To Get Back To

by Mary Oliver

is where
in the pinewoods
in the moments between
the darkness

and first light
two deer
came walking down the hill
and when they saw me

they said to each other, okay,
this one is okay,
let's see who she is
and why she is sitting

on the ground like that,
so quiet, as if
asleep, or in a dream,
but, anyway, harmless;

and so they came
on their slender legs
and gazed upon me
not unlike the way

I go out to the dunes and look
and look and look
into the faces of the flowers;
and then one of them leaned forward

and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life
bring to me that could exceed
that brief moment?
For twenty years

I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
Such gifts, bestowed,
can't be repeated.

If you want to talk about this
come to visit. I live in the house
near the corner, which I have named
Gratitude.

"The Place I Want To Get Back To" by Mary Oliver, from Thirst. © Beacon Press, 2006. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

This is from The Writer's Almanac. Tomorrow is Alice Munro's birthday. Happy Birthday to a beloved short story writer!

Oh, dude! It's freakin' Oliver Sacks b-day today. COOL! If you have yet to read some of his writings, you must direct yourself to your nearest bookseller and peruse a copy of one of his books. He is not only a genius, but he can write in a way that makes sense to the non-genius. Since I want to be a psychiatrist, I might find him a little more relevant than most, but it's a testament to his ability to write that they have this renown neurologist's bio up on Garrison Keillor's site. Please, please read his stuff. He's brilliant. I especially loved An Anthropologist on Mars
(from Sacks' site: Seven paradoxical tales of patients adapting to neurological conditions including autism, Asperger’s syndrome, amnesia, epileptic reminiscence, Tourette’s syndrome, acquired colorblindness, and the restoration of vision after congenital blindness). In a way he challenges the reader to think about her perception of a person afflicted with a certain disorder. For instance, a man with Tourette's syndrome, exhibiting severe tics, practices medicine as a surgeon (and no, he doesn't have several malpractice suits on his back). And society is really behind in this regard in my opinion. Civil rights activists have pushed issues regarding gender and race, but if you ask me, the mentally ill continue to be disenfranchised and voiceless in this country--who is speaking out on their behalf? How many of you have called someone crazy, or tell someone she or he must have ADD when they are acting hyper or something? I am sensitive to all of this--an addict is a person, a bipolar-stricken person isn't scary. People are people, we are all human.

And who the hell are you or I to judge anyone, anyhow?

From The Writer's Almanac also:

It's the birthday of the man called "the poet laureate of medicine," neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks, (books by this author) born in London in 1933. He has devoted his career to studying people with unusual neurological disorders, and writing about them so that they seem like real people and not just case studies. His first book wasMigraine (1970), about migraine headaches, and it got good reviews. In the 1960s, he started working with survivors of the sleeping sickness epidemic that occurred between 1916 and 1927. These people had been in institutions ever since, still alive but in unresponsive bodies. Sacks noticed that many people had similar reactions as people suffering from Parkinson's disease, so he decided to treat them with the drug levodopa. Many of them woke up and were cognizant for the first time in 40 years. But it was extremely stressful for many of them to have lost so much time like that, and most of them went back to sleep. Sacks wrote a book about it, Awakenings (1973). In 1990, it was made into a movie starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams.

He went on to write several more books in the same vein, including Seeing Voices (1989), The Island of the Colorblind (1997), and the best-selling book of essays The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985), about people living with a variety of neurological disorders. His most recent book is Musicophilia (2007), about the sometimes bizarre connections between music and the brain, and the ways in which music operates on everyone from people with severe neurological disorders to ordinary people who can't get a tune out of their heads.

hover in a veil of ethers.

I'm headed to bed early this evening. Again, I nearly forgot to post today.

From versedaily.org:

How to Sleep

Let your mountainous forehead
with its veins of bright ore
ease down, the deep line
between your brows flatten,
unruffle the small muscles
below your temples, above
your jaws, let the grimace
muscles in your cheekbones
go, the weeping muscles
sealing your eyes. Die into
the pillow, calm in the knowledge
that you will someday cease, soon
or late, late or soon, the song
you're made of will stop, your body
played out, the currents pulsing
through your brain drained
of their power, their purpose,
will frizzle out through
your fingertips, private sparks
leaping weakly onto the sheets
where you lay breathing
and then not breathing.
Lay your head down and relax
into it: death. Accept it.
Trick yourself like this.
Hover in a veil of ethers.
Call it sleep.

Copyright © 2009 Dorianne Laux All rights reserved
from River Styx

I'm exhausted and I don't really like my choice of poetry this evening, nor do I like this pseudo-attempt at consistency. But you know what? Instead of tearing myself apart here each day, I'm going to let go of that perfectionistic tendency and just allow myself to be human.

A funny thing about me is I enjoy being silly even if no one is watching, just because it's lovely to laugh. I was running on the treadmill this morning, and Okay Go's Here It Goes treadmill video came on and I started doing the routine-ish as I was running and I could see my reflection in the wall length mirrors in that room and it was just plain old fun. Seriously, you would have laughed if you had been there--in that moment, I felt as if my exhilaration, my joy would have been contagious to even the grumpiest of grumpy souls.

Also, thank you for this day. I love you, God; I love each living thing on this planet.

Goodnight and I'm off--goodnight and go--Imogen Heap has a new album coming out in August; I'm so excited. I've listened to Frou Frou and Heap's own album so many times; I'm sure the tracks are in my top 25 most played on iTunes.

I love you, whoever you are. May God bless you and may you love and experience pure joy as I did today.

Can you tell I'm quite sleepy, literally drooping, wilting above my computer?

mindfulness

I must confess, I very nearly neglected to post today. It would have been significant to me if I had, since I would have made two days of my goal.

I remembered to write earlier this afternoon, and I thought to myself during the day...I should write about this, I should write. I have made a ritual out of delaying and extending and procrastination. I used to repeat this phrase when I was anxious and thinking about what I needed to do that I hadn't even commenced working on: Procrastination Nation. If there were an island consisting of only procrastinators, everyone would wind up starving to death. I think part of it is my mind, my abstract as opposed to linear thinking. If I could make a google map of my thoughts, they'd be like tree branches, with the last thought stretching far from the core.

So anyway, I imagined writing about this moment I had today. I was driving in the car with my two dogs, going to pick my mom up from her colonoscopy, and I was singing along to the radio (I have a penchant for this, even though I'm far from decent--I absolutely adore singing), and the sky was this happy bright blue and the sun was radiating its warmth through my body and I just said aloud at a light, I love you, God. And I was so full of gratitude and peace in that moment. I know from my studies and explorations of alternative religions that peace and happiness aren't merely things that can come, that I must work to attain these states. And I thought, there is a lot of negative stuff going on around me at current. But I love this life, I have two wonderful dogs, an amazingly kind, generous boyfriend, and I have my health. If I choose to focus on that negative energy, it will draw me in like a rip tide, and before I know it, I'll be composed of the very stuff that makes me sad and hurt now, only I'll be the one inflicting these things on others.

And I really don't want to do that.

I think that's a choice we all have. We can take negative childhood experiences and have insight into the events and know that it's not your fault, it's just the way it is. And you can elect to let it seep down into the vessels inside you and let it tint your heart so its cold and the edges dull. Or you can weave an invisible shield, a cloak stronger than any verbal or physical abuse, than any neglect. And you can deflect that ugliness, so it deflects off of you and bounces back to the caster. It's not merely about being tough. There's a vulnerability in the whole process, especially when you love the people that try to hurt you and you pray to God they can get help. But you know you can't help them anymore, perhaps you never could, and for them to get help they have to want it.

My life experiences have shaped me, yes, but moreso my reaction and action. I am not merely a product of my environment. If I was, I'd be off the deep end by now. That's why I think I want to be a psychiatrist. Because I love people, I enjoy thinking about things, and I want to try to support and aid people in a really human way. And if I want to do these things, I must demonstrate I have the ability to utilize positive coping mechanisms. I mean, I couldn't preach one thing and practice another.

It is in this way that this year has indeed been golden, like I expected it to be (23, my golden birthday). I've learned a lot about myself; indeed, I've even surprised myself by my ability to ask for help when I needed it and also by helping myself.

I am so grateful to God and for this life and all the life that surrounds me. I want to be happy and I want to work to attain this state, because I believe I can do anything I put my mind to--and what's the point of putting myself to work in order to be miserable?

Love,
kt

happiness hazy through shutters

the innocents

sun pierces white wooden slats so that light scatters
like children playing outdoors when voices demand
they come in for dinner. the chosen leaves

touched by golden rays are transparent and thin.
i remember stepping over the door frame begrudgingly, but already
then i knew that duty precedes preferences.

now it's not so easily discernible, and duty shifts
as adults move the invisible rules in the grown up's own
chutes and ladders. some days the duty to myself and that thin

piece of sunlight called happiness hazy
through shutters is almost enough to empty the leaves of their matter,
that tangible weight. mostly the leaves are not transparent,

since mostly it feels like drowning. the fog
rolls in over hills like thick waves donning their caps.





----just a start to something, I don't know. I promised to post daily! I'm keeping my word.

starting anew

Not too long ago, I always had my creative outlets. When I was younger, I loved to sketch, to write poems and stories, and to dance. I still love all of these things, but I've traded these passions in for avoidance tactics. I realize that need for an outlet will never die, nor is disallowing myself from engaging in these activities going to promote good mental health.

I've been cheating myself.

Writing is a personal thing, it always has been for me. Sure, I write a lot of crap. I never could keep a diary--this is analogous to my general lack of life structure. I brush my teeth every day but that's basically the only sameness to the days as they pass. I lack routine, repetition. But when I sit down to do something that was previously daunting (say writing when I haven't in a bit--it's ugly at first, or pirouetting after lapses in dancing--it's a mess), I find myself joyful, happy.

There exists so much beauty in this world, and so much ugliness at the same time. For without the ugly, beauty would be nonexistent. Profound, I know. But honestly, this year I want to start fresh. I always say that, and nothing ever comes of it. But the more I think about my life over the past year, the more I replay the ugliness inside my skull till, the more I enable my bad habits and behavior: I am the victim as I subject myself to the past. And this is another sort of ugliness in and of itself. I want to be free, and I want to choose to be happy.

So I am committing myself to a new project: I shall post something each day. It may be short, it may only be a brief account of the day, but it will be something to build upon, a foundation of sorts.

The past was a void. The year of my 23rd birthday was the one, I told myself last 23 July. It was my golden birthday, after all. It had to be a golden year. But I felt alone at school (I did that to myself in part), isolated. My parents weren't getting along, my dad filed for divorce and took it back and said he was going to again. My beloved dog, Cassie, was 15 and showing signs that her life may not be long on this earth. I found out my father was cheating on my mother...with men. All these things, all these ugly skeletons in my closet, all the things I can't tell anyone...well, the page can sit with this secrets and know them. The page can hold its judgment of me and of my family, it doesn't talk back. On the page, I can be myself. It's frightening and scary. I mean, I want to scream sometimes or shout one thousand venomous spears and ask God why but I can't do these things. So I hold it in, hold it in, can't tell anyone, and then it comes to a head and I've screamed and said something horrid and mean and I'm chipping away at myself and my desire to strive to be better. When I don't write, I don't have any way of writing down the bones (not my line, stolen), any tangible manner of letting the ugly seep out of me. I hold my father's betrayal inside and keep it together for my mother and sit stoically and keep my head above water. But inside it's all tsunamis and chaos, lightning and gulls circling panicked overhead.

I told the only person I've talked to about all this in some small way that it was okay because I haven't cried. I measure things that way. For years I didn't shed a tear, like when I went to three different high schools in three different states, when I felt like I hadn't any friends like me, that I didn't fit. I didn't cry because to me, this is weakness. And then college came and I was always crying. I fucked up my direct path to becoming a doctor, I screwed up my social life, I was so lost. And now I'm back to that drought. It's a funny thing.

I think there's a lot to me that people don't know because I keep myself so guarded, so hidden, while appearing perfectly vulnerable at the same time. I learned to be a bit of a chameleon with all the moving, how to fit my square peg into a round hole. I went through a phase where I was fed up with that and did the exact opposite--daring someone to make me move, going right when someone said left. Hopefully now I have that out of my system. It's hard to trust the world, but I know that's an excuse. I can sit here and feel badly for myself and tell you all my ugly secrets, all of the hurt and the domestic violence and the suffering. I can tell you that's why I can't let you in, why I won't call you back or why I play computer games instead of dealing with life. Or I can extend feelers into the universe, and wrap tendrils around the safe, strong trees, instead of gravitating to the diseased ones that eat me up. I am not proud of how I've dealt with things of late. I can also tell you I wouldn't wish what has happened on my worst enemy. Sure, I am hurting. But I can't deal with this the way addicts do. I can't turn to an event (e.g. gambling) or a substance (e.g. alcohol--by the way, I don't drink anymore; I used it as a crutch for my social anxieties before and I hope everyone who put me down and made fun of me can realize that for every person who does this, there may be someone scared and hurting below that surface exterior) and take the intensity of the mood change these things produce and swap it in for intimacy. People need people. By avoidance, by not communicating with friends and by disallowing myself to write things that could potentially hurt myself and someone else because the things may be vile or may be secrets only I feel I can know, I am removing myself from humanity. I am cutting myself off. And that, that is the worst crime of all.

I need to learn how to trust people, how to believe. I need to have faith.

I do believe in love and compassion, in empathy for all things. So I need to trust in my own love and know that sometimes I can't fix myself, and that inaction only makes everything worse.

Right now I am writing this for myself, but maybe eventually I can share these pages and trust that I'm as bad as I make myself out to be.

It's also funny in that I want to be a psychiatrist at this point, and I have all of these tools for everyone else to use, all this compassion for others. I need to have a little bit for myself and employ my own damn techniques and positive coping mechanisms. So for anyone who has had an overweight doctor lecturing them about the dangers of hypertension or tipping the scale a bit too much, I'm a wannabe doc who is going to try and correct this hypocrisy in myself, and I'm gonna be a bit kinder and a lot more active in my quest to be mentally and physically healthy.

Love
k


Also, how gorg is this poem? I feel like yeah, you don't have to be the victim, but sometimes it's okay to wish yourself out for a minute and just sit with those feelings, so you can move on and out of the shit rather than just stew in it:

1999

We were driving to your funeral
& our father was not crying
because he has a way
of tying ribbons around grief.
It was the year we learned
the piercing that prefaces the blood
holds the most delicate of darknesses.
Then it was the year we opened
all our faucets & waited for the sea
to bleed to death. Then it was the year
we set fire to your mitt. Then, suddenly
the year we started to believe
every thorn was just a bridge.
Then the year all we talked about
was boxing. Then the year
my stomach hurt all year, & then
the year no one spoke of you.

If there were an antonym for suicide
we could all choose when to be born.
I would have been born after that day
so I could not remember you.
So my fingers would stop pointing
at all the things that aren't there.

Kevin A. González