Wednesday, February 26, 2014

How Bunny Won The Internet

Step One: Take sleeping pill.

Step Two: Doze.

Step Three: Awaken with two separate ideas for poems.

Step Four: Write them on your tablet.

Step Five: Sleep.

Step Six: Look at what you wrote the next day.

Step Seven: Cringe.

Step Eight: Post the first one on your poetry blog against your better judgment.

Step Nine: Keep the second one hidden, as it contains no capitalization, punctuation, or even coherent thought toward the end.

Step Ten: Confess your sins to your writer friend, FangBunny.

Step Eleven: Hold your breath while she reads your blog to see the bad--but at least properly punctuated--poem you posted.

Step Twelve: Cackle like a madwoman when she says, "It's not awful at all. But god...all the points to you for brooding spectacularly."

Step Thirteen: Post your friend's comment on your OTHER blog for posterity, duh.

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Be Careful What You Wish For....

Remember how I was bitching that I had no ideas for writing? Remember how I said the Universe was strangely silent on the matter? Remind my ass to never do that shit again.

A one-off comment to FangBunny earlier today sparked an idea for a short story. I wrote 14 pages of the story--some 5,000 words--and realized, nope, there's no way this is gonna be a "short story" because I wasn't even halfway through it at that point yet. So I was all, "Ok, this is gonna be a novella." Then I wrote another 2,000+ words' worth of notes for it and realized, FML, it's going to have to be a novel to make sure all the threads I've picked up are properly tied up in the end.

So...I have an idea for a novel ON TOP OF the blog/novel thing I'm already working on. Apparently, poetry has been abandoned for the time being while I'm the Universe's bitch again.

My biggest fear is that I'm going to lose interest and not do this thing. I hope not, but I may. I usually end up doing just that. I suppose, though, if the Universe is making me its bitch once more, it's not going to let me give up on it. It'll squeeze me until it wrings the whole fucking story out of me, drop by drop. Part of me hopes it doesn't because that is one PAINFUL ass process, let me tell you. But a bigger part hopes it does because I'm really excited about this. Hopefully, the excitement will last 'til I'm finished. Or at least until I'm far enough along that I can't justify quitting.

I'm also terrified because this is a daunting task that I may or may not be up to, but I'm going to throw everything I've got at it and hope I can handle it.

No, goddammit, I'm going to fucking handle it because I can't handle anything else in my life, and I refuse to fuck THIS up, too. Why? This quote by my idol, Sylvia motherfucking Plath herself, is why:

"What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age."

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Things Got Bad & Things Got Worse, Guess You Know The Tune....

So...I have worked 37 of the last 60 hours, and I am on the overnight again tonight. And possibly tomorrow. I am apparently the only dispatcher who works at this joint now.

*Sigh*

I am bordering on delirium.

Hell, maybe I should try to write.

I'd laugh, but I haven't been having any luck with it otherwise, so it's not like I could do much worse at this point, I suppose.

I did manage another short chapter of my experimental novel thing--the fourth one since I started it last month--so I am clearly making blazing progress there. Last Wednesday, I also wrote an 11-page conversation with Lucifer which I intended to turn into either a short story or a poem, but it's pretty obvious now, looking back over it, that it was written in a sort of feverish haze, so I'm not entirely sure I can do anything with it at all.

It's been so long since I tried to do anything real, anything with meaning, that I don't know that I can still do it. I was never that good to start with, but I've deteriorated over the years. Now I have a brief flash or two of something that's decent, but it's buried underneath mountains of bullshit to the point where I have to wonder if it's worth even attempting to dig it out or not.

Blech.

The Universe is being strangely silent on the matter for now, though, so I'm having to muddle through this alone at the moment. I feel like I'm having to relearn how to do something that I was, perhaps, never that good at to start with, and I hate it.

I've been trying to read more. The 19th century--the Victorians, mainly. They're the ones I love the most. I'm also reading a Kindle book that my dear friend L. sent me for Valentine's Day. (I sent her back the first book of the Grisha trilogy on Kindle as her Valentine's Day gift because I desperately want to addict other people to this freaking series, too.) I was doing well with the reading, too, until I started running out of meds. I've been rationing again because I don't know when I'll be able to get more because I'm broke as per usual, and I'll be goddamned if I'm asking my mother to get them for me again, given how much bullshit I have to take from her every time she does.

I have 3 Wellbutrin left in the bottle. I haven't had one in 2 days. Still plenty of Lamictal, thank God, but it's the Wellbutrin that I, arguably, need the most. I rarely get very manic nowadays. It's either a decent mood or black, black despair. Because, you know, why not?

Blinding headaches. My ADD is off the fucking charts. I can't even read anymore. It's so hard to love the English language like I do--flawed though it may be, though I am, too, so I suppose it's fitting--and not even be able to fucking read.

I talk to FangBunny nearly every night about writing. Well, and other things. Writing. Books. Angst. Our own pretension. Beautiful men. That kind of thing.

Last night, I ended up on the phone with my friend B. in Huntsville for two hours, from like 2 am until 4 am. About a third of the conversation was me being bitter and angsty because I have apparently reverted to my teen years or something. Another third was me drifting in and out of sleep. And the last third was me sending him fucking Tumblr links on Yahoo and listening to his reactions because yay, Internet? But at some point during the "drifting in and out of sleep" portion of the conversation, I said one of the most insightful things I've come up with lately. Ok, well, I didn't say it; I slurred it. I was about three-quarters asleep, after all. "I wish brooding were a sport," I said, "'cuz I'd win, like, everything."

Eloquently phrased? No. A wonderful assessment of the reason for a lot of my problems being because I stay in my own head too much? Yes.

But, alas, all my friends are asleep now, and I'm here listening to CCR and being angry because I can't write. Well, anything other than this shit, that is. *Sigh*

The good news, I suppose, is that L. is coming next week to spend several days. She's going to dye my hair black for me again, since it's been, like, 9 months since it was last dyed. I took some pics with my new webcam for Facebook last week, and it is painfully obvious in those just how two-toned my hair currently is. We may even go to the bar for old time's sake. I won't drink, of course. Well, no more than a daiquiri, or maybe two if they're particularly good that night. She can do the drinking. I'll drive. I don't need to drink, anyhow, and I get no pleasure from it anymore, anyway, (fucking meds), so there's no sense in wasting liquor. Besides, it's not like she hasn't driven my drunk ass around a million times over the years. It's the least I can do.

But until then, I'm stuck here with my own thoughts, and that can be quite dangerous indeed.

Oh, well. Maybe I can actually read tonight? Who the fuck knows anymore?

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

I Hate Everything, Most Of All Me

Well...that lasted real long. *Eyeroll*

Sometimes, I get going well and start feeling good about myself. You'd think I'd stop doing that after a while, considering that every time I do it, something happens to remind me that I'm a fucking emotional cripple.

I don't even know what caused it this time. I was doing ok, and now I hate everyone--especially me--and everything--especially my writing.

Ok, that's not entirely true. I've been catching shit from my parents (my mother, especially) lately, and I can only let it roll off my back like raindrops for so long until it starts seeping in.

"You're so smart, and you went to school for so long. You could do better if you would."

"You can do anything you want, if you just want to bad enough."

"There's nothing wrong with you. You just think there is." (That got an "And I suppose I convinced the doctor there was something wrong when there isn't, too?" out of me. I should've known better than to say anything, though, because the answer was "Yes, you did.")

"You need to get out and get a job." Because, clearly, all these 14+ hour days I pull do not count as a "job" in her world.

There's a lot more, but it's all along those lines, so there's not much point in rehashing it over and over again.

You know, I don't talk about what's wrong with me to people often. And I pretty much NEVER say anything about it to my parents because that is the exact type of bullshit I get. I'm not asking to be coddled. I'm not asking for pity. But it would be nice to have it fucking acknowledged when I point out that the reason I'm 30 years old and completely and utterly fucked is that I'm having to start my life over completely from scratch because I was sick and blew it all to hell. But, no, it's not that. I'm just lazy, just like I've been accused of being my whole fucking life.

On one hand, I'm glad that people don't get it because it means they've never been there. They've never had to live with a fire burning in their skulls while the reactor melts down, to borrow a metaphor from one of my shitty poems. They've never stared into the abyss and had it stare back. They've never cried out to a God who either wasn't there or didn't fucking care enough to help. They've never hated everyone and everything in the world (but never as much as they hated themselves). They've never had to deal with side effects of pills--thank you, Lamictal, for the vicious acid reflux that makes it impossible for me to even eat or sleep sometimes--or with other people being dismissive of their problems or with the despair that comes with being 30 years old and worse off than you were in college.

But on the other hand, even though I wouldn't wish this shit on anyone, it WOULD be nice if they could spend 10 minutes in my head. I expect they'd STFU then.

Hell, maybe I do use it as an excuse. I don't know. I don't think I do, but I'm not exactly known for my insight into my own behavior/thoughts/emotions/motivations. I just...I've lived without hope. Completely without it. There is nothing in the world worse than that. I don't want to go back to it. It's a wonder I lived through it the first time. Just the thought alone terrifies me. I will do anything and everything to keep from going back to it, and if that means leaning on crutches more than I should, then so be it. And fuck you if you don't like it.

Normal people can cook and clean their houses and take care of themselves and have jobs and pay their bills and have friends and just generally do the daily tasks of life. Hell, even sick people can do it. So why can't I? Am I that broken? Am I that afraid? Or is it some innate character flaw inside of me? Maybe it is. I don't fucking know.

Do normal people live with the specter of their own suicides hanging over their heads all the time? Not their own deaths, mind you. All of us live with that. The thought of dropping dead doesn't really bother me that badly. What terrifies me--what wakes me up in the middle of the night in a cold fucking sweat--is the thought that all hope will abandon me again and I will once more be driven to that place where I can't live with it anymore. Is it normal for people to always have at least 3 easy methods of killing themselves in the backs of their minds all the time, anytime, just in case they can't take it anymore? I suspect not. But maybe it is, though. What the fuck do I know about being normal?

The absolute worst thing of it all, though, is the struggle to write. I want to so badly. There's so much in my head that needs to come out, but I can't do it. I'm overwhelmed by my own words, and none of it comes out even remotely like it needs to, and I just hate myself for it. Everything I write is shit, and I hate it, and I feel like there's some demon or other standing back and laughing at me because I agonize so heavily over something I'm so goddamned bad at.

It's the same old refrain that's been playing in my head my whole life: You're not good enough. You never have been. And no matter what you do, you never will be. You're not good enough.


Well...that was thoroughly uplifting, wasn't it?

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Books Are Important, Kids

I am posting this for multiple reasons.

1.) Because it is true. This IS, in fact, the way I like my men.

2.) To make FangBunny have a heart attack next time she happens across my blog. :D

3.) Aaaaand maybe a little so I'll have it here in a place where the feed is much slower than either my FB or my Tumblr so that I can easily find it again when I need to drool over someone. Just a little, though. *Ahem*


He's not even my usual physical type, but fuck, he's hot, and even more importantly, fuck he's brilliant, and he READS. I don't even know what to do with that. For the longest time, I just thought he was a moderately attractive man who was a little too thin for my taste...and then I saw him quoting metaphysical poets on his Twitter account and promptly dropped dead. When I was revived, I was in love with him, LOL.

I BLAME FANGBUNNY FOR THE ENTIRETY OF THIS.

There's actually a small point I'd like to make, though, aside from the eye-candy bit, which alone makes this whole post worth it. I have never, never, never, never dated a man (or woman) who really read. Not really. And I'm coming to see that that was a huge mistake. Literature, especially everything from the 19th century, and poetry are really, really goddamned motherfucking important to me, and I've basically had enough of being mocked for it.

Don't get me wrong. I am perfectly happy with being alone. In fact, I prefer it because there is so little drama in my life now, OMG. It's glorious. I'm happy, and I get to spend time with my friends who are as well-read (or more so) than I am, and we get to be book snobs, and I don't have to front like I give a shit about things that "normal" people like that bore me to tears, and I don't have to dedicate my time to dealing with other people's issues. You have NO IDEA how amazingly freeing it is.

I love being alone. I love books. I love my friends. And most of all, I love writing. Ok, well, most of the time I love to hate it, but when it's finished, I love having done it. Some people might think it's sad that this is the way I've chosen to go with my life, but I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I'll write, and I'll be happy, and that's all I need.

On the other hand, should I find the one man in the world who didn't watch the Super Bowl yesterday because he was too busy reading Byron and simultaneously rebuilding his old-school muscle car, I might deign to be interested. Especially if he looks like THAT. ^^^^

;)

Monday, February 3, 2014

Conversations Between Writers At 2 AM

FangBunny and I are talking writing on FB, as per usual.

I'm currently discussing my crushing insecurity and totally overblown defensiveness when it comes to my own writing.

Me: Like, in my head, I'm somewhere between Vonnegut and Joseph Heller, but on paper, I can't even manage drunk Jimmy Buffett on a bad day.

Although the more I think about it, the more I think that's an insult to Buffett. Love him or hate him, the man can write amusing and ridiculous novels. Where Is Joe Merchant? is a big favorite.

*Sigh*

By contrast, the last thing *I* wrote was a poem with a "Uranus" joke in it.

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