Salisbury.Fake Life

You Don’t Have To Be Alone To Be Lonely

This one’s going to be a ramble, probably. I know, so surprising.

We’re going to talk about loneliness. Sort of. We’re going to talk about how it’s okay to take time to get to know ourselves and forget about being with other people because we deserve to like who we are.

I seriously hate how self-help-y that sounds. But hear me out. I spent the last two decades learning how to hate myself. Acted on it in various ways I won’t talk about in this post (I’ve discussed it before elsewhere), but it all boiled down to the thought that I’m just average/mediocre/run of the mill not worth anyone’s time. Kept me going for a long time. Or so I thought. What it really did was give me a chronic back ache because I hold my tension in my shoulders and my lower back. Makes aerobics fun.

But what’s the point of this? Let’s focus, Carla. I’ve seen some posts recently from some of my favorite content creators who talked about how they were using this quarantine time to get to know themselves a little better, and I suppose I have, too, and I need to tell you it is

u n c o m f y

Seeing how I’ve spoken to myself for the last half of my life really kind of broke my heart. Surprised me. Kind of like looking in the mirror and noticing you had peanut butter on your face all day. “I really let myself do that?”

But it hasn’t been peanut butter. It’s been self-dragging, self-loathing on a level that is kind of destructive, and just ignoring all the people telling me I’m not trash. “Thank you, but I am. It’s fine. I’ve always been this way.”

I haven’t.

We can try and pinpoint where it all started to go in a direction we didn’t think it should, but that is like trying to pick a watermelon seed out of a pile of watermelon seeds. I’d say a needle in a needlestack, but that’s not accurate enough. You can eventually find the needle you want if you search hard enough for the specific characteristics (size of the eye, length, sharp or not, blah blah blah), but watermelon seeds all look like watermelon seeds. They slip away every time you try to take one off the plate, and then you’re left with chasing it around.

The point of all of this rambling is it’s time we started being okay with being alone. I’m not talking about introverted alone, where one recharges after having social time with people. That’s a different kind of being alone. I’m talking about getting to know ourselves and seeing we’re not actually gum on the bottom of a shoe in summer. We are the kid who has the pool so all the parties are at our house. We have what everyone wants. We are admirable. We are strong, capable, and worthy of taking the time to learn how to believe that.

I say all of this knowing I’m going to ignore it like I always have, but the difference is I’ll know I’m ignoring it. Before, I would be all self-help-y and it would be for others. This one is for me. This time I know I’m ignoring good advice from myself, so it’s easier to hold myself accountable. And that is the key. Holding ourselves accountable for the goals we want to achieve and learning the difference between discouragement and destruction. Change is excruciating. It really is. I fucking hate change. I don’t really like swearing on these things, but this requires one. It’s that awful for me. So telling myself to stop calling myself garbage is like when your teacher tells the class, “no notes on this quiz, folks,” and turns around to do work on the computer so everyone uses notes anyway.

What a crock, huh? It feels like that, here at the bottom of this. But it isn’t a crock. It’s a truth I’ve been trying to learn, that I am worth my own time, and I want the people I care about to know it for themselves, too. I don’t know that many will read this, but I hope it helps someone. Maybe someone looking for a sign to start working on themselves.

Be safe as you can be in these weird, awful times. And remember: you are worth your own time. I promise.

Salisbury.Fake writing

I Feel That: a small opinion piece on Emotive Writing

I was going to do a book review today and while I do intend to post book reviews on here eventually, I had a discussion with myself the other day while I was watching some stuff. First, I’m not an expert, so please don’t take my words as true advice. Second, it’s important to develop your own thoughts on how you approach writing. I see on writing forums the endless thread creations of “should I be a writer?” “How do I start writing?” “What makes a good writer?” And the eons of variations. Writing is so subjective. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. Not everyone is going to want to read your work, and that’s actually preferable. Then you can get a perspective from outside those who appreciate your style. It can help you grow as a writer and a person to hear from people who don’t necessarily jive with your jimmies. There are limits, of course. People end up being rude just because they can, and those people don’t matter to your growth. You are worth exploring your interests and you are capable of separating the shit from the shine.

So, that disclaimer/weird pep talk out of the way, let’s get going. I think a lot of people are faking emotion, or presenting something in a way that’s emotional without having the reality of the feeling behind it. Hold on, we’ll get to why, but let’s be real here. With the amount of distractions and the way the world is these days especially, not many people are able to tell the difference between what they’re feeling and what they think they’re feeling. If we’re not paying attention to ourselves, we can start to associate certain things with feelings instead of actually just feeling the feeling.

This might sound confusing, so let me try and go a bit further into it. Two things I came across recently for this: a video about how a singer wasn’t able to actually emote the feeling behind the lyrics of the song, and an episode of Criminal Minds from the earlier seasons. In the video with the singer, the commentator said it sounded like he was trying to make it sound emotional. “There’s something that comes across as very thought through. . .it’s about the dynamics of the singing. It just seems like he’s trying to make you feel something instead of feeling it and getting it out there with his vocals.” (Semi-quoted from this video here: https://youtu.be/ddUBW9Ms0mA link opens in a new tab) While he’s talking about a song I secretly like (don’t come at me, Justin Bieber can really sing when he puts his mind to it), he’s 100% accurate. Maybe there are some preconceived expectations of Mr. Bieber because of his history as a person, and perhaps we’re not really sold on how true this song is to him because of that. That idea is a completely different post, however, so let’s move on.

I’m not putting a spoiler warning here because Criminal Minds has been out for over 15 years and so if you haven’t seen it, that’s on you, not me. In one of the seasons, a character, Elle Greenaway, gets shot by an unsub (unknown subject–cute, yeah?) and while she’s in surgery, she sees the light at the end of the tunnel and her deceased father is waiting on the private jet to take her to heaven. It sounds like it would be an intense, emotional moment, right? But it wasn’t. Maybe it’s how the actress did her job, or maybe it was the writing of the scene, but it fell flat and pissed me off because it was forcing me into an emotional moment I didn’t believe in. This is also a pretty common trope in television series, but within the same series a few seasons later, Aaron Hotchner is in the hospital fighting a wound/scar tissue issue, and he sees his murdered wife and the guy who killed her. This was a far better use of the trope because we’d had time to learn about Hotchner and we’d had time to appreciate him.

All of this leads me to the topic today, emotive writing. I’m not talking about books that make you ugly cry, not completely, but I’m talking about writing that makes your readers feel something other than “I am here reading this book.” When I think about my favorite books, they’re designated as such because I usually had an emotional response to them. Again, not the kind that made me cry. Tana French’s In the Woods is a mystery and the entire time my anxiety built and by the end, I was ready to never set foot in woods again because of how intense the emotion was. The Green Rider series by Kristen Britain is one of my favorites because I have an emotional connection to the main character as she does her best to help keep her home safe. Through her challenges and failures, I am invested in what she does. I feel like I’m right there with her as she fights off the bad guys. Neil Gaiman plays into the part of me that still tries to be a kid full of wonder because of how imaginative his writing is. He grabs onto that and runs with it so by the end of the book, I’m ready for another adventure.

I think it’s impossible to list all the ways writers can work emotion into their stories, but the idea is it has to be genuine. It has to be real and honest. If we’re writing a death scene for a beloved character, have we really given the audience time to invest in them enough for this death to matter? Or are we playing on what we hope they’re bringing with them to the reading? This is getting a bit into some literary theory, which one day I might do a series of commentary on that, but for now, I think trying to reconnect to the characters we’re writing, the stories we’re telling, that’s what we should focus on. Yes, writing for a market is always the driving force, but even while doing that we can write for ourselves, too.

When I get too bogged down by “this plot doesn’t even exist” or “how many times has this person looked at someone with a glare” or “I’ve used these words too much in the last twelve pages,” I remind myself of this: remember why you started.

But Carla, that’s such a silly thing to think when you’re telling me to be more emotive in my writing. Is it? Why are you writing the story you’re working on, then? Is it because you got excited to tell it? You … felt … excited? Hmm? That’s a stretch, and I know it is, but there’s a level of truth to it. We write for ourselves first, and then the audience later. We’re telling stories we want to share, and if we don’t believe in them, you can sure as the wind blows bet your readers won’t either.

If you made it this far, thank you. I hope it wasn’t too disorganized and wordy. Stay safe and good luck to you and yours during the upcoming holiday season.

Salisbury.Fake Life, writing

Romance Novels are Dangerous

Bear with me. I’m not about to go trashing a genre that makes billions of dollars. Very clearly it’s a market people want and are all about. But I do want to discuss it a bit.

Let’s take a moment and think about what romance novels are at their core. They’re meant to be distractions. Fantasies about what we want, or think we want. There’s lust. Not a lot of actual romance before we get to the end, and somehow the main characters are in love and ready for their future together. It’s one of those things where we expect to be entertained without going too far into why we’re entertained. It’s time to break into that a bit.

My biggest issue is that the genre presents lust as love, without considering the impact of leaving out the love that gets left behind. Potentially. We don’t really get to see much of that past a happy ending. It’s all wrapped up. Nice little package. But love isn’t always happy. And I’m not talking about the overly drawn out dramatic confrontation that comes right before one of the protagonists realizes that the other is all they’ve ever needed in love. I’m talking about the fact that eventually the quirks that draw you into a partner sometimes might become annoying and not so cute anymore. The nights when trying to be a household feels like an impossibility because you’ve got your own habits, and they have theirs.

Romance novels all have the same basic plot, too, in what I’ve seen from the ten I read in preparation for this post. Boy and girl meet, have a spark, they can’t stop thinking about each other, there’s something holding one of them back from fully accepting feelings, they have wild sex multiple times, one thinks they’re not good enough somehow for the other, big dramatic event happens, the one who tried to leave realizes just how much they love the other, rush to find them/save them/tell them, they get married, and the woman is usually pregnant by the end of the story.

This isn’t a bad plot. But after reading so many in a row, it got tedious. The man is usually incredibly wealthy, completely ripped and fit, handsome as hell, and a loner of some sort. Bad boys are even better. The women are curvy in the right places, but still manage to have a trim waist. Long hair with perfect waves. Career or family driven, never both (there was one rare exception I read), weeps beautifully. The standard impossible people. Some of the main character traits for the men were a bit disturbing. The women consumed their every thought and lives until it was all they could do not to see them. I know the feeling of being in love for the first time with someone and it’s rather difficult to tear one’s mind away from a new love, but the level of . . . intensity and dedication was borderline obsessive. They were overly protective, actively committing violence against a perceived threat to the woman they claimed to love. Jealous. Almost abusive.

The women are typically submissive, even when they’re described as being take charge and full of vivacity. They’re still dominated by the men in the stories, which tells me there’s not much originality in the thought that goes into these things. They’re also consumed by the thought of the man, usually after they’ve had wild sex that stays on their mind for a few days until they can do it again. They snap at the characters around them until one of their friends says something like, “you haven’t been yourself lately, what’s up with that??” and there’s a realization that the woman is in love. But she can’t be in love! They only just met! How could she possibly have feelings for someone she just met? /sarcasm

The level of superficiality in most of these relationships is incredibly off putting to me. There’s not much substance to back up the supposed feelings of the characters. The chemistry they’re meant to have just doesn’t exist. Typical story: they’ve known each other for years, haven’t ever done anything about it, friends pit them together and suddenly they realize they’ve been lacking for seventy years.

What I want from romance novels is reality. I know that doesn’t sell, and maybe I’m an outlier here, but what good are these novels if they perpetuate problems? Women are the main target audience for these (I unfortunately don’t have enough experience reading any LGBTQ+ romance to have an opinion on this, especially when there are others who are much more capable of discussing that topic), and while I appreciate the attempt to have books designed specifically with women in mind, it makes me question what the actual gain is here, and what authors believe women really want.

Sure, the sex scenes are hot. But is that really all the novels are for? I feel like I might be missing the point of these novels. You might be wondering why I’m so interested in this, and the reason is because I’m in the process of writing my own. I read quite a few last weekend all in the name of research, and it discouraged me from wanting to proceed because of how vapid the whole thing is. And maybe that’s the point! That they’re strictly for entertainment purposes, which is fantastic. They are pretty entertaining. But as a reader, I want something more than just a kinky moment in someone’s bedroom. It feels disingenuous and like I’m looking in on something I shouldn’t be. I’m well aware there are plenty of softer romances out there–I read those when I was younger, hoping for inspiration that way–but it still leaves much to be desired in my opinion (no pun intended?).

I think I’ll leave this here for tonight. I do have more to talk about when it comes to characterization problems I have, but that’s a different post entirely, I think, because it’s less related to romance novels. If you made it this far in my ramble/rant, thank you. I would love to have an actual discussion about this kind of thing with writers to see if I’m not quite catching the purpose of this genre. It would be an interesting conversation.

Salisbury.Fake Life, Weekly Update

32

Today I turn 32. It’s such an odd feeling. I’ve not been a fan of my birthday for a very long time, but I’m trying to change that. Every year I visit a state park where I live and spend some time in nature to remind myself the world is bigger than what keeps me up at night. My favorite time of year is fall. I love the colors of the earth, the rain (although it’s not particularly pleasant to hike in), the cool mornings and evenings, the holidays. I love getting to spend time with my family especially around my birthday. They keep me grounded and remind me it’s okay to be here. It’s more than okay.

I’m not sure what all I want to say today. I get to see my niece, which is something I’ve been looking forward to for a while. I get to spend time with my brother, and when she’s done working, my sister-in-law. Their house is one of my favorite places to be. It re-centers me and recharges my social battery, even if we just sit around and watch Goose entertain herself.

I think sometimes we put too much pressure on ourselves to be more than what we are, and while that sounds a bit . . . harsh? It’s enough to be who you are for the people who matter to you. I don’t know. I feel like I’m being rather vague and somewhat “self-help” book today, but it’s more just trying to figure out where I fit into it all. I really don’t need much to be content, and I think that’s something I’m going to keep striving for, contentment. Happiness is impossible to maintain, but keeping up with contentedness is far more achievable. I’m going to go make some tea, maybe hot chocolate, I don’t know, and then I’m going to get ready to go see the babiest baby who ever babied.

Be kind to yourself. You are worth it.

Salisbury.Fake Life, Weekly Update

Car Calories Don’t Count

That’s the biggest lie I tell myself. Not the cliche “I’m fine” or whatever. I tell myself that all food consumed within the confines of the car doesn’t count toward a daily calorie limit. It’s a lie. Those calories do count. But I still stuff a cheese roll up in my mouth on the way home from Taco Bell all the same believing it won’t exist in my body the moment I leave the car.

Hi, my name is Carla, and welcome to my TED Talk.

Just kidding. This blog entry is gonna be somewhat unclear in terms of how we get to the point, but we’ll get there.

When I was a kid, I never understood the concept of aging, I think. I knew I got older, had that quintessential fight with my parents about how I was 16 and not a child anymore (yes, Ariel, you are, sit down and comb your hair with a fork), turned 21 and saw Riverdance with my mom, got blackout drunk when I was 25, loved, lost, all that happy nonsense we expect along the way as we grow up.

But tonight as I was changing out of my work clothes and into my “I’m a writer” chunky sweater and baggy sweatpants, I had the thought of how it’s so nice to find a pair of socks there when I reach for it in my drawer. This might not be revolutionary to you, but for me it was a small epiphany bomb going off in my head. Because if there’s anything I know about myself it’s how I am when I’m depressed. I’ve mentioned that my depression manifests itself with dirty dishes and unfolded laundry. Well, I’ve got the dishes taken care of, now I’m working on the laundry part, and I think–honestly and truly–I’ve cracked it. I like knowing there’s a pair of socks waiting in the drawer for me to put on after work. It sounds so damn stupid when I say it out loud, but the part of me that’s been trying to be proud of myself is throwing her hands into the air saying, “THIS IS WHAT WE’VE BEEN WORKING FOR FOR SO LONG, CALL YOUR THERAPIST AND TELL HER YOU GET IT!”

The happiness we seek is elusive because we want sustained happiness. Why not try for sustained contentment instead? Far more easily achieved.

And just so we’re clear, car calories do actually matter, and I really need to work on my relationship with food. But that’s for another day.

Salisbury.Fake Life

Friday Morning Ramble

We wrap ourselves up in what ifs and could have beens, but do we ever stop and just appreciate what we did get into? I recently got my piano back and I had the thought I wish I’d gone into music in school because I love playing the piano so much. But if I’d gone into music, I wouldn’t have the life I do now. Really. I met some of my best friends in the writing department at university, and I had some pretty amazing professors who changed my life–I wasn’t a very open minded person–and I wouldn’t have written thousands of pages for over ten years.

I did some basic math the other day at work while things were slow. I write three pages–or I try to–every day on my lunch break and I wanted to see how much that would be if I wrote three pages a day for a year. The number is just over a thousand. I could write a thousand pages in a year, which honestly isn’t a lot if you consider the people who write fourteen pages in a day for a year.

But it’s enough, right? What is the limit for being enough? We could quote Mean Girls here and say the limit does not exist, but do we really believe that? Are we capable of understanding how much of enough we are? This is something I struggle with personally and I know so many people who do, too. But when we look at ourselves, really truly look deeply at ourselves, are we sure we believe in the concept of enough?

Unless you’re a genuinely horrible person, you are quite capable of being enough. Even if it’s just for yourself. I can’t wrap my head around that concept. Being enough for myself. I’m working with my therapist on that, but it actually hurts me to see how I’ve been talking to myself for most of my life. We all joke about how we’re dumpster fires rolling down an alley, but to believe it? To believe I’m the scum on the bottom of the dumpster? There’s no way to pinpoint the moment I started believing that about myself, but there is a way to start unraveling that belief.

When I get like this, I find things to ground myself. To re-center my gps, so to speak. And I go back to the concert where I met my favorite singer/songwriter (Noah Gundersen, if you’re interested). I remember my brother asking me to be there when his daughter was born. I remember holding Goose for the first time and weeping immediately because she was so small, and she still is, but she is mighty. I think of the way that small child expands my heart to bursting and it’s all because she calls me Ca with all the enthusiasm of an almost 2 year old. I think of the loves I’ve had, the loss that comes with love sometimes, the books I read, the books I’m writing, my piano, my sister’s laugh and her drive to be there for everyone, my dad’s love of his garden and his smile, my stepmom’s quiet grace and speedy wit, my mother’s strength to be herself– all of it. All of it reminds me that I am not empty. I am not the scum on the dumpster. I am doing impossible things, and I will continue to do impossible things because I am enough.

Salisbury.Fake Uncategorized

Dear Henry

It’s been a bit since I’ve written to you. It’s not that I don’t want to. I could write to you every day, probably. I get stuck when I try to, though, because I don’t know what to say to you. I love you and miss you aren’t enough for how I feel without you. I’ve tried to find something to fix the planks your death tore off my walls and I’ve been doing a terrible patch job. Crushes on celebrities, falling for a married man (that was weird, you would have laughed at me, but not rudely). I haven’t written poetry much either. Because you won’t read it. I usually wrote it for you anyway. Not that it was about you. I knew you’d read it and that made me feel seen.

You saw me, Henry. You saw me for who I am without wondering what the mess was around me. Maybe I wasn’t messy to you, I don’t know. What I do know is there will never be anyone who comes close to you. How do you love someone when you’ve already loved and lost your soulmate? I know, you’d find that rather silly and call me a silly girl, but I’d be your silly girl.

My therapist (you’d like her, she’s great) told me the love would just be different, it wouldn’t be less or more, it’d just be different and she’s right (she usually is). She’s right. But I still can’t read your letters without becoming a sobbing mess. I tried to today. I really did try, but reading your last words to me reminded me I won’t get any more words. And I want them. I want to hear how your writing is going, I want to hear how your brother is doing (I think about him a lot), I want to talk books, history, all the things we talked about when you were here. And I want to hear you love me.

I miss you. On nights when the moon is clear in the sky, I tell myself it’s you saying hi, that you’re all right, that you don’t feel bad anymore. It’s been three years, but when I think about it, it still feels like you died last night and I can’t breathe and I wish I could tell you more, but I can’t. I wish it didn’t make me sad, I know you wouldn’t like knowing this makes me sad, but it does and I just want to be your Carla again.

I love you.

Salisbury.Fake Life, Uncategorized

Let’s Talk

I had every intention of making this post about why I haven’t been blogging, but I mean come on.  There’s a pandemic and it’s thrown everyone into a tailspin and we’re all just doing our best.  I don’t know if I can say I’m doing my best, but I’m certainly trying to.

So, what are we going to talk about?  I don’t really know.  I wanted to be all poetic and beautifully worded, but I’m tired.  I’m very tired.  Maybe more tired than I’ve been before, and I know it’s deeper than because the world has felt like it’s been ending.  My depression manifests itself with unwashed dishes and unfolded laundry.  I finally got my kitchen cleaned and organized this weekend and it felt impossible the entire time.

It’s not a lack of motivation.  It’s more an attempt to pull an elephant out of a watermelon and you only have dental floss.  We hear so many times of people losing their battles with depression and anxiety and all kind of other mental illness, but what about the people fighting?  Daily striving to feel something other than a crushing weight of indescribable heft just hanging from our teeth.  Our chests are tight from holding in ourselves.  We can’t be too emotional, we can’t show we feel, so we hold it in, and we hold it tight because no one wants to know we’re struggling.

A lot of people are saying it’s okay not to be okay, and that’s true, but the caveat is you do something about it once you realize you’re not.  Self care isn’t always soft and gentle like those romanticized posts making the rounds on Instagram and Tumblr make it out to be.  Yeah, it can be those small moments, but real self care, the deeper self care is ugly.  It’s having moments where you tell yourself that enough is enough and you wash your dishes. You take a shower.  You brush your teeth.  The smallest things have the biggest significance.  You fight back for yourself.  You fight hard to beat back the voice that tells you you’re a failure.  Because you’re not.  You’re doing your best and that’s enough.  You are enough.

We are stronger than what our demons call us.  We can make it through this and more. I shouldn’t be here, but I am because there is some part of me that is determined to prove myself wrong.  I don’t ever tell people it gets better, because it hasn’t so far for me, but it gets easier to hoist on my shoulders and carry it.

You are worth it.  You are valued and you are loved most fiercely.  Hold on to those words until they fit into the bits of you that are broken because you are beautiful and the world needs you.

Salisbury.Fake dinner, food

Impossible Review

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Okay.  We’re going to get rather close here on the food blog because this food product changed my life.  I know that’s dramatic.  I’m sorry.  But hear me out.

If you are a new vegetarian struggling to stay away from the foods you know you want to avoid, if you’re a lifelong vegetarian/vegan and you want to indulge in some filthy junk food, this stuff is for you.

I used to be a fan of the Beyond Burger company.  Then they changed their recipe and added something to it that made it have a very strange lumpy texture.  I am disappointed because I liked the original formula/recipe/whatever it was.

If you want to know a little bit about me, there is a very specific craving I get every now and then.  I used to have double quarter pounders with cheese, plain, from McDangles and I loved them.  I was never a big meat eater, and since it’s been about 4 1/2 years since I’ve eaten beef on purpose (Taco Bell sometimes trolls me), I don’t exactly think I want to go back to it.

The Impossible Burger has been at Burger King for a while now and I’ve been so excited for it to come to stores.  Now that it has, I’m the happiest camper.

For dinner tonight, I made myself a double quarter pounder with cheese (Daiya American slices), and made my mom a regular quarter pounder.  My mom isn’t vegetarian, and regularly eats beef.  She said this was better than she ever expected it to be.

The cavewoman in me is mighty pleased.  10/10 I highly recommend this.

A caveat: as a treat.  Because this is essentially 12 dollars a pound where I live and that, my friends, is hella gross.  But I did buy four packs of it, three of which went into my freezer for later.

Last thing: I hope you’re all doing well.  The world is very uncertain nowadays, but we can keep working toward peace and understanding within each other.

Salisbury.Fake Uncategorized

Support These Vegans

If you are feeling overwhelmed and unsure of what to do to support those who need support, here are some vegans you can follow on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/plantbasedrd/

https://www.instagram.com/veganreina/

https://www.instagram.com/blackveganstoday/

https://www.instagram.com/southernveganeats/

https://www.instagram.com/icanyoucanvegan/

https://www.instagram.com/badassvegan/

https://www.instagram.com/diaryofamadblackvegan/

https://www.instagram.com/byanygreens/

https://www.instagram.com/sweetgreensvegan/

https://www.instagram.com/iamtabithabrown/

https://www.instagram.com/damgoodvegan/

https://www.instagram.com/sweetpotatosoul/

This is a bandwagon I’ll jump on and stay on for as long as it takes for change to happen.  And then I’ll keep on the bandwagon to make sure that change is maintained.