Salisbury.Fake Life

Just Do Your Best

I’m not sure how to start this one, so I’m just going to dive right on in there.

When I was a kid, I danced for about nine years. Ballet. I did the whole competition stuff, but I also did a private studio that didn’t participate in competitions. We would dance in local events, though, and there was this Christmas festival every year where members of groups and communities could decorate a Christmas tree and people would “buy” the tree. Proceeds went to charities or something. I might not have the full details on that because I was little and didn’t understand why I danced at this thing, I just knew I did.

One year, I’d asked my dad to be there. I don’t remember why, but it was really, really important for him to be there. He had dental surgery that day, and the pain meds he was given ended up making him sleep through my performance.

My dad arrived at the venue and knelt on the floor and just hugged me so tight and said he was sorry he missed my dance. He even showed me the inside of his lip as proof that there was a reason he wasn’t there. The regret in his eyes and the way he hugged me for what felt like an hour while kneeling on that hard floor, all because he thought he had failed me.

But he was there. He did show up.

I still feel that hug to this day.

I have more dances for him to see. They’re just not ballet. People won’t remember everything about you, but they’ll remember you trying. They’ll remember you being there in whatever way you can. I hope you continue to be here. And I hope you are a little gentler on yourself because you are doing your best.

Salisbury.Fake Life

Morning Thoughts

I’ve been awake since about 5:30a. That’s normal wakin’ hours for some folk, but for me, that’s not the standard. I think I had a dream where I was deep in my thoughts and that kind of made me wake up and now I’m thinking entirely too hard about loss. Of a sort.

When my friend Henry died, I still knew where to focus the love I had and have for him. It belongs to him, and I know he’d be annoyed I’m still missing him, but the fact of it all is, it is his to have.

When you lose someone because they became a part of your life and destroyed you, and letting go was the only way to keep yourself safe, the love has nowhere to go. I could internalize it, make it a learning opportunity for myself, but the reality of it all is, I don’t know how to do that.

I have spent most of my life making sure everyone else is okay. Not that my needs come second, they’re just flat-out unimportant. As a grown woman, I am starting to rewrite that thinking, but do you know how hard that is?

Sure, change is hard, but when my home isn’t being blown to bits and I’m able to afford heat during the winter, why should my self-image matter? I heard a refugee from North Korea say that people who are able to use words like depression and trauma say them from a place of privilege. She didn’t mean that it’s a privilege to experience these things, but when you come from a place those are probably illegal to name, what do you call it? I am free to tell someone “I’m not okay” and I won’t be thrown in jail for not being happy.

Change is hard. It’s even harder without some of the people I had to let go of, because I thought they were people I could turn to in my hard times. Being told someone is there for you only for them to weaponize your demons against you when you do something they don’t like is incredibly confusing. It’s debasing. It makes me feel shame for ever trying to be vulnerable to a person, and it closes me up.

I joke about how I learned a lot about myself this last year (accidentally the spicy kind of learning, haha, sorry, parents if you read this), but I really did. I learned how to say goodbye when it hurt every part of my kindness to do so. There is a piercing affect that has on a heart. I’m not new in this phenomenon. Millions of people have let go of those who hurt them. But I am new to the idea that it’s okay to go.

It’s okay to fall away, and it’s okay to cry months after you’ve done so. The love doesn’t have anywhere to go, so it has to settle in the back of my heart for now. One day, I’ll put it out into the world again, hopefully keeping some for myself this time. But for now, it’s okay to just hold onto it a bit longer.

Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake Life, Uncategorized

End of the Year/Update

Well.

I disappeared.

I didn’t intend to. I kind of forgot this blog existed. I’m sorry. I don’t know how many people are still with me, but if you’re still hanging out with me, I appreciate it.

If you are willing to continue stickin’ it out with me, I’ll be posting a lot more next year. This year I kind of spent more time writing my second book (The Keeper of Time in the Maker Series), and I ignored pretty much everything else. Aside from reading.

I think I’ll be rounding out the year with almost 100 books read this year, and I’ll be honest and say over half of those are probably romance novels. Sometimes you just need to shut the brain off and hope for the best. I plan on doing a “Books of 2024” post in January, and that will only be the beginning of what all I do.

I plan on using this as a writing journal, as that has become the most important thing in my life (outside my niece and my nephews). There will be other things I’ll probably toss in here, too.

I hope you’ve been doing well, and I hope you are entering 2025 with a spark of inspiration and hope. Sometimes the world is gross, but that’s all right as long as we don’t make it worse.

Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake Life

The Moon is You

It’s been a few years since I read your letters. I can’t read them without touching the grief I keep hidden because you’re gone. You are gone and there are so many things I haven’t been able to say since you died.

Reading them this morning, I saw with older eyes just how much you loved me and I feel as though I took it for granted that it would always be there.

That you would always be there.

You told me about how there was a book you wanted to write, your magnum opus, and you wanted to get it done because you felt like you were running out of time. And maybe that day you’d had some foresight, I don’t know.

People always thought you were so grumpy and so cranky and angry at the world. With good reason, because you were, but they didn’t know it was because of how hard you loved. You gave everything to what you loved. So much of yourself there was barely any left for you, and what you saw in yourself, you despised.

Your brother sent me all the letters I sent you when he was clearing out your apartment. You’d kept the whole stack. The mountain of letters, you called it once. I have them rubber-banded with yours to me. It doesn’t feel right to separate them. I read the last one in the pile I sent you (even though I know I sent you one for your birthday the year before you died, that one is not in the pile), and it made me desperate to know if you actually believed I loved you.

And would you find it silly of me to miss you with such a desperation now, six years after you’ve died? I can barely look at that grief, Henry. I can’t even glance at it because your loss is indescribably awful. I won’t say you’ve ruined love for me, but you have made it next to impossible for me to ever feel loved by someone as much as you loved me.

I wish I could sit in the stillness of a thunderstorm with you.

Salisbury.Fake Life

Grief Thoughts

Innocuous comment. Made by someone without the straps attached to my shoulders. The baggage I hold there.

All it took to shatter me. Send me into a pit of grief I still swim inside. My fingers are cold. My chest numb.

I miss her, the woman I was last year. She was fearless. She was incredible.

The argument could be made that I am still those things, but it is certainly underneath a pile of rubble. A building collapse, and no one can hear the shouting.

I feel like I’m running out of air. Like there’s wool surrounding my head. Cotton sheets on clotheslines making a maze I started laughing my way through, but now there’s no end in sight.

The sun is shining, and it is the cold sun of winter. Where the warmth doesn’t reach past the surface of your skin and you are left wanting.

I am wanting. I am filled with wanting.

I want it gone.

I don’t want to want.

It has taken an insurmountable effort, you know, to keep my sadness internal. To make sure no one knows the sun hasn’t shone for me most of this year. Spots of gold on the timeline where it cracked the barricade, softened the blow.

My sadness has always felt like weakness. Grief an unforgiveable sin.

I sin tonight without being capable of withstanding temptation.

The sadness will pass, as sadness does. But for tonight–

Just for tonight.

I think I’ll indulge a while longer.

Salisbury.Fake book review, Life

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

“You might try then, as I did, to find a sky so full of stars it will blind you again. Only no sky can blind you now. Even with all that iridescent magic up there, your eye will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations. You’ll care only about the darkness and you’ll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you’re some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay.”

Johnny Truant, October 31, 1998 (House of Leaves introduction, page xxiii)

I’m going to start out by saying this book is not for everyone and I don’t think it was meant to be. It’s meant for those who need it most. I was recommended it years and years ago by one of my very good friends, and I just never got around to finding it. It is a book that must be found. It is, without hesitation, my new favorite book of all time.

Let me explain.

House of Leaves is a story within a story within a story. It begins with an introduction by Johnny Truant, who finds this manuscript in the apartment of a dead man. He then becomes obsessed with the story of a family who moved into a house with bigger dimensions on the inside than were possible. But is it his obsession or is it the dead man’s? Zampano, the writer of the manuscript, has his own story, and through Johnny’s footnotes, we get a glimpse of what Zampano’s life was before he died. So, we have the story Zampano wrote–which by all appearances is an academic treatment of the mysterious film/photographer William Navidson–and we have Zampano’s story told to us in pieces by Johnny, and then we have Johnny’s story included in pages long footnotes at times.

The beauty of this book is you become part of the story. You are shoved into your own obsession with the Navidson brothers as they try to explain this house that cannot be explained. It’s a psychological horror of which I’ve never seen before, and it takes you on a circular journey of your own past as you work through the mysteries with Navidson. Not only that, you are given insight into a very tragic character in Johnny Truant. I think I felt a platonic love for him by the end of the book because of his story, all of which I cannot verify if it was real or not. And by that I mean within the confines of the story. Was he telling me the truth or was it drug addled nonsense? Either way, I wept for Johnny at several moments.

I would like to go further into the symbolism of the house, but I feel like that trudges into spoiler territory, so if you’d rather not have spoilers, please skip away from the page.

The house is a pleasant enough place at first, set up in the middle of nowhere, Maryland. Inside the house, the family consists of Will, known as Navy, Karen, and their two children. The children each have their own rooms, and then Will and Karen have their room, and as all beginnings are, this is a hopeful place. A place of renewal.

A hallway appears first, connecting the bedrooms upstairs, creating a void of light. And then the door arrives in the living room, the door on the outside wall. When the door is opened, another hallway is revealed, and throughout the course of the story, Navidson ends up exploring it with his brother and one of his friends.

To me, the entire book from Zampano, to Johnny, and even the Navidson crew, it’s not about the house. It’s about the ways we try to keep ourselves hidden from those we love most. Those who would know when something is wrong just by looking at us. It’s about knowing oneself so painfully well that every interaction with a new person will go nowhere because we know we aren’t going to meet their expectations.

It’s grief.

It’s encompassing fear of the unknown.

It’s love.

I feel like I’m not giving the words justice. I feel like I’m not explaining just how deep of an impact this book had on me. Saying it’s my new favorite book of all time feels dramatic, like I’m making bold claims after only having read it once, and it’s a book that almost requires multiple reads. It’s formatted like someone went after it with a hammer and super glue, bending pages to fit into whatever origami felt right at the moment. There are footnotes within footnotes. Some of the text is backwards. Some pages only have two words, some have one. Entire spaces are condensed into a haphazard mess of black Xs across red strikethrough.

It is chaos, just as the house is chaos.

And yet, it’s home.

*******I read the 2000 Random House full color remastered paperback edition*******

Salisbury.Fake Life

Mud Puddles

Effulgent is the face of a four-year-old as she steps into the standing water in her side yard. Her father has already told her twice not to do so, but the stick in the center needed saving. As did the leaves. Sodden socks removed and replaced with dry ones, rubber rain boots exchanged for the baby crocs she wore at first.

She is invincible.

With a smile back at those watching her, she sweeps her feet into the water, soaking instantly the dry socks, her tiny jeans, and part of her jacket.

The leaves are safe now, though.

She sits off to the side, near the fence she’s almost as tall as, and she removes her boots one at a time, dumping out the water. Entirely too pleased with her results, she stands back up and begins again. Once more filling her boots so that when she takes a single step out of the muddy water, it squirts from her boot and she looks over at the cackle I’ve made.

It truly is a sight I don’t think I can put in words properly. My niece is my favorite person on this earth and she will never know just how much she’s taught me. The small things that seem so instant, so demanding of my time are absolutely not of any importance when one must dance like the LED ballerinas on her videos. Or become a horse so she can direct me around the living room, but never on the kitchen tile because my knees are no longer as young as I think I am.

Her radiant and pure joy as I get out of my car, her little bounces because she can’t wait to run to me and tell me all about what she has planned for my visit, there are no actual words for the peace it fills me with.

I had not been well. In fact, I’d been too close to the side of me that wants to cut the losses and go. So close I had to take time off of work to find my way back to myself. My true self, not the one broken and hanging on by a mere thread of a root at the precipice of a cliff. The one buried alive under a hill of dirt clods, dry and yet still clumped enough to be in the way. Each attempt to dig out meant effort I couldn’t find. The light I’d found kept becoming reburied and I’d have to rest.

I talked to my brother one night, right at the beginning of understanding I was not, in fact, okay. And at one point, I stood beside him as he sat in his desk chair and he held me the tightest he’s ever held me and let me cry on top of his head because I didn’t have the words to say how scared I was. How uncertain of anything I was.

But he knew. He knew the way he knows what his daughter needs before she knows she needs it.

I am no longer stuck in the mud like a four-year-old’s boot as she tries to maneuver her way out without falling. I am sweeping my feet through the puddle, the joy on my heart is effervescent and I am ahead of where I was when I started sliding into despair.

Mud puddles are not places to get stuck. They are places to save leaves and prod with sticks and see the way the dirt swirls as it saturates.

There will be other sad times. For now, I am turning my face toward the sun, feeling the warmth on my skin as though for the first time, and I am okay.

Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake book review, Life

Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer

Who am I? I asked myself this question immediately following the finishing of this book and I feel like if Foer knew that, he’d either be pleased or he’d find me pretentious. But I didn’t ask it out of anything other than a gut reaction to the book ending. Foer is able to wield emotion like a sword, but with enough subtlety that it hits you after you’ve gone by a few pages, and you have to pause and sit in the feeling for a moment before you can go forward. It took me a bit to get into this book. I honestly didn’t remember why I picked it up (it’s got a sticker from the bargain bin on the back, so that’s the most likely reason, and I know I like his writing style, so I solved my own mystery), and as I read about the marriage of Jacob and Julia, I questioned even more why I grabbed it. It was about a loveless marriage, but also a marriage full of too much love. The kind of love you think is stagnant, but is actually hiding behind hurt. Unspeakable only because to voice the hurt would make it known to those who haven’t hurt you, but those you love and you don’t want to show them your vulnerability.

That kind of love is my favorite. And as I was slowly absorbed into the unfolding of this marriage, the explosion of a worldwide crisis of possible war, the outlook on Jewish people by the rest of the world, it all settles together in such a way you forget you’re reading about something heartbreaking. I think love is the entire theme of the whole book. There’s familial, romantic, platonic–it’s all in there. It’s the love that hurts, but the impermanence of pain is what draws me to it. It’s the understanding that while what I feel might be in the realm of anguish, it is not forever and I will be okay.

I told a friend of mine about some of this, my reaction to the book. But it was 3 a.m. and I’d had to read a brain numbing romance novel to get my head to calm down (seriously, all those people need to do is talk to each other. The lack of common sense and communication in those books is astonishing, but then I realize it’s real life in a way we aren’t ready to admit to, which I also know sounds like the opposite of calming my brain down). A sense of yearning took over, and I was filled with wanting. To be enough, to be wanted. And the part that makes my heart break is I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to accept that I am already good enough. I am wanted. Just as I am. It causes an ache in my ribs. When I breathe. I inhale, almost like when I run, and the life that fills me also takes my breath away.

The last time I wrote in my physical journal, I started a list of resolutions and I will expand on it offline. I know you might be wondering why this has anything to do with the book of this post, but I’ll get there. A person I follow on YouTube was talking in a recent video about how she calls resolutions her “intentions.” What does she intend for herself? The start of a new year, the reset, the fresh feeling. Some part of me that lingers in my self-hate is disgusted by the positivity of it.

But I think about a sunrise. A sunrise after walking all night, being so stuck in my head, unable to fully see even though all I’ve been doing is looking.

The sky lightens, letting the earth know what’s coming, but it’s that first burst of bright. That explosion of color that scars the sky and yet whispers hello.

My hope lives there. In that moment, that crack of a new day. Flash in the pan, almost. It holds me, though. Gives me enough courage to approach life one day at a time until a year passes and I am no longer witnessing the sunrise, I am the sunrise.

That’s who I am. I am hope, burning across the morning dimness with a gasp of colors. I am not ending. I am beginning and I am afraid. Afraid of understanding. Afraid of seeing. Not of failure, because I’m not failing.

I am becoming.

And that’s what this book did for me. I don’t know that I would say Foer is my favorite author, but he writes in a way that helps the world make sense as I see it. While I’m not a middle-aged Jewish man, or his wife, or their three sons, I have felt at times what they have, and seeing emotions I know so well, written in a way that feels like I’ve been flayed while saying thank you is something I don’t know I’d get from anyone else.

I give this book an 8.5/10

*******I read the 2016 Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardback edition*******

Salisbury.Fake Life, Uncategorized

Quiet Desperation

This post will contains personal feelings things so if you aren’t interested, please skip. I hope you are doing okay.

Spending too much time in my head is not always a bad thing, but usually it tends to get me into thought spider webs. I know that what I have is rare, a self-awareness to know exactly what I’m feeling and how to express it. Not everyone has this, which is fine, but it makes it challenging to present my real self to others because I get seen as emotional or moody, when all I am is trying to be honest. I hide so much of myself because I don’t want to be seen as “unstable.”

It’s less about stability and more about accepting the parts of myself I know are the truth. I am probably going to feel things on a different level than most of my friends, my family, and the potential partners I might have. I’ve said I’m okay with being alone, and mostly I am, but the reason I’m okay with being alone is I don’t want to feel like I have to constantly hide my feelings.

What I will say is I feel like I learned at such an intense level I should hide myself. I should keep myself tucked away because no one wants to see that. No one wants to be around that. No one knows how to handle such vivid and clear emotion. Anyone I do end up with “has their work cut out for them,” as I’ve been told a few times.

I’m not a lot to handle. I can be eager to express myself, which may come off as too much, but it goes back to my desire to be honest, and to be authentic. I hate saying that because it sounds so trite, but when you spend so long trying to be “normal,” or trying not to be “high maintenance,” you get kind of tired of it.

I don’t need to be maintained, I need to be understood.

And yes, sure, the “right person” will be able to, but it still sucks to put hope into something that ends up failing. Obviously, being vulnerable is awful. No one wants to do anything that will make them feel inferior or like what they feel is unworthy of mention.

But how are you going to know you’re worth something to yourself if you don’t at least try to prove yourself wrong?

Salisbury.Fake Life, writing

Small Update

Hey!

I published my first book. It’s out there in the world now, and that’s why I’ve been gone for so long. It went live on Amazon back on May 31st, and I kind of forgot this blog existed until a few days ago.

I probably should share a link to it, so I’ll do that at the bottom of this post. It’s available in paperback or on Kindle. There are some minor errors in the printing, but you know what? I care, but not that much. The story doesn’t suffer from those small errors, and there aren’t any glaring spelling issues so I’m leaving it as it is. I’m not intending to make it big, just wanted to tell a story I love.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to. I’m currently working on the second book, The Keeper of Time and that has been smooth sailing (which is difficult for me to accept sometimes because it technically took me about fifteen years to write Fulcrum).

I hope you are well! Thank you for sticking with me. I think I’ll attempt to make more of an effort at updating this blog from now on, but please do forgive me if I go on a hiatus for no reason other than I forget.

If you’d like to read the prologue of Fulcrum and the first bit of the first chapter, it’s available as a “look inside” feature on Amazon. You can find all of that here:https://www.amazon.com/Fulcrum-C-D-Kleeberg/dp/B0B2TBJC56/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2DO6GGUROXZFD&keywords=fulcrum+cd+kleeberg&qid=1658454699&sprefix=fulcrum+cd+kleeberg%2Caps%2C324&sr=8-1

One day I’ll figure out how to make those links look like nice text instead of gibberish, but it is not this day.