Salisbury.Fake Life, Uncategorized

What Even Are We?

Wow, two posts in one week, is it Christmas??

I find myself in this pit of angst.

Or a sort of angst.

Every so often I get this bout of “stronger than normal” depression and I find myself restless to the sky with how empty life can be, even if it’s so full.

Those questionnaires at the doctor’s office all “do you struggle to enjoy things you once enjoyed?”

I struggle so fiercely it hurts and people tell me they’re worried about me, and it makes me think, “Oh, I should get better at hiding this.”

Don’t weigh the world down with your non-emergent saddies, me. You’re not being blown to bits every day, so what can you possibly find to be sad about?

It’s not even sadness, though. That’s what I think throws people when I tell them I’ve been living with major depressive disorder most of my life. “But you’re so funny! You’re always making others feel like they matter!”

I’m fuckin’ hilarious, yes.

Because I don’t want you to see inside me.

I don’t want you to see the ugly tar dripping down the walls of my mind because you would be horrified. The mess manifests on my kitchen counter in weeks of tupperware I can’t wash because then that means something bad might happen.

“It’s my emotional support yogurty jar I could have rinsed out but didn’t because I need to see how awful of a person I am.”

We joke and we laugh about the things breaking us apart, and I want to keep laughing, but I am so tired.

I know there are reasons to stay, and they are keeping me here, but isn’t it all right if I just crumble for a bit? I don’t not love you, I just need to be by myself so I don’t appear weak in front of you. Weakness only I dump on myself as a label because everyone else calls me strong.

Let me sit down.

Let me see the way the sun sets and the moon rises while eating a bag of Doritos stale from having been left open in the pantry too long.

Let me be sad without wanting to fucking fix it because I want to see it in its grotesque formless mass. I want to hold it and see the places I rip myself into shreds. So I can see it coming next time.

I’ll be fine.

Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake Uncategorized

Game Review – The Callisto Protocol

(image from encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com)

I keep thinking about this game and how it made me feel, so I’m going to drop a review of it even though I’m not a gamer who plays. SPOILERS AHEAD so if you don’t want to read about the ending of this game, please feel free to skip this post.

Anyone who knows me knows my favorite games, tied for first (I’m being honest with myself) are Dead Space and BioShock. When Dead Space first came out, I was blown away by the design, the gameplay, the story, all of it just settled into my brain and was kind of the beginning of my love of science fiction. I’ve always liked science fiction, but Dead Space opened my brain up to the unsettling aspects of the unknown dangers in space. I know there are films and stories older than Dead Space, but I hadn’t taken part in those yet. Aside from Halo, I hadn’t really encountered that uneasy feeling of something ahead I couldn’t see, but knew it would be a problem. When the popcorn balls of Flood came swarming out of a hold in the first Halo game, that moment kind of kicked the part of my brain that likes the spooky space stuff into gear.

I begin with Dead Space because throughout the gameplay I watched of Callisto Protocol, I kept comparing it to Dead Space. They are incredibly similar in design and story. There are certainly different visuals and gameplay itself is different, but I think both games have elements that make them their own. I’ll start with the similarities:

  • Location has encountered unknown virus or disease taking over
  • Main character is the ‘go-fer’
  • Main character has a job unrelated to the primary functions people keep asking him to “fix” or “take care of”
  • Limbs seem to be the thing to remove in order to kill beasties faster
  • Cool guns/weapons
  • Figure of authority who is the cause of problems/doesn’t do anything to stop problems from spreading
  • Ambiguous ending (for main campaign play. Dead Space had two more games after, and Callisto Protocol had DLC that we’ll get into later)

The things Callisto did well:

  • World design
    • large prison moon that expanded across the entirety of the location. The depth of the prison is revealed to have an older, failed settlement underneath the initial location. There are several sequences of falling that help showcase the absolute behemoth of a world Callisto is.
  • Weapons
    • I thought it was ridiculously cool that you could 3D print your guns/upgrades. There was the standard “credits for upgrades” stuff throughout, but I enjoyed the animation for the printing of the upgrades every time it happened. The boom stick made such a satisfying sound when it hit enemies. That kind of small detail was one of my favorite parts of the whole game.
  • Visuals in general
    • The colors, lighting, textures, etc all played a part in making it an immersive environment. The design of the enemies (I called them gooey dudes and freezy boys depending on location) is gross enough to be what I’d consider a standard of the genre, but interesting enough to be distinguishable from other games. A caveat is the gooey dudes were a little similar to the clickers from Last of Us, but that’s a digression. When fighting on the surface of the moon, everything kind of had this grayscale effect to it that was really, really cool, and enemies kind of blended in if they weren’t frozen in place.
  • Sound design
    • Not only was the music a legit part of the environment, but the creaks and rumbles and splashes were all insanely fun. I started my watch-through not wearing headphones but quickly put them on because I couldn’t hear what Jacob (main character) was saying. The sound is binaural and wowzers. The anxiety is heightened when you can hear something ahead but you can’t see it. The voices of the security bots is also intensified when it sounds like they’re right next to you as you’re being stealthy.
  • Enemies
    • Speaking of the security bots, haha. As the location is a prison on a moon, the elements of security would necessitate bots of some kind. These bots are not the standard floating boxes. These bots are completely badass.
(image from fan art on a Reddit post: click to visit)

What enhances the security bots later is a misguided scientist’s attempt to combine biology with tech and all she gets is this monstrous metal gloopy being bent on killing everything. The reveal of these enemies is pretty cool because there’s the shiny metal, but also the muscle mass and sinew of mammalian biology.

What Callisto Protocol failed for me:

  • Main character is a bit boring
    • Jacob is a pilot, a courier. He crash lands on Callisto while delivering and is kept as a prisoner because he “knows too much.” I think this game fell into the trap of “meet here and we’ll decide what to do next” only to keep using that mechanic to propel the game forward. As Jacob, we do a lot of running to places to fix things I’m not sure a pilot would necessarily have the skill required to fix. There are some moments where the characters acknowledge this lack of skill, but he still manages to fix the things just fine. Josh Duhamel as the VA for Jacob was a solid choice, though.
  • Gameplay is repetitive
    • Not only do you have to keep meeting people only to have to meet them later on a different level for a different task, there’s a lot of repetition in those tasks. Changing a fuse to open a door is a pretty standard sci-fi horror task, but it seemed like there were very few doors we didn’t need to change a fuse for, or he had to cut the wires for something to open. The stealth kill animation is also very similar to Joel’s in Last of Us. I know there are going to be similarities, but even to the way the main character lays the victim down feels a little recycled.
  • Story doesn’t have much cohesion
    • This is strictly for main campaign gameplay. Once Jacob saves the life of a resistance member (Dani) from the virus, he sends her off in an escape pod. They’ve shared their memories so she has his knowledge of the situation, and he has hers of why she’s a resistance member. He then runs off toward the exploding prison like the hero he is. There is no explanation that makes sense to why Jacob “knows too much.” It’s revealed he has some kind of dementia, or amnesia, but there’s no explanation for that either. Supposedly this missing information is passed to Dani, but the player never gets that conclusion. For all we know based on the story presented, Jacob is just the victim of corrupt prison wardens and human security and he doesn’t actually know anything.
  • DLC felt like an insult
    • The main campaign takes about seven hours to complete. The DLC adds almost another three. Essentially 9 hours of total gameplay. It’s full of the whole “we need to do this before we can do that! Meet me here and I’ll open the door for you!” tactic, and that grows incredibly tiresome after a few hours. The continuation of that for the DLC is a disappointment because we don’t get to have proper exploration of the world or story.
    • SPOILER: (the DLC) it was all just in his head. The reveal at the end of the DLC that this was all a “could have been/might have been” as he’s dying in the scientist’s lab is such a slap to the face. When Jacob watches Dani fly off in the escape pod, he’s blown up. The prison doctor/scientist finds him and hooks him up to her machines. All of the running around he does in the DLC is just a dream he conjures while being kept alive so his memories can transfer. In the scheme of storytelling, this is such a cheap way to end a story you didn’t even bother to fill out in the first place. There’s no explanation for pretty much anything, and we’re left to wonder why we played the game so long if it wasn’t going to give us any conclusion.
      • ANOTHER SPOILER: At the very end, Josh Duhamel’s voice comes out of Jacob and he’s shouting that “hey, it’s me, Josh! I’m not dead! Hey!” This would have been fun to me if I hadn’t just witnessed it all being a dream. It felt like the producers laughing as they turned the lights off and left me in the dark as I asked why.

All of the negatives I’ve listed do not detract from the fact I loved this game up till the end. The ending left me bitter and annoyed, but everything else was fantastic. There are similarities to Dead Space, yes, but I think overall Callisto is its own game and I think if we can forgive a shit ending, we can appreciate the game that got us to that shit ending. The visuals, especially the lighting with the sort of neon colors against the darkness of a failing environment, were so cool. Sound design was also amazing to me.

I think I originally gave this game a 6/10 because of the ending, but I feel like that’s harsh considering how much fun I had until that point. I will give this an 8/10.

Salisbury.Fake Uncategorized, Weekly Update

Where Do I Go From Here?

I feel it poking at the back of my brain, trying to wheedle its way into my skull. To bury itself where it feels most familiar, most comfortable. I am surrounded by what-ifs and why. Can’t you just let me breathe?

I wish I had answers and timeframes, and understanding of the deeper parts of fear. I just have a promise to keep trying. Keep doing. Keep rising out of bed, keep putting my shoes on and still be a person where it’s expected of me.

I want to hollow myself out and climb inside. Wrap the cavity around me and tighten it with screws. Let me get to know the woman I’ve become. Without being asked why I changed. Why I became.

It’s okay not to be okay, of course, but how long do you let that be your maxim? Your guide through life? When does it stop being a thing you tell yourself for grace and becomes a thing you tell yourself to hide?

Hide with me, I beg the moon. Hide away with me from all the sunrises coming for me, so I can stay with the part of me I don’t know yet, the part I’ve been running from this whole time.

Is it right, I ask my back patio, to leave the tired parts of my mind behind, to stand guard against the darkness seeping in through their fingers, while the rest of me pushes forward a brightness I know is false? Is it right of me to do that?

I wish I could tell you, I say to the pillow I tossed onto my mattress last night. I wish I could tell you why I can’t find the pieces. I just can’t.

I’ll keep looking, though, don’t worry.

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 Uncategorized

Dear Robbie

Your birthday is Monday. And so another year has passed without you here. It went quickly this time. Most days appear to be happening faster than I think I like.

Some days are better than others. Where I can see a sunrise and not be disappointed one of my best friends isn’t there to see it. Where opening my mouth to inhale doesn’t hurt because you aren’t able to do the same.

If I had loved you more. If I had loved you better. Would that have made a difference? Probably not. I know what it’s like to be chained to the whirlpool of thoughts dragging a person to the bottom. I know there’s very little, if anything, that looks like hope. That looks like something to hold onto with every bit of strength left.

I love so hard. I put everything I have in me into making sure people know that they matter. I give all of myself and usually get very little in return, but I do it because to lose someone else, to break open with every thought of them–good or bad–I don’t have it in me.

My beautiful boy. You will never be 35.

I tell myself to keep plodding through the different paths my life will take me. I do it for the little girl I never got to be. I do it for her.

Myself.

All this time I thought I was doing it for everyone else. Because I had to stay strong, be strong for them. Be the one people could rely on even when I was broken and battered by the hurricanes of my mental illness.

To say I miss you is to be cheap with words and you deserve more. I hope the sun shines on your face now, and that the pain you felt while here is more a memory almost forgotten.

You will never be forgotten, my sweetest friend.

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, Uncategorized, writing

Bent Yet Golden

This is going to be a personal one, so if you’re not up for feelings, please skip this post. I won’t be offended.

My favorite thing to do in the beginning of spring is drive home with my windows down. Daylight Savings Time swung us back to the sun being up when I leave work and because of that, I get to experience the most beautiful time of the day. The golden hour before sunset. Have you ever driven at a high speed with your hand out the window and the sun beaming itself directly into your eyes? Terrifying. And yet, stunning.

It makes my eyes water.

It burns them.

Tears whip down my face with scalding accuracy that only happens when I cry for myself, which never happens. I am beautiful in that hour. That drive home. I am just as stunning as the sun because nothing matters. I am between the earth and the sky and the brilliance of the light is pulling me together. Holding me on its shoulders so I no longer have to hoist the burdens I place upon myself alone.

It’d be easier to let others see how hard I work to keep myself steady. How fiercely loyal I am to them, dedicated to make sure they live the lives they can with as much ease as possible. No one should ever feel inferior. I will let myself be trampled if it means someone else is able to shine.

Does that make me sound like I view myself as a martyr? I don’t. I don’t want anyone to see me.

And yet, I want to be known. Life really is one great big paradox and I still keep trying to solve it.

The rush of air fills my lungs, much in the way running steals it away. It pushes into me, through my nose and mouth, sometimes choking in its eagerness to give me life. To fill me to the brim with the desire to be more.

To become.

To exist within the world I see.

To be the bold, golden beam of light for others.

The buffeting wind on my skin, the promise of further breath. The sweet grass coming in along the side of the road, baking in the sun all day, letting go its almost saccharine scent as the light fades.

As I slow down to turn onto my street, I understand what it means.

Salisbury.Fake Life, Uncategorized

Merry and Bright

I’m going to just come right out and say this, I’ve been struggling. This blog isn’t going to be about how or why, because I’ve already talked about those things. But it’s going to be a promise to myself that next year will be different. It’s going to be different because I won’t let this year continue into that one.

I got sick and had to stop running for a bit, and since the winters are cold in Indiana, I’ll be running in the gym more, but I’m going to keep up with that. The good news is one day I’ll be okay. And that’s what I want to give people at the end of this year, something to look forward to. There’s that quote I’ve said a few times about everything is okay in the end, and if it’s not okay, it’s not the end. But there’s always a moment where we want it to be the end, when we’re definitely not okay, and we desperately want to be.

And that is my firm belief, that we will be okay. We will find a way to maintain contentment, and every now and then feel that pinch of happiness that makes us wonder why we don’t feel that way all the time.

It’s going to be okay. I wish you and yours a happy holiday season, and if the holidays are especially difficult for you, know that you are seen and known and loved. I don’t need to know a thing about you to know you are worth loving. Be safe, keep holding on, and remember that the sun will always rise tomorrow.

Until next time, friends.

******salisbury.fake will return in January 2022*******

Salisbury.Fake Life, Uncategorized, writing

Poem I Wrote for a Boy, But Now Give to a Man

I never told you,
but when the sky is blue–
the kind you find on marshmallows
in Lucky Charms–
I have to take a picture with my eyes
and imagine you can see me.

You know,
I never said this when you were here,
but you made life breathable again.
It’s gotten hard to breathe
and I don’t know what to do.

I read recently that nostalgia lies to us about the people who’ve died. How we spend so much time remembering the good about them, and not really thinking about all the ways they’re awful. And it made me wonder, well what’s wrong with that? Why do I need to remember the ways a person hurt me when I want to be happy with the memories of them that bring me joy? I’m not offering them sainthoods in their next life, I’m offering myself respite from the grief of loss.

I’m fine, really. This week’s post is a poem I wrote back in 2013 and it was originally for my friend Robbie, but as I read it, I thought of Henry. It’s almost unfair how much of my creative processes get devoted to him, but if he’s been the reason I still write, or paint, or give light to the world, I don’t think that’s wrong.

Salisbury.Fake Life, Uncategorized

Acceptance

A small backstory for this is I lost a friend of mine a few years ago when he took his own life. For the longest time it crushed me because I was worried I didn’t do enough to help him, to keep him. His birthday is today, and in the past I’d become a useless mess because I didn’t want to face the overwhelming sadness. I miss him most especially today. The piece below is something I wrote last year for him. There’s sadness today, but also joy because I got to know him even if it was for a short time.

Acceptance

It takes a lot of effort sometimes to remember the good moments when you’ve lost someone really close. Sometimes the grief is more than a wave. It’s a vacuum and you can’t feel anything but the pressure of that loss, the pressure of the absence of the person you loved. They can’t make jokes about how innocent you were. They can’t send you twenty-five YouTube videos of their favorite metal songs for you to wake up to. They can’t stay up until all hours of the night just because they love the sound of your voice.

You romanticize these moments. Look back on them with a fondness you never felt while they were here. Because they were here. You didn’t need to remember them fondly yet. You could keep talking even though your throat was sore and the birds were chirping and oh shit, man, I gotta work in four hours. I’ll talk to you later.

You gave so much of your love without knowing you had and now there’s nowhere to put it. So it bubbles over and leaves you with a displaced mess of smiles for boys with an Irish lilt to their voice, for those friends of yours now who ask if you want to talk about history, or go into why you’re slacking on your writing. You no longer hear that beautiful voice, but you remember the way it filled your heart with a hello, hey, I missed you.

It’ll be all right, you tell yourself. And it is. It’s absolutely okay. But sometimes it’s okay to miss them and accept you’re still sad about it.

written july 27, 2020

I watched Bo Burnham’s “Inside” last night and it’s kind of stuck with me in a big way. It rendered me speechless, but it was 2 A.M. and I was lost in remembering Robbie, lost in the sound and art of “Inside,” lost in wanting to just create forever. The world can often feel too large and yet still too close all at once and it’s so easy to get stuck in a loop of existing. Letting the world slide over you while you try to come back to what you’ve worked so hard to become. It ends up feeling like nothing.

But there’s a moment. A last ditch effort, that sniff of “not yet, I can’t give up yet,” and it propels you forward for a moment and lets you feel real. Like you’re invincible and everything is yours.

On my drive home at the end of summer, when the days start getting shorter, and the sun hangs lower in the sky at 7 p.m. The gold covers the earth and for a half hour I am okay. I see the world as I love to, without the filter of what keeps me up at night. It is striking and stunning and it is mine. That is the world I exist in with Robbie. With Henry. With all the ones I love. It’s the rush of air coming in through my windows, in the breath of sweet grass baked in the sun all day. I am the realest I’ll ever be and it is enough.