Salisbury.Fake Weekly Update, writing

Writing Journal #14

Good morning! Wait, no. It’s afternoon. Good afternoon!

I’m almost done with my proof copy edits, and that’s been a delight. I think from now on I’ll order a proof so I can make final changes seeing it in book form. Once I get those edits done, I’ll fix them in the final document and upload and everything will be ready for publishing. Woo!

I’m a bit over 4600 words into my 15k project for this month. I’m looking forward to seeing where it all goes.

Short and sweet this week, as I wrap up my last day of time off for the year. I don’t necessarily want to go back to work, but as I am not independently wealthy, the mortgage must be paid.

Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake Uncategorized, Weekly Update

Writing Journal #13?

Lucky numbaaaaahhhhhhh 13. Or something. I have returned from my time in the trees, and I did no editing. I did read a few books while out and about (Quicksilver by Callie Hart, Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy, and The Lost Woman by Sara Blaedel), and I hiked for a bit. The state park I went to is one I’ve not visited before, so it was nice to do some wandering in unfamiliar territory. At one point, I thought maybe I’d wandered off trail, and I got nervous I’d be lost. But, clearly, I am not. Have a picture:

Writing wise, I plan on editing the proof copy of the project I am almost finished with. I still have some changes I need to make to the final text, and seeing them in printed form will definitely help with that. I ordered a proof version to make sure everything was where it should be, and it ain’t, sooooooooo back to the GIMP drawing board.

I have sneezed almost ten times in the last six minutes. My face is betraying me.

Anyway, since NaNoWriMo is disbanded, I’m participating in a November Writing Thing on the forum I’m part of, and I have a title, and I have almost 1500 words so far, but I hate them, so I’m going to (pause for sneeze) redo them and try again. The title will stay, though. I do like that one a lot. I’m only shooting for 15k words instead of the 50k because I am trying to finish a project, and I don’t want to be too spread across the lands. (Like butter over too much bread, eh, Bilbo? [I had to, sorry]).

That’s all the soup in this tureen, chickens. I hope you’re well, and I hope your words are coming along pretty.

Until next time, friends. Have another photo.

Salisbury.Fake Life, Uncategorized, Weekly Update

Little By Little

Sometimes, my dad hugs me just a little longer and I am lighter than I was before. Sometimes, my sister drops a random moment and I laugh like it’s how I breathe. My stepmom will give me a smile and I am okay for another day.

My niece tells me about her little almost seven years old life, and I wonder if anyone ever listened to me with such gusto.

I’m always going to be thirty years older than her, and I still see how small she was when she was born. She’s not my kid, but she’s my kid.

When I see the little ways people love me, the quiet ways, the moments just us, it makes me panic that I don’t appreciate it enough, that they don’t know how much it means to me.

I’ve hated my birthday for a long time, never wanting to be reminded of my own existence. I know I’m here, don’t tell me about it. But this year I started asking myself why.

The attention being on me is certainly one of the reasons I hate it. I hate being cared about so openly. It makes me feel like I need to do something to “pay back” and when people don’t want the reimbursement of their love, I don’t understand.

But I want to.

I want to stop being uncomfortable when someone does something for me because they want to, because I exist in their life and they find value in who I am. I want to see why birthday candles are fun things to look forward to, the wishes blown out a promise of future happiness.

I spend as much time as I can around my birthday in the trees. Seeing the world as big as it is reminds me I’m small and insignificant, but not so I can use that to hate myself. It is my way of proving to myself that my existence is necessary. That I am part of the great woven masterpiece I drape around my shoulders, and I am not meant to leave it yet.

Little by little, I tell myself. Little by little, we’ll find our way back. One day, I’ll smile when my birthday rolls around. One day, I’ll embrace myself the way my father hugs me, and I’ll hold on a little longer each time, too.

Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake Life, Weekly Update, writing

Writing Journal #11

Salutations and sabra hummus to all.

I’m minutes away from finishing the second to last content draft of my summer project. It’s going to be a pile of paper for a few days while I let my brain come back to being a person. I tend to disappear when I write, and I don’t mean to.

A few moments later and the last pen mark has been dragged across the paper. Time to type. I’ll let you know when the thing’s ready for lookin’ at. I’m not going to do a big release of it, just kind of set it out for the world to see if they stumble across it.

I’m a little tired. October is a hard month for me, and I’m trying not to let it get me in the funk it usually provides, so of course my brain is doubling down.

I hope you’re well. I hope your words come easy. And I hope you are able to see the sun through the clouds.

Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake Life, Weekly Update

Confetti

Don’t mind me, I’m still in Rocket Arena, watching confetti fall from the ceiling while Vessel sings my favorite song off the newest Sleep Token album.

I’m not one for letting myself cry in public. It takes a lot to make me cry in front of others, like truly cry, not the few tears thing. I can do that. I can show I’m a human through that, but when it comes to the kind of crying that makes people ask if you’re okay, I stopper that up so fuckin’ fast.

I wish I had the words to explain how utterly overwhelmed I was when I got to hear Infinite Baths live. I sobbed. In full view of people I love dearly. One of them put her arm around me to comfort me, for which I’m grateful.

I can’t stop thinking about the way it felt to turn my head to the ceiling and watch the pink paper confetti fluttering down onto us as Vessel asked us to drift with him.

Surreal.

Ethereal.

Unearthly.

The way it lives in my whole body, the way it switches me to life to remember I got to experience my favorite band in an arena.

I’m not a risk taker. I’ll talk myself out of just about anything. And the idea of crowds in any number greater than five is abhorrent to me. So, getting tickets to not only a Sleep Token concert, but also the Louder Than Life festival the weekend before, it made me do a quick, “hey, who even are you?”

Turns out, I can be brave for Vessel. I can put aside my biggest anxieties just for the chance to exist in the same room as him, hearing him sing his music.

That’s such a powerful thing to give someone, you know? The confidence to be unafraid of what scares them. I didn’t need to see him (I did a few times, don’t worry, it wasn’t me just Gollum crouching saying “my precious” the whole time).

I got to hear him.

What a beautiful, beautiful thing to be part of, to keep in my heart for the rest of my life.

Salisbury.Fake Life, Weekly Update, writing

Writing Journal #8

A few thoughts and then I flee again. Not much to report, really. I’ve been

s t r u g g l i n g

to write my summer project. Most of it consists of staring at a blank page of notebook paper and wondering if I finally developed carpal tunnel from my decades of writing everything by hand. I mentioned something about maybe “outgrowing” a project, and I think I have a little here. And by a little I mean a lot. I still want to tell the story, but it feels like every other romance novel out there. What separates my characters from anyone else’s? Why should anyone give a shit about this story?

Am I being morose? Yeah. There’s a starvation in my chest. An ache where I wish I could stuff someone in there and love them. Loneliness and yearning I can’t explain rationally. But is that kind of thing ever rational? I don’t know, but I feel so stolen by it whenever it finds me. Kind of jerked out of time, a bit. My brain just rattles around trying to find the place it fits and the room is a mess.

Trying to write while being suspended above yourself is rather impossible. I could shove all I’m feeling into the story currently eluding me, but no one wants to read realism in romance. We all want to be swept into a reality not our own, and if I put down on paper my vulnerabilities like that, what am I setting loose into the world?

I know, I’m writing it down here, but no one really reads this, so I’m not too bugged. I want to be seen, but unknown. If you only see what I drop onto this screen, I still own myself and I am not beholden to anyone other than the gromblins chewing on my cerebellum.

How do you put such distended limbs on a person you create?

If I could find the right words, I know I’d find the story properly again, but for now, they’re going to remain buried in the pile. Slippery from being disgorged out of the intestine of my thoughts.

Do I even want to write? Do I want to see my words continually fail? Maybe if I write the wrong ones enough times, I’ll get something to make sense.

Salisbury.Fake Weekly Update, writing

Writing Journal #6

Singing Justin Bieber’s “Baby” while unwrapping a peanut butter cup is peak Saturday morning behavior, I think. I don’t know if this is journal number six. I could look, but that requires more dedication to a numbering system than I particularly care for currently. I don’t know “Baby” past the chorus, so it’s been just a repeat of “baby, baby, baby, ohhhhh” progressively more offkey.

I haven’t been stuck. Well, no, I have been. Stuck in chapter twenty of the Lazarus Rising first draft. I’ve come across things I’ll “fix in post,” I tell myself. Scribbling late into the night because insomnia has come to visit again. Who needs sleep when words give so much more to me? I probably do need sleep, because the headaches that have come from this lack of it are just debilitating sometimes.

But yeah, finally got through chapter twenty, and I actually made it through chapter twenty-one. Finished that last night, and then when I woke up this morning, I had some clarity to restart the gibberish I wrote to open chapter twenty-two before I passed out.

Currently, peanut butter cups are eaten, and water should be next to consume, but that requires getting up again and I just sat down to keep typing up chapter fourteen. I don’t want to get half a book behind on typing again, so I’m going to spend today doing some of that. After I have brunch/lunch with some friends.

Depression has been keeping me company as of late. I see it. I wave at it when I get home. I tell it how my day has been, knowing full well it’s been right there at my ankles the whole time. It knows my weaknesses. It knows my sadness. Not a bad roommate, really. More like a mother giving you the silent treatment and you aren’t sure what you’ve done wrong, so you’ll keep trying your best not to mess anything else up.

I hope you’re doing okay. I hope you’re able to see the sun, and I hope the warmth sticks with you longer than you expect it to.

Until next time, friends.

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

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

Let’s Talk Loss

The following post discusses weight related issues as well as some disordered eating. If these topics are triggering for you, please do not continue.

My body has not felt like my own for about a year now. More than a year, really, but I don’t feel like being technical. I’ve mentioned before how I lost weight, and while I’m still not at the goal I wanted for myself, the getting there has been more of a challenge than I think I let myself believe it would be.

No one ever talks about the ugly side of weight loss. We see the photos of slimmed down people, and sometimes they briefly mention how hard they’ve worked, but I rarely see anyone go too far down the discussion of exactly how hard they work. I’ve been trying to lose three pounds for about four months. I’ve been in calorie deficits, and picked up my exercise, and I know how to lose those last three pounds, but it is just not happening.

This is discouraging because I still see myself as overweight. But the worst part about it all is I no longer know my body like I used to. When I was about fifty pounds heavier, I knew my limits. Now, I feel soft and squishy in places I didn’t notice before because there’s a tightness in the skin when you have so much heft. Sitting down is painful for me because my ass is disappearing and my bones touch the surface of what I’m sitting on. I jiggle when I walk, and I feel it. I’m sure I did before, but I didn’t feel it, and now that I can, I know it’s more pronounced and people can probably see it.

I can’t eat like I used to. This may be a good thing for some, but as an emotional eater, sometimes I have a painful need to binge and I can’t because I get fuller faster and the emotional satiation doesn’t happen. So I overeat anyway, and then end up wanting to vomit to relieve the pressure on my shrunken stomach.

The stretch marks on my thighs look like turkey neck skin when I scrub my body after a run, and I get grossed out with the wobble they still make when I take a powerful step because I don’t move slowly anymore. I’m not a fast person, but I became one because there’s a need to leave myself behind even more so now.

My lung capacity is greater, but I still ache and creak and I notice it more and more. Each time I have to shift myself in my seat because my knees are aching, or my hips are tighter or whatever the reason, I notice it and it angers me.

I am angry at this body. I am angry that it isn’t what I want and yet I am terrified to lose it. The continued loss of who I was, the destruction of the person I thought I was, it’s not just physical. It’s excruciating to see what I’ve limited myself to because I didn’t think I was worth the time to learn.

How many things have I shuttered closed in my head because I believed I was too fat? Too massive, too bloated, too gross to ever be considered beautiful?

I am angry at this body because it’s making me learn to love it.