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

End-of-the-Year Party

Well, I guess this is going to be one of “those” blog posts. You know the ones. Where the writer waxes poetic about the year gone by, and talks about hopes for the next year. It is going to be one of those, yes, but I’ll try not to bog you down with a lot of “2020 was the worst” stuff. Because even though the pandemic is still ongoing (wear your damn masks and stay home unless you absolutely have to be out), and so many people have had tragedy after tragedy this year, I think this is one of the first years I’ve grown the most into the person I’d like to be.

I had a goal this year of finishing three books I’ve been writing for a little over ten years. I separated out the year into four-month quarters, allowing myself time to get done with each one and have it beta read while I worked on the next one. I didn’t accomplish that goal, but I don’t hate that I didn’t. The person I started out as at the beginning of this year is not who I am now. And that shows in the quality of my writing. I stopped using first person perspective, switched to mostly third limited, and the story just fell out of me.

As I consumed media, I paid attention to the stories being told. Most notably, I watched/listened to a playthrough of Death Stranding, a video game produced by Kojima. I was not prepared for how deeply that story would end up impacting me. But then I decided to look at what made the biggest impression on me, and it was the emotional growth the main character goes through by the time we get to the end. It twists and turns itself around its own story, told in memories mostly, told with tragedy and loss. But at the end, hope remains. I’ve made it sound so cliche, but the relief I felt at the end of the game was profound.

I want to tell a story like that. I want to infuse emotion into my writing so that by the time we reach the end of the story, the audience is relieved and filled with feelings they then get to internalize and see themselves through. I know that’s a lot to task myself with, but I feel fairly confident I can do it. Emotive writing is important, especially in this day and age where emotions are often suppressed for being too intense.

Along with my writing growing, I feel like this year I’ve changed so much about my mindset about myself. I know I’ve talked about my mental health issues, and I will continue to do so because it is an ongoing, lifelong process. The small moments of joy, the reminders it’s okay to be here, the tethers we create to make sure we don’t leave behind what we will miss. Holding on with a white knuckle grip because there has to be something worth it at the end of this, I believe in it. I believe in it with a fierceness I’ve never believed with before.

The power behind that hope, the force of that desire to make it mean something, I wish I could give it to those who struggle. I still have my shitty days. I have them more than I talk about because that’s not what I want to focus on. They’re becoming less frequent, which is fantastic, but I want to hold on to the memory of them so I know how to fight them.

This year was hell for a lot of people. It was horrible and garbage and there’s no amount of gargling that will get the taste of it from the back of our throats, but you are still here. You are still here and you are incredible. You are stunning. I believe in you with the same fierceness I believe there will be good somewhere along the way, and we can pick it up to sling it on our backs to carry us through whatever the world tosses our way. Because we are strong enough to do so. We are capable of battling and making it through, even if that’s all we do is make it through.

I hope this year taught you more about yourself. I hope this year gave you the confidence to accept who you are, and if not, I hope it gave you the boost you needed to make the changes you’ve been wanting to make for yourself.

Next year, there will be book reviews, writing about writing, life talks, recipes. It’s going to be a better year because we will know how to approach it properly with cautious optimism. It’s not over yet, but it will be and we will march forward with a brightness of hope, a determination to conquer anything and everything.

Thank you for going on this ride with me. Thank you for your readership, and for you. I’ll see you next year.

Salisbury.Fake will be updated again after December 31st, 2020.

Happy holidays!.

All my love, Carla

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.