It Came From the Goo.

Poetry Month Day 8.

Some days I’m not all myself. Sometimes I see myself from the outside as being a little quiet and a little distraught. I see myself as frustrated and angry and I try to find ways to calm myself.

One way is drawing myself as my avatar. Because we all need an escape sometimes. She was a safe place for my emotions to go and be… Just be… During my divorce.

My son asked me to clarify whether my monster character is the same as my moniker that I sign things with. The answer is not quite.

I introduced her to the blog as Mommy. I believe she’s always been, in my mind, Mommy. She is the single mom that I was and am. She gets frustrated at dating, she gets confused and upset when she can’t communicate herself well. She seeks out help, she needs it.

And sometimes when it feels like I’m a scream I look to her and try to find the words that I need to write or the art that I need to create.

Maybe my so is right… And Mommy is just a part of Moueska as well.

In a lot of ways I’m a tapestry. Swatches that go back three generations or four even. I miss my great grandmother Alice, but truly I miss my godmother Aunt Helen. I wish I could ask them

Oh well.

Pour the Ink

National Poetry month, day 2.

Let’s talk about the comfort in little lies.

Positive self talk, manifesting good energy, this all builds into one big ball of quiet little statements. True, false, doesn’t matter. They’re quiet little statements that can impact your mood, impact your judgment, and impact your way of thinking.

Now that that’s out of the way:

When you don’t know what you don’t know, your brain tries to fill in the gaps. With Google at our disposal, it’s much easier to find the answers to those gaps in many cases. But answers don’t always exactly meet our needs, and so we try to fill in the gaps again.

I don’t find that lying is an effective method for maintaining certain things. Honesty is treasured by me. That means being crystal clear about when things go haywire, even if I’m trying to hold everything together backstage.

I’m having some technical difficulties.

This month will be rough.

Please stand by.

Me, Today

Me, Today

Beware the Brummagem

Can you see it in my eyes?
(I am a Brummagem.)
They are glassy, they tell lies.
(I do not know, remember when)
My skin is tense like rubber,
(You would not know it to the touch)
Fat on my waist like blubber
(Not that you care too much).

Can you see it in my face?
(I am a Brummagem.)
Inauthentic, out of place.
(They think they know, ha! Them.)
My silken dress does flicker
(Like a hologram you might see)
I purse my lips and dare to whisper
(“My story you know not, yet you judge me).

So I ask you, is it my brain?
(Am I a Brummagem?)
That thinks in storm-like rain?
(A Cheap and twisted stem)
Do I dare to speak:
(Am I alone? do you see me?)
A flower bush grown weak
(More briars than petals there be.)

I square my shoulders loudly.
I hold back my rising storm.
I scream into the distance.
I take another form.

There is an argument you see
About what makes someone real:
What I’ve come to understand
Is that it’s not exactly what you feel

And even though it should be
And everyone should have a chance
To let their song inside fly free,
To shed their shoes, and dance.

(This one goes out to the long string online I found that drove me to paranoia the other day. The gist was that if you call yourself out as being authentic you are, in fact, not authentic.)

(When the word Brummagem showed up in my inbox I knew that it needed a poem: and perhaps to be put back into normal use again. It means Cheap, Showy, or Counterfeit according to https://worddaily.com/ . Thanks Word Daily for sending a balancing word to my inbox. If you need a prompt daily or just like words, totally feel free to subscribe)

New week. Let’s do this.

Chronology of a Mental Breakdown

I failed to recognize a mental breakdown before it was too late. It killed my career, I lost my apartment, lost custody of my child, and here’s how I responded to it:

Autumn, 2018
I knew something was wrong and approached my superiors about FMLA, as I guessed it had to do with my anxiety and I needed time to see a therapist/psychologist.

Winter, 2018
I couldn’t get enough support in filing the FMLA claim prior to my breakdown creating issues on the job. I was called into a room about breaking rules for customers based on faulty intuition from my breakdown. Shortly after I was fired.

My sister was in town and took me to the hospital, where I spent 12 days getting to know my disability: Schizophrenia.

My dad flew in from St. Louis, helped me pack my life, put it in storage, and fly back with him to Missouri.

Spring, 2019:
I was at rock bottom, trying to cut through delusions, and get back on track. Somehow, the case worker in Seattle, where I had been living, managed to get the BJC Health system information for individuals in need.

I found free health care and latched on to the BJC program when they had an opening. They were able to put me in touch with a psychiatrist, a case worker, and eventually a job coach.

Summer, 2019
I took a part time job. Kept in contact with my son by playing video games with him. I began to see a therapist.

Spring, 2020:
Just before the shutdown, I switched to a new position at a different company in hopes of steady hours… I was there a week before they shuttered.

Covid gave me time to reorient and reflect. I won my disability hearing, and then focused on setting back out to Seattle. Plans were laid in April.

Summer, 2020:
In May, I made my way back to the Emerald City where I spent June in an extended stay while hunting up an apartment and securing a temp-to-hire job at the best pay rate I ever received, even as a team leader in my former life.

Fast Forward to today:
Now I’m back in my child’s life, still writing for The Prompt (when I can), and living my best life while keeping an eye out for my health first.

A Little Valentines’ Day Self-Care

Last year I had my first “single” Valentine’s day in almost 16 years.  I must have pulled myself completely off social media for it.  No tweets, no facebook posts, not even an Instagram photo from that week.  No blog post.  I was avoiding all of the hearts I came across like the plague they were.

It wasn’t always this way.

This year’s a year later, I wanted to find ways to worry less about why this Hallmark Holiday should bother me, and more about why I should enjoy it.  So here’s some silly memoir-esque snippets about the holiday.

• The real reason why I’m so fond of the holiday is because of my Mom and Dad.  They always tried to celebrate for us kids.
  • My mom borrowed a short film from a local Christian bookstore: she was a Sunday School teacher and was likely going to show it to the confirmation class.  I don’t remember whether she did or not, but since it was at the house she allowed me to watch it, too.
  • The story, like St. Nicholas being evolved by Coca Cola, was evolved by Hallmark and other card/candy companies to include more commercialism and the flood of hearts that we think of now.
• Hilariously, my first character from high school was named “Valentina”.  When digging through boxes this year, I found a copy of the draft.  It’s lighthearted, and silly, and everything you would expect from a teenager trying to write about something that they don’t have a lot of knowledge about.
  • It was a fable about the abdication of a king, started by a vocabulary lesson where I was too lazy to write the same word ten times, instead opting to write a paragraph using each vocabulary word in it.
  • You write what you know, so there were characters for my brother, and my best friend.  I ended up changing Valentina’s name to something more greek in my second pass of the draft, but I wonder if switching it back wouldn’t be the right call.
• The year after I started college, I remember a particularly crisp February that included visiting Cravings in Webster Groves for Apple Galette (a flat apple pie pastry), buying chocolates: Dove promises (which were NOT romantic in nature, but also little self-care fortune cookies at the time) to share with others, carrying around a ginormous fake rose, and generally trying not to think about my choice to more or less opt out of dating.
  • The team at Cravings allowed me to give my compliments directly to the chef, which was really sweet. (It was a great cream of broccoli soup.)
• Once upon a time, I worked at a florist shop – just an ordinary shopgirl.  Valentine’s day is not just a holiday there – it’s the busiest season of the year.
  • Watching a florist build a rose bouquet – their first or last for the day, is almost a science. Where to place the flower? What height?  How many places should the ferns or baby’s breath sprout from? How full? How light?
  • One other thing about flowers: Not all flowers have a scent but many do – and they can be powerful, light varied, syrupy, sweet, or just plant-like warmth.

• I am a ridiculous fan of haunting the half-price Valentine’s Day sales after the fact, like post-Halloween sales.  Aside from the candy, there’s also some really adorable nonsense that goes up for sale on Valentine’s day.  I think my favorite was a pillow that said “#LOVE”.
  • Let me say with my most wicked grin, “This year will be interesting, because the day after Valentines’ falls on a payday.”
  • While I don’t plan on buying anything, looking is always half the fun.

While this year is going to be a little more tense than usual, I keep rededicating myself to other things that are important to me:  My child, my job, my mental health, my myriad hobbies and my writing… and maybe one day, I’ll be able to appropriately balance all of them.  Until then, though… Happy Valentine’s!

(What do you like to do for Valentine’s Day?  Do you have any suggestions for me?  Things to read? Things to avoid?  Speaking of writing: On Anime Binge, I reviewed the Princess Ai series, which is a really #throwbackthursday moment for the blog.   Check it out!)