Tag: love

About Me

Embracing Change: My Journey After Divorce

Autumn

It’s been a very bad year.

I’m still pretty scared to talk about specifics, so suffice to say that I had a plethora of brand new experiences, met a variety of people, and stepped well outside of my comfort zone in ways that I never would have imagined.

Oh, and I’m also now divorced.

Turns out that you can spend years working your butt off to love and care for your soulmate, only to have it turn out that you’re the wrong “context” for them and they don’t want to be with you anymore. Oh, and they also loathe the way you state the obvious. And the way you associate concepts together. And, and, and …

Maybe one day my heart will stop hemorrhaging.

You know all those statistics that claim that women fare better emotionally after divorces? Not true in my case. Aside from the soul-crushing devastation, there’s the intense feelings of betrayal and rejection, as well as feeling like a defective failure at life. Did this happen because I’m too fat? I dunno. Better stop eating just in case.

Only I know I’m not fat. It’s the stress and pain triggering body dysmorphia — my subconscious attempt to take control of something that’s completely out of my control. Even if I weighed only 90lbs and had the flattest abs in the world, I’d still be discarded. I’m still “that” woman.

So I’ve spent hours and hours crying until I was too dehydrated and exhausted to keep crying. I’ve had numerous meltdowns, and moments when it felt like I didn’t have the strength to keep living. Life doesn’t come with a pause button that lets you get your feet back underneath you, it just keeps plowing ahead no matter what’s going on, and getting dragged along leaves you feeling even more banged up.

Then one day I woke up and I felt like eating again. So it is true that time does eventually heal some wounds.

Though I am now dirt-eating poor.

I looked into getting a job or attending an online community college, but those options didn’t feel remotely right for me. You know how it is when everything you built up over the years gets abruptly yanked out from underneath you, you feel trapped in an aimless free fall where absolutely nothing could possibly get worse than it already is, and you say to yourself, “Well, I did always want to earn a living as a writer.”

That’s what I’m going to do.

I’m going to earn a living as a writer. It’s not just about getting by, but finding a new purpose in life — a reason for everything, and a means to express the hurt.

When I feel sad, I can research and implement marketing tactics to keep myself distracted (especially now that I know that I can survive far outside of my comfort zone). I can write about how much I hate men in my novels (facetious exaggeration, don’t take that seriously). I can start churning out as much fiction as I can possibly write, and I will build a new life for myself that can’t be unraveled so easily. And I will do it all while still cooking delicious dinners and homeschooling my children, because I can be that awesome no matter how hard it is. Sleep is overrated anyway.

I’ve spent the last few months telling myself over and over, “If you want things to be different, then you have to do something different.”

And I’m starting to feel ready to do something different.

art

Love

Autumn

I joined Night Cafe for making AI art, because while each creation costs “credits,” they offer a lot more options and control over what you can make.

Every day, Night Cafe holds a contest where they announce a theme for members to submit AI art, then people vote on the entries — the one that averages the highest rating wins.

A few days ago, the theme was “Love.” After spending some time thinking about it, I decided what I wanted to do, and after a few tries, managed to create this image:

It was something of a trick, and I repeatedly specified that I wanted a “normal baby,” — with negative prompts for things like, “scary,” and “creepy.” I discovered earlier in my playing around with Stable Diffusion, that the AI has a hard time understanding what constitutes a “cute baby.”

Nightmare fuel

As much as I would have liked to have a dad present in a loving family portrait, the addition was beyond my current skill level. But, as a picture of a mother and baby, I’m really pleased with what I was able to create.

Motherhood has been getting dumped on for the last 50 years, to the point where women have internalized the misogynistic messages. You aren’t “just a mom.” You aren’t “wasting your life.” You ARE contributing to society — by raising and shaping the next generation. Please, stop listening to those toxic messages and learn to love yourself and what you are doing. Motherhood really is beautiful and important.

I wasn’t the only one who submitted a picture of a mother with a baby for this contest — a huge number of other people did, too. The winning picture was of an old man and woman, illustrating that Love is spending your life with someone.

Funny how it’s artificial intelligence that is revealing what people actually feel in their hearts.

About Me

Love

Autumn

Last year or so, I got into an online argument with someone. 😀

I don’t, usually. I’m perfectly aware that it’s a fruitless waste of time, so why bother, etc, etc, etc. But this one guy was all, “Men don’t need women,” and I wanted to blow off some steam.

Women are really only necessary if you want a future for humankind.

Anyway, that guy elaborated his comment to mean that love flows in one direction, going God -> Man -> Woman -> Child. God loves men, men love women, women love children, but children apparently don’t love anything? Except for maybe their pet cat. And cats love food. No arguments there.

Ha ha, I can’t even blog about this without making fun of it.

So, according to this guy’s logic, men get all their love from God, and therefore don’t need women.

I imagine that this guy’s life story is very lonely and depressing.

Love is significantly more interconnected than that. I know that as a mother, I feel an enormous amount of love from my children. They like to pick flowers for me, or climb to the top of the jungle gym and shout, “MOM I LOVE YOU!” They also love Dad, and like to get his favorite candy at the grocery store, or help him with his work.

As a family, we all very much love each other. The idea of one of us not needing the others is absurd.

Don’t go around assuming that men don’t need love from their wives and children — they very much do. Far more than they let on, too.

byautumnrain.com

About Me

Romance

Autumn

This month, my husband and I celebrate 12 years together.

It was one of those “love-at-first-sight” whirlwind romances that everyone insists is unrealistic and guaranteed to fail. Yet here we still are, and there’s no one else I’d rather go through the fall of civilization with. 😉

So…

Don’t let the critics and naysayers stop you from making your own destiny.

About Writing, Alice and the Warden

Writing a three pronged love story

Autumn

When I started writing Alice and the Warden, I decided that I wanted it to be a three pronged love story.

First, I wanted to depict Alice growing to love herself. The foundation is built on her learning that she has inherent worth as a person, and that she isn’t defined by her past mistakes. As she herself puts it, “I lived like I was disposable, so it was no wonder that I was used and thrown away”. She realizes that before she can move on and build a better life, she needed to accept that she has value.

Second is the story of maternal love. Alice’s main motivation is to be the sort of mother she thinks her daughter deserves, and all of the introspection and hard truths that she admits to herself stem from that desire. After her baby is born, she does her best to empathize and care for her newborn without complaint, even when she’s exhausted. As she says, “I’m her whole world. I’m the reason she exists, and I can never be replaced as her mother. When I think about myself from her perspective, it makes me want to be a totally different person – the sort of person who’s worthy of that love.”

Third is the marriage between Alice and Hackett. Their relationship is built on companionship and acceptance, as they skip past the stereotypical romance and dive right in to quiet evenings at home with the baby — but they’re still flirty and affectionate whenever they get the chance. They aren’t perfect, but they’re determined to love and support each other, especially when things get tough. Because they both come from painful backgrounds, they find refuge in each other.

Alice: “I feel like it’s okay to be damaged with you. My real dad abandoned me because my parents divorced, but now I can rely on you to look out for me instead, you know? And you’re so good with Alicia, that I never want you to leave me. I love you. Probably more than I would have if I wasn’t damaged.”

Hackett: “She wants to make sure that Alicia doesn’t grow up lonely and vulnerable the way she did, and she wants to make sure that our marriage never grows cold and distant. And you know what? It makes me feel safe. I can be myself without turning into a giant disappointment.”

In retrospect, my original plan of wrapping it all up in 15,000 words was pretty silly. The character development is more ambitious than that would have allowed for.

Anyway, I promise that I’m not being self-congratulatory or anything like that. This year has been stressful in more ways than one, which has made me more forgetful than usual, so I decided that it was a good idea to start compiling my thoughts and goals with this novel. Truth is, I’m not sure I’ve satisfactorily met my goals with this story yet, since it’s still very much a work in progress.