Tag: mental health

About Me

Facing Life’s Surreal Challenges: My Journey

Autumn

I have lots of moments throughout the day when I’m overcome with the surreal thought of, “How is this my life?”

I’m not sure how much I should publicly share. Parts of it make me think of the line, “Lawyers clean up all details / since daddy had to lie” from the song End of Innocence by Don Henley, and the title itself feels apt enough.

There are days when it’s easier to lose myself in a list of things that have to be done, and not think about the big picture of what I’m doing. My heart stops every time the doorbell rings, and I wish that this wasn’t my reality.

Events are traveling through the neighborhood grapevine faster than I would have ever expected, but by now I have surrendered my pride and laid everything bare. People are more supportive than I anticipated, and I like how they periodically check in with me. I don’t really care if it’s morbid curiosity or genuine concern, as long as I have people surrounding me through all this.

I still feel hopelessly lost. I keep wondering when that feeling will fade, when something will come together and start to feel solid, but instead everything under my feet keeps crumbling.

And I don’t even know how much I should share, because it’s moved into the legal sphere now.

For all my life, I heard divorce talked about like it was an ending. In reality, it’s a beginning. Sometimes people take it as permission to punish you, to erase you, to make your life as miserable as they can. After all, why should they care? They’ve already moved on to their new partner, and you’re just a loose end and a failure. An object that no longer serves a purpose.

But I’m not.

I will not be erased. I will not surrender my life just because someone thinks that my existence is inconvenient now.

And the legal sphere is where I still have rights and a voice — where my story still matters.

So as much as I wish it had never been pushed this far, as unreal as it feels to be going through these events, I will not surrender. Not with everything that’s at stake.

About Me

Finding Joy in Ordinary Moments: Life, Food, and Family

Autumn

I’ve been channeling my inner Paula Deen and indulging in Southern comfort foods. Banana pudding and lemon curd pudding? Yes please! Chocolate popcorn, potato salad, beer can chicken (though I used apple juice instead) … It’s feels really good to throw off all concerns about sugar and fat and just indulge in the fuel of life.

Besides, I was never the one who cared about reading ingredient labels anyway.

The weather is nice and I’ve been getting out a fair bit, going on nature walks and identifying bird song using a handy app I downloaded. I like how I have a better understanding of the world around me, not to mention the excitement of hearing a bird that’s marked as “uncommon” or “rare.” My kids and I also keep our eyes out for fish in the river, any other critters that we can spot, and plants that are interesting … I enjoy these excursions quite a bit.

I patched a hole in the back tire of my daughter’s bike. I haven’t done this sort of thing since I was a kid, so it was satisfying when I got the bicycle put back together and it worked … especially with getting the chain back onto the gears, since that was rather tricky for me. I like discovering this inner reserve of handiness that’s gone untapped over all these years, and it’s really boosting my confidence. It’s not that I couldn’t fix things, but rather that I was never allowed to before.

Occasionally, after all of these busy days of outings and improvements, I have days when I feel completely unmotivated to do anything. I’m doing my best to frame these as days of rest, and not judge myself by their existence. I’m rebuilding a lot right now, and it would be unfair to expect myself to keep doing so much every single day.

It is surprisingly hard to write about myself. The internet is full of people who go on and on about the ordinary things that they do, while here I am struggling with summarizing my weekly activities. I don’t believe that I have the “it” factor, so I’m not going to gain any attention through journal entries, but this is something that I want to do for myself. I grew up in a shadow, then married into a different shadow, and now I want to feel like I have the right to shine with my own light. No permission required.

About Me

The Hidden Fragility in Narcissistic Relationships

Autumn

It’s their fragility that gets you.

You know perfectly well the bravado with which they present themselves to the world — it was the first thing that you saw about them, and probably what drew you to them in the first place. But as time passed by, you began to sense that fragility inside of them. The bragging and exaggerations began to seem more and more like a coping mechanism, to hide how easily they could break inside. There was so much about ordinary life that they couldn’t handle.

And you never wanted to break anyone.

So you helped to maintain their public image. After all, most people were complete strangers that you were likely to never see again, so it would be mean-spirited to demean someone you cared about over an exaggeration. You picked up the slack at home, taking on all the chores and obligations, while they seemed to spend so much time socializing and engaging in leisurely activities. Sometimes you resented them, but their fragility kept you from acting on it; you were the stronger one.

You can’t lash out at someone who’s so weak and vulnerable.

So you endure.

And the more you know them, the more childish they seem. Instead of equal partners, you’re the parent, constantly cleaning their messes and boosting their self-esteem. They even cry out, “Look at me!” and you reply, “Wow, good job!” Only you don’t feel it inside, because you know that they aren’t a child. They aren’t growing, and they won’t ever become anything more than what they are. They don’t take your words of encouragement as motivation to improve — they insist that they’ve reached perfection already. You tell them “good job” because it would break them if you didn’t.

You aren’t a mean person.

They never look at you. They never tell you “good job.” You work hard, you miss sleep, you devote every moment to trying to build them up, and they never seem to notice. On the other hand, they have huge reactions for every moment when you slip — and they extract every last ounce out of you without any forgiveness or leniency. You feel ignored and scrutinized at the same time. You have to be everything in your loneliness, and sometimes you wish that you were a literal robot free from your own emotions. It would be easier if you didn’t feel so much.

But you can’t leave, because they’re so fragile. You imagine them sitting in garbage and mold, wasting away without someone there to care for them. Who else would put up with this person once they learn the truth about them? You aren’t heartless.

You feel like a bad person for thinking that way.

Until the day when they tell you that they’re bored of you. They tell you that you held them back and wasted their life. They tell you that you abused them by being a separate person from them — but inside you know how much of yourself you lost to them. You know how much you sacrificed in trying to protect them from their own fragility.

It hurts. Deeply.

You then learn how many manipulative games they had been playing to keep you off balance. That time when it took them months to make you a copy of the house key, claiming that they kept forgetting because they were busy? Or when they went through that phase of talking in a quiet voice that was difficult to hear, only to insist that they were speaking normally? You begin to wonder if they were secretly hiding dishes then returning them to the drawers and cupboards, just to make you feel like you were losing it when you could never find what you needed. Maybe there was more truth to those paranoid moments of doubt than you realized at the time.

They’ve thrown you away, and you’re left wondering who you really are. You don’t know what’s real anymore, and you’re scared to think anything good about yourself. You feel drained and damaged. You don’t know what you want out of the future.

You learn that it’s called “narcissistic abuse,” and that there are a lot of other people out there who have gone through the same thing. For the first time in a long time, you no longer feel alone.

That’s where your healing begins.

You learn that it's called "narcissistic abuse," and that there are a lot of other people out there who have gone through the same thing. For the first time in a long time, you no longer feel alone. That's where your healing begins.

About Me

Overcoming Writing Insecurities: My Journey

Autumn

I find it encouraging that my fiction writing is still performing the best in my blog statistics.

I’ve been working on overcoming the memory of that smug voice telling me that my writing ideas were cliched and immature. Despite that proclamation, I continued writing my ideas. Alice and the Warden? Me. The Scion Suit? My interpretation of a writing prompt. The Black Magus? Yup, that was me. I enjoyed writing my ideas immensely, and others have enjoyed reading them as well, so it doesn’t matter if they were “cliched” or “immature” — it isn’t about being the best of the best, it’s about personal satisfaction and having fun.

It wasn’t really my ideas that were the problem. Rather, it was the seed planted in my brain that made me feel like I had to seek a stamp of approval before I could write them. That deep insecurity and fear I always felt when I started a story that hadn’t been given the “green light” by someone else.

Yet that person who had propped himself up as the Gatekeeper of Quality left.

It might be difficult to understand if you haven’t been through this, but when someone deliberately inflicts an emotional wound so that they can provide the “cure,” that wound is still there after they leave. Real healing takes time and is very difficult, especially when you feel the withdrawal from the false cures they fed you. It hurts severely to acknowledge that they weren’t trying to help you improve, but instead deliberately keeping you dependent.

Despite knowing better on a cognitive level, it’s been terrifying to write without that stamp of approval.

I’ve switched back to writing with a pen in a notebook, but unfortunately my handwriting muscles aren’t what they used to be (I blame the years spent typing). It reminds me of being a teenager, secretly filling page after page with my characters in novels that will never see the light of day, though now my end goal is to publish. I haven’t given up on my dream of being a professional author; it’s always there in my mind through every moment of every day.

All I need to do is write without holding anything back.

About Me

Embracing Self-Confidence Post-Divorce

Autumn

I’ve been feeling really good about my physical appearance lately.

I find it very affirming that divorced me has healthier coloring and less bloating. Divorced me is more confident in my own body. Divorced me is better at socializing with complete strangers.

Not that I’m claiming rampant improvements across the board. I still haven’t figured out a huge portion of my life, so being able to smile at my reflection in the mirror feels like a small win.

I think that I’ve been doing a lot of internal improvements, particularly with rewriting my internal self to embrace the idea that I don’t have to be invisible. I’ve been working to join the “warm social world,” and have been pleasantly surprised at how many people respond positively to my comments about the weather (and other various small talk topics). Instead of being constantly self-critical and internalizing far too much, I just aim to be friendly and curious, and let everything else be as it is.

Awhile ago I mentioned that I’ve been trying to emulate what I think a strong and admirable character would do in my shoes. I admit that I feel plenty of pressure to throw myself out there and pursue success (why haven’t you found a real job yet?), but I think it’s important to fix the parts of me that led me to rock bottom, so to speak. Otherwise I might end up playing out the same story with new costumes.

And when I think of myself as the bleeding heart who was terrified of the spotlight, I realize how inevitable my fate was.

Not that I want to stop being empathic and supportive. Rather, I know that I need to do a better job of letting people go when I get bad vibes from them — something I witnessed in myself more recently when I kept a conversation going with someone who I strongly felt like they had huge red flags surrounding them, and I absolutely hated talking to them. I probably should have ghosted them, but I kept feeling guilty every time I didn’t reply.

So I really want to internalize the idea that it’s not wrong to protect myself from people who clash with me. It’s not wrong to prioritize people who make me feel safe to be around.

I don’t have to be the one who’s always understanding. I don’t have to be the one who’s patient and never gives up. I don’t have to be anyone’s savior — and I have learned to acknowledge the hubris that drives that particular ideology in the first place.

Phrases like, “No one understands me” are red flags, not challenges. Don’t try to be better and prove otherwise. Save the empathy and support for someone who appreciates it.

art

The Art of Weaving: Tying Emotions to Objects

Autumn

Recently I watched the anime movie, Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms, and at one point someone offers their sage advice to the main character to let the fabric she weaves tell her story and weep for her. Or something like that. I confess that this is one of those movies that hits me right in the “feels” and I spent the entire time crying, so my memory of the exact conversation is probably lacking. But, you know, close enough.

That idea got me thinking. I also enjoy weaving, and while I don’t have the ability to literally encode messages into the cloth I make, I can still pour my intentions into it.

So I made a “story cloth” for myself. As I passed the shuttle back and forth between my hands, I meditated deeply on all of the events of this past year, so now it can always hold the truth of my experiences. It holds my story for me, so that I can let it go and move forward to create a new one.

I’m a bit of a metaphorical person, but we already knew that. The funny thing about being a genre writer is how it bleeds into reality, and I have a touch of that magical thinking in everything I do.

The yarn is Lily Sugar n Cream cotton, and I hand-dyed it myself. It’s small enough to fit neatly on the top of my dresser, with plenty of room for … all those other things that seem to end up on top of dressers, lol. The hand-dyed colors combined with plain weave make me think of crosshatching with colored pencils, and it’s especially pleasant to look at from a distance.

I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to take a moment to share my two cents:

During my class on domestic violence, there was a time when the teacher gave us the assignment to do something nice for ourselves during the week. Most of the other women said that they were going to do things like giving themselves more patience, more compassion, more understanding, which are all very good things. But the problem is that when one is eyeballs deep in stressful situations and in the process of healing from emotional damage, it’s hard to remember abstract ideals like patience. Plus, how do you measure if you’re giving yourself “more”? How do you know if you’ve succeeded?

My belief is that it’s better to tie those ideals to something physical. Whatever you chose should be very individual and personal, but an example could be a bead necklace, and every time you catch yourself fiddling with it, you tell yourself, “I am worthy of patience. I am allowed heal at my own pace.”

You see?

Or maybe acrylic fingernails that serve to remind you that you’re worthy of feeling beautiful. A sweater that helps you feel comfort. A ring that keeps you grounded whenever you twist it on your finger.

Something. Anything. The objects themselves don’t matter as much as the thoughts that you tie onto them. The point is to remind you to think the sorts of thoughts that you want to be thinking.

Of course, my disclaimer again is that I’m not perfect. This is something that has helped me cope so I’m sharing it with you, but I am by no means an expert or a therapist.

About Me

Navigating Healing: How Fictional Characters Inspire Personal Growth

Autumn

One of the nice things about being a writer is that I can step outside of myself and ask, “How would a confident character handle this situation?”

Then I give myself guidelines to follow, and do my best to emulate how my imaginary character would be navigating my real life.

For example, I’ve given myself the very strict rule of no rebound dating. At first I felt done with relationships altogether, so it wasn’t really that big of an issue … but as time wears on, I find myself missing simple things like hand holding more and more. But since the last thing that I want to do is drive off a perfectly good partner with unresolved emotional baggage (or pick a bad one because of said baggage), I’m holding fast to my rule. This time is for rebuilding myself, and that’s what I’m going to do! Even if it leaves me feeling lonely.

Back during the summer, I told my domestic violence class that I was going out of my way to do one fun activity a week, outside of the daily grind and responsibilities, to remind myself that life still had a lot of enjoyable and beautiful things to offer. And I meant it. I was — and still am — doing my best to engage in some small activity every week, like hiking and baking.

But here’s the dark side to trying to emulate a fictional character: I felt like an impostor after saying that.

Despite the fact that my actions were true to my words, inside I didn’t feel like I was having all that much fun. Inside, I had days where I kinda wanted to step in front of a moving train. But I didn’t confess that to anyone, because I didn’t want anyone to stress and worry over me. I was already suffering from enough guilt over the events that landed me in a domestic violence class in the first place, and I didn’t want to add to it. I didn’t want it to turn into a Big Deal. So instead, I took my kids to the zoo so that they could have something exciting.

Enough time has passed now that the painful emotions are settling down, but the habits are still here. Still eating ice cream every Sunday, and going on long walks by the river. Still taking the kids to the park, and still looking for shapes in the clouds. Still watching the sunset.

My heart isn’t back yet to where it used to be. I’m still grieving the loss of the life I thought that I would have, and still trying to wrap my mind around what my future is going to be like. But it’s okay to feel a little bit like an impostor because my insides aren’t matching up to my outsides, because as long as I keep doing my best I’m sure that they’ll synchronize once again. One day I’ll see rainbows and feel the beauty with my entire soul.

I just have to keep looking up.

About Me

Introversion: A Description

Autumn

I’m getting the impression that there’s a lot of misinformation floating around about what introversion is, so I’m going to straighten the record here:

Introversion is NOT a mental illness, social anxiety, or social awkwardness.

In broad strokes, introversion and extroversion are about your “mental locus” — are ideas processed inwardly or outwardly.

In application, this means:

Moving through transitions at a slower pace.

My extroverted husband wakes up and jumps right into the day without missing a beat. I prefer to lie in bed for awhile, then move to the couch with a cup of coffee. Once I have finished a satisfactory amount of thinking, then I get up and do stuff.

I also have to work myself up to going to the grocery store, the pool, neighborhood BBQs, returning home — anything that’s a transition from one thing to another. Even with places and activities that I adore.

Taking extra effort to mentally process everything thoroughly.

This is where being drained by social interactions comes into play.

When I talk to people, I listen to not only their words, but also their tone of voice. I pay extra attention to their body language and facial expressions as well, then carefully analyze everything to read into the person as much as possible. The result is that I tend to pick up on subtle clues much earlier than others, but it takes a lot of energy.

With groups, there’s an overwhelming number of things to analyze, so I prefer to check myself into the corner instead. I still talk to individuals who wander over, but I can’t handle THE GROUP as a whole.

New people present a variety of unknowns, so it takes additional energy to figure them out — there’s a definite “warm up” period.

Phone conversations rob me of all the visual cues I use to read people, and are consequently stressful.

Reading people lets me know what I can expect from them, so I’m not abruptly thrust into an unexpected situation without having enough time to process it.

Muted external expressions.

I’m frequently so caught up in my head that I forget to show anything on my face, so I tend to have a blank look most of the time.

I also prefer to simply state, “That makes me mad,” rather than scowling or punching, because I’m not outwardly focused enough to derive any sort of satisfaction from external expressions.

This tends to cause friction with people, because they assume that if something isn’t happening plainly out in the open, then it isn’t happening at all.

And they get weirded out by my glacial stare.

A rich internal world — which is used to forge deep connections with others.

I like my inner world — I like it so much, I write novels about it. For me, writing is far more expressive of my heart and soul than talking is, so it means more to me to have someone read my work than to have someone listen to me talk.

All of the ideas I come across are ultimately used to enrich my internal world, and I’m deeply attracted to people who can provide me with new ideas to work with. I love knowing what people actually think as individuals, and I want to know about their internal world.

And frankly, I’m snobbish enough to prefer my own thoughts over listening to someone recap the latest Disney movie. Uh huh. There’s a dragon. How nice. I could have just read the blurb on IMDB, without expending all of that energy on coming out here and talking to you.

I’d much rather listen to someone gripe about their personal problems, because at least it’s a subject that they’re emotionally attached to.

So, when someone describes themself as “introverted,” don’t assume that means they’re single, depressed, and socially awkward.

I’m actually quite gregarious with mah peeps — the people that I know well and feel comfortable around.

And no, I don’t need to break out of my shell or expand my comfort zone.

I’m fine the way I am.

Stolen from the ‘net
Stories

Concept Story – Darkness

Autumn

We interrupt our regular scheduled programming to bring you a concept story so dark, I feel morally obligated to give a trigger warning:

Self-harm/suicide attempt


Continue reading “Concept Story – Darkness” →
About Writing, Light Eternal

About Light Eternal

Autumn

cover03

I think that the best way to describe Light Eternal is as a Gnostic romance. Or, as my husband so succinctly put it, I studied up on Gnosticism so I could write trashy fanfiction about it.

I like fantasy romance, and most of my ideas revolve around the simplicity of two people in love. One of my biggest disappointments with the romance genre (and fiction in general) is that very few of them start with marriage, which, in my personal experience, is when I would say the real adventure begins. My novels don’t revolve around the question of “Will they get together?” but rather, “What are they willing to do to stay together?”

I also like magic and larger-than-life characters, so with a touch of amusement I would say that I ascribe to the “One-Punch Man” style of storytelling. The conflict isn’t about how they are going to be strong enough to win, but is instead an almost human interest exploration of what life would be like as the strongest, smartest, etc.

Light Eternal also contains a lot of pagan elements, including soul retrievals and spiritual parasites. The story is about gods and goddesses surrounded by a rich mythology, verging on spiritual fiction. Because there is a strong theme of Light versus Dark, there are a lot of Gothic and horror moments as well.

Finally, it is a novella about trauma, mental health, and dissociation. It illustrates the damage that traumatic events can cause, and the struggle to continue on with life afterward.

It is the best fictional Gnostic romance book out there!

Available for free with Kindle Unlimited