bombshells

There are two worlds which overlap that our minds perceive.

The first is the one that everybody wants to see.  The rainbows, the unicorns, the magical land of fae.  Where dreams come true, where there is light and joy and happiness.  It's filled with color, brightness, warmth and hope.

Then there's that Other Place.  The place of darkness, of sorrow, of pain, despair and hopelessness.  The place where demons and dragons are real, ready to eat you at a moment's notice.  Where if you try to hide in the dark, something is going to get you.

And sometimes, it does.

I learned yesterday that the child of a friend of mine I've known since high school committed suicide.  Honestly, I can't remember her age, save for the fact she's younger than my youngest daughter, which puts her at 13-14 years old. 

It's tragic.  Some kids mature faster than others, true, but at 14.....you don't know what potential life has yet.  You're trapped in a situation you have no ability to change, you can only ride through it.

But once you turn 18, your whole life unfolds before you.  You can make it go any direction you wish.  And it's such a short, short time.

At the age of 18(ish), there's discovery.  You're able to break free and go exploring.  Wherever, whatever you want, if you have enough desire and determination.

It hurts my heart so bad.....at 14....that this young girl felt like she was in so much pain, she just wanted it to stop and she felt like she had no one to turn to, no one to talk to.  I get that.  

But....killing yourself?  It is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.  "This too shall pass."  "Enjoy the good times, because they are fleeting.  And when you are in the bad times, remember, they can't last forever."

But she'll never have any chance to see past the 'bad times' in her life.  Because she's gone.

And there were a lot of people she could have talked to.  They put her in therapy.  I don't know if she was on meds, if meds perhaps made her do it.  but depression is a fucking liar - you can't listen.  You can't let those things in the shadows gobble you up.

If you really feel you don't have anyone you can talk to, really, think about calling or texting someone who is removed from the situation - someone objective to really listen.  Click here for more information.

I know it's about you, but if you're to the point you don't give a damn about yourself, you need to remember that there are people who love you and care about you, whether you know it or not.  Even people who really don't know you because nobody should ever be to the point where they are in that kind of pain that they want to take their own life.  Life is so precious.  Please...please talk to someone.  Anyone.

To Write Love on Her Arms

Teen Suicide Hotline

Suicide Prevention Hotline

high functioning anxiety

When we moved from Houston, we left the older one behind (it breaks my heart still...I feel like I abandoned her...) and the younger one came with us.  Now it's like she's an only child and she happily saps whatever I have to spoil her with to her heart's content.  Of the two, she seemed quite a bit more fearless and intrepid, with a penchant for all things Gothly and horror movies.

Recently, my PS3 bit the dust.  This actually created a lot of internal turmoil - that thing was with me right after my sister passed away.  My husband gifted it to me, giving me something else to do other than work and sleep (and see my way through a handle of rum or vodka every other day or so).  It let me immerse myself in a game rather than dwell on the fact that I was now having to take time to go through my sister's things and get rid of much that was of no use to anyone anymore.

My sister and I gamed a lot.  Not....gamer girls, you know, the pretty ones that pose licking controllers or whatever, but actual female gamers.  I loved RPGs and puzzle games, while my sister loved platformers and action-packed games.  And we worked oddly well as a team that way.  When I played, she'd listen to me logic out stuff and make suggestions and vice versa.  When she was sick and living with my mother, I came to visit while I was training for Walmart in Dallas.  She was playing Prince of Persia, sands of time.  We had dinner and visited and she was suddenly hit by the notion of showing me the game, where she was stuck.  She showed me his cool abilities and how he moved and the area where she was stuck.  I was immediately focused.  After a few moments, I asked, "Did you run across the wall to that platform and try to run up that ledge and jump over?"  She blinked at me once or twice, then did it.  She shook her head.  "I've been stuck there for a week," she said in disgust.  And...that's kind of how we gamed.

My girls have grown up gaming.  One is very into Pokemon.  The other....into the same types of games my sister played - anything and everything.  Except she will play horror games.

Now, for those of you who don't game, there really is an entire genre of video games out there filled with blood, guts, gore, jump-scares and all sort of sick and twisted shit.  Really.  Stuff that makes most people's hair crawl.

At one point, I observed my youngest playing one of these games, so somewhere down the road, I got it in my head that she really likes them.  I can't even watch horror movies, much less play video games like that.  So living vicariously, I buy them for her.  When she sits to play them, she just makes commentary like, "Ohhhh......oh, that's not good...."  Or snarky stuff. "Yeah....so you took my hand.  I still have a gun."  I took this as fearless and really into it, so...I continued to buy those kinds of games when the PS3 died.

So after a few days, she's playing something called Ori the Blind Forest or something like that.  It's a beautiful game.  But the other night, I was like, "Honey, uh, why aren't you playing Resident Evil or Silent Hill or something?"

She looks at me like I've lost my shit.

"Mom, it's late at night.  Are you crazy?" she asks.

"I thought you liked those kinds of games," I replied, uncertainly.

"Mom..." she says, teen-splaining it to me, "yeah, but c'mon.  It's a horror game.  I won't be able to sleep tonight."

Then I realize she is actually gets scared with those games. And state as much.

"Of course I get scared. They're damn scary!"

I shoot her a sideways look.  For some reason, she's getting into the habit of using those words around me a little too fluently.  "Taindee....you mean to tell me that those games where something is trying to eat your ass or kill you actually scares you?"

"Of course, ma! Geez!"

So all that snark, all that very controlled conversation with the TV that sounds casual, is actually my child chattering out her fear and playing the game anyway.

Damn...I wish I could do that.   Even taking an anti-anxiety med, the idea of it sends my mind crawling up walls.

So every now and then, like I said, vicarious living - I hear her say something snarky and I have to walk through the room with my hands over my eyes, peeking a bit, as she fights the shit that was born of someone else's nightmares.

I do gotta say, I think we both kinda freaked out when the dude was running after her character with the chainsaw.  That was a bit much for us both, regardless of my meds.

So she doesn't play those games after dark and that's fine by me.

Trying to get back in the saddle....

The last post to this blog was in 2013.

Shit.

After friends poking and poking me, I think I'll try to take it up again.  The whole blogging thing.  At least then someone will get the happy thought they can go somewhere and read the bullshit I have to say and be done with it.

Maybe that's why I can't read anymore.  Because I need to write.

In fact, I'm not even going to go back and try to see where I left off, other than that month and that year.  Um, so around 2013 to about now in a few lines....or...you know, as the first blog entry, I guess.

I went to trucking school because my husband said I couldn't do it.  Did it for three months, rolled a rig on it's side 180* and laid it gently on the side of the road (unbelievably glad that it didn't rip the arm off my co-driver, who I adore, but her cat totally shot out the broken window when the truck came to a halt and we never found it, which broke my heart.  He was a beautiful tuxedo cat and was sweet - lost somewhere on I-10 right shy 3 miles of the Florida boarder - named Rio).  Did some recovery and dropped LSD (an analogue, don't judge) about every weekend for a solid four months (which is probably why I didn't wind up with PTSD in regards to getting in a big rig again....I think I could still drive...they never called me back....the official reports said that it was mechanical failure...I waited and basically my CDL expired....whatever).  Walked into a head shop looking for a pipe for my friend's birthday and wound up with a job behind the counter.  Worked for a month there as a clerk, became a store manager.  Worked solidly for four months straight without a day off and became the purchasing agent/warehouse manager for the chain (5 stores), helping out the general manager because she had her IUD ripped out of her body, got pregnant with twins, and was all-round miserable the entire time (which, that was a funny story too, the 'Hey, I'm pregnant' thing, but that's for another blog) and at some point in that first few months, had to take a week off because I had fibrous growths on my uterus and a cyst on an ovary so bad it was encapsulated (I think everything was taken.  She did leave me an ovary, which, the first 'period' I had after....holy shit, was it pissed off that it was doing the job all by itself...it HURT....).   Learned more about weed and drugs than I ever did in high school in the duration of 1 year.  Got 'laid off' because I took the time off to get gastric bypass surgery.  Got a job as a dispatcher at an AC company.  Office was quiet, folks were nice and down-to-earth country livin' types.  

A year into that, life went to hell in a handbasket.

In October of last year, my dad died.  It was a paradox of thought - I cannot say it was unexpected, but it wasn't expected.  I knew he had a bad heart and I imagined a heart attack would eventually take him out.  I had just hoped that he would live long enough to see both his granddaughters graduate high school. I loved my father so much and I even though we did not see eye to eye on religion, we had a good relationship.  I just didn't get to see him enough.  So now it just leaves me, my mom (three half-siblings which live literally on the other side of the world), and my stepmother.

A couple of weeks before my dad died, my husband and I had been talking a lot about my need to sleep more.  It's gotten to the point where he wanted me to seek medical attention, so I went to see a shrink.  Who wound up giving me an anti-depressant, an anti-anxiety med, and a sleep pill.  Two weeks later, my dad drops dead of a heart attack.

That was perhaps the only reason why I could stay and still stay relatively calm about the whole affair.  My emotions are chemically castrated.  Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad.  In this case, I don't know how I would have made it through the past few months without it.  

A week after my dad died,, my husband got laid off.  Breadwiener of the family at the moment (Bread Winner - title given to the majority payer of the bills.... Breadwiener - same diff, save for the fact that we can tease each other about it from time to time), this was Really Bad.  At least in my mind, adjusting to meds.  Within the week after, he gets it into his head we need to do what we talked about years ago, right before my sister died.  We needed to move to pursue our spiritual side.

Um, okay.  I had thought earlier that we'd hacked out a sort of four year plan to get our youngest daughter out of school and then us move out there, but sure.  If that's what he wants.  I am really in no condition to be making life decisions two weeks after my dad died, but hey, we're a partnership, and at the moment, he's more than welcome to take the captain's wheel while I go starboard and hurk my emotional guts out.

So, the kicker was that we moved to Kentucky to learn witchcraft.  No shit.  Specifically, British Traditional Witchcraft.

Who had any idea that Louisville, KY, home of the Derby, housed so many traditional witches in the US?

But during all of this whirlwind of insanity, there had been a plan.  There was a plan kicking around before I got laid off from the head shop gig about going to Thailand for at least a month.  That plan had not changed and it was for January of this year.  That actually was several blog posts worth of shit, but if you're not on my facebook then you missed it.  I will, however, give you one picture (because, you know, thousand words):

 (If you want to know more about this place, look up Wat Rong Khun (see?  Isn't it spiffy of me to provide you a link to the wiki for easier access?).)

Anyway, amazing lifetime adventure, get home, flight of the bumblebee packing, head towards 'home'.  When I get back into town, I get generics for my meds.  This....was okay from the one I was taking, the mail order that does three months at a time?  I don't think it works the same.

Husband's insurance hasn't kicked in yet, so I'm into the last month of what I've been prescribed and I gotta find a shrink.  All the while, I've been looking for a job since the beginning of February.  I think I found one.

Having been an assistant manager with Walmart kind of gives me a little street cred in the retail arena - it's not an easy job, you really kind of get paid dick for the amount of stress involved, but because you can handle that, you can handle just about any kind of middle management hell they want to stick you in.

So...uh, the first gig I've gotten a good response from is a singing fudge factory.  And that's not some sort of euphemism for anything else.  Literally, your job is to sing and make fudge.  As an assistant, it just includes key turn, deposits, cash flow, and supply chains.  'Supervising'.

I keep telling people....I really just can't make this shit up.

So right now, my life is compromised of domestic tranquility of sorts (I try to keep shit clean, my cooking hasn't poisoned anyone yet, and maybe the laundry isn't folded, but it's been washed and put in the general vicinity of where it's supposed to go).  I'm fucking around on the computer, waiting for all the paperwork and red tape to put me into the candy-making store in a highly 'entertaining' part of town, trying to keep the cat from tossing it's cookies everywhere and diligently taking meds, trying not to worry about when they're gonna run out if the insurance has kicked in or not.  Occasionally, practicing some spiritual stuffs.  I watch my 14 year old kid (almost 15, she keeps reminding me) walk through the house painted in grey body-paint with white out contacts (Not as Goth as you think - she's a coplayer who refers to herself as Homestuck Trash....some sort of web comic where there are quads of feelers.....you'd have to read it.  But everyone that IS Homestuck Trash advises against it.  My husband works second shift, so things are just a bit weird so far.

Other than the coven we'd joined prior and the politics involved in having so many covens so close, I don't really talk to anyone or haven't made any 'friends', save for this nice burner fellow that likes to breathe fire and kind of fancies himself a circus kid - all good.  Somewhere in the above paragraphs of what I've been doing, during the time I was working at the AC company, my friend introduced me to a local Houston group that fancy themselves by the name of 'Burners', a collective of artsy people who lifelong goal is to party at the feet of the Burning Man effigy at Black Rock City.  Nice people.  Did some arting with them.  So when I came out here, I tried to find a few....Zootch is the only dude I've met so far.

I'm sure it's just going to get weirder.  Or more normal for me, anyway, even though it seems lonely.  I keep telling myself I just need to give it more time.

Anyway, my fingers are out of practice.  I'll just try to write more stuff tomorrow.

Day of the Dead - post mortem?

I've had the unusual blessing of being able to witness various traditions when it comes to this time of year.  October is generally Harvest Moon, Wolf Moon, and the time is marked as the time when the 'veil between the worlds is the thinnest'.

I lost two people I loved about a year and a half ago, and I have always been an individual that prefers to deal with my own personal griefs in private.  So recently, this has become a very strong, personal thing for me.  

The Sumerians introduced me to Eereshkigal and Nergal, and the festival of Nattig.  Following the descent of Inanna was perhaps the first time I was ever able to really begin come to grips and understand death.  As the demons followed us in the darkness of the unknown(demons are neither good nor bad, they are spirits, unhuman creatures in Sumerian mythology), unseen and untouched, only heard.  It was an amazing experience.

The sum of the experiences for me of this 'end of the growing year', the time of the Dead, is learning the understanding that Death comes for us all, Death is no respector of persons, and whatever our struggles and challenges, it is all part of our natural course.  We should not have to fear death, we should have a healthy respect of it.  Death touches every aspect of our lives, and most of the time, we only see it when someone passes in such a way as they go to the grave.  There are a million deaths which touch us, that most do not consider.  The death of a way of life, the destruction of an idea, even the passing of a friendship.  We must take a moment to consider these deaths, mourn the passings in our own way, and then rebuild our lives and move on.

I've had a lot to mourn over the past few years.  I have had some very radical job changes, moved across the state, lost relationships, friendships that I had believed were steadfast, and dealt with the deaths of my siblings.  It's been a lot, and there are times that I have felt apathetic, and other times where I was so crazy-feeling that I lashed out at those close to me.  I hope that I have repaired things where I could, and where I couldn't, well, I hope the best for those I parted company with.  Maybe the death of one thing will lead to the birth of something new, or the rebirth of something old.

So as the cold of winter creeps across the land, laying waste to the green things....as the wild Hunt roams the darkness, know that in the deepest of the cold, the deepest winter...that somewhere in the darkness, is the spark of hope.  The tiny light.  The promise of the return of the sun.  The promise of life, even after death.

September is over.

September is over, which brings forth cooler tidings and seasonal changes.  It's weird how I feel like it's been forever since I've been cold (the mornings here in Houston have been cool), but how it feels my sister and stepbrother disappeared not too long ago.

I thought that this month would be easier, being that my sister's birthday was last month, but it's not.  Not really.  I'll be 35 this month, and after April, I will have exceeded my sister's lifespan.  It's kind of a depressing thought, so frankly, I'm not really looking forward to my birthday.  I find it just easier to take it a day at time.

I have, however, decided in all these things, over the past few months, that I wanted to embrace my spirituality more fully.  A part of that came along in the decision to open the shop.  The decision stills scares the hell out of me, but it has always been something I've wanted to do.  And frankly, life's to short to wait around dreaming of things instead of doing  them.

I find myself among old friends again.  Moving forward through life is fine, but if you are moving just to move, you much resemble the card the Fool, with common sense nipping at your heels.  It's great to have new experiences and make new friends, but we are creatures of limited space and time, and we should not let our  past be forgotten.  I think that some people would say that circling back is some sort of pattern that needs to be broken.  I don't see it that way.  If we weren't meant to have cycles, there would be none.  And just because I have certain cycles, doesn't mean that others don't have different types of cycles.  The idea though is to spiral upwards, not just chase your tail.  As for my old friends....well, time and hardships can change a person, do they not? But the hope is that whatever was fundamental about them that brought you closer to them doesn't change.  That is, anyway, the hope.

The death season is upon us, and with death comes new beginnings.  I hope that they are the best to come.

unusual reflecting...

I don't know if I believe in ghosts.

I believe it's something. I mean, the pictures for 'ghost hunters' and stuff. Reason being is that reflective light acts a certain way, and I've captured some of these weird things on 35mm as well as on digital - over the years, I've had several different types of cameras and even archaic films. So I couldn't really say.

But it's something.

I think one of the most convincing pictures I viewed by complete accident. I flipped through a picture-book that someone brought back with them to work, after having gone to some sort of business convention. As I flipped through it, my boss was standing next to a very large, flat plasma. He beamed a cheesy smile, and next to him was one of those luminescent orb things.

I'll be damned it if wasn't reflected perfectly in the screen next to him.

I don't have any rational explanation of why it did it, because like I said, light doesn't behave that way. It means the thing itself was its light source, and that light source cast a reflection. Odd.

Anyway, my grandfather died Monday. I'm sad, because I didn't get to travel back to 'home' to commemorate him. In fact, I wasn't even sure that they were going to do anything at all. I loved my grandfather, even if we weren't so close as I grew up. He was a good guy, had a ton of people, and would give you the shirt off his back. A good man. I remember his deep, rumbly voice. His smiling face. The fact that he turned his head when I swiped cookies from the cookie jar when I was little. Sleeping idly on his porch swing. There's a lot of little things I remember.

And I'm flipping through pictures on Facebook, where my brother's posted some pics from the informal gathering at my grandfather's house....and inside is my Dad. And wouldn't you know? But an orb floating gracefully before him. I don't see anything else in the pictures. I suppose it could be reflection off the mirror...but I wonder how, being that the reflection is at an angle, and the orb is actually in front of him. So...the reflection from the light would be blocked.

Maybe he was just stopping by to say 'see you later'.