Biggest Impact - Posting Challenge, Day 7

(Also be sure to follow along with Tina, Jean, Krista, and Tambo as they say much more sane and less esoteric things than me!)

*sigh* Seriously? Because, you guys can't handle the truth. Promise. But here it is in all it's squicky glory anyway.



The single biggest impact on my life is what you see right here.

Yes, I have tons of positive impacts. Every friend individually changed my life in amazing and healing ways. I had some teachers reach out to catch me when I fell. I had strangers help me in time of need. I have new people that, even today, are shaping my life for the better. I count them as my blessings and my guardian angels, and I know where I'd be without any one of them. There are not words for how grateful I am. But every one of them was only part of my path to recovery.

It takes a village to heal.
To destroy, it only takes one man.

Maybe it's because he got to me first, I don't know. But I do know that I have struggled endlessly to overcome, to undo what he did; I struggle even now, twenty six years after the day my mother finally left him. Every healing hand has had to find and soothe the wounds left in me, every friendly smile has had to fight with my withered self esteem and lack of confidence, every tolerant soul has had to deal with my shoddy memory, temperamental nature, and uncertain time sense.

I am a walking, talking PTSD poster, and I have accepted long ago that I will never be "normal." I am a broken leg that healed wrong, a curved spine, a hand with missing fingers. Some things, once done, can never be completely erased, and that's where I am now; where I will always be.

Unfortunately for me, this really fits. If I had to think of one thing, one single thing that has touched every aspect of my life, changed the course of my future, and altered every day I have lived on this earth, this is that one thing. I am strong, I am no one's victim, and I have overcome so much, but it remains that I can never get back, never heal or earn, beg, borrow, or steal those things he stole from me. In some very fundamental ways, I will never get better. Despite my best efforts, his shadow is over my life still.

Fuck you, fuck you very much.

Maybe another blog post I'll go into detail, but I'm pretty up after the superhero post, and I don't want to come down. Not tonight.

Places I've Been - Posting Challenge, Day 5

I snagged links today! Also follow along with Tina, Jean, Krista, and Tambo as they say much more sane and less esoteric things than me. :)

Today's demand is a picture of somewhere I've been. Give me a minute.

I'm back.

Here you go:

 

Not what you expected?

Well, I could tell you about my life in one of five different states or around forty different cities and small towns. I could talk about the six or seven other states I have visited. I could speak of mountains, forests, scenic highways, oceans, swamps, fields, and deserts. I could talk of famous cities, of festivals and events, of clubs and nightlife, even of places that have briefly been home to me as I passed through area after area.

I won't. I'm not travel guide, and besides, you've probably already been there too. If you haven't, Google it.

I want to discuss something a little more...mythic. More surreal. Maybe even crazy. I want to talk about the place where I grew up.

Somewhere in the mind of every lonely child is a friend, just waiting to be imagined. And somewhere in the mind of every abused child is a still small place, a place they used to get away. And that a child suffering both, a creative, lonely, frightened child might create a populated world to flee to...it makes perfect psychological sense.

But it was real to me, real enough that it altered my entire life. It was a land where, in dark corners of the forest, trees bled and screamed. Where unicorns--real unicorns, not these pansy ass, horse-with-a-horn-Jesus-myth-virgin-loving-wanna-bes--were rare, beautiful, intensely magical...and were the terrifyingly vicious fighters of myth. (Seriously, I don't care how you depict a unicorn, but if you are drawing a horse with a horn, you're DOING IT WRONG.) It was a land with dangers around every corner and magic that was just a little too chaotic to be trusted, a war-torn land where children were disposable and people were suspicious and frightened even of familiar faces, and yet was also a land of incredible, awe inspiring beauty and endless, boundless potential.

I tried to write about it, in fact, spent most of my childhood locked in a battle with myself, trying to depict this inner world to my satisfaction. I eventually put that story down and moved on, after thirteen years of trying. I came to realize how difficult it was to capture, and if I succeeded in my dream, if I managed something so well that it could be published and shared but I made a mistake in that world, it would be cemented in print forever. The very thought felt like a betrayal. So I moved on to write stories about worlds that I cared about so much less. I still loved them, mind, but they weren't Home.

I suppose no one can capture the spirit of their home very well, even if they are writing pure nonfiction, and not about a world that lives in their head.

Maybe I'll take it up again, someday.

In the meantime...if you are following me through these posts, you'll recall I mentioned that I am a weirdness magnet. Let me leave you with a little weirdness that is--probably, maybe--all in my head.

But, you know? Maybe not.

Name That Blog – Posting Challenge – Day 2

Today’s posting challenge is about the name of this blog–what, why, and where it comes from.



This is hardly mysterious. My last name is Grimm, and I set up this blog (originally) to be my writing blog. You do the math.

So instead I will talk about the name of my first blog, "Screaming in the Dark." I made that blog back in the 90's, back when the internet was so new it barely had graphics and the idea of sharing information was just as new. Back when I was pretty new, too, and trying desperately to navigate a life I was ill prepared for while dodging the demons that haunted my every step.

Anyone who knows me knows my life was never a picnic. Abuse, neglect, mental programs, and a lot of anger haunted my childhood. By the time I was seventeen my mother had had enough of me and threw me out of the house. By the time I was in my early 20′s I was a wreck. I barely knew how to make friends, I worked shit jobs for too little pay–so little that even holding down two or three could not pay my meager bills–and every day seemed just a little bit darker than the last.

Some good things happened, such as me discovering a place called Ravensguild. There I made my first lifelong friends, embraced a spiritual path I was finally happy with, and discovered that everything I said, felt, and thought was not wrong or stupid or immature. I was, for the first time, respected, and it was a revelation. It wasn’t enough to cure all that ailed me, but it went a long way to making me the person I am today.

But while it made my mental life easier, it did nothing for my physical one, and could only help ameliorate the worst of my lingering emotional effects. Bluntly put, they kept me sane, but they couldn’t make me a functioning human. I felt like I was drowning, physically and emotionally, that the light was going out of the world. Every day, every breath was a struggle, and I was ill equipped to deal with it.

But a friend in the Guild noticed. He only went by Wraith; it was all I ever knew him as, even though I have long since learned the names of most of the others. He didn’t speak often of his past, and what little I learned showed his to be far darker than mine. We spoke often. I told him what was going on with me, and he told me it was okay. It was okay to be in darkness. It was okay to drown.

See, I felt I was failing at life. I often still do. But I wasn’t the failure. In fact, nothing was wrong with me at all. Everything I was was a normal response to a fucked up existence. I was, in fact, a machine of survival, bred under harsh conditions to stand up to anything. What seemed broken was merely me breaking into a new world, a world where I no longer had those conditions to endure. I had to learn all new skills, and do it without a therapeutic ear, parental guidance, or really, any help at all. I was in the deep end–sink or swim–and I was going under.

I saw this world with a stranger’s eyes, and I saw more in it than those whom it had treated gently as children. I saw the hypocrisy, the double-speak, the lies. I saw it when politicians’ swindles made lives harder and closed doors. I noticed when people were subtly rude about my value, implying I had none because I was poor. I understood as my friends could not how and why the deck was stacked against me. And I ranted about the unfairness of it, even though every rant fell on deaf ears. People who hadn’t been there didn’t believe it, people who had and survived refused to think I could be different than them while those who failed also thought they were fully to blame for their failure. The first lesson I learned as an adult in this country that there was no mercy for people like me, and that I was more disposable than a week old McDonald’s wrapper.

I was mentally broken and scarred, severely PTSD, completely alone in the world without any familial support, I had no savings, and every goal I reached towards I had to achieve completely alone. Before you say it’s easy, imagine college without loans or grants, imagine your parents never washing your clothes, no friends to lend you money or take you out, no reward for hard work but more hard work. I was in a race with the rest of the world, but someone had moved my starting line ten miles back, broken both my legs, then demanded I catch up. Then, when I found myself floundering and begged for help, they told me my failure was my fault.

It was a hard coming-of-age, an awful one, and at the time I was unable to sort all the lies from the truth; even the truths I suspected I was reluctant to give public voice to. No one agreed (oddly enough, almost 15 years later they do but it took the collapse of an economy), and most told me I was full of it. So instead I whispered it to Wraith in private.

The pain I felt, the betrayal of my country, the double standard of outward politeness and subtle discrimination, the ghosts of my past trying to devour me, my feeling of culture shock and betrayal in my own home, a stranger in a familiar land, all the unnecessary trials I had to endure, and my fury at being thrown to the wolves…he called it “screaming in the dark.” He’d been there, talking into the blackness, into people’s apathy and their unwillingness to listen or learn. He’d raged against the world, a well founded rage, and been ignored, forgotten, dismissed. Disposed of. He’d screamed defiance against his own demons as threatened his very being, and he lived in that darkness still. We both did.

He taught me the darkness is okay. The fury, the pain, all of it is as right to feel and embrace as joy or love. Getting rid of the emotions only numbs you, but it doesn’t make the source of the problem go away. Injustice will exist, always, but the brave don’t look away. The truly brave don’t fear the dark.

And he taught me that I wasn’t alone.

I remember the relief I felt. I was depressed, and that was okay. I wasn’t “broken,” I didn’t need to “cheer up” or “get over it” or “focus on the positive.” I could rest, stop struggling all the time to live up to those impossible expectations, nurse my wounds and just let them heal. All those things other people demanded of me, that  was their wants, their needs, their desires, not mine. And I had no obligation to fill them.

Wraith taught me there is positive strength in pain, in sorrow, in being true to yourself and honoring your needs, even those most people would say are negative ones.

I named my first blog “Screaming in the Dark,” and that was what I did. I was young, there was an awful lot of whining done. But I said many true things as well, and I found a forum in which people would listen. And through all of them, I made my way out of the dark.

That time in my life is over, even if I feel the darkness swimming about my feet again, piranhas set on devouring me. I’m not yet certain the blog title still fits, and I am certainly fearful that I have no more wisdom or insight, but that my best years for both are behind me. I am pretty certain no one would listen, not this time, and I find myself blaming myself for my failures and cowering once again from the dark. It’s a scary damned place.

But for the moment, I’m trying it again, just to see if it’s right, just to see if it fits. Just to see where it goes. I’m walking down old roads in search of new paths, things I missed the first time around, and seeking to pick up strengths I once had but have since let fall behind me. And I am completely noncommittal. “We’ll see” is all the credence I give it.

But if I get really lucky, maybe I’ll find myself there once again.

And if I get really, really, really lucky, maybe I’ll find the ghost of a lost friend.

15 Things – Posting Challenge – Day 1

The official instructions are to post on Day 01- A recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself.

I warned you I’d fudge the pictures.

This is a picture of me from several years ago. Digging, of course. The blue dye in my hair had faded to a rather pleasant green, I am, as always, barefoot as possible, and I am on a mission. Aside from gaining weight, not much has changed.

I’ve done these “15 facts” things before, and I always seem to say the same things. So I’m going to try to stretch my wings on this one. Let’s see how I do.

1) I’m a Florida girl at heart. Not the soulless “Death’s Waiting Room” Florida has become, catering to the very expendable cash of people who realize they can’t take it with them, and who’s voting views look no further than the end of their ever shortening life spans. No, I’m a true Florida girl, one of the ones who can remember when Florida tourism advertised itself for the state’s natural beauty and not just tourist trap beaches and hotel pools. I am swamps and bugs, beach sand and sticker bushes, hurricanes and hundred degree weather, buzzards and eagles and hawks and ten types of cranes, I am antebellum trees with hanging moss, alligators and armadillos, bikinis and bare feet.

I am the living embodiment of the memory of the state, of the land, which is slowly dying as short sighted fools build in a place with no natural barriers to stop them. Florida was once not paved all up and down the coast to the point that the only way you knew you exited one city and entered the next was a sign telling you so. You didn’t find an air conditioner in every building, and old faces everywhere you looked. Florida has been consumed by people who exploit her worse than a five year old sex slave, and like that unfortunate child, they will use her until she dies. She is dying.

I secretly root for hurricanes with high property (not people) damage. I root for fires and floods, for the unsavory reputation of death to follow closely on the heels of her name. I want people to think twice before moving here. I want them to consider other warm places, Arizona, Texas, Alabama, or half the bloody South. I want those who only care about their next breathing day (young and old, mind), and who devoid the state of opportunity, of growth, of beauty, of any reason for youth to stay, of any help to the non-wealthy farmers and laborers who daily strive to make this a state worth living in to leave. I want them to find other homes and never return.

I want my state back.

2) I have very limited reading habits, which I’m told for a writer is suicide. I read sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and a (very) little bit of romance. I also read countless fun articles, news articles and blogs online, though I’m not sure how these officially classify.

I don’t so much read non-fiction as skim for what I need, and most straight fiction (aside from select humor) bores the crap out of me. I consider most suspense and westerns as “men’s fiction,” meaning they are fast in pace but often low in characterization. I also eventually quit reading mysteries for this reason–I was supposed to care about what was going on, but I didn’t. I feel obligated to struggle through classics, though I do admit a few of them are perennial favorites. Overall, though, the daily human experience holds little thrill for me–to me, I can look out a window and see it. It’s making the impossible seem real that turns me on, so that is what I read.

On the flip side, I do read voraciously.

3) I have a strange idea of beauty. I think lush green lands are very pretty, but…postcard pretty. Uninspiring. For beauty that shakes me to the core, give me miles and miles of miles and miles. The ocean’s vast emptiness, the unfolding desert, the middle of winter when the leaves are off the trees and you can finally see the land rolling away before you. I love skies that go on forever, rainstorms seen in the distance, sunsets and sunrises that brand the sky halfway into tomorrow. The beauty I seek doesn’t have to be harsh, but it should have grit.

Perfect beauty on people bothers me too. Give my a slightly asymmetrical face, a smile too wide or too crooked, some lines, crows feet, scars, a little bit of pudge. Dolls and statues are beautiful because in them we can create a human ideal. People are beautiful because of their flaws. Anyone without flaws is also without humanity, without the imprint life leaves on us all. They are pod people, and as such are to be avoided. And screw a media that says otherwise.

4) I have found the way to discourage people from reading things is to be verbose.  So if you want to publicize personal facts without having people actually read them, just talk a lot. (By the way, how you doing in this post so far?)

5) I’m double jointed to the point that sometimes things…spontaneously dislocate. I don’t know why, but my guess is I stretch the tendons or something just a little too far. Old age is gonna be fuuuuunnn…..

6) I like long hair on both men and woman, and I think the cultural push towards ever shorter hair is criminal. I will admit, there are people who look best in shorter hair, and even I prefer them that way, but I think it should be personal choice, not a cultural no-no. For both genders. I also think there is nothing unprofessional about well kept long hair on men or women, and that with all the other things we need to worry about, nitpicking someone for long locks is just plain petty.

7) I overcooked my toast and now it’s a briquette. Hey, it’s a thing….

8) I love writing, but I absolutely hate, hate, hate the process. This was something I held as a shameful secret for years. But then, much to my surprise, I discovered I was not the only one. Some people write shallowly, and you can tell. Others rip open hidden corners of their souls and struggle to get it on paper. How hard that struggle is, I think, depends on how good a grip you have on your inner demons and past nightmares, and as it turns out, a surprising number of people don’t have a grip that’s all that good.

To everyone who keeps on plugging away anyway, driven by muses with whips who chain you to a writing implement, I salute you. This should, in the end, be a “fun” thing, but I’m not sure it should ever be easy.

9) I want to have a pet skunk, a couple ferrets, breed Scottish Fold kittens, and own a greyhound, a Great Dane, and a small dog. My perfect household will be overrun with animals. And kids.

10) I once had a cockroach in my cleavage. No, I don’t feel like sharing that story today; I just told you to tease you.

11) I have a memory of something that happened before I was born. Not telling that story today either. Instead, I’ll just link it.



12) I’m a weirdness magnet. If something is going to go strange, I tend to be standing somewhere in the vicinity, if not at ground zero. Most of the time I’m just minding my own business when it happens, too.

Wait, you want examples? Don't ask for much, do you?

Well…two UFOs (not aliens, but flying objects with zero explanation behind them, I looked), an odd experience that I can only describe as a fairy encounter, several ghost-like encounters and one haunted house, shared dreams with an ex, and a few experiences to frightening to go into. Also, there was the time I got into an exclusive camp because I wrote on a wall (they weren’t mad and it wasn’t punishment, they were impressed), twice I was stranded on the road and helped (safely) by complete strangers, survived an accident that should have killed me, and a whole lot more. Seriously, my life makes no sense, and people who’ve lived with me can and will attest to this.

Thankfully, I have yet to make a door fall off a plane, though.

13) I like caves and underground spaces. I go into them even though I suffer a touch of claustrophobia and find them uncomfortable places to be. This may go back to that whole weird concept of beauty–I think they are marvelous. I also love exploring ruins for much the same reason.

14) I am a Southern eater to the core. Sweet tea, grits, fried catfish, greens, black-eyed peas, and all those other down-home foods are my nirvana. I have had fancy food, foreign food, and things so delicious they’ll make your toes curl, but offer me a choice between those things and cheese grits and the grits win every time. However, a good red curry is a fighting second place.

15) I did this for a year:



The falling down? I did lots of that, too.

It was how I got past a suicidal depression. Needless to say, I wasn’t much fun for my teammates, and I think they were happy to see me go. But it saved my life. I can’t do it again–too time intensive, it costs too much money, and then there’s the little matter of having blown out both my ankles–but I’m glad I did it. I wouldn’t take back the experience for the world.

Duty, DONE. Honestly, I’m not that interesting of a person, and some of my most interesting bits I don’t want to talk about right now anyway. Maybe I’ll revisit it next year and see if I have anything different to say.