As the Kitty Burns

I walk home, one knee high sagging around my ankle.

I'm thinking.

My cat needs her kidneys flushed. Something is wrong, but I have no idea what. The nice doctor explained it to me on the phone, but a combination of what I can only assume is medical-speak plus his heavy Indian accent turned the explanation to gibberish. I don't understand accents on the best of days because...well...I'm a terrible person (isn't this the sort of thing politically correct, caring, and sensitive white folk know how to do?), but it's even worse when the words are unfamiliar to me.

All I know is she needs them flushed. She needs an IV. She needs an extended vet stay, and in a couple days, she needs her blood tested. Oh, and antibiotics. We can never forget the fun of giving a kitty antibiotics.

And I'm seeing little cartoon dollar signs flitting around my head, making a pass or two before fluttering off into the wide blue sky. I have money. I can pay for this. But it'll hurt. And the solution they're giving...well the doctor isn't guaranteeing it's a solution. There could be more money, more tests if this doesn't work.

I'm thinking of my mom, a single mother in Florida--back when Florida was still something resembling sane--struggling to make ends meet.

We were the only white faces on the black side of town, but back then that didn't mean what it does now. The neighborhood was by no means safe, but crimes didn't happen in broad daylight. Neighbors still looked out for each other, even if it was just keeping a wary eye on what was going on around the homes next to them. My mother could go outside and walk down the street without fear of being raped. I could play in my yard--front or back, we had both--without fear of being kidnapped or harmed. In fact, we had more to fear from the boys who liked to drag race their cars down the street than any criminal danger.

And all those black faces around us were in exactly the same boat.

We adopted a dog when I was four or five and named her Lassie. She wasn't a collie. She was, in fact, probably the spawn of several generations of sleazy back-alley encounters between breeds looking to kink it up with members outside their genetically exclusive gene pool. She was a small, enthusiastic mop of nervous love, her big brown eyes hidden behind bangs so long my mother often clipped them.

She was a pound dog, and that meant something different then than it does now. Anything from a pound had a fifty-fifty chance of having contracted some sort of disease or ailment, usually from the close quarters with other dogs or the merely adequate hygienic conditions. They weren't checked, and pounds didn't apologize. It was simply known, like you knew the sun was going to rise, that you took your chances.

Lassie, when she came to us, had problems. She wasn't fixed, for one thing; that was on our dime. I remember looking at her stitches, mom trying to explain to me what they were for. I also know she was ill, but I was little and it's been years. Ask me to tell you with what and I couldn't answer. I know it was two or three things, probably ears, fur/skin, and some bacteria or virus she needed medicine for. The moment we got that dog we had a money pit.

But my mother stretched her budget and that lovely little dog lived with us for nearly twenty years.

Keep in mind, my mom was a single mother--that's difficult in any day and age. She had only a high school degree, so she wasn't exactly raking in the bucks. And yet, in many ways she was better off then than I am now.

We owned our own home. Sure, it was dirt cheap and on the wrong side of town, and sure we only afforded it because of a special program hosted by the city (lowering crime by making prices affordable for families who weren't criminals to move in--it worked), but hey, we owned it. How many people could do that now, even if offered similar help?

Mom owned her own car. Not making payments, owned. And when a wreck wiped it out, she bought a new one. Sure it was old and not very fancy, and sure it wasn't speedy or pretty or really anything desirable. But it was reliable, not a junker, and was bought with money she saved.

We got a dog, and while the budget was tight while we nursed her back to health, we managed it.
She had one job, one, and it paid all the bills plus some left over. Very little, but some.
And, I can't stress this enough, she was raising a child all on her own.

And my mother, then, made less than I do now, even adjusting for inflation.

Fast forward ten years.

After her divorce and after discovering that her ex had found a legal loophole through which he didn't have to pay his court mandated child support--ever--she was essentially a single mom again, but this time with two kids. Still, she was also senior in her field, having the know how and experience to have moved up considerably in rank, and now made more than she did when I was a preschooler.

My grandparents bought her a trailer on a tiny piece of land nearly an hour outside town--if they hadn't we'd have been homeless. My grandparents bought her a car--if they hadn't, mom would be jobless. And to keep us afloat my mother maxed every credit card she owned, worked long hours, and when that didn't cover it she took on so many odd jobs they essentially became a second job in their own right. Money was so tight we didn't even have a dollar to spare for a candy bar.

Fast forward again another fifteenish years, give or take.

I'm single and childless. I make more now than my mother ever did--even adjusted for inflation--but I own nothing permanent. No car. No college, because I can't afford it and my credit is too bad to get loans--education is apparently NOT an equal opportunity offer. No home; I rent with a roommate, in fact. I own nothing but my books, my clothes, and my cats. Most of my money goes to bills, and I mean basic bills. Aside from internet what I pay falls under necessary--phone, food, electricity, water, sewer, gas. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy some modest pastimes, like going to the movies or out with friends, but even these things are done pretty rarely.

And sudden disasters like my precious cat being sick? A nightmare.

Like most of my generation I live hand-to-mouth. I don't have credit cards (by choice) so I can't even pretend things are better than they are, that I am somehow wealthier than I really am.

And as I walk home, my knee high around my ankle, exhausted from too much work and too little sleep and hallucinating dollar signs hemorrhaging into the open sky, I wonder how we got here from where we started, not even a full lifetime ago.

I wonder if we'll ever have the energy to get mad or whether everyone else, like me, is so exhausted merely from the daily struggle to survive that they just can't rouse the energy to fight back. Or even to care.

And then I walk in the door.

Family Fun - Posting Challenge, Day 14

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



So why am I sharing a picture with faces? Because it is totally and completely ludicrous.
I know, it doesn't look funny, but let me put it in perspective.

• There are 27 people in that photo.
• Of that 27, 18 are blood related, the rest are by marriage.
• All 18 are blood related as children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, or great-great-grandchildren  to the women in red.
• 10 are children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren to the woman in blue right next to her.
• Only 2 are direct children of the woman in blue--3 are represented here if you include the grandchildren given to her by one of her children that has passed away.
• The woman in blue has 9 kids total.

Mull on that a moment. For most people, this picture would represent their entire family, plus friends. For my family, it is only a fraction of a percentage. Aside from my aunt's nine kids, my grandmother had three, neither of which started popping out offspring as...generously as my aunt, but both of which also have children, grandchildren, and possibly great-grandchildren as well. What you see here is actually a conservative family gathering.

Why don't I know for sure to what generation various family members can chart themselves? Because, in order to keep up with this family you need a programmable flow chart.

I figure, at the rate we're going, one out of every ten people will be blood related to my family by the year 2130.

Also, this casual poolside picture? Guess what time of year it was taken.

The smart ones caught the one hint in the photo and have already guessed it.

Christmas.

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.

To My Grandfather

When Practicality IS the Dream

It’s two weeks until Christmas and my blog is snowing. No, seriously, there is a snow GIF on my blog. I’m not sure how I feel about this. It’ll all melt off by January 4th–about the time that, I am told, snow will fall for real in my neck of the woods. Maybe by then I’ll have a job, so I can buy snow boots. Otherwise I’ll have to trust to thick socks and flimsy cloth sneakers.

I am looking once again down the barrel of my writing. The strange creatures that haunted the pages of my comics are calling to me again, wanting to give birth to themselves from the corners of my mind.

I’m not sure how I feel about that, either.

In the midst of a crisis of confidence--or perhaps a four-on-the-floor depression, who the hell knows?–I decided my writing was…well…bupkus. Utter, total, and complete bupkus. I was a hack, a wannabe, with all the writing talent of a squid, and I’d be better off investigating a real line of work, like, say, my local 7-11.

So I stopped. Completely.

But the ideas won’t go away. They flirt on the outskirts of my mind; tiny black-winged figures in the distance, soaring over the trees, somewhere between threatening and begging, waiting to be brought screaming to life beneath my typing fingertips. I find no joy in creating them, no joy in the process of making them coherent in the plot-line, and some pain in that they won’t tell me what they’re up to! I only have the vaguest, most frustrating idea.

But there is a perfect beauty to their flight, their menace, the way they can destroy and mutilate lives, then disappear without a trace. There is a terrible wonder in the way they devour others, and something inspirational in the heroes that oppose them, though they barely know what it is they’re up against. There are so many story threads here that I need a chart to map them–brother to sister, brother to friend, sister to friend, friend to friend, friend to lover, lover to lover, lives blown apart by the deepest connections, ties severed and wounds flayed as only the closest of friends can do, now in desperate need of mending before the darkness comes for them all.

And still, I’m writing a blog post instead, putting off the damned struggle of herding and wrestling all these ephemeral cats down onto the paper and pinning them in place, my collection of feral, furry little butterflies. I’m dodging the scratches to my psyche, the claw marks in my hopes and dreams, the little teeth biting viciously through my self confidence and tearing it away in chunks. I avoid the specter of my own failure by failing to try, and while that accomplishes nothing, at least I still hold the dream that I could have succeeded. You know, if I really wanted to.

You ever wonder how it is we can so easily lie to ourselves, even when we know what we’re doing is a lie?

These days I sometimes wonder if that’s all any of it is, a lie. I will never get a job or unemployment, but run out of money and be kicked out of my home. I will lose everything I own and roam the streets begging for a little compassion from a cash-strapped and increasingly hostile country, hoping not to be raped or murdered by people who see how vulnerable I am. I will never go overseas to meet my one true love, but break his heart and my own with false promises I can never keep. I will never see my son again. I’ll be seen as a shameful influence and a fuck-up by his parents. And I will never, ever, not in a million years, write my bestselling novel.

So why even try?

Sometimes the answer “because I need to eat and maybe keep warm” is the only one that keeps any of us going. It’s certainly a good enough one for me. So I will try again, for god and country and a desperate need to eat.

And who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky.