Reflection

October was a strange month. 

I fell into a slump, I couldn't find the words to communicate my feelings. I couldn't even write about it. I felt myself drifting farther from the people who love me. I could see it, but I couldn't stop it. 

My birthday weekend was filled with complicated emotions. I celebrated with a friend, wanting to keep it quiet. I saw the Icelandic band, Of Monsters and Men, who sang about nature and heartbreak. I ate pie at midnight. The next night I drank too much. 

I woke up in the morning to my beloved cat, Boogie, fighting death to spend his last breath with me. Still a little drunk, I cried and murmured "my sweet boy" until it felt like I got to say goodbye. It was a death I was not prepared for. 

After the family get together, I dug him a grave in the back yard, next to the chicken coop. The ground was hard from the drought, I had to use a post hole digger to loosen the dirt. I dug until my arms shook, until my shoulders burned. I dug through sobs and sore hands. Mom came out with a flashlight after the sun went down. We planted a butterfly bush on top of him. Somehow, losing him was more heartbreaking than the others. 

I was glad that I buried him on my own. The pain from digging felt good, felt right. I got to say goodbye properly. And somehow, his death brought me back. At least, it started to.

The next week I saw Florence and the Machine at the Greek Theater. I cried happy tears, overwhelmed by the positive force of her voice. It seems that music and death were the forces I needed to get back to myself. 

I still feel myself slipping sometimes. There are days when I feel like it's all meaningless. But I'm slowly becoming more human. I can see beauty in things, I can smile (most of the time), and I'm starting to love people again.  

So to everyone, thank you, for being patient with me if I've seemed distant or moody. I promise, I'm trying to turn things around. 

Sinking

I'm trying, Universe, I really am.

It's three weeks into the semester and I am slowly losing my grip. But don't worry, I won't fall apart in some flashy dramatic way. It'll be quiet, behind doors, listening to Of Monsters and Men on a loop.

I wrote my first poems for poetry class. We were given a line from one of John Wieners poems to start them. I don't know how I feel abut them yet, so I will just post them without judgement.

1)
Old farms await to take us in
fold us into them
down dirt roads and crumbling highways
we rattle like loose tires
metal on metal, rubber on asphalt
we can hear our old mothers calling
kneading bread in the early hours of morning
kneeling down at bedtime
crosses clasped in cracked hands
we can hear our old lives waning
as the tires roll over uneven pavement
your hand out the window
catching the wind

2)
Old farms await to take us in
ancient roots grow under our feet
sprouting from hidden lakes underground
I walk through the tall grass
watching the stooped farm houses shrink
the farther my feet take me into the green ocean
if you listen closely,
can you hear
the gentle waves
the cries of birds
sometimes, there is silence
a stillness, as if time has stopped
alone in a sea of grass, I imagine
brittle wood splintering
a real ocean, full of fury
crashing down
drowning us all

A song to go with my mood:

Bees

 

School started last week. 

This morning I saved a bee from drowning. They drink from the kiddie pool I fill for my ducks and often drown in the process. I made a little bee drinking container, but they are drawn to the larger body of water. I can't save them all.

Did you know my name means honey bee? It's Greek. I don't know if that has anything to do with being drawn to their safety or not. Maybe it is some sort of self-preservation. I used to think that my name didn't suit me, but I think I've grown into it. Honey bees are a collective, for the greater good, something that  I strive to embody.

Sometimes I feel like a speck in the world. Actually, many of my days are spent feeling like an empty space in the universe. I'm not sure if it is from feeling like I'm unheard, or because I am crushed by the weight of possibility. It could be anything in between. Either way, it's exhausting to be in a constant state of existential crisis.

But if you think about it, bees are just tiny specks in the world, yet without them, our existence would be much less beautiful. No flowers, less plants, no fruit. We would survive, but there would be a noticeable absence.

It's really easy to fall into the pitfalls of my anxiety when school starts. Suddenly my worth is quantified into grades. Suddenly, if I struggle with an assignment, it's because I'm not smart or creative enough. Or maybe I'm not trying hard enough. School makes all my flaws float to the surface and I have to deal with them head on. And more often than not, I feel as though I am insufficient.

I guess what I'm getting at is, I am a honey bee. I need to remember that even though I may be a speck, I exist for a reason. And my absence would be noticed.

Time

Time is a weird thing.

I can never really get the hang of it; always elusive and confusing. Days and weeks will pass in a spiral of slowing and speeding moments that I'm never fully aware of.

Summer is coming to an end soon and I have not completed any of the tasks I wanted to. I have not fixed up and learned how to drive the manual Acura Integra that has been sitting in my driveway. I have not completed any writing projects. I haven't even finished putting together the zine for the comic shop.

Needless to say, I am not great at completing things.

Time.

I mean, look at the babies in that photo (that's me in the middle). I am about the same age my niece is now, which places it about twenty five years ago. A whole quarter century, almost the entirety of my life; yet in the grand scheme of things, it is a blip on the cosmic timeline.

I guess what I am getting at is, we tend to worry too much about time, I worry too much about time. I make up these timelines and then sink farther and farther into a cycle of shame and defeat when it doesn't play out the way I think it will. In my quest to be kinder to myself (and live a less anxious existence) I need to let go of some of these expectations.

You'd think that after all these years I would realize that I complete things in my own time. I get this feeling that I am a failure because I don't do everything I want to and in turn, completely ignore the things that I am actually accomplishing.

This summer I started a writer's group and I'm putting together an all women creators zine. I've been keeping up on my blog. Though it wasn't much, I made some progress on my graphic novel Delirium. If we don't celebrate our accomplishments, it's easy to forget they are even happening.

I need to stop thinking about time in a sense that I am wasting it.

Blue Moon

I don't know if others feel this way, but some days it is really difficult to live in this world, this reality that we have created. I am a big picture kind of person, who looks at all sides of issues to understand them and unfortunately, not everyone does the same. And it is frustrating because I just want people to understand.

But isn't that the reason I became a writer?

This past week has really made me appreciate my education, for many reasons. As someone studying writing, I often am confronted with, "you don't need a degree to be a writer." While yes, this is true, anyone can start typing away and write a book--maybe even a highly acclaimed or bestselling one--I feel that studying your passion is never a waste of time.

I struggled with whether or not I should study writing, or something else and just write on the side as a hobby. I decided to follow my dream of writing, and after a year at SF State, I'm glad I did.
I am more comfortable in my writing and am improving everyday. The literature classes I've been taking for my minor are exposing me to new writers and genres. My understanding of the world and how literature shapes and reflects it grows with every story/novel/poem I read.

So even though I have days when I don't want to exist in this world, days where people's uneducated opinions are harmful to others, days when I feel like a lone voice of reason in a sea of voices louder than mine, even still, I don't ever want to stop learning. Because even though I feel too small to change the world, if I keep writing, I can at least shift it a little.

Tomorrow night is a blue moon, the last until 2018. I think there has been a change in me and while I don't necessarily believe in astrology, it would be foolish to discount the power of the moon. After all, it controls the ocean.

Distance

There is something lonely about the landscape of middle California. I took the train down to Los Angeles last week and it wasn't as peaceful as I remember it being. Maybe it had something to do with the hour long delay on the way down. Or maybe the charm of traveling by train has worn off. Next time I'll probably fly.

It had been so long since I ran away to LA. Last summer I was too poor to take my annual trip to clear my head, which is probably why I've been feeling so off lately. It didn't make any sense, I have so many good things going on in my life, yet there was a lingering cloud of unease. I couldn't put my finger on it.

Perspective. I needed to leave to gain perspective.

I needed to spend time with one of my favorite people in the world. I needed to walk everywhere and eat delicious food. I needed to get out of Santa Rosa and break my daily routine that has become stale.

Most importantly, I needed to be around my creative partner to fall back in love with my story. I've been working on Delirium for four years now, which makes it my longest running project. After struggling with it for a year, I realized it needed to be a graphic novel because the story couldn't just be told in one point of view. And what better person to have illustrate than your best friend?

Your insanely talented best friend.

But then because I am a crazy person, I kept trying to write it as a traditional story anyway. It took half a bottle of wine and spending a weekend with Blair to finally start writing it as it was meant to be. Granted, I regret writing while mildly intoxicated, but I am at least going in the right direction.

Luckily we are both struggling with the project, so we can commiserate together.

Final Thoughts on June

Over the years I've been collecting books on writing, usually from required reading lists in various creative writing classes. I would read the chapters assigned and then place them on a shelf to collect dust; but then something happened last week. I pulled them all down from the shelf where they were neatly organized and I began to go through them for inspiration. Granted, I got them down to find prompts for the Writer's Block meeting, but I didn't stop there.

I think my brain is finally ready to jump back into my stories. I've been wondering about my characters lately and July is a great time to find out what they're all up to. Zillah is still in that damn diner and Madeline just wants to understand why she lets the man she loves break her down into smaller and smaller pieces. I don't even know what's going on with my demigod siblings.

Part of my hesitation is because when I look back at my stories, I realize how awful they are. Not the ideas or the characters, but how I wrote everything. It's crazy to think about how much I've grown as a writer in the last year. I'm pretty sure it's more than I have in the previous five years. I was so afraid that the writing program would be too much for me, but I stayed afloat and my skills shot up into the sky. I'm really proud of myself.

So since it's almost July and I haven't done it in a while, I think I'm going to sign up for Camp NaNoWriMo. I need a reason to show up every day to write. I still haven't quite gotten to the point where I can do it without an "assignment." Plus, this time I have a community of writers to keep me motivated. Seriously, starting Writer's Block is probably one of my favorites things from this summer so far.

 

 I'm so ready. 

In other news, I've been making myself more and more at home at the shop. In honor of Pride (and the Supreme Court ruling) I made a display of comics/trades that feature LGBT+ characters. It was my favorite display yet!

 I want to decorate the entire store in rainbows.

AND I just checked the Girls With Issues Facebook group (the ladies comic book club) and we have 70+ members! Even though we only have about 20 women show up to the meetings, it is fricken awesome that so many want to be part of our community. 

I never imagined working at Comics FTW would be so rewarding. I just thought it'd be cool to get cheap comics. 

June was a pretty good month.

Clarity

Showing up every day to write is difficult. Very difficult. But it is my job, right? I chose to be a writer, out of all the things I could've been. Well, to say I chose it wouldn't be entirely true. It is part of me. I can't survive without expressing myself on the page. If I don't write, I feel disconnected. It's how I process this big confusing world.

Even still, writing every day is hard. Some days I can only dribble out a few awful sentences. But some days I find that one sentence or phrase that resonates. One that longs to be something bigger. This week it was, "the ravens are calling." I have no idea what it means, but it stuck. I think it needs to be part of poem.

I've been working on showing up to write every day. I date my entries so I know what days I miss. It's not going great, but it's a process and I'm at least writing more than once a week. It's something.

Being out of school is fantastic because I have all this free time to do things that I love. I've been spending more time at the comic shop. I finally have been setting up our website and figuring out twitter so we can build our online presence. The downfall of all this free time is the inevitable self reflection that comes with it. Suddenly I have all this time to think.

 And I have time to get new glasses! 

(it's only been eight years...)

Remember all that talk of being kinder to myself? I'm trying, I really am. Every day I am dispelling the constant, "you aren't good enough, your life is a mess" thoughts that float through my head.

My life isn't a mess. I am loved. I have value. I can show up every day and write, even if it is a page on nonsense, because sometimes the ravens call and I find the little things that will grow into something bigger.

Still Learning

 Do you ever have days where you feel like you can't do anything right?

I don't expect to be the best at anything, but I'd like to be good at something. Anything, really. Some days I feel that I am falling short of being good at anything, except being the grumpiest person in the room. There's this lingering feeling that I'm not good enough. Not a good enough friend, employee, family member, person. I don't even know what standard I am trying to reach. I know I'm probably being too hard on myself. I always am.


For example, grade for Spring semester were finally posted on Friday. What was first elation that I managed to pass all my classes now has settled into reflection of all the things I could have done better.

 

My grades are really good. I have to keep reminding myself that not only am I at a university for the first time, I am also commuting for the first time and having to battle my anxiety on a grander scale than I ever have before. It was a miracle that I made it through my first year at SF State in one piece, let alone with a 3.65 GPA. 

I have been trying to be better at self-care, but I keep leaving out the part where I am kind to myself. I forget to celebrate my victories and forgive my mistakes. I dwell way too long on my failures and flaws. I mean, I do allow myself guilty pleasures, such as living in my new Alkaline Trio shirt for a week straight. 

I really need to wash it.

I allow myself days where I don't get dressed and zone out on TV shows without (much) judgement. I don't beat myself up too bad for missing social things when I can't muster the courage to go out. So I am getting better at taking days to decompress, but I really need to remember to think kindly of myself. To internalize all the encouragement and support I give to others. I need to practice self-love more than just self-care. 

So in an attempt of self-love (and to be brave and proud of my creations), here is a poem I wrote a couple months ago for an assignment. Those of you that know me know that I don't often share my poetry, but I'm thinking I should change that. I know at least one person enjoyed this poem, so who knows? maybe others will too.

Jump Ship

Last night, you

climbed over the railing, you

struck the water like an anchor, but you

sunk faster, pulled down into the abyss, you

trailed sheer fabric, a glittering fish drowning, you

waited until the moment when I couldn’t reach, you

twisted in the water, all grace and sorrow, you

down, down, below, you

breathed darkness

Return From the Dead

I don't quite know what happened to this blog the past year. No wait, I do know. School happened. But now that I've survived my first year at SF State, I can breathe a little and go back to the things that I love doing (e.g. writing this blog).

I've learned a lot this past year, about writing and about myself. I learned that I can still complete papers even after complete meltdowns. I learned how to manage my anxiety when I feel myself shutting down. I learned how to call myself a writer with confidence. I've also learned about my intense love for well crafted short stories. It's been a good, albeit difficult, year.

As much as I planned to be lazy this summer, I can't help but be a little productive. So last week I started a writer's group at the shop. It seems to be going well so far. I'm excited about bringing together a community for local writers and learning from them. 

I find it strange how I keep putting myself in positions of leadership, since I still have a hard time being outgoing and social. I guess it's not that surprising since I'm getting more and more involved at Comics FTW. I'm proud of myself for doing it anyway, but I really need to make sure I take days to recover.Who knows? Maybe I will get used to it after a while, maybe my social anxiety will wane.

I'm hoping that the writing group will keep me motivated to update regularly. I gave them permission to yell at me if I hadn't posted by next moth, but my real goal is to get back to weekly. I just need to remember how to collect stories and anecdotes like I used to, as well as document my adventures, even the small ones.

So look for new adventures!