I’m on the first quarter of this novel and again and as always, SGJ is a master, a genius… and a snack, which is neither here nor there, but still. He is packing not just big guns, he has all of the arsenal, claws, teeth, even spatulas, kitchen knives, a medieval mace, thumbscrews, gun powder, melon scoop, and all possible implements of mayhem you can imagine. He is armed and dangerous. CROMCH. 15/10 always recommend.
(*I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.*)
Y’all, it is hot as Hades out there, and I can’t seem to muster the energy to do much more than suck up the A/C and watch scary stuff on Netflix. Speaking of which….
I’m sure you’ll all be shocked to hear that I’ve read and watched a lot of slashers in my day. (Freddy is my personal favorite, just FYI.) But my knowledge on the subject pales beside that of our story’s heroine, Jade Daniels. She is flat-out OBSESSED, and has watched-slash (heh)-memorized pretty much every slasher movie for the last few decades.
To seventeen-year-old Jade, these movies are so much more than scary masks and skewered campers. Obviously, they are an escape from her life, which is, well… awful. Her father…
Some people cannot ever be or feel loved. They are born into a toxic family and develop an attachment disorder before they learn language. They are neglected, rejected, or bullied by every person they allow themselves to depend on or need throughout their lives. All they ever want is love, but it’s never freely given to them. Not by their parents, their siblings, their lovers, their spouses, their children. They are alone in this world.
Because the words “I love you,” are meaningless and have no context for them they cannot be internalized. Because they can only try to guess what it might feel like and act accordingly to seek it out-they fail to find it or, if they do find it, they destroy it and only realize the truth too late. They have no concept of what love really feels like and can never learn it, no matter how much trauma processing, emotional regulation therapy, mindfulness, and radical acceptance they practice. No matter how many pills they take. Love cannot exist inside a vacuum.
Affection is painful. When they feel it, it lights up their pain receptors brighter than it does their pleasure receptors. All love they see or experience vicariously hurts them. So they begin to love the pain. They have no other choice. They can’t even make themselves numb, not even when they are unconscious in sleep. All of the distractions, addictions, and obsessions in the universe can only ever take the edge off for a second at a time.
If this is not you, recalibrate your sense of self awareness to acknowledge more gratitude every day you wake up alive. Thank your uncrossed stars. Every. Single. Fucking. One. Worship your sun on dark cloudy days and your night sky during the sickle moon. Your life is unimaginably prosperous.
This photo, taken by a Brian Dale Fall and posted on Facebook today, made me break down and cry. Nearly twelve years ago, a dear friend lost his fight with depression. This was his favorite film and comic. They were Sacred and Hallowed to him. He didn’t dress up as Eric Draven only on Halloween, but pretty much every single day, not even joking! Over the years, on the anniversary of his loss or his birthday, the remaining group of friends-those of us who still miss him dreadfully will occasionally all synchronize and watch the film to remember him. His name was Ed. But I called him Edders. I wish so very much he could have hung on long enough to see this moment of serendipity, melancholic or not. The peanut on the headstone for corvid tax makes it even better- because every Crow that ever lived on this planet to ferry messages to the dead and remind the living that there is justice even in the afterlife demands tribute, and I accept that. It can’t rain all the time. I wrote a memorial poem for him shortly after he killed himself that I will add below the photo.
BOY
six months till December again, boy… did you know- your face flashes across my eyes every day and on that one, that day… 30th December- one year since you ran from me it will rain. i’ll curl up in a blanket and let again your loss overtake me… you could have just died, you know. accident, murder, ill. but you knew me too well, boy you wear the outskirts as do i. our own personal hand me down. you decided to keep my secret without telling me. you took it to the place you know very well, boy you know very well i want to look you know that you and me we have that skeleton key to all of the doors that all of those are afraid to walk through. the thresholds are dusted with snow and everyone turns away after they lay the flowers there beneath your name… they don’t have the grip the strength to shoulder the pain and push past the latch on your heart and mine. and that’s why, boy that’s why they call it winter
Night; and once again The while I wait for you, cold wind Turns into rain. -Masaoka Shiki
Asian voices have been speaking out with dignity, respect, and stoicism from every continent on the globe for eons, and are as yet, still ignored. White people, we must decenter ourselves from this conversation and how it affects us because our feelings are fucking irrelevant. We must sit in our discomfort and allow these festering wounds we’ve created to drain and cleanse or nothing will ever change. And only when we listen and HEAR what they are asking of us, should we use our privilege to take action.
I’m so tired of white supremacy. I’m so tired of terroristic misogyny. I’m so tired of rape culture. I’m so tired of evil white men getting treated with kid gloves after they mow down multiple bodies because they had a “bad day.” I’m so tired of guns. I’m so tired. But, I have the privilege of birthright and beigeness in a blinding, cruel society that punishes any color that shines too brightly in dark spaces. So, I don’t get to be tired. Not while bodies are still dropping on the daily.
Lang Leav:
Lang has several publications available for purchase and she can be followed on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and her personal website at:
Just meditating on my favorite poem by my favorite living poet… because it’s the only comfort I can find when I again, as always, lose someone and they tell me I am a curse. I am a drain. I have too much scar tissue and too much rage, and it exhausts them because of my illness (CPTSD) and how it affects my overwhelming emotions and reactions. I cannot be softer. Not for long. I cannot be pretty for long. I cannot hide my fierce feelings. I can’t crush them either. I can’t suffer a bridle or gag. And so I just keep losing people. Warsan speaks here of intimate relationships with men… but for me, it’s everyone. You get to a point, if you have this diagnosis, where you feel like maybe the monsters that stored their trauma in your body and gave you this rotting all-corrupting albatross have turned you into a monster too and everything you touch gets broken. Everything turns to ashes in your mouth. If not today, then eventually.
you are a horse running alone and he tries to tame you compares you to an impossible highway to a burning house says you are blinding him that he could never leave you forget you want anything but you you dizzy him, you are unbearable every woman before or after you is doused in your name you fill his mouth his teeth ache with memory of taste his body just a long shadow seeking yours but you are always too intense frightening in the way you want him unashamed and sacrificial he tells you that no man can live up to the one who lives in your head and you tried to change didn’t you? closed your mouth more tried to be softer prettier less volatile, less awake but even when sleeping you could feel him travelling away from you in his dreams so what did you want to do love split his head open? you can’t make homes out of human beings someone should have already told you that and if he wants to leave then let him leave you are terrifying and strange and beautiful something not everyone knows how to love.
Be a lady they said. Your skirt is too short. Your shirt is too low. Your pants are too tight. Don’t show so much skin. Don’t show your thighs. Don’t show your breasts. Don’t show your midriff. Don’t show your cleavage. Don’t show your underwear. Don’t show your shoulders. Cover up. Leave something to the imagination. Dress modestly. Don’t be a temptress. Men can’t control themselves. Men have needs. You look frumpy. Loosen up. Show some skin. Look sexy. Look hot. Don’t be so provocative. You’re asking for it. Wear black. Wear heels. You’re too dressed up. You’re too dressed down. Don’t wear those sweatpants; you look like you’ve let yourself go.
Be a lady they said. Don’t be too fat. Don’t be too thin. Don’t be too large. Don’t be too small. Eat up. Slim down. Stop eating so much. Don’t eat too fast. Order a salad. Don’t eat carbs. Skip dessert. You need to lose weight. Fit into that dress. Go on a diet. Watch what you eat. Eat celery. Chew gum. Drink lots of water. You have to fit into those jeans. God, you look like a skeleton. Why don’t you just eat? You look emaciated. You look sick. Eat a burger. Men like women with some meat on their bones. Be small. Be light. Be little. Be petite. Be feminine. Be a size zero. Be a double zero. Be nothing. Be less than nothing.
Be a lady they said. Remove your body hair. Shave your legs. Shave your armpits. Shave your bikini line. Wax your face. Wax your arms. Wax your eyebrows. Get rid of your mustache. Bleach this. Bleach that. Lighten your skin. Tan your skin. Eradicate your scars. Cover your stretch marks. Tighten your abs. Plump your lips. Botox your wrinkles. Lift your face. Tuck your tummy. Thin your thighs. Tone your calves. Perk up your boobs. Look natural. Be yourself. Be genuine. Be confident. You’re trying too hard. You look overdone. Men don’t like girls who try too hard.
Be a lady they said. Wear makeup. Prime your face. Conceal your blemishes. Contour your nose. Highlight your cheekbones. Line your lids. Fill in your brows. Lengthen your lashes. Color your lips. Powder, blush, bronze, highlight. Your hair is too short. Your hair is too long. Your ends are split. Highlight your hair. Your roots are showing. Dye your hair. Not blue, that looks unnatural. You’re going grey. You look so old. Look young. Look youthful. Look ageless. Don’t get old. Women don’t get old. Old is ugly. Men don’t like ugly.
Be a lady they said. Save yourself. Be pure. Be virginal. Don’t talk about sex. Don’t flirt. Don’t be a skank. Don’t be a whore. Don’t sleep around. Don’t lose your dignity. Don’t have sex with too many men. Don’t give yourself away. Men don’t like sluts. Don’t be a prude. Don’t be so up tight. Have a little fun. Smile more. Pleasure men. Be experienced. Be sexual. Be innocent. Be dirty. Be virginal. Be sexy. Be the cool girl. Don’t be like the other girls.
Be a lady they said. Don’t talk too loud. Don’t talk too much. Don’t take up space. Don’t sit like that. Don’t stand like that. Don’t be intimidating. Why are you so miserable? Don’t be a bitch. Don’t be so bossy. Don’t be assertive. Don’t overact. Don’t be so emotional. Don’t cry. Don’t yell. Don’t swear. Be passive. Be obedient. Endure the pain. Be pleasing. Don’t complain. Let him down easy. Boost his ego. Make him fall for you. Men want what they can’t have. Don’t give yourself away. Make him work for it. Men love the chase. Fold his clothes. Cook his dinner. Keep him happy. That’s a woman’s job. You’ll make a good wife some day. Take his last name. You hyphenated your name? Crazy feminist. Give him children. You don’t want children? You will some day. You’ll change your mind.
Be a lady they said. Don’t get raped. Protect yourself. Don’t drink too much. Don’t walk alone. Don’t go out too late. Don’t dress like that. Don’t show too much. Don’t get drunk. Don’t leave your drink. Have a buddy. Walk where it is well lit. Stay in the safe neighborhoods. Tell someone where you’re going. Bring pepper spray. Buy a rape whistle. Hold your keys like a weapon. Take a self-defense course. Check your trunk. Lock your doors. Don’t go out alone. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t bat your eyelashes. Don’t look easy. Don’t attract attention. Don’t work late. Don’t crack dirty jokes. Don’t smile at strangers. Don’t go out at night. Don’t trust anyone. Don’t say yes. Don’t say no.
“From the depths of the water I cried out to you, and from the depths of the earth I will call to those who pass by me. Watch for me. See me. And if you find another who is like me, I will give him the morning star.”
From the Aurora Consurgens manuscript, 15th century
I have spent my entire life suffering casualties of war. Not just during my teen and adult years, but honestly, my entire life. Since the day I was born; when Hitler was a corporal. Before I learned to walk, before I could utter human language, I’ve been a soldier of misfortune in an involuntary vanguard; engaged in nuclear hostilities and napalm death. And I have always been Awkward Squad.
When it comes to interpersonal relationships in a family dynamic, complete honesty is not something merely excruciatingly hard won with intensive and empathetic therapy and learning proper communication skills. No. “Oh, my sweet summer child.” 2 The probability of its existence is Pluto-remote, if not out of the orbit of possibility altogether. Cognitive dissonance “is a helluva drug.”3
Calling for accountability from people in your personal life on a public platform is never, ever, ever a canny idea; particularly on a space wide open to anonymous invasion from strangers’ eyes staring out from the darkest depths of the internet and beyond. Especially if the people you are playing j’accuse with are always the last ones to see themselves for what they really are. On the contrary, they are in fact overly obsessed with their social standing and what people think of them. They won’t tolerate anything from anyone, no matter how close, not even if blood related, if it jiggles or scratches at the flawless and enviable Jungian personas they purport to the world.
Their worst fear isn’t losing loved ones to death or suicide, their worst fear is what their peers might think of them if the truth came out. At forty-three, I’m still not sure what this “truth” is, really. I suppose everyone has their truth; the truth they don’t want anyone else to see. I’ve only caught glimpses of their truths, enough to know that I couldn’t emotionally compensate if their personas disappeared. I have a shuddering suspicion their full Monty is something akin to a Lovecraftian nightmare.
So, I’m not interested in crucifying guilty parties, here. Or trying to hold anyone besides myself to account for the tatty suitcases full of damage and agony that I drag around with me every day. Pursuing that goal is without merit for me at this point. I’ve established beyond all doubt that it’s utterly pointless and offers me no emotional probate or sentimental assuagement, anyway.
I will say that if you have one narcissist or superiority complex in your immediate family, you are pretty well in a state. If that narcissist is personally responsible for your emotional and physical wellbeing and development, well, you live a life on the tenterhooks. But if you’re like me, those comparisons aren’t quite even or just so. Seriously. Not even a little bit. I had three parents. Two are surviving. One, who died in 2012, was highly likely suffering from an illness or illnesses like what I deal with; caused by the pain and invisible keloid scars from layers of trauma and family violence. I’ll never know now. She never accepted that she had a problem. She drank herself to death instead. That was the most comforting and nurturing parental relationship I had, and she could be a real waspish, spiteful shrew when she wanted to be, let me tell you.
The other two are more of a sinister nature. I had not one suspected narcissist in my immediate family responsible for my care, but two. Two. In all things, despite the rarity of narcissistic personalities partnering with others of the same sick bent for a long-term relationship, they were always a united front against not just the world outside our family, but also against me personally. And to this very day, they still readily (and not without glee) embody the title I gave them: The Best Heavyweight Gaslighting Tag Team Champions in the World.
My background was a perfectly diabolical Agatha Christie set up. I never had a chance. Not even an atheist’s prayer of a hope to avoid disaster and catastrophe. So, when I moved to Arizona in the year 1999 after giving birth to my first child, my life took an even darker road. I stumbled through a self-perpetuating series of victimizations in abusive and exploitative intimate relationships full of vicious psychological ill-use, physical battery, pathological control, repeated rape and sodomy, physical torture, and accumulated and compounded near miss almost murderings.
Then, every relationship after, apart from one, was abusive too. I walked away from my last abusive relationship in 2018, and it took a widowmaker heart attack to get me to do it. All these mentioned events were also punctuated and stricken through in every part with multiple attempts to end my own suffering full stop. Even that widowmaker heart attack was self-induced.
The end results? Fifteen years of looking into a clouded, warped mirror and sorting through the DSM-5 searching for shadow answers that never fully clicked. A chronic struggle with the toxic side effects and exacerbation of symptom severity because of the countless number of psychotropic medications that were casually thrown at me in massive doses by ethically questionable psychiatric professionals with compassion fatigue, using almost pure guesswork and random experimentation to see what, if anything, might stick.
Until finally, in utter desperation and total defeat, I reached out to a trusted friend and PhD Childhood Trauma Specialist. She knew me very well from our long-time connection on social media, and she told me exactly what was broken in me and why; that it was not my fault at all and never had been. And as I sobbed in relief, she then said to me emphatically that despite me being told to my face by a licensed therapist (during a session) in the past that there was no hope at all for “people like me,” full remission was not just possible, but even probable and highly likely.
I accepted her diagnosis of Complex Trauma Disorder, or CPTSD, and fully committed to one-on-one therapy and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy groups twice a week, every week. And I will go on with these self-improvement pursuits forever and a thousand years, or so long as I live, like that abhorrent Celine Dion “Titanic” song, if that’s what it takes.
After just ten weeks of treatment, I now have some real perspective. And hope. And faith. And trust. And I love myself, I think. Maybe. Since starting therapy, I haven’t had any suicidal thoughts at all. Not even for a moment. Astounding. For the very first time in my entire life of over four decades, I believe I’m going to be okay and that being okay is positive and life affirming and feeds itself and will eventually grow. Like Boston ivy, maybe. But even so, CPTSD is no uncomplicated thing. If you want to know what it’s like living in the headspace of someone like me, someone who has an Italian Timpano di Paste of Trauma inside of their body, scarring their psyche, and a very haunted, aching, throbbing heart, I have a finespun metaphor that’s straight from the legends, myths, and lore of the fathomless sea.
People like us, people like me, we’re all drama school alumni; our first starring roles after graduation are the titular characters in the 2003 film “Open Water.” The film follows the true story of a couple on vacation who get on a boat to go scuba dive and explore a local reef. But they swim too far out and are gone too long, and the boat captain doesn’t count heads as swimmers return to the boat. The rest of the scuba divers and crew don’t notice anyone is missing, so the boat calls it a fun day and goes back to shore, leaving this couple all alone in the middle of the ocean to tread water until they exhaust themselves to death, are eaten by predators, die of exposure, or drown, whatever comes first. Supposedly, they lasted three days. No trace of the divers was ever found. And we cast mates, who took these parts as our first gig, are on location at this deep-water set doing our very best, but we are all method acting in spite of ourselves and our would-be lofty duty to craft, because we all have extreme and unrelenting thalassophobia.
And if it’s not bad enough to tread water that stretches as far as the eye can see without rescue or even a second of rest, we’re constantly all too aware of the inexorable: that at all times, we await The Kraken and the other monsters too colossal to see. They live in the pitch black of the Mariana Trench and wait for us. And when we come, they rise from the belly of the deep blue to swallow us whole and drag us down to Davy Jones’ Locker for all eternity.
To further season our character and for the amusement of a capricious and cruel Poseidon, there are also incessant Category 5 hurricanes, fetid red tides that stretch for miles, Fukushima disasters that come bearing freakish tidings and Minamata disease, tsunamis, and perfect storms that swallow any and all would-be friends and empathetic rescuers, just like the Andrea Gail, in one single gulp.
We are all of these water elements, and more, all of the time. Rampageous squalls, waterspouts, maelstroms, doldrums that induce primeval and fatal ennui, and finally, just to add more salt to the water in our mouths and lungs, we also get Megalodons and Moby Dicks. And no one can save us from ourselves. No one can rescue me.
Oh, and, if you have someone you dearly love with CPTSD and you’re thinking you’ll just wriggle a couple of floaties on your biceps and jump for it, fucking don’t. You cannot. The first rule of life guarding is when a drowning swimmer jumps on top of you, you must push them the hell away or risk your own death. I also need to point out here: we do not come from the factory with any lifesaving accoutrement. No rafts, no floatation devices, no wooden dinghy with a hole in the stern and a handy bucket, not a one. Not one solitary inflatable boat to be had aboard this vessel, mateys. Sorry. It might be best for you to go ahead and start tuning your violins for “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”5 I only hope you can someday forgive me. If it brings you any comfort, you are not the first casualty, and you won’t be the last. And every single one breaks my heart to pieces and forever after, I will grieve. I must live every single day with that too.
You will hear thunder and remember me and think: she wanted storms. The rim of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson and your heart, as it was then, will be on fire. ~Anna Akmatova
All these woes aren’t even personal crucibles that we can collect and count off as triumphs as they accumulate. They merely test our spiritual resolve and emotional fortitude: Sink or swim, dude. This is fine. I’m fine. Everything is fine.
“Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we do? We swim. Swim.”6
When faced with all of this emotional intensity and the giving of my flesh and blood in personal efforts over my life just to continue to breathe, all I really know about myself, the very core of me, is one thing: Mystery. Writers and poets (me included) seem to throw out the term “mercurial” a lot in their work, too many times, in a very blasé manner. I’m here to tell you: that word and this shit is not a fucking game. Having mercury in your veins is not pretty, fascinating, romantic, or alluring at all. It’s toxic. It poisons absolutely everything.
It’s not a melodramatic, intensely hued dream full of introspective journaling, intellectual repartee with attractive people, emotional ecstasy in film noir, spine-tingling poetry, and inexplicable crying fits after fantastic sex. It’s not Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre. It’s a living nightmare. I am nothing if not a force of nature, right down to my mitochondria, platelets, and white blood cells. And what is striking in that is the word force, because it distinctly lacks the essence of both choice and consent. And nobody, nobody, ever finds that “good times,” margaritas, and smooth sailing with Jimmy Buffett tunes playing in the background.
And although I can create beauty and charm and crease people up, I also love harder than love has ever loved, and it comes with an extortionate price. It’s a supple love, yes. Strong-boned. Hard wired. Nearly impossible to dissuade once it entrenches itself in my emotional folds. It can heal and levitate and overjoy and endear. And yet, in the very same strokes of over-saturated passion, it can cripple, eviscerate, maim, and kill. It has before. And will again, no matter that my heart might desire otherwise. No matter how I feel.
I’m not a source of light. I’m a vessel. I’m a vacuum. I’m a conduit for the elements. I’m a chasm hellmouth of need. The love I bear comes with it an equal measure of malevolence that I cannot fully control, because the malevolence was carved into me by those that were supposed to love me unconditionally but intentionally chose not to do so. And no matter what I want or intend, or what preparations, disclaimers, and reparations I might make in hope of avoidance or remaining need for recompense, I don’t just devastate… At my heart, even after all the skin, gore, scar tissue, and necrosis are surgically excised and pulled out of the way to fully expose me as an open wound that hemorrhages sensitivity, empathy, need, and vulnerability (often fatally), I am still elementally and utterly annihilating.
“If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.”
-Sylvia. Fucking. Plath.
References
“Underwater Bride” is a song by the Brighton-based folk artist Passenger AKA Mike Rosenberg, off his 2009 album Wide Eyes, Blind Love.
Quote by character Old Nan from the book A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin. HarperCollins. 1996.
Quote by musician Rick James referencing his personal cocaine abuse. Interviewed on The Chappelle Show on Comedy Central. 2004
Quote by character Dory from the film Finding Nemo. Disney Animation Studios. 2003.
Alleged (by A first-class Canadian passenger, Vera Dick, and several other passengers) to be the very last song played by the doomed band on the sinking Titanic.
Featured Cover Photo: Artist: Toni Frissell, Title: Weeki Wachee Spring, Florida, Year: 1947
“I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”
2nd Star To The Left, Straight On 'Til Morning 