Written Whispers

If you don’t understand why I used to say Quack and you just happen to care I recommend reading the post prior to this one.

I’d met her at one of the protests I’d arranged. My little way of showing my peers how little I cared if they thought I was strange, showing the teachers I was smarter than they thought, and showing the principal that at least one of us had read the rule book inside and out and could ‘use’ it just as well as anyone. Not to mention I wasn’t about to let us, even those I didn’t like, be segregated by jock, cheerleader, dork, and delinquent categories. Not for my sake or anyone else’s- simply because it was wrong.

And it was a damn good little protest if I do say so myself. Well organized with a decent turn out if only because the others had been curious. I’d even used the school’s resources and time to set it up. That’s all another story though- one I’m too tired to tell tonight. The one I do want to tell tonight is about how I met her.

She’d come only because the poster said to, sitting quietly at a table with a book in her hand, completely drawn into the world of words and art. I’d been preoccupied at the time but something in my radar went off, something in her aura. Something that made me think of how quiet I was before… everything happened.

After spending several hours in the office being told why I was wrong- though I must have been right somewhere along the lines as my method eventually worked, I found myself sitting in biology class right next to her. Still really shy myself I didn’t say anything to her the first or the second day, not even on the third. I’d never take the initiative to make a friend before. The few I had had always found me first but I was damned bound willing to give it a try.

She sat alone at lunch, spent all her time in the library, drew instead of paying attention in class, always had her nose in a book and sucked at math. I think somehow I’ve always known we were supposed to be friends.

Back in Biology class later down the week we had this in class thing to do. We each had to stand up when a part of the cell was named and make a sound to help up remember it. Our teacher started with the front row and everyone was making, pardon me, the most stupid sounds. A clap, banging a fist on the table, a stomp. They all sounded the same to me so- when it came to me, in the middle of the class, Miss Too-nervous-to-stand-up I said the first thing that came to my mind.

Quack.

And the girl next to me, the one no one had ever head speak, said:

Roar.

Several notes, a pencil, and a near detention on my part later we were friends and we’ve been that way since. Five years later she was my maid of honor, six years later and she still lives with me.

Here’s to friends! The real ones are never far behind.

I was chatting with Xean this morning and there was something she said that made me think about the past. I was telling her about my dorky moment with Ni and Ju and she h ad said something about the wacky moments that bring friends together. It just made me think of how some of the most treasured people in my life came to be in my life.

See, I wasn’t always wacky and strange. I used to be quiet a sullen creature. I cried a lot and spoke to no one, seeing everyone as a potential threat and treating them that way. When I moved in with my adoptive family I learned, in a very slow and painful but rewarding process, that a lot of people have good in them and even the ones who aren’t so great… well, I wouldn’t be here without a lot of bad people.

When I started learning things like this and being forcefully pried from my shell I was… I don’t know how to put it. I felt like an unprotected stick standing upright in the sand while the wind rages all around me. Completely vulnerable, scared, breakable, and as far out of my element as I could possibly be.

But with every way you can fall into a hole you can learn a way to go around, over, or through it. A.k.a. coping mechanism. I don’t know how it really came about but I developed a rather odd one. See, I was still learning how to hold conversations and because I’d hardly spoke I didn’t always know what to say- duh.

So, whenever one of those nerve rupturing silences would pop up… I’d say Quack Quack.

It’s an instantaneous ice breaker. Silence scared me, giggles and ‘what the f’s’ did not. Even if you don’t know what to say I can guarantee you that if you walk up to a random person (be it someone you know or not) and say Quack Quack 8 out of 10 times they will respond with some other animal sound and then everything is rolling again.

Now here’s the real kicker and pardon my shoddy explanation of the events before hand but I’m trying to keep it short. Before I lived with my adoptive family I attended middle school A then I transferred to high school B in another town. I didn’t come back to high school A for nearly my entire freshmen year. My point being that I knew people before but we didn’t have much day to day contact till I came back from being somewhere else.

I hadn’t changed much at first but it was while I was in high school B that I’d met my adoptive family, and shortly after my transfer that I moved in with them. My old friends,… people I’d spent time with because there was no one else and people who spent time with me just because I was there… didn’t quite understand the changes. They couldn’t understand why I was dressing different, blurting out things (first attempts at standing up for myself), and asking them all to call me by a new name. My signature changed, my style changed, my hobbies and goals changed. Everything.

Alas, it wasn’t more than a month after I’d developed my new coping mechanisms that they started to tell me I was annoying. I didn’t do it all the time but I was learning that I loved talking to people so they heard me say a ot more of anything to them than I ever had before. It’s needless to say it but over the months we all drifted away…

And the ones who would quack back at me and be patient with my odd little habits are still my friends today. It really proves that true friends are the ones who accept you for who you are even if that person changes and doesn’t know quite who she is.

My little coping mechanism did more than just this though. It also brought me together with one of my best friends, current roommate and constant sister, Ree/Kei but that’s another story that- like this one, deserves a post all it’s own according to me.

On a brief side note, some other odd coping things I had was that for awhile (and occasionally today) I’d almost refer to myself in third person. Not in an obnoxious way as I see the habit in general but just as easily as I say I. I think it’s because I’d changed my name and was constantly reassuring myself that I was the person I was becoming and not the one I had been.

Odd

Ah, so as you know (or don’t) I spent last Thursday with my long lost (3 years) buddies Ni and Ju. We had a wonderful time and the only reason I haven’t written a full post dripping with hyper spazticness all about it is because the recent reunion gave me some things to think about which are still cooking inside my head- all the base ingredients are there but I need to wait a little bit for the chemistry to kick them and turn it all into one solid thought I can better grasp.

In the mean time though I’d love share my beautiful moment of stupidity. There are very few people I can let my guard down around so despite how flighty it made me look it also makes me happy. It doesn’t hurt that they’re also pretty used to my odd little flighty moments.

Okay, so we Ju and I were in the supermarket looking for Ni who’d gone on ahead of us. As two relatively short attention-span-lacking people Ni has a much better chance of finding us than we of her but we did try.

Trying lasted all of two minutes before Ju pulled out her cell and started texting Ni to let her know we were looking for her, explaining to me it’s their way of playing marco polo (they’re so cute together ). I laughed and we waited a bit for a response… it didn’t come.

After a moment Ju said Ni must have left her cell phone in the car.

Not a second after Ju had told me that, still holding her cell phone out in front of her, I very enthusiastically started going through my purse saying “Oh, hold on. Let me get mine and you can try to call her on that.”

…

Oh, yes. I totally said that. Ju was laughing for a good ten seconds before I’d figured out what I’d said and just what was wrong with it. I could have slapped myself in the head, lol, but it made me laugh too so it’s all good.

Mahaps it’s because I’m one of the few cell phone owners left on this continent who doesn’t text?

More likely it was because I was so spazzy, lol, but in that moment I have to admit it felt like all of us had never been apart. Like it was just another day and I’d never gone back into foster care. I can’t deny that I yearn for those days but I’m also looking forward to the days ahead of us- and all the dorky moments that come with them.

I have another wacky little friendship story to share but I want to keep this post short so I’ll go ahead and make another one.

I have wasted my day away- from the moment I woke up till the moment at hand. Nothing I’ve done has achieved anything.

Or has it?

Like a coin I have both my positive and negative moments. Everyone does but I do like to think I acknowledge flip side more often than a lot of people so forgive me if this is stretching things a bit.

I woke up, I played Sims3. For 11 hours straight. No, I’m not joking. I’d be a lot less embarrassed to be typing this if I was but as it stands I’m too lazy to type it if I don’t mean it. 11 hours.

So, you can see why I feel like I haven’t gotten anything done today but the more I sit here thinking about it the more I realize that maybe I did do something. Games are a great distraction, a great way to let the mind drift without quite as much potential for getting caught inside it. In short- it’s hard to think about the stress that’s trying to pile up on me whenever I’m not looking when I’m busy trying not to kill the little people in my town.

I’m not much of a gamer by nature but I think I can start to understand the lure some people feel. I know when I start getting real anxious- the peace and quiet inside my head too still to hold back the darker darkness, I find a quick online game of Tetris. The thing that just amazed me so much is that I actually spent a whole day doing it. Usually Ree has to beg me to come game with her online because despite the pretty colors I just can’t go that long. Usually my muse steps in and says ‘No, I have an idea. You need to log out right now and let me take control.’ and then he hits me over with his newest pet plot bunny.

Did I mention said plot bunnies are usually rabid?

Well, they are.

Anyways, so yeah, I did not expect to be gaming that long at all but now that my eyes have readjusted and I’ve actually left my seat for more than an hour (even walked from one side of the house to the other) I’m glad I did because despite feeling like I’ve somehow managed to waste my entire day I feel pretty good. Relaxed even.

I do know this means I’m going to have a hell of a time falling asleep because when I spend multiple hours on any one project I tend to see myself doing it when I close my eyelids (this hasn’t just happened with games like Sims, it also happened when I took up knitting). I can tolerate that sort of thing with writing because I don’t see my fingers on the keyboard or the words forming on the screen- probably because my eyes are usually closed when I’m writing, but I see the stories themselves and it’s about the same as dreaming. Though I still have to be careful with that because if I’m working hard enough on a plot then I’m just laying there with my eyes closed, thinking.

Thank goodness for Tylenol PM and a weak tolerance.

[Wrote yesterday but forgot to post. I should edit it but I'm not going to. ]

Yesh! I have my new keyboard and it’s sooo tiny. Possibly even a little shorter than my laptop keyboard and all non letter buttons are compacted together. It’s wonderful. I have to work a bit to get used to it- my happy go lucky back space button is a whole row up from where it is on the other two keyboards which is something that has caught me in this paragraph a total of four times and my shift buttons are only half size so I have to be careful not to hit the next one over. Lol, all in all though it’s a nifty piece of hardware I already cherish.

If you’re a new reader and you’re wondering why I plan on ‘wasting’ a whole blog post about my brand new keyboard then you clearly haven’t read much here. Some writers have a favorite pen, a preferred kind of paper or notebook, some have a special seat or song they need to get their muse to come forth.

Me- I have a keyboard.

Some writers have told me there’s nothing like having a pen and paper and as a writer I should embrace it more. I tend to agree on some small level but only as I won’t always have a computer at all times and I need to have some meek skill for reading my own handwriting but in the end I derive more pleasure from keys. I love the sound they make, the feel beneath my fingertips and how I usually have a better chance at keeping up with my thoughts.

Mostly, this past year or so, I love how I don’t get the huge headache from reading what I write. With and without my glasses on.

Thinking back, when I was six and living in one of the foster homes my bio parents had given me a children’s type writer. A lightweight plastic thing that you plugged into the wall. It was red and white. I don’t remember asking for it though I may have- I was an early reader, or it’s possibly my bio parents were hoping I’d send them letters they could use as legible evidence against ‘the system.’

A few years later, my first reprieve from foster care, when I’d gone to live with my bio parent, uncle, and grandfather my parent let me play with her big electric typewriter. A huge thig that had to weigh more than my eight year old body. For the next two years, roughly, I’d spend most of my time sitting in front of it on a milk crate clicking away the hours word by word.

I wrote some small poems and a story- which later nearly got me kicked out of school but that’s a much longer tale. We moved to Michigan around my tenths birthday, moving into our very first apartment on our own. No one else living with us so all the junk that had been in storage since the incidents that led to foster care came about could were taken out and put in their respective places including a PC- Windows 95 and all.

I’d used computers at school but never at home. Now I used them in both places, constantly working on my stories. It was years later when I was 13/14 that I actually managed to have one not get deleted long enough to reach 100 pages. It was printed instantly and not read by another soul for one more year. I moved into my adoptive family’s home where they let me type all the time on their computer.

Then I went back into foster care and all was lost. Everything I wrote there was instantly trashed. I didn’t begin writing again till after I’d escaped and my Hubby bought me my very own laptop, gently, quietly urging me to pick up the craft once again.

Long story short- I love typing. It’s so much a part of my life. I can measure whole spans of my existence by the typing I’ve done.

I’m full of thoughts right now. They swim in my blood and buzz in my brain. Constantly keeping me alert of so many things… cracks in the world, cracks in the people around me, and cracks within myself. Sometimes I think it’s amazing to see so much- there was a time when I didn’t see anything at all, but now… it’s like looking at colors we have no human word for. It’s so much to take in sometimes. Things are still so new to me.

Part of it is from where I’ve been and part of it is where I’m going. I’m never sure it’s part of the present because it’s like a special kind of perception that doesn’t alter. It stretches from one side of my existence to the other and I’m never quite sure what to do with it.

Sometimes I get so anxious I can’t sit still. Spikes of fear bombard me from the very core of myself and it’s rather hard to overcome something that comes from yourself. Sometimes I see so much beauty around me and so many different connections between things that I want to take a magic marker and carve a colored path through the air and show it to everyone. Sometimes I see the rock hard surface of the world around me and I feel that overwhelming urge to accept things as they are, the softer side of my heart telling me it will never change but then I remind myself that even stones can be worn away by time and the elements- and if given enough effort, the human hand.

I don’t know really why I’m writing about this but there’s just so much going on inside my head all the time. If I could type, and type, and type for a year straight I still don’t think I’d manage to find a moment of silence. I’m not sure I’d be thankful if I did.

Everything has meaning and meaningless things are nothing.

I wonder at it all and have so many questions for the universe. Forget the big ones- everyone wants to ask those, I want to ask about the smaller things. The over looked, under cared, little tried things. I want to do so much, say so much, and show so many people my thoughts and share them.

I’m working on it, so maybe someday, I’ll find a way to get this urge out of me. This constant need that fills my brain with wordless… something. Someday I’ll figure out how to express the things I’ve never known how to let out.

Someday.

Ideas are going to be the death of me. I’ve starved myself of caffeine for over a year now and my muse is still talking thirty miles a minute. It’s beautiful and unfair. As a writer I love having the extra surplus of random story telling that constantly rolls through my mind but as a whatever else I am I feel this urge to try to finish projects. I never it in school but man do I feel it in my writing.

Anyways, I have another idea. I’m going to buy another web domain and possibly sell or park one of my other ones. The second bit is a second undecided story for another time. As for the new one…

I bought Written-Whispers to use as a writing website. WW was the name of a blog I’d started and evolved from on Blogger. My idea at the time had been to run my blog on one part of this domain, like I am, and run the writing related stuff (the writing stuff not related so intimately with my life) on the other side but it seems I’m having trouble doing that. On one hand I don’t want the extra attention here on my blog- I do and I don’t. I want to be found by people seeking, but the writing end of things I want to be found by everyone.

On another hand, I don’t want the two bleeding over into each other or overlapping each other. Another hand is that I want to do sooo much more with a writing website (forum, active prompts, guest posting, etc) that I just don’t want to be connected to my more intimate writing unless I’m specific about it.

*sigh* So, anyways. I’m thinking of buying another domain. I already know I can manage multiple sites, create my own template, and get visitors as easy as dropping a coin into a hat. I’m no newb on that side of things, but I’m still not sure if I’m ready. I want to have the idea and direction as complete in my head as I can manage before I run gallivanting off down the path but that’s always easier said than done.

My idea is mostly geared towards ‘writing out the darkness’ and stitching old wounds up with words. I can relate to it and I know enough about it. I want to give people- like me, like you- a place to find. I want to share my opinions on the writing world not from the perspective of a publisher, a professional, a frequently published author, or someone who’s taken classes but as someone who writes because they need to. They need to in order to breathe. These people might be professions or just the average teen with a pen in her hand. Either way I want to be coming from that direction no matter what I put up there.

I want to collect others who’ve lived through scars so all of us who fall back into stories can see we’re not alone.

I’m thinking of calling it Scribble Twitch or something akin to that. Other name suggestions are welcome. I’ll be looking for a lot of help from various writer buddies or anyone with a writerly opinion to offer.

I had another thing I was going to write about in this post but I’ve forgotten it. Oh, well. Good thing I’m into multiple posting. Saw my friends tonight and responded to comments but I’ll write all about that jazz later on.

Peace, love, and wordly thoughts of doomification.

PS- Some kind soul resubscribed me for Poets & Writers magazine. YOU ROCK MY STRIPPED SOCKS!

I am now the proud owner of cosplay (costume) cat ears. That plus purple hair tends to equal an interesting experience while walking through Walmart. Even without the cat ears I think my favorite thing is hearing children- anywhere, exclaim “Mommy, mommy! They look like cartoon characters!” or “Lookit her hair!” Kids are cute, even the one firmly running her nose up and down a glass door, leaving little streaks all the way.

Most of you’ve already heard my rant on why I have purple hair [link to post] but why wear cat ears? Why sport striped socks that go all the way up to my thigh? Why sing karaoke while prancing through the mall?

Because I can. It makes me happy and as ‘weird’ tends to summarize my nature in most vocabularies I usually get a few odd looks here and there. Might as well do something outstanding and know what I’m getting them for.

PS: Been awhile since I’ve had some happy posts, eh? The darkness might still be around me but for anyone else reading this who’s lost in their own darkness- I want you to know something: The dark only seems so big and bad because you have such light in you that it must cast a heavy shadow. I’d be more worried if there wasn’t such darkness in my life here and there.

Peace, love, and carrot colored pizza sauce.

Tee hee. The day I’ve had,… less eventful than some, more eventful than most.

First was therapy. That was uneventful for the most part. We’re supposed to fill out paperwork every three months to reassess my goals,… needless to say that was an epic failure- not on any one person’s part really just because they can’t seem to properly schedule me and keep said appointments. I haven’t met a single one of the goals on my paper so I think it’s a joke to continue assuming I’ll be done with therapy within the six month term they originally predicted for me. Especially if you know that I only have one month left.

My new therapist seems to get that things haven’t exactly gone as they were supposed to and I have good faith that she’ll do her best to see that this three month period doesn’t go as choppily as the past five have.

We spoke a little about spiritual beliefs- that was an interesting explanation but she seemed to understand what I meant (I like getting the feeling that people understand what I mean on specific matters like that). Better still she took my beliefs (not religion- religion to me is more like an after dinner joke) and helped me work through them to better understand my own disturbing thoughts concerning other things. I’ll probably post more on that later because I’ve been given a lot to think about but on to better topics first.

I saw my friends today.

*giggle giggle*

If you’re confused see the previous post. Anyways,…

Yesh. We met up at the bookstore and there was much hugging, spazzing, and random poking in the nose. I made them pet me because my hair is freshly dyed and oh so soft and purple. Lol.

We wanted to hang out longer but the roads were bad out and my poor Hubby hasn’t been feeling so hot lately- he ate some bad food, so I’m going to be going back up there next Thursday since that’s their one day off in the week and I don’t have an appointment.

Squeeee! I’m so happy. They haven’t changed at all though I swear Ni’s gotten taller. Either that or I’ve gotten shorter but I refuse to admit that in any way shape or form. They’re still wonderful, spazzy, understanding, and just wonderful people. Ju is a little quieter now, I’ll have to fix that. Everything else aside it’s like we haven’t had a three year gap in seeing each other.

Lol. I have to laugh. By now we all know I’m an anxious sort of person. So is Kei, when she gets nervous around people she gets quiet so I have to poke her multiple times. Me on the other hand, when I get nervous around people I do the exact opposite. I’m quiet but as soon as I start talking I don’t stop. I nervously fill any possible silence with random babble about anything.

Methinks they remembered this because if they noticed they didn’t say anything.

We played with the stuffed animals in the bin, looked through some horror comics, talked about cosplay, where to find the best manga online, and I think I might have even convinced them to come to the next anime convention with me. Mwahahaha. That would be exciting.

Alas, we eventually had to say out temporary goodbyes but it was funny. Every time we started to say goodbye and that we had to get going we’d suddenly find something more to talk about and spend another ten minutes going on about it. It was awesome.

I’m so happy. So many wonderful people in my life.

Tomorrow I have therapy. I can say/type that without shame because I’m the one who chooses to go. It’s weird,… I have a thought in my head but I think I’m going to keep it and move on. If it comes out as I go then kudos to me, right?

After therapy I’m going to go meet the two friends I mentioned post before last- the ones I haven’t seen in years. I do have something to say about this.

You really should cherish your friends.

Fleeting moments that don’t seem so fleeting at the time. Cherish fights and awkward silences because when you look back you’ll remember those too- not with a bittersweet taste thick on the back of your tongue but with… I don’t know. I’m filled with an emotion I can’t describe. They’re moments, precious, precious moments. The good, the bad, the weird, the random.

We never had any real fight but my point still stands as I sit here thinking back. Just riding home from school was a moment with my friends. Even the most simple thing, I can’t help but look back and smile.

I live everyday under a thin umbrella of fear- fear that I’ll lose the ones I love. I’m so used to losing people, to having them taken away from for me, or life just happening. I’m so used to it that it’s a reflex for me to expect it. When I sit with my husband I take in his scent with the single thought that when something does happen I want to remember it forever. When Kei and I are with people I always try to poke her real hard when she gets quiet because I want to have those moments to look back on even as the bruises (given with love) fade.

I’m always so afraid but… and I could laugh and cry happy tears at this, but I think the universe is trying to tell me it’s okay to have a little more faith in it than I’ve been giving lately. I’ve had so many people taken away from me… and now two of them have been brought back into my life.

I just feel so much about this.

I lost Kei for awhile when I moved away, it took me two years and a lot of patience with some less than healthy people but I finally got her back.

Despite everything,… everything I have my Hubby. I don’t know why he loves me, why he doesn’t find someone better- because I know I can name twenty women off the top of my head who want him. I don’t know but despite it all he’s never left me. He doesn’t have any plans of ever leaving me.

My writing was taken from me for almost a year, literally ripped from my soul in a way I don’t care to explain right now. That nearly a year later it was given back to me, first with a trickle, tenderly encourage by those I love, and then with an explosion as the piece of my soul fitted back into place where it belonged.

My two friends… they tried harder than a lot of people I know not to lose me. They spent nearly five hours at a time coming to see me when I was in foster care. They,… well, they’re just awesome but alas, life happened on one too many levels and I’m very sad to say someone close to me knew where they were and how to contact them but lied to me and said they didn’t.

I had lost them for awhile, close to three or four years, but now I have them back. I have them back.

You might think it’s weird getting all emotional over a couple of high school buddies I have seen in a few years but then I’d have to say you just won’t get it. I’m not certain how to explain it except to say,… hmm.

You’ll hear/read me talk about my past a lot. When I do that I don’t always realize how bad I had it. How horrible those things sound to other people. You may think me unfortunate. I think of myself as lucky for the things I do have. I don’t see it as a few in comparison but a whole hell of a lot.

When it comes to people though my perceptions are a bit different. I know I’ve never had much in the way of family- that’s why I love my adoptive family so much. I know I’ve never felt as loved as I do now- that’s why I love my husband so much. I know I got screwed out of having that special sisterly bond- that’s why I love Kei, Cat, Jy, and my brothers so much. I also know I have never had very many friends or people who understand me without having to take a glance inside my head from time to time- that’s why I love my friends so much.

I could live through a lot of the past crap all over again. That stuff is survivable once you get used to it but once you’ve had such wonderful people in your life,… it’s hard to let that go without a fight or panic attack. Whichever one comes first.

I think tomorrow is going to be a good day. I’m anxious and there’s a lot I need to get done on top of being up early but I’m looking forward to all of it.

Peace, love, and duckies! Have a quacky night!