I suspect, while my new anti-depressants are working, that I need to have them upped because my anxiety at pretty much everything is steadily climbing through the roof and every day I’m left wondering at myself if I’ll even recognize when it’s too much.

That aside-

No new sales on Neko Creations lately but that’s okay. I’m pretty proud to admit that I’m starting to understand the power of my audience more and how to get them to share my content. Pinterest and Tumblr are amazing resources for my particular niche market. I still need to work on getting more involved with the NC FB page and DeviantArt in general… social networks are so exhausting for someone like me who constantly thinks (is certain) there is something better I could be doing.

Like I said, no new sales but lots of new shares and visits which could lead to something later. I’m willing to take a chance and hope on that. If the stats are anything to go by it’s worth it.

-

Hmm… I kinda want to write more, to vent all the things that have been running crazy through my head lately like ants before fire but instead of being cathartic I feel more like it’s just going to make me aware of the issue more- a.k.a. listing off all this anxiety/worries/fears is just going to give me an ever growing list.

-

Happier things, two of my better (best?) friends are going to move in with me soon. They’ll not only be able (and willing!!!) to help me out around the house and the kitties but also contribute monetarily.

Long story short we’ll all be taking care of each other. My home offers something they’ve both been denied a bit in life and they both offer true blue friendship which as I grow older and learn how to seriously look at- and through, the people around me… I’m finding fewer and fewer of.

-

ShutoCon is coming up. My favorite convention down in Lansing. There’s a rather large group of us going together this year- most of which who have never been to a con, or at the very least a con on this scale. It’s a bit scary and excited but I’m so happy to be an ambassador for more people into this strange and wonderful culture.

-

Not a well thought out post but I wanted to write on some of the things that have been in my head. These are the important ones. All else can stay in the back and shrink away.

Just writing this far has taken me some ten minutes of gathering wisps of fragmented- well, everything.

The universe, like any good writer, seems intent on filling out the backstory to my backstory little by little. Each time I think I’ve made peace with what I don’t know, embracing acceptance and moving forward, the answers are thrust at what feels like my unready heart. In truth I know that’s how things work- hence acceptance in the first place, and I know that my heart/mind/whatever is ready… though it certainly didn’t feel like it today.

-

It began when I was on the phone with Hubby. I’m a phone walker- I go in circles from one side of the house to the other whenever I’m on the thing. This morning was no different. I started in our room in the back, calling to let him know I was awake and starting my day as well as checking up on him, and ended up down the hall and in the kitchen looking out our front door before too long.

There in the snow was a white box, tilted on it’s side- sender side up. My eyes took in the name and a part of my brain froze. I finished up the call without saying a word about the package and went back to our room to get some warmer clothes on. ‘Oh god, oh god, oh god…’ A rising mantra in my mind as I made my way back out to the kitchen.

The sender, W, is an old friend of the family. My bio mother stayed with her for a but after I left her at age 15 and the social security checks stopped. W is such an honest kind soul but eventually, as with all wise souls, my mother wore out her welcome there too. I’m sure she left of her own accord but to my knowledge the friendship is no longer welcome unless she takes some drastic steps toward not being a using bitch… that’s basically what it comes down to. My words, not W’s.

Anyway, when bio mother left W’s she left behind an assortment of things. W and I had discussed me driving up there to pick them up and go through them but I’ve not gotten the chance in our two’ish years of reconnecting. She was trying to surprise me, bless her heart, but as soon as I saw her name on the box I was filled with dread.

It’s not as though I didn’t want her stuff… some potential answers hidden in her paraphernalia and I’d heard of some journals that had me very curious. It’s just that even after all these years away from her influence I know that even the most tentative of connections can rattle me. Some of it’s the PTSD and some of it’s being too damn smart for my own good and being able to absorb and work things out from what I see. Mostly it’s a reflex.

-

“Oh god, oh god, oh god…” The mantra was outside my head and splurging quietly up my vocal cords by the time I’d opened the door to retrieve the package and still going when I set it on the couch and left again to retrieve a knife to pry back the tape. I don’t know when I stopped, only that at some point I had and I was sitting there with the box open on my lap, shooing curious kitties away and bracing myself for whatever could be found.

I clearly remember telling myself that no matter what I found it wasn’t going to change who I am, who I was, who I’ve been. It wouldn’t change the past- the things that had happened. It had potential to change my perception but that was okay. It was okay.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

The mind inside me, always rushing on ahead, tripping over it’s gray matter had turned sluggish.

-

This moment I can’t rightly remember what I looked at first, only that I approached each object with caution and put certain obvious ones aside till the end- namely packets of photos.

I removed the bubble wrap- Cookie kitty appreciated this more than anyone else.

Four framed photographs. Myself and the step-family we nearly had, an old sin remembered, a wound I’m okay with but am unsure of having in my house.

Sunglasses, her trademark. A pair of my glasses, a reminder of enforced pink. A nightlight. Some pens. Innocent enough items left behind. A box of envelopes and a set of unused manila folders I remember well enough from her makeshift office of OCD like people categorizing.

Careful to check everything in case W had left any sort of notes or letters I found some photographs inside the box of envelopes. Bentley- her cat before my birth (I think). I only remember his burial and having seen these photos before. I tuck them back in, no thoughts of what to do with them. No questioning that they should be kept. Their only sentimentality to me being in that they are familiar in a vague way- which is more than I’ve been used to for years.

-

Some, what appeared to be, letters in handwriting I recognized as my grandfather’s hard to read scrawl. They didn’t appear to be written to bio mother so I carefully put them aside for later. For a moment, looking at the gel pen used, I half feared they would be the letters I had left her, collected together, and I would have to face my thoughts of the time all over again.

Death certificates. My father’s- I didn’t know his father had been from Scotland. My grandmother’s, I didn’t know her name. Some sort of form- I didn’t know my father had been in the Naval reserve. Some sort of license marking my grandfather as sailor- the second one issued, very fancy and framed. I put all these carefully to the side after raking over the details of each.

A map of a Detroit cemetery. If it hadn’t been for meeting my Uncle last year I’d have never known this map was pointing me to my Grandpa’s sister’s grave as well as his mother’s. I think for a long moment about visiting it and meeting them, sitting in front of their graves, reading their names. It would be the closest I’ve been to any biological family since meeting my brothers.

-

I picked up a stray photos.

I came to tears.

I was in softball when I was 12. They had baseball cards made for each of us. This was one of those.

-

I’m not sure why I cried or if it can even be called crying. No tears fell, they simply welled up. I walked away to grab some tissue, the last thing I needed was getting all messy while going through fragile things.

Beyond that there are no emotions I can remember.

There was a second stray photograph. Earlier, perhaps when I was 6 or 7. Pigtails, school photo, foster care. I remember seeing it’s ilk before and feel nothing.

-

There are other assorted items and papers or worth but little importance to me right right now. All that remained at this point were the two photo packets, a thin red box of slides (the predecessor to photos), and a large binder.

I started with the photos.

-

My 15th birthday party. The start toward the finish.

I remember all the faces. Those in focus are smiling, those caught unaware are not. Mostly they look bored. The bits of the house behind them are more interesting than they are. Shallow children who never tried to understand me, our connections being only that I knew their first names or we’d nearly been related to them- in that town that wasn’t saying a lot.

Now that I’m an adult with a younger friend who suffers from severe anxiety I can see the sharp angles of awkwardness and stress in the way I hold myself. I know from being inside my own head at the time that it wasn’t a good night- even before certain incidents, but being so clearly able to see it as an outsider… I feel like I’m looking at a stranger.

I see now what others saw when I could not and I see now that others must have chosen to be blind.

Toward the end of the stack there start to be more photos of the floor and dark shots of the walls. I can only assume this is the point where she started to get drunk… before the incident that lead to me leaving her.

I could go on about that night; how I raised the money for all the food by returning over 500 of her beer bottles or how she grabbed me, but this isn’t the time and as I looked at those photos I didn’t fall back into those moments. I felt detached. No thoughts, only a curiosity at myself.

The second pack of photos could easily be from the same camera.

-

So far so good.

-

The packet of slides has my birth name on it. It’s her handwriting. I’m not sure what to think about that so I don’t.

I hold each carefully up to the light and try to make out the tiny details. Most are undated and only a few written on.

I recognize only my parents and one of my uncle’s faces. Some of the slides show my eldest brother when at age 1 or 2 and some sow my father’s father, a man I never had a chance to meet. Other faces mean nothing to me other than curiosity. I know they are relatives, likely the rest of my uncles, but I have no names for these faces.

-

The last item worth mentioning is the journal. It is perhaps the most powerful of all the mementos.

I am incredibly thankful that it was not one of hers, as I suspected when journals were first mentioned. She had a thing for documenting everything her… gentlemen of interest… did or said. A growing obsession that I watched from up close and afar at the same time.

No, instead it was my Grandpa’s journal.

He journaled much like I did when I was in foster care, leaving behind a tome that puts this blog to shame. Once a day, every day- from what I can see he is without fail. I can see where I get a lot of things, thanks to the year or so I was able to live with him. My writing ability, my vocabulary, my sense of the poetic.

-

The binder starts with an index which I quickly scan. It starts in 1996, a list of life events that held significance to him. Some listed talks with my Uncle, others letters he sent, when he began learning the fiddle and others. Most seem to have no meaning for me- which is fine, it’s not my journal after all, and others quickly pull my interest as I put together dates and realize what I’m looking at…

Especially when the index reads: A Very Black Day and goes on to list several things in a short period of time.

He had started writing months beforehand, and what I had showed well over a year afterward… a detailed recollection of my father’s suicide, the trial before it and my bio mother’s battle to have me released from foster care afterwards.

-

His handwriting is extremely difficult to read, emotional calligraphy with bread swoops and sharp loops leaning to the right. Many entires were possibly written drunk, many more written with scattered thoughts, anger, stress and depression. I could read all this in his lines but only about ten percent of the actual writing- for now.

I was able to read that he’d had a moving and contradictory conversation with my father the day before he died, his sorrow for my bio mother’s situation (he’s her father), his anger at my brothers and belief that they drove my father to his death.

His love of my father like a son moves my heart in no direction as I might have otherwise thought it would. Years ago it might have left me conflicted and aching for answers but not on this day. Today it’s just words to absorb.

I have accepted that certain people I love believe my mother and father innocent. I have accepted that certain people I love believe my brothers were not. I lean certain ways, sure, but being so young at the time I honestly only know so much. I’ve been told so many different stories and at this point it doesn’t matter ‘how’ it happened, to me, only that it did. The things that matter to me are the things that happened to me and only for those things can I judge the people involved.

Though I know Grandpa would be sad to know I’ve cut ties from his daughter so deeply, I feel like he would understand if I could say these things to him today. That if these weren’t people he knew that we were talking about, that he could see where I’m coming from and come to accept it as whatever progress it is.

-

I am able to clearly read my name in some of his writings. It seems written with such love and care compared to the rest of his scrawl that I can’t help but run my fingers over the letters and try to feel him through the paper. I do feel the connection though it may only be a thread of ink.

I’m sad that the journal ends just before I began living with him. The index goes about that far (my math is poor so perhaps I’m wrong) but the journal ends before that and I feel the pages like a loss. I would have liked to know his thoughts on me and if I had as much an effect on him as he had on me, what his expectations and hopes were or what he thought of me pursuing writing as he had.

I’m going to have to read the rest of this journal. There are some 500 pages, many back to front.

-

Flipping gently backwards to the beginning I begin to see little notes in pencil close to the start. The fact that I can read them without effort is not the first clue that Grandpa didn’t write them.

They are in her handwriting.

I am curious but still detached.

I go back to the first page and begin combing for her words.

-

“Not up to Dad’s intellectual standards.” Is written on his first page. It seems more editorial than rude so I continue.

She calls my Uncle and asshole several times. It’s almost funny that it’s so childish. Seemingly innocent entries from him, casually mentioning things Uncle does are rife with arrows and little comments. If only she knew how much he tries to be on her side.

Further along it seems like she is trying to correct him. Abbreviations for Uncle’s and her names are written in full, the name of his favorite watering hole is highlighted with the word ‘bar.’ Above his scrawl she writes in the more difficult words that she’s translated. I consider doing the same in a separate notebook- it seems taboo to write in another’s journal.

He writes of Grandma and her passing, a sweet poem about how his heart is broken and my mother writes in that the woman made their life miserable and that he was a drunken asshole. It’s obvious to me now that she’s filled with anger during these writings, this anger is old- predating me. I know some from old arguments I’d overheard as a child but these are distant shadows, without form to me.

-

It feels like disrespect that she has written these things on his work, uncherished and left behind where she dare not return. I think back on earlier readings where he’d written so thoughtfully about her and in this moment I realize that she is different. As an I. We are different people looking back on different lives.

-

After I close the journal I sit there. Aside from batting cats out of the box and repacking everything with care I did nothing.

My mind was silent.

-

Should I be calling someone? No one was home with me. The first time in awhile.

I dare not bother Hubby at work. My adoptive family would not understand. I go through my phone and realize I have no one close enough to me that I can use to help me jump start the silence in my head.

I continue to sit. I do not know how long.

-

I eventually get up. Take a shower, make tea, feed the cats. I am wooden, movements are automatic. I’m sure there are things I meant to do… why can’t I remember what I normally do when I wake up? How do I get back to my routine? What do people do in these situations?

My brain is so blank I can’t even ask these questions which is fine seeing as I still don’t have the answers.

-

Now, nearly the whole day later this is the only thinking I’ve been able to do and it’s mere recollection.

There is silence in my head.

This is the only thing I know.

No, don’t be sarcastic. I know we all wake up every day in some sense of the word. Heads on pillows, eyes opening. Sometimes coffee is involved- not for me, I’m a caffeine free creature. Sad but true.

The waking I’m curious about it the sort that happens when you’re already up and about your day or lazing on the couch, doing dishes or checking email. It’s the sort that can sneak up on you when you’re not looking.

It’s the sort that happens when you didn’t even know you were sleeping.

It can be slow and gentle, a subtle thing that slips it’s way into your awareness or it can smash across you like a bucket of cold water. It’s a realization, a clearing of things with less meaning than you thought to make room for something you likely never considered.

I’ve woken up a handful of times that really strike me. I won’t write about them all here. That’s for a future book. I will say though that they have been at the pinnacles of my life.

When I truly saw my bio mother for the first time and when I left her. When I first asked myself about my sexuality and spirituality. More subtle pinnacles include realizing how broken the last foster home had left me and that I wasn’t mentally or emotionally in a place where I could fix… things.

These wide eyed moments in my life have made me. They’re wrapped in my strongest emotions,  my deepest, darkest, and brightest passions.

And I am in the midst of one other, I believe. It’s subtle and a bit more drawn out than other wakings but the power behind it and what it means is taking me by storm. It asks me to judge most my entire life and question threads that have been wrapping around my neurons for as long as I can say they’ve been moving.

It has the potential change how I look at the heart of my writing, if you’re a frequent reader you know how much that affects me. More so it’s forcing me to look at something I’d never realized I was quietly fearing and to ask myself why.

Change is coming. I will it.

More later. I know I’m a frustratingly cryptic creature.

But sadly my head is full of tension. My jaw ever tightening against my will, sinuses full and pressing at the lower half moon’s of my tired eyes. A heaviness sits at the back of my skull. A sunken rock behind my brain. That same brain which is likely the true cause of this out of sync’ness between the entirety of my skull and the rest of my person which supports it.

Tragically this is an episode repeated many a time.

The time between when I fall asleep and when I wake seems instantaneous – unless of course I dream. My eyes close, my brain races ever forward. Fears, to do lists, projects, lamenting my dreams and the reach between I and them, and then f course there is the writer me ever plotting, angsting, creating and ever, ever weaving.

Thoughts begins to swirl, spiralling further and further apart. Less focused, more random and the SNAP!

It’s the next morning.

I try to lie here, where I am this very moment, to be still and enjoy the fluidity and warmth. To snuggle deeper into my nest of blankets and cats… but my brain is already ratings top speed. Ever forward, moving, moving. I resist this traditionalbooting up at first, my monkey mind, but eventually give in as it tricks my body. Anxiety, adrenaline, sweet needing panic. These are what I have to look forward to if I try and lay still and enjoy the quiet. Remnants of the PTSD my doctor would say and I know it’s nit false.

On nights I dream the story is slightly different. Brain rushing me into oblivion while I patiently wait for it to slow enough for sleep to sneak in and claim me. That darkness is brief and then I’m awake again but in a whole other level of reality. Colors are intense but don’t burn my eyes, scenes travel fast and out of order and yet they still make sense. Faces are faceless and yet I never notice. Taboo is often not… and often leaves me wondering.

Waking is less snap and more a slide. A gradual shifting of internal senses to external and instead of rushing forward with the day my brain is blessedly betrayed by it’s favorite puzzle, a story incomplete. Where the dream ends I am able to lay here, the Weaver of plots within me filling in the gaps and continuing the dream as if I’d never woken.

Monsters become less scary, the taboo is rationalized, faceless faces grow eyes and noses and I become less of an observer and more a curator of parts I enjoyed, things to write about and Muse deeply on.

The wonderments that fill me, oh if only you knew.

Don’t get me wrong though. This is not a deprived. Only a stalling tactic, a truce between my imagination and the warmth of my bed. Gradually my brain will lose interest in the dream even if my mind has not. It will wander to the mundane things that stress me and drive my focus to the rock of mucus pushing my treasured grey matter against the fore of my skull. If I wait too long the anxiety will take me but not if I am wise – with my brain taken upon the dream my mind can pull forth the writer who, when pulled by bright colors and flowing words, dominates all else.

I grand my tablet. I sit here. I write. The brain is occupied. Anxiety quelled for the moment.

Eventually I’ll leave my nest; wake up my friend, feed the cats, check my email, etc. But in my own time.

On my own terms.

Ever forward.

The hardest part is going to be going to bed at the some time every night. Need to work out a system for that methinks….

On a different note that sou ds the same, I’d love to put together a manga. What a shame I suck so badly at drawing people let along anime style. I keep practicing and searching up new tutorials but no real progress yet. Methinks I need a physical book, something far away from the computer, that I can sit beside my notepad and sketchbook and play with for a few hours. I know I learn well, he’ll I learn fast but I just don’t think Joe found the right teacher so to speak yet.

All in good time though. I have ideas aplenty that I know would best be expressed like manga. They contain the same sort of story telling and would just be so much fun to see in that format if I could get them going.

Woe is me though I imagine this is just another one of those projects I’ll manage to never finish. I’m awful pike that and more and more it’s starting to get me down. I have great energy for starting projects but for some reason I have so much trouble finishing them. It’s rather pathetic the more I look back at all I’ve constantly started which now sits waiting for me to complete it.

I swear I just can’t figure myself out sometimes.

Also, on that note I’d like to start a passive comic featuring the exploits of my 12 kitties. Unfortunately I think I suck at drawing cats too.

It’s driving me a fair shade of crazy.

The sound alone wouldn’t be so awful but I can feel it and that’s what will really drive me nuts in the end.

Had tuna sandwich for dinner. Bit of left over cocoa from the gas station this morning and a sugar cookie the hubby and I shared earlier. There’s a swiss roll I’m saving for dessert. I’m going through all the manga I’ve downloaded on my tablet and catching up on my feed reader items which I never have time for usually. It’s too cold to type too much but my brain is my biggest entertainer. Full of fanfiction, brain movies and all my own stories that I’m constantly making no progress on.

The tiny shy kitties have finally joined us in the bedroom. The only one I have seen edge his way in here yet is out rescue kitty Ivan the cuddly. He’s part wild cat but was left declared in our driveway last winter before ghee huge storm. It took us over a month to catch him because he was so terrified of people. Finally hunger won out and I managed to coax the scrawny giant into out home and hearts.

Now thoughts hanging out in the living room, he’s what our vet calls socially autistic in the world of felines. He doesn’t reaction the same cues of body language and dominance play that our kitty do from time to time. As a result he is excluded from the cuddle pile by all but our youngest felines. With all the other kitties in the bedroom tonight I know we’re not likely to see him but I’ve left all his favorite blankets out and have gone to check on him a few times. So far so good though I can’t help wanting to shove him inside blankets and cuddle him with all the others.

My fingers are freezing!

Gosh I really hope the weather is good enough to make it out to toys for tots tomorrow just so I can spend some time in the nice warm car for that nice long ride. Of course it’s so dangerous out there and I’m all out of my panic attack preventing medicine because even the pharmacy is out of power.

We’ve eventually slept the whole day away. Went out once we knew the roads we’re clear to stock up on gas, candles and a bit of fast food. I miss that bit of time in the car but I do not miss Michigan roads. Seriously, I do adore the nature of this state and the lack if natural disasters for a pretty decent time period but I think I’d rather live somewhere with a little less extreme weather. I can do things about the heat. Not so much when it comes to the cold.

At least this provides me some good time to work on a lot of my writing if I could just pick one project and go with it… and of course if my fingers weren’t freezing off… that would suck. My brother A is likely laughing his as off in California right now, well next year he’s getting me for Christmas and well into the new year.

Also as soon I get internet back I’m installing a less, having hand around vaguely here, typonessified keyboard.

Oooh my music decided that I’m going to write now. Ta ta for now.

Since then I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to make a novel and write one from start to finish. There’s a method to it, sure it’s different for everyone but there’s some hint of planning and threading everything together at some point which is greatly what I lacked before.

I have writer buddies I’ve seen do both to the exclusion of the other. I’ve done both to the exclusion of the other. It doesn’t work for either of us. On one hand we get a lot of writing but no novel and on the other we have a novel it’s just not written.

The more I think and stick myself in various mind slots I’ve wandered through the years the more I realized I need to wade in the between area. The freeform that’s such an inherit part of my everything and thebplanning and threading I’ve learned with age. Like a fine wine my process is maturing, method and rigidity are giving way to freeform and freeform is settling enough for me to mould and shape it into something the people outside my head can recognize.

It’s a worthy adventure to partake in methinks.