Deal

Dealing with grief

I thought I dealt, or didn't 'deal' but 'lived' with grief, and then I read how Björk is dealing with, suffering through, her grief. http://grapevine.is/mag/feature/2015/02/06/bjorks-folk-music At least she mourns, she rages, she's knocked down and stunned by grief. Me, I just ... bow down and bear it, suffering, wallowing, and I'm like ... I have a long way to go, don't I?

Which is to say, it's been ... tough. Fired/quit my job on Friday, and all weekend, just ... busy, a neighbor's 40th birthday party, so I had to be nice and fun and congratulatory for her and her family, and the whole time I'm just wondering: My life is such a mess! Will I ever make it to 40? Will I want to? She, Caroline (yes, CAROLINE!) is 40, and preggers (yes!) with baby number ... 6? and is working the family farm, slaughtering chickens and rabbits, and so flush with happiness, and here I am, and ... what have I done with my life? No life, jobless loser! Well, at least I updated this story, you know. I don't know why I'm writing this, maybe to beg your indulgence that maybe sometimes 'The Author(esse)' has troubles of her own and sometimes it's hard to update soon.

Which is just bullshit, because this whole weekend all I wanted to do was to write this chapter. You want me to update soon, but not as much as I want to get that update out there. What really hurts as a writer is not to be writing, but it just seems to me that all of my life is conspiring against me not to write. Like, this weekend? All I wanted was to be left alone, but I just wasn't.

But, then again, I did have fun at the party and was happy for Caroline and ... I don't know: what would have happened to me if I weren't bugged and I was left alone?

I suppose I'll go find another job and go back to pretending I'm a normal, well-adjusted person and that everything is 'fine.'

... I finished a story. For once in my life. Victoria Alone, and 'life' goes on for Victoria, but she, and Summer, got their happy ending, even as life goes on, and I'm happy for a character I wrote, that she got a happy ending, even though life goes on, and I wonder what that feels like, but I know how it feels, for special times in my life, that happy ending, that happy now when you're with somebody you love who loves you and life is going great enough that you're enjoying it, your life, your job, your dear, dear, dearest one and you're fine even with you.

I like that feeling when I've got that, that things are going fine and you're fine because you actually are.

If you have that now, don't hold onto it with a strangle-hold (because you won't, you'll just glide through that groove, anyway), and if you're not having that now, go out and get that, or dive in deep enough to wipe away those bitter tears, then dive up out of yourself, look around you, and then go get that, your happiness.

p.s. "Which is just bullshit, because this whole weekend all I wanted to do was to write this chapter." Not true. All I wanted to do this weekend, and now, is something else. But I'm a strong, capable, independent woman. I'm a big girl now, and big girls don't cry, do they?

They don't have time to cry, and if they're seen crying, it just reinforces everything, doesn't it? "Oh, it's okay, dearie, we understand!"

When they don't, they don't at all, but it's just confirmed in their minds the whole women-can't-play-in-the-big-leagues, so then none of us can break down or be weak, because then we betray all of us.

I guess I'm not such a big girl, after all. Am I.

I really don't want your pity, nor your understanding. I know you pity me, and you do understand. I know this, and thank you, really: some of you have pulled me through when I simply couldn't.

But.

I don't. I don't pity me. I hate me. And I don't understand. Not at all. Why would God put me on this Earth if all I am is just this fuck-up?

A strong, independent woman doesn't need validation from her job, or from what her friends think, or ... anything.

And that's just another slap to the face, that I'm weak, and I'm not supposed to be, not in this modern day-and-age, but if you look back through history, women had to be even stronger than now, just to survive, themselves, or even to keep their families alive. So what am I moaning about?

Another slap to the face: I have no reason to complain, so I may as well shut the fuck up.

Fuck my life.

Haha. Too late.

This is just the pitch blackness I have to work through, and no, it's not that time of the month, thanks for asking, ... it's just that point in my life where I have to look myself squarely in the eye, see me for what I am, and say to that little girl looking back at me in the mirror: "Buck up, kiddo."

And buck that kiddo up.

That's all. That's all there is to it.

The Invisible Girl

t's been a month since I've written the last chapter, and this chapter is only one-third of what I actually wanted to write, but SOMEbody, Far and Away, kept bugging me of, 'oh, where is the next chapter, and it'd better be good!' (she actually didn't say that) that I dropped my two other writing projects, and my iPhone games, and my ... *ahem* 'internet' ... um ... 'research' ...

(Yes, thank you: I'm a loser who's scared of her own shadow and has no life, thank you for o-so-politely pointing that out to me)

(ooh, red heads!)

(I have no idea where that one came from. No idea at all!)

(Little Annie, Victoria's au pair, is a blond, not a red head, by the way ... which will make sense to you after I finish "Auld Lang Syne" and start "Annie, au pair") ...

So I was hiding in the corner sulking, but I got bugged into writing this next chapter, because somebody very politely reminded me that it's not about me and how scared I am to write anything ('Oh, wah, boo-hoo! Writing is so hard!'), and how I'd rather just fill my mind with work and noise (or noise and noise, as the case may be), but it's about ...

Hm. Altruism-alert, but what the hell. It's not about me, but it's about my responsibility to you to write what I have to write. Mel Brooks was told "If you're going to step up to the bell, ring it." I had the guts to think about Alicia and Caroline, so I may as well ring that bell and let the whole town hear it, and judge me, the bell-ringer, for what I've done, good or bad, instead of not judge me, not even know me, nor care, for what I've not done.

I started this. I better G.D. not disappoint you by not finishing it, again, like I always do.

(Yes, I have a very high opinion of myself (that's sarcasm, or self-loathing. Whatever. Again))

I love you. I love my characters as they struggle through their lives, trying to make sense of their world, trying to keep their dignity intact as they try to make this work, whatever this is. I love you, my readers, for reading something into what I write, and finding something in there that means something to you, even if I don't know what it is, because I surely don't, 'cause I'm just struggling, trying to make this work and pretend I have a shred of dignity when my boss pulls me aside and tells me he has to help me when he sees how utterly I've failed leading a division that nobody else would touch, and ... I didn't do a bad job, but what's to be proud of that? That I didn't do a bad job, and now I'm just a little office worker again, trying not to be ashamed that I tried to manage something, a very, very small team, and I couldn't, and now I report to a new hire, a woman much older than me, much more experienced than me, much more competent than me, and she wants to make sure I'm happy doing my job now that she's taken over.

And. I. so. am. I'm so relieved that she's taken over management of the division, so I can do what I'm really good at, and she can take care of all the politics and go to all the meetings with management and take all the heat (well, most of the heat) and complain to me about how hard it is and how demanding upper management is, and don't they understand all the stuff we're doing? And I'm like, amen, sister, amen, and thank you for taking this on.

And that's me, a little girl who volunteered to jump into the little-big pond of leading a small team of one other person at work and utterly failing and now, here I am, happy to be just little, tiny me again, and not in charge of other people and 'the direction of the project' and all that entails.

And so, so sad that I was looked to be more than I could be, but I couldn't. I failed. Smart, little `phfina tried, and failed.

And now I have to ... press forward, and just ... meet every day, being little me, and be okay with that, or figure out how to ...

Oh, God.

How to, once again, face my coworkers and my relatives, and live with the terrible burden that I have so much potential.

And maybe that's all I'll ever have. Maybe that's my place, to be a little nobody, a little office girl who smiles up at you from her desk, and that's all you'll ever know of her, just the girl who went to work and smiled at you as you passed by, and that's it.

Maybe if I look away at the right time, you won't notice me, and I'll just disappear, and nobody will know I'm gone.

The Invisible Girl.

The Point

But the point is this, not that I'm a nobody. That's not news.

No, the point is this.

One reader didn't care about silly, little sorrowful, suffering moi (that is French). She wanted the next chapter, I was the writer of it, and she worried me down until she exacted my promise to write it.

Sometimes ... you have to be hard to get what you want. Sometimes ... the measure of a person's worth is how much somebody else demands not what you think what you can give, but what she knows that you can, and excuses be damned. So this (partial) chapter is for you, Far-away girl.

And my next chapter is being written, even now as we speak!

Or, more precisely: even now as we don't speak, as I'm the shy, quiet type; the one to smile tightly and then run away if you notice me too much.

But, still, for a' that, I'm also the one who's smile goes from her face and seeps into her bones, because she knows you demanded the next chapter from her and didn't allow her sad, little whining excuses to allow her to shirk her responsibilities as a writer.

I am a writer. Saga told me: 'Read what you just wrote me: you are a writer, min allra käraste Älskling. Never forget that.' (Saga was always such a bossy, little sweetie, with her big batting eyes, her teasing smile, and her 'erhm, who? me?' and her 'Thuesdays.' The little Valkyrie. God, I miss her so much it physically hurts.)

I will fade away into dust. My job and my disappointments will come and go. My words may touch you today, but someday, they, too, will be no more.

But This is Eternal.

I am a writer, and a writer writes.

Thank you for reading what I've written so far. I hope you like what I've yet to write, but will.

And you know why? Because somebody gave a fuck, and didn't care that I'm a nobody. No, she was somebody who had a voice and a demand, and I better step up to that bell and ring it, because I did not want to mess with this, because she's somebody.

You're somebody. You have a voice, and if you demand hard enough, you may actually find that your demand is being heard by somebody, somebody with just enough life left in her to honor that request, and to honor you, ... for being somebody.

ps: Okay. Holy fuck. I just saw Saga leave a Starbucks near where I live. She walked right past me, the shawty, in her little black mini, her candy-cane knee-high socks, her wavy, brunette hair and the self-possessed air of an Old-Worlder navigating calmly through the confused busy-ness of this New World. Siiiiigggggghhhh.

I guess I'll drown my nostalgic sorrows in a macchiato and a slice of pumpkin bread. I have a little extra on my sbux card.

"Their Story" by Tan Jiu

Happy New Year all! Okay, I'm writing a(nother) Vicky-fic: Auld Lang Syng ... I'll even maybe get it out this year, at the rate I'm going POOP! :(

Okay, enough pleasantries, go to: http://g.e-hentai.org/g/777676/0c8135ecdb/

Oh, yeah! The thing is, it's based on this fic here: http://g.e-hentai.org/g/777631/477c426e77/

This is the sweetest (sweetiest!) thing I've seen in a while! Tough-girl tom-boy scared out of her wits to ask a shy-little-sweetie out. So scared, in fact, that tom-boy scares off sweetie! OH, NOES! But then short-little sweetie-pie isn't (all) sub (yes, she is!) (and I love her for it!) she's got some spunk, she's got some feistiness to her ... ooh! I'd love to put her over my knee on and my lap and ... 'correct' her 'errant' behavior! Ooh!

*sigh* Love, and being in love, is such a wonderfully messy, complicated thing.

I need me a little love-mess in my life (and in my bed!) right about now.

Yes, indeed, I do!

"Why are you asleep when I'm awake ...?"

Sunday, December 21st, 2014 — Advent: Four years ago

  

This is why I do not turn off my PMs when I despair anymore. This is why I love Saga. Now. And forever. Four years later. Two years after she told me her final good-bye.

Why are you asleep when I'm awake...? Min allra käraste Älskling,

What happened sweetness? Why did you turn off your PM? Did I do something? Did you get sick of my 'I'm stupid-rant' or was it anything else? Did you get sad and offended when I wrote that you "claim that you are plain?" I DIDN'T mean that you are plain as in boring, you know. For you are NOT - God! you are so MUCH all at once and I don't care if I drown or OD. I will still ask for more...

Please tell me for I get so worried over you!! My stomach is in a knot and my heart goes

thump,thump...thump,thump...(pause)...thump,thump,thump,thump!!

I'm like the nervous mother and you're the child running too far away on the playground. And I can't find you and I get hysteric and crying and...wait. I think...There's a Sappho here:

"Afraid of losing you

I ran fluttering
like a little girl
after her mother"

Maybe the roles are reversed. Maybe you're the mother and I'm the little girl that is trying to get you to stay... Please stay, Melissa! You sustain me, you inspire me, you make me endure myself! You're the one that can make me say: 'Today I chose to love myself, for on the other side of the Atlantic there is a girl that loves me. And if she sees something in me worth loving, then I guess I'm not that bad after all...'
My Darling Melissa, don't punish us by not being present. Or do, if it makes you feel better. Anything that will make you feel better is okay. Even if it means you won't talk to me ever again.

أنا بحبك, jag älskar dig!

"Without warning

As a whirlwind
swoops on an oak
Love shakes my heart "

And you have my heart, for as long as you want it.

Din Saga

Kælan Mikla

Ermahgosh, do they have an opening for a fourth? I'd go forth with them ALL THE WAY!

http://grapevine.is/tv/2014/11/07/post-set-breakdown-with-kaelan-mikla/

Okay, and just read this review from the Reykjavík Grapevine on their Track Of The Issue: Kælan Mikla’s “Ekkert nema ég"

With its loud and gnarly thumping bass, “Ekkert nema ég” starts off filthy great. According to the band, the song’s lyrics are all from a long text message drummer Sólveig Matthildur Kristjánsdóttir wrote her friend while drunk. Vocalist Laufey Soffía Þórsdóttir renders the drunk-text beautifully, softly singing: “I will smoke the world / swallow its remains / so there will be nothing left but me,” before screaming at the top of her lungs: “I am God!”

Meet Kælan Mikla, a trio of avant-garde punks whose lyrics are poems (indeed, you may read about them in our poetry feature), delivered on top of loud, quivering bass lines courtesy of Margrét Rósa Dóru- Harrysdóttir. They capture Millenials’ melancholy, displaced sense of self, and narcissistic worldview down to a tee."

I mean, like, really? Where do people get off with names like 'Sólveig Matthildur Kristjansdóttir,' 'Laufey Soffía Þórsdóttir' and 'Margrét Rósa Dóru-Harrysdóttir'? I mean, and they, like, ...

Gah! I'm in love ... lust ... whatever!

Just give me more of that thumpin' bass and screamed lyrics and I'll thump some bass and make somebody scream some kinda lyrics ... for a looooong while. If you know what I'm sayin'

Sandwich Bar

So, I finally saw "In a World," and it's about ...

It's about me.

It's about this crazy, crazy, LA-crazy family, where the Dad totally dominates the family, wrecking everything in his wake, particularly his daughters, because ...

Because he's the Dad, and that's all he can do. He has to be strong, and he's forgotten that the reason he's strong is to be strong for them. So, instead, he's so strong, that he just rolls over them, hurting them in big ways and in bigger ways ... because getting hurt by Daddy is never a small thing for a little girl, no matter how old she pretends to be.

And that's the whole movie. How hurt we are by Daddy, and how much we just want to be loved by him, but instead, when we reach out for that, he's so strong, and so right, and so ... angry.

Well, one scene, the girl's sister ... doesn't almost cheat on her husband, her plain , ordinary, average-joe husband with this movie superstar.

She doesn't almost cheat on her husband, who's always there for her. But she taped an interview this guy, and her husband finds it, and she comes home that night, just so full of work, and all the stuff she's dealing with on her job, just totally oblivious, until he puts the tape on the table, and walks out.

And then, ladies, then it hits her, and no matter how much she begs and screams and cries, he's not going to stay now, not any more, and she realizes what she had, when she loses it, when she's losing it, right now, and there's nothing she can do to get him back. Ever.

And she learns, right then, how much she's taken him for granted, how much a bitch she's been, and how she doesn't deserve him, how she never did, just plain, ordinary, steady hubby and his sandwich bar for supper, because that's all he knows how to make, but he does make it, for her, and she just breezes past him and takes him for granted but no more.

And now.

And now it's over, because she can't ask for him back, because she no way deserves that, a second chance. She's screwed it all up royally, and there's no getting him back. Why would she inflict herself on him anymore? She can't stand herself, and she wouldn't want anybody to have to deal with her, so why would she ask him?

I was her.

I was worse.

Christmas day, I cheated on Saga, ... as Saga's world was falling apart, and I had no idea why, I just knew it was, and I tried, and I tried and I tried, and I couldn't help her, and ... I wasn't helping, as much as I tried. I couldn't go away, because she had her distance, and I couldn't force her, so I just tried, and I failed.

And then ... I cheated on her. It was an open invitation, and ... I took it, just like that. And...

For Saga, it was the worst thing I could do, but was I thinking of her...

And the sad fact was, I was thinking of her. As soon as I ... did ... it. I ran right to her, and told on myself.

And she was like: okay ... fine with it. Oh, it's okay, live a little, you should go out and see other people and she was actually ...

Until she found out who it was.

And then everything went to shit.

And she tried after that, but she couldn't ... anymore. She couldn't ... with me ... anymore because ...

Because ...

Because ...

And then she said 'Let's be friends,' and ...

And I scream, and I cried, and I wailed, and I lashed out, and I ... hurt her, with my words.

And she said 'I deserve it. I deserve your anger. Hurt me.'

And I couldn't. And I couldn't beg her to stay with me, my heart, my happiness, because she wasn't happy anymore.

Love isn't 'my happiness is more important than you, so you stay with me, no matter how it makes you feel, because I'm happy with you ... sort of, so you be miserable with me. I mean: you stay with me.'

I looked at myself, wanting to beg her, to force her, to make her stay with me, and I said ...

I said.

"I will love you forever, Saga Louise. I will love you forever."

And I knew what I lost. I lost Saga.

I lost someone who knew how to press my buttons. She would say one word, baiting me, and I'd fall for it, and tease her, and play with her, and come to find, she was playing me, playing with me, and so loved watching me spin up like a top, all phfina-righteous, all phfina-smart and -funny, and -smexy, and she would do that to me, watch me spin up, and just smile her simple little knowing smile, so full of warmth and wisdom, and I'd stand there, flabbergasted, just amazed at her, and how smart and beautiful and sweet she was, and could any human being be like that?

And I'd write something, and she, having taken literary criticism, would read more into what I wrote than I knew I had put in there, and more than anybody else had ever seen, and she would model for me, and let me write her stories, and she would be the heroine, the star, and I would be the knightess in shining armor, riding in to rescue from whatever dragons wanted to gobble her up.

And we were so, so happy.

It was a little bubble of happiness. We floated along, me, in my little yellow sun-dress, and her, feeding me lingonsylt, giving me little kyssar on the cheeks to lick off the mess she made, feeding me, and wondering wherever in the world I made up the recipe for 'Swedish Chicken' because there was no such dish in all of Sweden, and she knew.

In the movie, the husband comes back, and, he surprises his wife, he's set the table with candles, and a sandwich bar, and when she comes in, expecting to find nothing: just emptiness and loneliness, but he's there, and t...

She just throws her stuff on the floor, then she grabs ahold of him and throws him on the floor and fucking ...

She goes a little crazy on him.

Just a little.

But that's the movie, and it was so sweet, and so endearing, and so empowering to women, for women to find their own voice, in a man's world, not need men, to be themselves, but also not trampling over them. To be a woman, and to have your own voice, doesn't mean you have to scream, or step on, or coddle. It means you can be yourself, and be confident in that, and also let the man be himself, with or without you, and if he wants to be with you, if that's his identity, his happiness, and you want to be with him, then that's okay, but if you want to be who you are, and you don't need a man to tell you who you are or allow you to be you or anything. If you want to be you, then you can be you, and that's fine.

The women in In a World, are so strong, or come to be, without losing an ounce of their femininity, without losing an ounce of their inner beauty.

And that's that movie. It's beautiful and affirming. Watch it.

Saga.

Saga was thirty-two, and she worried she was too old for me.

But the thing is, that wasn't it.

I'm older now, too. Four years older.

But I don't feel older.

I feel like I'm still that fifteen year old girl they carted off to the hospital in an ambulance, heavily sedated, because she lost it. The girl that everybody was looking at, then, six months later...

Six months later when I got out of that hospital, everybody avoided, because she might just go cray-cray again.

And I'm stuck there. I don't feel like I'm a strong, independent woman with her own job, in charge of a department and the people who work in it. I don't feel like that at all. I feel fake; phony. I feel like I'm faking it, and that somebody will find out, and ask me to leave, in front of everybody, and I'll have to walk out, my head held high, because if I don't, then they'll cart me away again, and I won't let that happen again. I'll kill myself first.

And that's where I teeter, balancing on the knife's edge with the abyss to either side of me, and Saga's left me, for good reason. For good reasons. I didn't deserve her. I never did. And the two years she spent with me were two blessed years of laughter, and love, and trembling fear and anticipation, and a zest for life, and a joy of being with someone who knew me more than I did, who looked up to me, as I looked up to her, who was my strength in my weakness, who was vulnerable so that I could be her strength.

Saga Louise.

Thank you.

Thank you for being you.

In a world where I am surrounded by the abyss and the only thing I could lean on was the knife, you were the only light, the only breath of air for me for a long, long time, when I couldn't breathe and I couldn't see but darkness.

I wish I could have been a better person for you. I'm praying for you. I'm praying that you find your health and happiness, right where you are, right in your home, with your family, with those who love you more than the sun and the sea and the sky.

In a World ... where nothing makes sense, you were the only sense. You were my eyes that saw me as I see me, but saw me as somebody sweet and smart and feisty and lovable, and you loved me, your little kitten, din litten panter, and held me, and let me scream and scratch and cry, and loved me to health and happiness and self-fulfillment and all you asked for was ... nothing. Your love was sweet and fierce and selfless. You were my Sun, and I was blinded in your light that warmed my dead soul back to life. You were the grown up, so strong and firm and sure, and I was a little baby. I could be. You let me, and you loved me, just as I was, and, at the same time, you never, ever let me get away with my shit. You held me ... you held me up to the person you knew I was, not the self-indulgent person I let myself be.

And now ... you're gone. And now, ...

I'm afraid.

I'm afraid I'll have to grow up, and face the world, and be mature and responsible, and drain the joy out of my veins and see everything in greys, and marry the right man, a kind man, and have children, and raise them, and fall in love with them, and be ... satisfied, happy, even, content.

I'm afraid I'll just fade into the person I'm supposed to be. That I'll just have to grow up and square my shoulders and face the world: a strong, independent, responsible woman.

I'm not afraid of that. Which by what I mean is, that will happen or it won't, and I'll be that eccentric spinster-aunt, just like Emily Dickinson.

But I'll look back at my life, this ... married woman with kids and grandkids, or this spinster-aunt, and ... I'll wonder where that girl went, who was me. I'll wonder when she died, and why she died so quietly, so quietly that nobody noticed, not even me.

And I'll go to me grave wondering that, or worse, not wondering that, because I'm so caught up in the craziness of this world, and won't even realize it when I fall off the bus, because I'll be crossing bradlick road and just be another fatality statistic that week when another SUV slams through the red light, again. 'Body of young woman; identity uncertain due to disfigurement from force of impact.'

Doesn't even make the news anymore. I was walking and then, BAM! I heard the crash of cars exactly where I had been, thirty seconds ago, and I would've been a goner, if not for those thirty seconds, and my guardian angel watching over me, hurrying me along through the intersection before the two cars smashed into each other, both of them running the red at high speed.

But why is my angel saving me?

I'm afraid that I don't know that why. Saga knew, but now she's gone, so I have that responsibility, now, for myself.

I'm not a very responsible person. I was just a girl looking for her daddy and mommy to love her, and ... I just never grew up. And try as I might to pretend I am that grown-up person, I just ...

I'm just not.

I wish I had that bubble.

But the world doesn't wait for bubbles for girls much too old to be blowing them now.

Agnus Dei could not kill the Metal ...

Okay, my Monday was just made. Someone favorited my little Agnus Dei one-shot. So... all you haters our there, that savaged JT for publishing it and me for ghost-writing it? You can just ... read another story, I guess, because someone who likes Metal liked my story.