My 'phfavorite 'phfina one-shot is ...

Background

So, I write a bit. Some of these are one-chapter stories, called one-shots. One reader said, "Oh, What She Said [my most recently written one] is your best!" So I was like, hm, is that so? So I did something I've never thought I would have done: I ran a little poll asking which one-shot was your favorite.

And here are the results:


And the winner is...

Drum roll, please.

Fireworks! Yay! *throws confetti*

What did you get out of this poll, 'phfina?

What I got out of this poll was that every one of my one-shots was voted on by somebody, and that warmed my heart. It tells me that there's something I wrote in each of my one-shots that touched or moved somebody.

Did you vote, too?

Yes, I voted.

Which one-shot was your fav?

Not telling.

Aw, c'mon, 'phfina!

Oh, all right! I am such a push-over! (um, don't tell anybody, and don't use that to your advantage, you know ... somewhere horizonal, either!) Tell you what, I'll show you mine if you show me yours. "Dear 'phfina, I voted (would have voted) on X and here's why! ... Okay, now show me yours? You got pics? *blush* Eek! I didn't write that! You've turned me, 'phfina, you've turned me into such a perv! So ... this weekend ... EEK! *scampers away*"

Um, you don't need to follow that PM format precisely ...

But actually, when I voted, it was so, so hard, and then I got scared away. I couldn't do it. They are all my favorites, I can't choose one of them! But I had demanded you pick a favorite fav, so it would be unjust for me to chicken out. So I picked the one that called out to me, and actually cried a bit about not being able to pick the other ones. I'll give a run down of my one-shots and why I love each one of them here some day later (or 'real soon now').

Stereotypes

Did you know stereotypes are generally true? Like 'Americans are loud, dumb, and monolingual,' right? Yes, stereotypes are generally true. I'm an American, by the way. Do they help, these general truisms? Sure they do, right? I get it all the time because of my gender, my job, and if I was out? God!

What are you sayin', 'phfina? I guess what I'm saying, okay, I'm dealing with my stereotypes and prejudices all the time, but I really, really try to put them aside, and I really, really try to listen to, well, you, and try to put aside what my thoughts are telling me, and work on just listening to you. And I find when I listen to myself instead of you, I always get in a ton of trouble, but when I just listen to you (which is tons harder, girls), it's like ...

It's like: wow! It's like: wow, there's nobody in the world like this.

So my unreasonable request to you is to just listen, too, to that person you are talking to or judging. 'Oh, Bella is sure dumb in this chapter!' Oh, really? Really? Have you walked a mile in her moccasins? Have you read the books? And you're judging her because she's still alive, being among vampires for two years and how long do other people last? A day? If that? And Bella's dumb because she lets Rosalie kiss her? Hm. Just like Edward has been doing for all of Eclipse and Breaking Dawn?

Or, 'Oh, I hate me that X,' X being Rosalie or Irina or Tanya or ... Edward. Or a coworker. Or a customer. Or a relative. Or a friend. Or a reader. Or a writer. I do, too, girls. God! I do, too. But there is somebody, a person, that I am hating, and there's a reason why I am hating. And here's the killer (for me, anyway), that hate is coming from somewhere inside of me.

My hatred of somebody is telling the world more about me than about the person I hate.

Stereotypes. Yeah. They work, so easily, most of the time, because they are mostly true, or else stereotypes wouldn't exist.

Think about it. Every stereotype you have a reaction to is true, somewhere in your mind. Whether you laugh at the joke or are furious about how wrong the portrayal is, it's 'true.' And you know why? Because you are reacting to it. If it had no basis in your reality, you would've just shrugged your shoulder and dismissed it with a 'Well, that's a weird thing to say.' And everything you react to has you in its power, girls. I know. I know that very well from the reactions I get in conversations I have every day.

And meanwhile, last week (July 15th) in D.C. a man was attacked and beaten by two others for his sexual preference. And meanwhile a coworker told me she was walking home when a car pulled up to her, and the driver asked her if she wanted to 'cuddle,' 'cause that's what a girl walking home from work wants, a 'cuddle' with a complete stranger.

And it all starts with a little snicker, a pointed finger, or a comment.

Vampires and Mermaids

Steph's going to write a story about mermaids, she said some time ago. Do you know why?

I do.

It's because they are the same in her universe, and ... in mine, too.

You see, Vampires are basically sad (except Alice and Esme and Carlisle ... well, okay, so most vampires are okay, except Edward ... and Rosalie), and Mermaids are basically happy, but you know what's exactly the same between the two of them?

Neither of them cry.

They can't cry. They are physically incapable of crying, which means for Vampires, after a year or so, they don't miss it, they don't even think it or feel it. When they are are sad, they channel through stillness or anger or rage or detactment or a blink of the eyes or laughter, but they don't cry. 'Cry,' as a concept, simply doesn't exist for them. Mermaids (and I suppose Mer'men' exist) from their conception don't have 'cry' in their lexicon, in their emotional repertoire. I mean, a mermaid is basically happy anyway: they are playing or singing or swimming or dancing. They are just so happy, all the time. Air is what we breathe, but mermaids don't breathe water, they breathe happiness.

Except.

Except with they, or perhaps just one, just one little mermaid, one kära lilla sjöjungfru, becomes aware of ... something.

Something that isn't for her, that could be. She falls in love with that human above water, and the normal mermen just don't do it for her, I mean, she could be nice to them, and they, nice to her, but ...

But, something's missing from her existence, and that is her handsome human prince (because it'd be way too much for me to ask for a sweet human princess to fall in love with me ... I mean her, human princesses don't give a fig for mermaids, we're nothing but rivals for her affection to her handsome prince). And when she realizes this, she becomes sad, and this is new for her, and so confusing. She is sad: she doesn't want to sing and play.

But she doesn't cry. She doesn't know how. She doesn't even know that 'crying' exists as a possibility for her, because it doesn't. The sea is the only salt water she'll ever feel on her cheeks.

And I so want to be a mermaid ... and, okay, I admit it, even though I am so going to get a serious tongue lashing from Rosalie (and not the good kind, girls), I so want to be a vampire.

Because.

Because when it's hard to draw the next breath, because the tears are obscuring your vision and you have to type this goddam entry from the memory of where the keys are under your fingers because you can't see the screen, because you know the next breath you'll draw is a gasp and will come out as a sob ...

It's tiring, girls. It's tiring drawing that next breath, because you know the sob will make the tears spill over, and here I am, crying like a baby, and Larry (my coworker, my 'partner' at sbux) has to drive me home from work and how much leave can I take from work? 'Cry-leave'? Is there any such thing? For me, yes, too much of it, in fact.

I don't know why Larry, well, anybody puts up with me. I can't stand me: so I don't see how anybody else can.

And if I were a mermaid, or a vampire, I wouldn't cry. I'd just deal with the emotion so dispassionately: 'I am sad. I have no reason to be sad. I am now moving beyond my sadness.' But no, here I am, a weak, sad little human, who, okay, girls, who hates herself, and hates the very next breath she's drawing because the tears are falling and can I hide this from anybody? No. And isn't it about time they fired me?

Vampires don't cry. Mermaids don't cry. And I so want that. I so want to be happy because that's my natural state. I so want to be unable to cry.

Another thing common to vampires and mermaids: they don't exist.

Humans don't cry when they don't exist anymore, did you ever notice that? The only people crying at a funeral, if there are any tears shed, are the people still living.

The dead don't cry at their funerals. They don't care. They are in eternal repose.

yeah. I'm fine.

Lunch

Today for lunch I had a bottle of Ethos water and a turkey sandwich with muenster cheese and a ginger spread on whole wheat bread. Do you see that little girl wearing all black and a green apron sitting alone at the sbux, pouring over a very professional looking notebook? Do you see her looking out a the clientele sometimes between pages and between bites of a sandwich that her daddy used to make her when she was a little girl? Do you ever wonder what she's thinking? Or feeling? Is she sad? Is she lonely? Or is she just enjoying the zing of the ginger spread in the sandwich?

I'm a writer

Do you know how a bad day(s) can turn right around to be a good one? I know I'm suppose to create this myself, right? I have my own magic wand, so I can godoink! and grant myself smiles and happiness and joy. I have to take responsibility for my mood, be it pissy or joyful. I can't say: 'oh, don't bug me, 'cause I'm pissy,' because 'I'm pissy' is wrong. No: I choose to be pissy. So I can choose, right now, to be joyful.

But, wow, sisters, when you get that smile from somebody else, and she says, 'you know, 'phfina, you're a writer' and she pats your cheek affectionately before skipping out of the sbux with her caramel macchiato? It just makes it so much easier to turn a bad day(s) into a good one.

Lesson learned for me: surround myself with people like that. People who look for the good in you and then speak what's so right into existence. People who aren't the wet blankets at the party, but are the life of the party. People you just want to be around.

Lesson learned for me: be that girl for everybody I can.

Got and gave four hugs today so far, btw, and the day is still yet young.

I'm fine

You know, I'm a really good pretender sometimes.  Sometimes I am; sometimes I'm not.  And I can write through the pain or with the pain or about the pain, and I can write when I'm superbusy because I have to 'update soon.' And I can make it all sound good.  I'm fine, I'm silly, I'm funny, I'm insightful, I'm weird 'but in a good way' (whatever the fuck that means), I'm smart, I'm whatever.

But you know, I'm always second guessing myself.  And that little voice in my head, she just never shuts up, and she always has something to say about how I just really, really screwed up on that last PM or review reply I sent you. Self-esteem problems much, 'phfina?

'Fraid so.

So I plaster that smile on my face, and I tell myself: "oh, she's busy, that's why she hasn't replied, and, anyway, bitch, how long have you kept everybody else waiting and you're just expecting a response after a second, minute, hour, day? They have lives! You know what that is? 'Lives'? Why don't you get one and stop being such an alert-whore?"

And then the talk goes downhill from there: "Why did you write that? That wasn't funny at all! She'll know now, won't she, how fucked up you are.  That's why she's not replying. You are one fucked up little bitch, 'phfina, and this girl was a smart one, breaking off, disengaging when she still could, before you could really fuck her up and but good with your mind-fuck games."

Do you know how hard it is to have that voice just eating away at me and still get your coffee order right? Well, get your order right most of the time?

And then I go home, exhausted from keeping that fake-smile up all day, and I fight that voice and tell myself: "Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!" and I'm screaming at myself into my pillow and crying so hard ... you know the cry, right? Where you cry so hard that you don't dare make a sound so it's the silent-scream cry because if you really do let loose the neighbors call the police, again, and there's that knock on the door and questions about spouse abuse and no, officer I live alone ['fucking loser,' the little voice comments] and yes, you can search the place, see, nobody hurting here.

Nobody.  

Nobody hurting here.  That's me: nobody. What, no, officer, I'm fine, thank you for the card, yes, I'll call the number. Yes, I promise. No, I'm fine, really. Thank you; good night.

I'm fine.  Yeah, I'm fine.

And I thought I was doing so, so well. I won the hug game yesterday, again, and everybody said in group last night how, oh, fuck, how proud they were of my "complete transformation." And I get home and I check my email and it's a few "good story" reviews and the fucking EMPTINESS just fucking crushes me into that bed and I grab my pillow and I just start screaming and the fucking tears come again ['fucking cry baby' she whispers in me as I scream] and ...

Where is that fucking magic wand?

You know, we have all kinds in group, and there's some who were heroin addicts and, you know, other stuff, sex addicts, alcoholics, lots of stuff, and some people who are just dealing with life, husbands, wives, singles, divorcees, gays, straights, social workers, politicians, massage therapists, business owners, sbux baristas, and, lucky me, I've never been hooked on drugs, because I probably would have O.D.ed and died a long time ago.

Yeah, lucky me.

Yeah, so I wouldn't be facing this agony now, being dead and dust and worm food for years now. Yeah, so I get to just go on, pushing through this unmovable bleakness and blackness and despair, waking up another day so I can wake up another day, so when somebody says, 'hey, violet, how are you today?' I put that smile on my face and I can say:

I'm fine.

Some reviews in some languages

So, I've gotten reviews in Swedish, Brazilian and German and French, so I'm waiting for a review in your native language, be it English (howdy there! ... oops, that's American English) or Swedish or Brazilian or (Mexican) Spanish ... or Icelandic. Nr 2 in readership is Sweden, nr 4 is Iceland, so ... what does this mean?

"Ég tala bara ensku."

but before that: "Hvernig gengur? Manst Þú eftir mér?"

and then finally: "Takk kærlega"

Is this enough for me to be polite(ly mute) in Iceland when I break free of the American borders? Do they have an sbux in Iceland so I can transfer there? Tell me in your reviews!

Well anyway: Takk kærlega to everyone for reading and reviewing my stories!