…to more than they are meant
I haven’t yet found a place yet where I know I will survive. I wrote beside my computer so many months ago, “I tell you, Baby, this wound is so heavy.” And it’s true. Carrying it around is my constantly having to live too close to tears. I think I’m feeling better but I’m lying to myself. Summer is falling away from me and it’s all so god damned sad. I’ve lost faith in everything. We’ve lost the golf course. If we do not sell in early October the bank will start forclosure proceedings.
We played our end of the year tournament today and I sit here aching from 27 holes played. Burning from 40 mile an hour gusts of wind and chilled to the bone in exhaustion. When was the last time I slept well? I remember one day, not too long ago, the first day in a really long time where I had finally drove my body to the point where not even me, in my current emotional state, could keep myself from sleeping. It’s been a long time, and it will be a long time more before I truly sleep again. I can smell autumn. It was the last end of the year tournament, the last summer. And I hate myself.
I hate myself because I missed so much time here of the last five years for him. Now it’s all gone. And I can still hear him ranting on how I should have moved down there to help finish the house for him. Help him, like I should have. And, I suppose, married him and had his children. Been that girl, like I should have. How much could he possibly hate me for saying such a thing to me? I ache with the time I missed here. I ache with the hours, the days, the weeks, the months that I will never get back. And he wanted more.
Thank God I never gave him more.
My Grandma told me, “Men never move for women.” How true she was. Imagine if I had given more. I can’t really, not truly, I have felt as though I gave more than I had for so long. So much so that now I feel infinitely thread-bare, desperate for a reprieve (anything, anything at all) and so fucking tired. But if I had given more, whole years for him so he could have been happier, so he could have had more help (never mind that I never got any) I know that he still never would have moved for me. And imagine how much more the fool I would have felt now.
And he still says, “Wish I was there. I miss you so much. I really miss you.” and I wonder if he could possibly know how spiteful that is. How inconsiderate and how unbearably cruel he is being. In the end though, it’s on me, I’m still talking to him, I’m still listening because I simply have nothing else. I’m not holding on to him because I want to. I’m not talking to him still because I want to, God knows he’s burned himself to me, I’m still talking to him because I have nothing else left and no one else left to hang on to.
He said, “Ya know, if you wanted to come down here I wouldn’t mind if you stayed with me.” Oh my God. How can’t he see the knife he’s twisting? He says, “I wish I was there” and I think of how he had destroyed this wonderful place with words, cut me so deep, told me he never wanted to be here. He says, “I miss you.” and I remember him telling me how it’s been four months (like I’m holding on and he’s over it). He says he wouldn’t mind having me around and I remember how he used to tell me he wanted me all of the time. I want to tell him, “Ya know, Fucker, I really think I could find someone who might actually WANT me around that I don’t need to lower myself to sleeping on the couch of someone who would think it would be all right. As if you would allow me to come follow you around. At least I’m not as pathetic as YOU seem to think I am.”
But I’m too tired to fight anymore. All fighting means is how he’s going to give me the schpeal he gives himself every morning so he can move on about how this is for the best. And how we’re moving in different directions. And how I’m going to be better off. And how he’s right. And I can’t bare to hear it again. All I want to say is, “Moving in different directions, huh? As far as I can tell, you’re going nowhere and I’m sprinting with two broken legs at a stand still.”
I say nothing and I try not to cry over all of this. We’ve lost so much. I want to tell you it all. Everything about other people in our lives, people we thought we could trust. People we thought were family who did such awful things until we were alone and shaking and bleeding. My mom keeps telling me that, “This is when our lives begin. We must sell the golf course first, then the divorce and then I’m as free as you. You’re free, Baby.” But I’m not, and she knows it. And I am nothing if I am not free.
I have one thing. The one and only constant in my entire life. My book. Embraced by Darkness remains my only hope. The only thing that still gives me faith in one thing: one very small aspect of myself. I am a writer and I need to learn how to need nothing else if I am ever going to find peace again. Not happiness, I can’t even remember that anymore, just peace. A place in my life where I am capable of sleeping.
I received an email from my editor last night that absolutely made my day, “I have just finished Part Two. Boy, that Waltruk was an ugly sucker. Now I am in it. Now I am involved. I really liked the longer sentences, the longer discussions in this part.” I knew my book was a very large swallow starting off, no matter what, and my editor has confirmed that with her comments over the past week as she got through part one and part two. I kept hoping, crossing my fingers, that once she finished part two she would understand. This email made my heart soar. I went back to my book instantly and read 3/4s of it in two days! It’s been awhile since I had even looked at Embraced by Darkness. When I’m away from it for a few days, or even weeks, I start thinking that it is simply shit. But, I read it again and it was like reading something that could truly become popular. Something sharp and well cut. Something that showed a writer who truly gave a damn when she was writing it. I hope with all of my heart that someone else will think that too someday.
Choices
I’m in a bit of a conundrum here. I’ve talked about this before but I simply do not know what to do. I need advice: very specific advice, and have no one to ask. I want to get a grant so I can hire someone to produce an incredible cover for my book, so I can finish it and give it a gorgeous website and then truly advertise the hell out of it and promote it myself. However, I am concerned, what if this could hurt my chances in acquiring a publisher or an agent? I would like to think that if I can sell a few thousand copies of my book, than wouldn’t that be a good thing? Wouldn’t a publisher or agent be more interested in me then?? I don’t know who to ask this question to and I am concerned.
On top of that
I just read from a very reputable writer (who writes fantastic free articles for writers) that you really shouldn’t even consider sending out to agents or publishers until you have every book written that will be included in the series that you’re selling. So, that means I should really have the sequel to Embraced by Darkness written as well. I am 30,000 words into it but the task of taking it on and writing it is just not something I do not have time for in the summer. Especially not this summer. So, that is something that is obviously making me lean toward just publishing and promoting the first Embraced by Darkness myself.
Cart before the horse
My wonderful editor still has to finish going through my book before I should even be considering this stuff. So, it is going to probably be two or even three months (realistically, I know I haven’t always been realistic with my time-lines, maybe that’s why I’m always disappointed?) She needs to finish reading it first and she has her own very busy life to deal with, not to mention she’s doing this for free because she’s my wonderful and very loving aunt. I will keep you updated on her progress 
Ads
I am determined to someday make some money off of all of this time I spend on my blogs. I now have my Recipe blog as well as this one. I have Google Adsense on both blogs now and I have included a cool book widget from Amazon now in the right hand column here. I think that it is really cool. Now everyone can see my all time favorite books without having to ask
Please, don’t think I expect to actually make money on either this or my recipe blog. I am simply not that naive. But, I have been working on trying to come up with a blog of some kind that could truly make me some money. I always come up with ideas for things I know nothing about because that’s obviously the blog I would go to and enjoy learning something from. I took a step back and started focusing on what I know; what I can teach someone.
Web Design Workshop
That led me back to an idea I’ve had for awhile about putting on a one day “Become a Web Designer” workshop in my local hometown to make a few bucks. I’ve been brain storming about this all summer and it never occurred to me to make a website out of this workshop. Why not?
So, the next website you’re going to see from me is a total and complete devotion to my teaching the newbies what they need to know to become web designers (at least to some extent). It’s going to be very large and take me a lot of time to propagate with all the info that I want to add. It’s also going to include a blog that I will try to update at least monthly with new thoughts as well as a new entry for each new web design that I do. I hope to give people a literal walk through of my own web design process. Full tips and tricks. But, mostly, a basic layout and step by step guide beginning with acquiring a domain name. I will let everyone here know first when I finally get it up and running.
Portfolio.Tarahlynn.com
Some of you may have noticed a broken link over in my navigation called portfolio. When I was sending out resumes last year (to absolutely no avail) I ran into several companies who wanted to see an online resume/portfolio. So, that is something I hope to have finished and up ASAP. I have wanted a place for my photos, all of my web designs and book designs for a very long time, so this is something I am excited about and I think it will be a good step for me professionally. So, check back soon!
Well, I’m home. Just got here a couple of hours ago. I left yesterday and I remain in awe at how time is and how we remember it. I left 3pm yesterday, a long time, but only a blink, the drive is just a blur and it feels like I’m just pulling away from our house. Eleven hundred miles and none at all. I hate the way we remember things. I hate so many things right now that I can barely breathe. I have a lot to be glad about, a lot to be thankful for. But yesterday was the worst day of my life. Too many people I will never see again. Too many tears that were so deep I had to pull over because I simply lost the ability to breathe. I wanted nothing more than to turn around after I left and go back to our house.
This is a memory I will always keep and it will always be held in the fist of the shocking, oppressive heat that has been clutching Oklahoma for the past week. When I think of driving away the last time, it will be entirely soaked in sweat. When I think of signing the papers for my house to go on the market, it will be with the sun blaring down, becoming an intruder that feels like it’s trying to kill me. When I kissed Joseph for the last time, it will be with the salty taste of sweat, covering the taste of our tears.
Five years of my life, my “home”, all gone in a heart beat. It’s funny how, as a writer, I am a realistic, insightful, absurdly creative person, yet I never imagined it would be like this. I had no idea, no way to prepare myself. I am used to being prepared. I am never blindsided. Never played the fool. Yet here I am. Feeling like a fool.
Sharon has my book (see, look at how easy I changed the subject and pity me at how quickly I go back to it) she wrote me an email two days ago saying how she can’t read my monster right before bed at night because she ends up having the craziest dreams and getting no rest at all. I’m actually smiling at that. I told her, “You wonder why I’m an insomniac I’ve got that stuff going through my head twenty-four hours a day!” Of course that’s not true.
The truth is my books are my only real distraction. Driving up I suddenly realized an important piece of dialogue that I want in my sequel. Funny how even through all of this there is always a piece of my brain working on one of my books all of the time. No matter what. Suddenly the sweat shop gals who are working so silently hard on my book, in a windowless corner of my brain, pipe up and say, “We’ve got something, check it out!”
What keeps me up at night is not my imagination but always my heart. Regret. Anger. Grief. This is what keeps me up at night. In that order. I am a writer. I feel too much. Too hard. Too fast. And, as my mother puts it, I am absurdly loyal. I simply am not emotionally capable of leaving someone behind. I’ve had to do it for five years in this long distance relationship, time and time again. And, yesterday, permanently. It just doesn’t work in my brain. I don’t understand how to go on having left someone behind me. I literally just do not know what to do. I am sick with grief. I am upset beyond words. There is an entire continent within me that lies in shock at the mere fathom of trying to move on having left without him. I always wanted to take him with me, with or without our relationship; or kids; or marriage; or any of that fucking bull shit. I just couldn’t leave someone I loved behind.
His choice. Yeah, I know. Say it again for me, it hasn’t sunk in yet, maybe it will this time. He wants you to leave him alone so he can move on and find misses-fucking-better-than-you. You know this. Yes, I know this. Say again. Yes, I know this, and I know I deserve better than not to move on right at this moment. But, ya know, that continent inside of me that doesn’t know what the fuck to do now, that is actually lying quivering on the floor in shock? So? How can you say so? That continent is the majority of my emotions. So? Fuck you. That’s not very nice, right now you’re actually having an argument with yourself, if he doesn’t want you, if he wants so badly for you to abandon him (the chick that anybody would want on their team) then why don’t you? Why don’t you just give him what he wants? I don’t want him to get hurt, he’s a sweetheart, he’s had it rough; he’s my best friend; he has the worst luck in the world and I don’t want him to be alone. He can always call you, God knows you’ll always pick up the phone and be there for him. It’s not the same, you remember. Yeah, I know what you said to him when you held his head against your heart, you said, “This is where I will always keep you.” Nothing is stopping you from that. But it’s where he belongs. Than, if that’s true, he’ll learn that the hard way. I don’t want him to have to, I understand the hard way now; it’s no way to live. Well, there isn’t a part of you, not even this one, that can blame you for that. But you know that that is not how it’s going to happen. Yeah, I know, he’ll find somebody. Sure he will, but you can still keep him there, the him that was then, the him that you once had, you can remember that Joseph even after he forgets. I can’t even handle the consideration of knowing that that is all I have left. I just can’t do that yet. You will with time. I know, I hate time. Everyone does.
Yeah, I got that inner dialogue typed all the way out didn’t I? Today, six hours from home (after a terrible night trying to sleep) I almost fell asleep at the wheel. I went to a gas station and bought what I could to get home. I drank a five hour energy, washed it down with a red bull, took three ibuprofen, washed them down with a red bull and then lit a cigarette. I was able to keep going, I was able to get home. Everything looks like it’s missing something. But I did get home. If I can do that, I can still get up tomorrow, at least. One step at a time, right?
I started something new for myself the other day. I’ve been working on the idea of putting together a recipes website for a very long time. The hardest client for any web designer is themselves. I got this site done and was/am happy with it, though it isn’t anywhere near as commercial as I think I would like it to be now. Anyway, I based my new recipes website off of this design. I thought it made sense because I wouldn’t be buying yet another domain (ask any web designer we have domains coming out of our ears) but instead it would be a subdomain of tarahlynn.com.
Once I was able to settle in on this particular unique format (spiral notebook on the right etc.) the design came very easily. The only real struggle I ran into with the new recipes site that with the switch now to Wordpress 3.0 a lot of my code that I was using to start my Wordpress designs with (namely the comments code) stopped working correctly. Royal pain in the ass. I had to go back to hard code and start entirely from scratch with my Wordpress design. I don’t know if other designers do this but I have a base code I always start to avoid constantly typing the same code over and over again. It takes time to develop this base code though, especially for something as complicated as Wordpress. So, to the say the least, having to start from scratch was both disheartening and maddening.
I finally got my prints up in the Blank Canvas Gallery. Thank God. Prints are done, prints are hung and they look spectacular and they are beautiful. When I went to the gallery the day before I left, literally the day after I got them hung up, every person who walked in made an almost bee-line to look at those photos. It was incredible. It made me feel so good. But that doesn’t translate into income and as soon as the golf course closes this fall, and we still haven’t sold this house in Oklahoma, I have no idea how I am going to pay my bills. My car payment and now the payment on the loan for these prints. I’m afraid I took a step for my future and it may have been a nail in the coffin of my future.
Sharon has my book, she just finished reading Part One and I’m going to be sending her Part Two. But, like everything else that I do, besides the praise and the wonderful support I get from everyone. I’m not making a penny.
I’m trying to avoid talking about my personal life right now. I’m trying to think of somehow coming up with another 600 words in this post to completely side step around telling you that I’m in Oklahoma right now and it is the hardest, worst time of my life. He left me when I was gone, something much easier to do than if I were here. Something we swore to each other that we would never do. It feels like I came back to someone who has already gotten over me, someone whose standing there going, “It’s been four months, what do you expect?” That’s not how it is, but it is how it feels.
Moving On
We’re going to lose everything this year, have I told you that? Last night my mom told me over the phone that she was looking at the auction flier for the golf course. It’ll be gone by October 8th, if it doesn’t sell before the auction. We sold the blueberries and a very large piece of property that was on the golf course. It’s all going to debt. If my mother can’t yet be described as drowning than I don’t know what drowning looks like. In the meantime the endlessly disgusting process of her trying to divorce my father has turned him so petty that it is pitiful. The circus plays on and it all just kind of makes me want to abandon the male race.
Slander
I have become acquainted with this word too many times in my life. My entire childhood was an endless spew of never ending slander out of my father’s mouth and my just trying to be good that it never be about me. But of course it was, just never to my face, like it was about everyone.
My father (of course, this won’t surprise you) has managed to find himself a female bitch lawyer that professional slander seems to be what she majored in. It only took him three other lawyers over the past year and a half to finally find one that would agree with him that my mother should have to pay for him to simply live out the rest of his days without working. The only thing we have to hold on to is that we know he’s being charged astronomically for her services. As if any of this is going to matter in it end anyway. And that is what is so infuriating. It’s just more delay before my mother (and consequently me) can move on with her life.
It’s all so fucking sad.
The etching away at our lives has begun in earnest. I just wish that etching was the right word, God working away everything we’ve ever loved with a little baby rock hammer. But that’s not how it is. He’s using a sledge hammer. Within another three months everything besides my mom and the house I grew up in, will be gone. Sold, lost or leaving me behind.
I don’t know if I will ever know grief as deep as this, coming at me from so many different sides. I pray I never experience anything so completely all consuming again, and I stopped praying a long time ago.
Last night I held Joseph’s face again my breasts, wrapped my legs and my arms all around him and he held me. I told him, “this is where I am always going to keep you.” He laughed because he thought I was joking, and meaning it literally. But that is where I will always keep him, against my heart, holding on as tight as I can to what I can remember of the good times before it was all gone.
Oklahoma was a hot bloody work out. I tore the cartilage between three of my ribs up under my left boob. Four weeks now and no reprieve. A sneeze or a cough leaves me almost in tears. I had the thought last night of, “What if I get a cold?” And it left me chilled and nearly terrified. I literally could not imagine anything worse physically than needing to cough right now.
Hard Core Pain.
I have not been posting as much as I should. It’s natural, us folks from Minnesota, for our work schedules (or our life schedules would be a better way of putting it) to be astronomically packed in the summer. I have to leave in two weeks to return to Oklahoma for another two weeks. I know I said in my last post that we would be finishing up the last time I was there. It didn’t quite happen. We are so close it’s almost worth getting teary over. Two weeks will be enough time to truly be done with it all. Greatly sad and wonderful in every way. Like everything else in my life right now.
Get it all in Before Winter!
Minnesotan’s would probably believe my schedule for the next fourteen days but I don’t think anyone would from anywhere else in the country. I am packed from dawn until dusk and, torn cartilage and all, I am running hard to catch up.
Too Long.
I wasn’t there long enough and too long. For the last five years of my life I feel like I’ve been on a highway jumping back and forth between two cars. One: my life there (so different), the other: (so comfortable) my life here. Always I jump out of the Oklahoma car and race desperately to catch the Minnesota car, I can never run fast enough. Sure, I get there and get in, but I always missed something. I can never truly catch up. I’ve learned what it’s like to be holding out my hand-cuffed wrists to friends and family saying, “I can’t make it to your wedding, I’m sorry, I simply can’t.” I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I look forward to choices again, where I’d have to lie about where I was if I didn’t make the wedding, or actually get to go. But I can’t deny the truth of it: This hand-cuffed life style fits me very well, I like being not all that available (whether it’s by choice or not), I like having an excuse. I do not like being at anyone’s beck and call, which is why I never want to be a mother and why I am in no way the marrying type.
I have received a wonderful opportunity to be a part of the Blank Canvas Gallery in downtown Park Rapids, Minnesota. I’ve had the chance to become a member by doing their website (which I will say came out gorgeous! Go look at it!) in exchange for membership dues. My prints are not up yet because of serious financial hardship (isn’t that all of us right now?) I simply couldn’t afford them. Then I stupidly held out in the hope of a grant and let half the summer disappear on me when I should have just bit the damn bullet and got a loan from the bank five months ago. Well, better late than never. The bank gave me what I needed and I got the prints ordered this morning with some money left over to ease my stress a little. 
Joseph and I
I will keep this memory for the rest of my life. We had just finished gutting the den we had been living in for the last five years, our home. Ripped out the dirt brown carpet, tore down the paneling. Put in new lighting. Hung sheetrock, taped and bedded, matched the texture and had painted everything. It was incredible. It smelled and looked so good. Our black, dirty cave became a sun room. Joseph brought in a big roll of extra carpet we had left over from the rest of the house. I was upstairs, couldn’t find him and finally went down to the den to find him on that soft, new carpet, laying on his back in the entry, just smiling up at those new lights, recessed into the newly painted ceiling.
I joined him, laid down beside him with our bodies touching in a hundred different places. We talked about the den, our place, our home for so long. The place we inevitably had grown to hate. I can still hear him and me, talking about that weird brick wall, those horrific blinds, that linoleum that had become something else entirely with age. So many different things, so much time to tear it all out. So much time living in it, laughing in it, making love in it. We remembered and we both laughed until we cried. I will never let that moment go, it was ours and we were still, somehow, us.
No matter how he and I turn out after all of this, nothing will be the same. The us that we were with that place will remain with it. When it sells, that us will be our memory. I hope I never forget. Being us with him, in that place, were the best times of my life.
The Book
Yes, my book is still beside me, as it always has been. God knows, it’s been my best friend long before anyone else besides my mom. Like all things, getting it edited has taken about fifty times more time than I expected it to. I’m not naive with my time-lines, I’m just hopeful, right? But, as we speak, I am about to hand my printed book to my editor and, hopefully, she’ll start soon. She’s going to go through it one part at a time. So, while she’s going through Part One, I’m going through Part Two etc. I have no hopes on time-line’s anymore (how could I still after that god damned house?) whenever it gets done, it gets done. I can just hardly wait.
Well, I’m on the road again. As I’m typing this I am enjoying the happy sounds of a hundred semi’s cozying in for the night across the parking lot of my hotel. The top corner of the box spring of my mattress is held together by duct tape and the water smells notably fowl. It is the greatest place in the world and I love it all. After the first eight hours of my trip it doesn’t matter what kind of bed it is, just the mere act of stretching out on my back is absolute Heaven.
Nothing like a 1,100 mile trip to get you to start appreciating the simple things.
I got a 10% discount on my taco salad and a piece of lemon merange (no idea how to spell that) pie because I’m staying at this super 8. All in all, supper cost my $10 Everything would be fine if it wasn’t for this nagging sore throat that has been progressively turning to fire, becoming a cough, and stuffing up my sinuses. I fear no matter the amount of sleep I get, which wont be much I am a notoriously bad sleeper, I will wake with a full on cold tomorrow. Oh yay.
I am working on my sequel.
But I’m also working on my first book as I go here as well. My mom read it and liked some of it. Though, I must always take what she has to say very well salted, no matter what. She does not read fantasy in any way and my book is heavy graphic fantasy. She admitted she didn’t think my book was very commercial, I.E. she certainly wouldn’t read it if it wasn’t written by her daughter. I really hope that she’s wrong. But even that little sentence from her leaves me terrified. And it doesn’t help that I am presently enthralled in one of the greatest fantasy series of all time, A song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin. His books (rightfully so) make mine read like they were written by a first grader. I am struggling with trying to help his writing inspire me, but, instead, it just makes me feel like no matter how hard I work whatever I produce is total shit.
But I can still learn.
And that’s all I’ve got. Even though it’s starting to feel like I must have started with less talent and capability than most authors I know that a authors ability to continue learning is all that can create decent writing. I’m just terrified that, that means I’m going to attack my first book again. I am beginning to feel like a little skiff in an angry ocean getting thrown again and again, for a hundred years, against the rocks of the coast that are my first book.
Doubt.
I am so sick of doubt. Of feeling like no matter what I do my writing will never be good enough. I know better than to do that to myself. But, some days, it’s impossible to not certainly feel that way. But, this is where common sense must save me. I have not sent my Embraced by Darkness to a single agent; I haven’t even given it the chance to be rejected yet, so what have I got to be so down about? The truth is that I am certain it will be rejected and, honestly, I just don’t know how much more rejection I can take after the last few months. Sharon will be attacking it soon, as soon as we finish one more book before mine.
The Talking Stick: Volume 19
We sent the book in, finally. Sharon and I finished The Talking Stick: Volume 19. I sent it in literally the night before I left for Oklahoma. And you’re thinking, I thought you and Joseph broke up, why are you going back? I’ve had every man I know tell me to not go back. Tell me that it is the stupidest thing I can do. Why would anyone go back? The truth is that it’s more complicated than that. A lot more. I own a house with Joseph that still has work that needs to be done on it before we can sell it and get the fuck outta here. If the house wasn’t involved I would not have gone back. And, the truth is, in this moment, I feel like a battered house wife, still going back despite everything he’s done to me. And, you reading this, are probably thinking that stupid, naive little girl, what does she think, he’ll take her back? Honestly, if you are thinking that, than you don’t know me.
Why?
I’m going back to finish the house, because it is equally my responsibility as it is his. My name is on it and we’re looking to make a profit when it’s sold but we can’t sell it until we finish the work or we risk losing four years of our lives without seeing a dime of profit. So, there it is. I’m returning to the world of sheetrock dust, Oklahoma heat and he and I slipping into the only relationship we can have: Best friends With Benefits. It’s weird. It’s awkward. But it’s also working. There are no absolutes with this kind of relationship. There is nothing either of us have to do for the other one. There are no plans, no expectations and, mostly, it’s great. But I will admit, there is a sadness in everything.
As you all know I am a heavy reader. Usually I read about a book a week and no, I have not been able to keep up with myself and keep the books I’m reading updated in the column on the right-hand side of this page (admit it you never read it and never knew it was there). The plan is to have an entire page devoted the books I’ve read, one page for every year. No, I’m not going to write a review of all of the books I read, not unless I am blown away (or the opposite reaction of “I barely kept myself from burning it before I finished it.”) I’m not even going to dignify them with a star system of how much I liked them or didn’t etc. The truth is, I know that if you wanted a review or a star system you would just go to amazon. The pages will be mostly for me, because, even though I have an excellent memory, I want to make sure I never forget the books that I’ve read.
I haven’t posted in a while.
No kidding huh? My one post a week that I managed since November of last year was blown out of the water since Joseph left me. Life happens. It’s complicated. All that bullshit. Joseph has since renounced everything he said and does wish he never left me. It all makes sense. It all makes no sense. It’s complicated. All that bullshit. Regardless. This year I am free. This is the promise I gave myself. I will no longer be tied, no longer be shackled. This year I am free. This is what I have always wanted. I didn’t get here like I wanted to. But do we ever?
This year I am free.
No grief, no happiness, no change in the wind, will change that simple fact. It is the only plan I will make in 2010. This year I am free. That is the best thing I have ever heard in my whole life. I have never been free. Gone from a bastard father to a nice guy that meant well but who did what all guys do anyway and, of course, felt terrible about it. I believe now that most men are cowards, especially the nice ones, and they will all destroy whoever and whatever they have to to hide that fact.
All men are liars and thieves, the good ones just feel bad about it.
Are you a man? Welcome to the first generation of men who are actually learning that life is unfair. Women have known this fact for two thousand years, if not longer. I have no pity for you, as I have none for women either. It is a rare dead when we’re not all dealt something we don’t deserve. In fact, if you haven’t been dealt something that you absolutely didn’t deserve, than I haven’t met you yet.
I sound contrite and I hate that. You may not believe me but these have been my views for as long as I can remember. All I am suffering now is complete and total gut-wrenching disappointment that my pessimistic and very cold opinions turned out to be relatively true. I am a Tiger according to the Chinese Zodiac and I do live up to my name.
The books I write are all about strong women who crush unfair assholes beneath their boots. It is no wonder. They are the only women I can truly respect.
I have reached almost 20,000 words in my sequel and I am very excited about it. However, I have begun reading what are considered two of the greatest fantasy fiction series of all time. Truly they make my writing look like that of a fifth grader, it disheartening but I will learn from them. Earlier this year I read the first four books of the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. I was blown away, could not put them down, and it almost killed me not to spend my last dollar for the remaining books in the series. My financial troubles have become the bane of my existence. And, it seems, I am not alone, it seems in fact that the entirety of the Unites States is with me. So I can’t complain. But that added to the last four weeks of my life means that I am still smoking a little. My mom and everyone else I know was in a constant state of total bitchiness (men and women both) but there has been a turn in the weather, quite literally. It was over eighty-five degrees here in Minnesota yesterday and I can tell you, it helped.
This year I am free.
So, my financial troubles are bothering me less. I am happier and sadder than I have ever been in my life. I am farther from suicide that I have ever been in my life but I am also closer to tears, though I am all dried up from tears, I still feel like crying every now again, though I don’t want to admit it. Because I’m happy here. No regrets and I know that that is something I have never been able to say. Through all of the unfairness that I’ve been handed and the just, out-right cruelty, I don’t want to take any of it back. That is, by itself, amazing to me. I have lived forever wanting to take everything but, my whole life, even when none of it was my fault. I don’t want to take any of it back. In fact, if I look back I will be lost. I am glad it’s over and I am so excited to move on and finally be free. I am just so relieved that I got out of it in tact, that I didn’t lose my spirit, or my soul, or my heart, I am so relieved that it’s over. That I did not compromise who I needed to stay to be happy, to be able to still respect myself in the morning. I’m still here and now I am truly free.
After I finished the first four books of the Dark Tower series by Stephen King I read the next book that I didn’t have to buy. My mom got me the first book of the series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin. I read that first book and though I was able to hold myself back from buying the last of the Dark Tower series (because I had only forty two dollars to my name at that point) I could not hold back from buying the last three books of the series A Song of Ice and Fire. I have no doubt that it is the greatest fantasy series of all time and if you like fantasy fiction in any way you are doing yourself a grave miss-service if you do not follow the link and buy them all immediately. I have not been left so awe-struck by a book in a long time, maybe not ever and yes, of course, I have read The Hobbit and a dozen other of the greatest fantasy authors of all time. None of them compare. Follow the link, give A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin a shot. It will blow you away.
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