childhood trauma

Phone and Sun

It’s quiet, at least. There are only a few haze-clouds; the sky is that rain-washed blue only found during spring in this part of the world. It’s going to be a bright day. Alack and alas, I suppose, because I love the rain–but everyone else will be thrilled. I don’t know why anyone who likes sunshine lives here, but if we could all live exactly where we pleased and moving wasn’t such a hassle I suppose we’d all be a lot happier.

The week wears on. I’m exhausted, and it’s only Tuesday. I didn’t get a damn bit of actual work done yesterday, but that’s balanced out by the fact that I was on the phone for a significant portion of my waking hours. All sorts of administrivia was put to bed and much of it I don’t have to do again, so at least there’s that.

But gods as my witness, I hate the phone. In email or text I can weigh and calibrate responses at something approaching leisure, and there’s a record of what both sides have said. Even if one takes notes, one is often browbeaten or pressured on the phone, and predators who weaponize other people’s politeness tend to prefer it because of the ease of abuse as well as the inherent “he said, she said” when there’s a later question about what, precisely, was agreed to. Not so in email–it’s right there, written down.

I liked the phone well enough as a teenager. I mean, who doesn’t at that age? And really it was all we had at that point.1 But once email, and later texting, arrived? Hallelujah, bitches, no more suffering through phone calls!

…and yet some people still love it. I’m baffled.

There’s also hypersensitivity to account for. On a phone call, you’re listening to tone of voice, word choice, the spaces between words, even someone’s breathing to gain clues about their mood and what they actually want instead of what they say they want. I’m fully aware my sensitivity to this particular aspect of the problem springs from a childhood spent frantically trying to assess what my caregivers actually wanted so I could escape physical (or other) abuse2, but the principle still holds. In email, all that extraneous stuff to keep track of simply isn’t there. Passive-aggressive (or directly aggressive) bullshit stands out in stark relief and is far easier to parry since text and email are asynchronous.

You can just let things sit until you’re ready to deal with them, and give measured responses.

Some phone-lovers say it’s easier and quicker than writing, and I suppose in some very sharply limited situations it might be. But each time the bloody thing rings, or I have to brace myself to put on a cheery voice and deal with said blasted phone, I die a little inside. And I spent hours on it yesterday.

I’m sure that if I had comments open I’d get an avalanche of them from phone-lovers. Be easy, my friends, you can use it all you want! It’s simply not my cuppa, and is profoundly anxiety-making in the bargain. At least I can cut down on the amount of time I personally spend enduring it, or video calls–which are nerve-wracking and exhausting in a similar way. Modern life is good for something, I guess, and it’s interesting to think about how I dealt with the phone when it was literally the only game in town.

Anyway, the dogs are certain that I should stop clicky-clacking in front of the magic glowing box and turn my human magic to the matter of breakfast. They both want their usual ration of toast-crusts, and that can’t happen if I’m busily typing. Sometimes I wonder what they think I’m doing all day, crouched over the keyboard. Do they simply consign it to the same realm of wonders as the dining room table, that bounteous source of human scraps? Or is it simply one more incomprehensible human magic, like cars? They certainly view it as an integral part of the daily ritual; if I’m not at the keyboard during my morning coffee they’re unnerved, and more than once Miss B has herded me firmly for the office, as if she suspects the time spent here is integral to the later appearance of toast.

She might even be right, in her own inimitable way.

The sun has reached a gap in the cedars along the back fence, and is pouring into my office. The small solar dancing-flower on the windowsill makes soft tick-tock sounds as it waves, enthusiastically greeting a day I feel much less sanguine about. I suppose the light will do me some good during walkies and the morning run, though. Miss B is having a good morning and may want to accompany us around the block, but I’m not sure if I’ll let her since carrying her up half the hill yesterday was hard on both of us. So we’ll see…after toast.

One must perform the ritual, after all. Off I go.

Recognizing Hungers

Finally have the ol’ YouTube channel sorted. I don’t know how long I’m going to keep up Tea with Lili–it does cut into my writing time twice a week–but at least the old teas have a place to live now when they drop off the Twitch stream. I have also been experimenting with Streamlabs, which is much better than Twitch Studio and doesn’t cause my desktop to crash, hallelujah. So maybe I’ll stream some gaming or something too, we’ll see.

My agent tells me I’m witty and personable, so this is a good marketing thing. I am not sure–one of the reasons why I write is the solitude. On the other hand, maybe nobody will watch the damn vids, so there’s at least that. And though writing is a lonely, solitary task, bringing a book to publication requires a lot of cooperation, so the writer’s life is a lot less lonely than one might think. At least, now in the age of the internet it is.

How the world has changed. Reading Anaïs Nin’s diaries and thinking about how long it took a letter to get to its recipient in those days fills me with a strange sensation. On the one hand, I wonder what Henry Miller’s emails to her would have been like; on the other, he probably would have sent unsolicited dick pics and she might’ve blocked him. (Good riddance, too.) It’s fun to think about her and Antonin Artaud’s text messages though. Artaud was apparently an experience–no less than Nin herself, I fancy.

I recognize some of my own hungers in her diaries. I am profoundly uncomfortable with small talk–I want to speak about the real, sooner rather than later, and social pleasantries are akin to being slowly peeled. The household I grew up in was aggressively, violently shallow and superficial; that way, the adults could retain control, and they relentlessly mocked and belittled anything to do with art, culture, deep or real feelings. Maybe it was a mercy, since showing any true emotion or letting the adults know what one thought was a recipe for further abuse, beatings, and just general disaster.

I learned to hide, but I never liked it. Being able to play the game–and play it well–even with narcissists is a useful skill, one I can wish it wasn’t so damn necessary.

Anyway. We need groceries. I did run out and get milk over the weekend, but it’s about time for another trip to get, well, everything else. Not looking forward to it–there were far too many naked faces breathing disease while I made the milk run. Each time I see someone unmasked in a public building I feel disgust, nausea, and great sadness. The utter selfishness is stunning, but then again, what did I expect in ‘Murica? The sense of being chained to a seat on a train merrily heading for a cliff-edge is overwhelming, and no matter how I struggle to free myself and others, I can’t halt so many tons of moving metallic catastrophe.

All I can do is mask up myself, encourage others to do so, and keep writing. It doesn’t feel like enough. It probably never will.

And yet…several of you have sent me suggestions for office chairs I can sit cross-legged in. Thank you! Every time I start feeling too down, someone passes along a kindness and I am reminded there’s good in the world, too. We somehow muddle along, one way or another. I’m trying to focus on that rather than the firehose of bad news. Of course the bad news isn’t like it was during 2016-2020, but the successive retraumatizing doesn’t help. A body-and-soul can only absorb so much.

I suppose I’m in a bit of a mood today. A run should set me right–yesterday’s was lovely, between the rain and my body suddenly deciding to slip back into the groove after injury and bad weather dropped my mileage to a pittance. The road back is always thorny, but also always reaches a point where the body decides oh, okay, I remember this and suddenly things become a great deal easier. I was hoping it would happen soon-ish, and it appears yesterday was the day, thank the gods.

There’s a release next week (the third and final Hostage to Empire book) and I’m already feeling the nerves. Submerging into a cave to ignore them and keep writing is the best possible course, and I should get right on that…

…as soon as I walk the dogs, get a run in, and dodge the murderously selfish unmasked in order to get us supplies for another few weeks. There’s a storm in Hell’s Acre and I need to write a certain character’s arrival before going through and braiding in a formerly written scene, and I positively have to get the monster hunters in Sons of Ymre #2 caught. That last has been hanging fire for at least a week, because there’s something the heroine needs to realize before it happens, but I don’t know what. I’m waiting for her to speak.

Sometimes one has to settle outside a character’s mousehole with a bit of lemon candy and wait. There’s nothing for it, especially early in the book when whatever they say will have knock-on effects all the way down the line.

And with that, I’m off. Happy Tuesday, my beloveds. Stay safe out there.

Something Indeed, Survival

Another mist-drenched morning. The dogs are very calm, probably because all the clouds come down to earth muffle extraneous neighborhood noise. Except, of course, the helicopter that nearly buzzed us last night. It sounded low enough to take off a few roofs. Both kids came out of their rooms, wondering what the hell; the dogs were anxious for a bit, glancing in my direction to see how they should take the event.

Wonder what was up with that. And I’m slightly amused by everyone looking at me to see if they should worry about an Unexpected Event. Of course, that’s part of the essence of motherhood–and there was the time I, as a chaperone, stood up on a bus of fourth-graders beginning to spool themselves up on a field trip and hissed, “When it is time to panic I will let you know.”

Peace was restored, the troublemakers in the back were model citizens for the rest of the ride, and I was much in demand for class trips after that.

So. It’s Thursday. The Marked is on sale, and Sons of Ymre #1 is due for release later this month. Which means my own brand of panic will be in full bloom; release days always put me in a state. So far, February’s been an…interesting month. January seemed to last forever; this particular calendar-division isn’t far behind. I keep saying, “You know, last year…? I think?” and one of the kids will say, “Mum, that was last week.”

I mean, I’ve known all my life time is subjective, but this is ridiculous.

Perhaps some of the slipperiness of the fourth dimension lately comes from a certain form of completely accidental vengeance. The thing about time, and about surviving, is that sooner or later one outlasts a few things. Say, for example, that the Universe serves up a great deal of karma to someone who tormented you mercilessly when you were young and therefore temporarily helpless. (Though when you’re under eighteen and trapped it doesn’t feel temporary. Far from.)

Now, self-satisfied social mores might bleat that one isn’t supposed to feel any satisfaction from such an event, especially if one was born female and ruthlessly battered into being a polite, perfect victim because that serves the interest of entrenched powers. But watching karma (also known as “consequences”) come around the mountain like a freight train to paste a long-ago abuser is…well, it’s something.

It’s something indeed.

So time has lost most of its meaning, I’m enjoying my coffee on a quiet morning, and every once in a while the thought, “Huh, I survived,” drifts through the warp and weft of my concentration. For most of my life I never even compassed that I might. My own survival was invisible, because it did not occur to me that it was possible. And now I’m here.

I suppose I could always be so calm in disasters because I assumed I was already dead and most of my “life” was just marking time waiting for the cosmos to notice and update the paperwork. As a coping mechanism, was it ideal? Hardly. Useful? Very. Effective? In various ways, yes.

And now, in this the third year of pandemic, I look out my office window to see the fog pressing between cedars. I listen to the dogs breathe as they wait, half-napping, for morning walkies. If this is a victory, it’s a quiet one. The plague might still get me, and if it doesn’t the ongoing fascist coup (what, you thought that was over? Ha!) probably will. But I’ve lived long enough to see the muscled arm of cosmic consequence administer a well-deserved bitchslap, and I didn’t have to lift a finger.

At the moment, it’s enough. And my coffee, sipped slowly, tastes very good indeed.

Puzzled By Cruelty

Yesterday was all about line edits; Sons of Ymre #1 is inching that much closer to publication. (Yes, as soon as there’s preorder information, I will absolutely let my beloved Readers know.) I was up what passes for relatively late last night–the dogs went to bed without me, and are bright-eyed and fresh this morning while I drag.

I am a night owl by temperament, but years of having to get the kids ready for and delivered to school have left a mark. Now that’s over, the dogs are still on a schedule and creatures of habit who view All Change as Very Very Bad do not take kindly to schedules shifting. Left to my druthers I’d be up around 1pm, work until 3-4am, and fall into bed around 4-5am, depending.

Alas, it is not possible, and my body’s protests must be listened to though they change not a whit of what must be. Ah well.

The news from Texas yesterday put a dent in me, as well. I know a certain proportion of people just plain enjoy cruelty; it is a fact of existence on this planet, like gravity or nitrogen. Still, it’s puzzling. Why spend all your time being a racist, misogynist asshat when there’s a literal infinity of other things to fill one’s earthly time with? These people could go touch grass, learn how to unicycle, write songs, watch some movies, or even just take a goddamn walk.

Instead, they apparently want to be nasty little fascist dipshits. Why spend that kind of effort? It’s absolutely and literally easier to just…not, to simply be kind or at the very least leave other people alone.

I suppose that’s part of why I write. Not deepest, most overarching reason–I am, quite frankly, unable to stop, and have been ever since second grade–but an important one nonetheless. The addiction of some people to cruelty has baffled me literally all my life, starting with childhood caregivers who hurt me apparently just for funsies. It made no sense to Child Me and makes even less to Adult Me. (For whatever value of “adult”, I suppose.)

I wish I knew why. Attempting to understand might be the writer’s curse or just a function of empathy, I haven’t decided. Yes, I’ve written villains; I’ve even written characters who enjoy cruelty for its own sake–Perry in the Kismet series, for example, or a few of the antagonists in Afterwar, not to mention Summer in Gallow & Ragged.

Now that I think about it, “comfortable with cruelty” is a hallmark of many of my villains or antagonists. Yet those characters, foul as they are, cannot hold a candle to the petty, nasty, apparently endless brutality and mendaciousness of real-life authoritarians. Even Perry, and he was dead set on killing the entire world if it got him what he wanted from Jill.

Fiction has to make sense on some level. Real life, alas, does not.

I wish I understood. It’s long been my fervent belief that understanding breeds compassion, and while I’m fully aware sociopaths and narcissists view compassion as weakness it’s still integral to me, I will keep it that way, and it doesn’t mean I’m unprepared to enforce my boundaries. I can even view the understanding as a way of anticipating the behavior of those who like cruelty for its own sake, so I can protect me and mine from their depredations.

I suppose the only hope is to keep writing. There’s finicky little changes to go over in Ymre now that the bulk of the line edits are done, I just approved a shiny hardback for Moon’s Knight, and today is subscription day. The next major project is revisions on The Black God’s Heart diptych, but there’s a fellow writer’s book to beta read and an article to copyedit for another friend in the queue, so those will be loaded to the cannon first.

Not to mention walkies with a pair of excited, bratty, furry toddlers and a run to get in. The latter, at least, will help me concentrate and get through the rest of the day. I will mull over the mystery of why some people are cruel goddamn dipshits during both, I’m sure, and arrive at no answer other than, “They like it, and the best we can do is protect ourselves from them.”

It is not a satisfying explanation, but at least it grants some succor. It will, as I often say, have to be enough.

Over and out.

Resentment, Body, Détente

So. 6k+ on HOOD‘s Season Three yesterday. The crisis is written–the apex of the season and incidentally of the entire serial–and now all that remains is a few scenes’ worth of falling action. I could have pushed through an all-nighter and gotten at least the scaffolding of those in, but it would mean more work later fixing fatigue errors. So I did the Reasonable, Adult thing and went to bed, resenting every moment of it.

There’s a particular state where I do indeed actively resent anything that isn’t writing. I’m still there this morning. Even this blog post is only glancingly acceptable because it involves typing. What I really want to be doing is writing that falling action, getting the characters to the new equilibrium.

Which means Guy of Gisbourne, Alan-a-dale, and Robin Hood have a scene that needs to happen, Maid Marian and Little John need to have a conversation followed by Guy’s visit to the woman he’s loved since childhood, and Robin needs to stand in the ruins of his own childhood home. I think I can do it in three scenes, now that I’ve gotten some sleep and food in my reluctant corpse.

I shouldn’t be so mean to my body. It’s hauled me around, largely uncomplaining except with good goddamn reason, for a very long time now. We have somewhat of an armed détente; we’ve both done things we regret. Parents, men, and society have tried to make me hate my closest and oldest friend, the flesh that carries me. Working against that current is difficult, especially when I’m used to escaping into worlds of my own creation.

The fact remains that my body is my ally, and when I stopped lobbing shells at her, she was more than happy to relax into a peace without negotiation, pettiness, or ill feeling. I don’t deserve that grace, but she offered it without rue or anger. Better than I deserve, I suppose. We can’t live without each other, so I should stop being cruel to her and myself.

I suspect that particular trick will take a long, long while; I’ve been working on it for about a decade. It’s hard to shake the first thirty-odd years of training and the constant cultural (and advertising) yelling to lose weight, be fuckable, you’re too old, you’re too ugly, buy this product, starve yourself, who do you think you are?

Patriarchy’s biggest victory is getting women to hurt themselves. Wrestling that weapon away from the grasping invisible hand of the market is huge, uphill labor.

I’m sure my body will like a few days off with the relief of finishing this zero draft. Before that can happen, though, I’ve got to finish absorbing the coffee both of us like, walk the dogs, and give the ol’ corpse the running it craves to purge stress hormones and stretch the lungs. Then it’s back to writing, where each word echoes in the secret hollows of my bones, the threads of my capillaries.

Writing is hard on the delicate structures of the wrists, it’s hard on the back; I don’t know about other scribes, but every combat scene or narrow escape hikes my adrenaline and fills me with characters’ pain or uncertainty. Ironic that the thing I long to escape into relies upon my body; every word is intimately bound with my flesh.

Even when I’ve hated her, she’s given her help unstintingly. She throws herself, often to the limits of endurance, at every task I set her to. She does her best, despite the ill treatment I’ve made her endure. Her complaints are always founded in deep effort; she never wants to betray me. I’m going to spend the rest of my life undoing the damage inflicted during the first few decades while she winds down, doing her absolute best to carry me while time, ill chance, and mortality gnaw at us both.

I wish I’d learned to treat her better earlier, but at least I have this opportunity now. Gods grant I don’t squander it.

In any case, it’s time to care for the corpse before I can achieve the end of the story we’ve both been working on for a long while now. Plus, the dogs are patiently (but energetically) waiting for their morning ramble. All of them are kinder to me than perhaps they should be.

May they teach me to be better, each in their own way.

Been Here Before

It’s still dark outside, yet I have resurrected.

Well, that’s a strong way to put it. “Too nervy to stay in bed since I went to sleep early yesterday, yet still exhausted because my entire self, body to soul, is recovering from years of constant retraumatization,” would be more precise. So maybe I’m just clawing my way up out of a very deep hole.

At least I’m not being dragged back down, drowned, and repeatedly punched by the news cycle. Small mercy, but I’ll take it.

In any case, it’s Imbolc, the return of light, and I’m still shaky. Normally I love winter; normally it’s my most productive time. Nothing about last year (not to mention the three-four before) was normal, however, and I’m reaching the end of my resilience.

I’m trying very hard to focus on the good things–the solidarity, the lessons in carefully harboring my energy, the reinforcing of my deep belief that cutting toxic people out of your life is absolutely okay and healing. Otherwise a survey of the damage might just cause me to sink below the surface with only a faint, grateful ripple to mark where once I floundered.

At the same time, this feeling is familiar. Been here before, my bones whisper. After I left my childhood home, during the divorce (both times), after buying the house, after any number of massively stressful life-changing events (or disasters), oh yeah, I’ve been here. There’s crisis, where mere survival is the victory. Then there’s the relief just after whatever abusive bastard is punching you has worn himself out and you find yourself bruised, battered, still trapped in hell, but alive nonetheless; it’s comparable to (although not nearly as deep as) the relief of standing on the other side of a burning bridge, breathing deeply and having no way to go but forward into a wilderness that has to be better than what you’ve left behind.

Then there’s the process of gluing yourself back together, which takes five to seven times longer than one ever imagines and can be interrupted by any number of things. Not to mention the risk of re-injury once you start feeling a little better and the tiny voice of self-harm inside your head begins whispering, “you’re fine, you should get back to work, you should push yourself, you’re lazy not to, you’ll starve if you don’t.”

It doesn’t help that our society is set up to keep the vast mass of us starved and in constant fatigue. A quasi-serf class is easier to control if they’re tired, overwhelmed, and focused on sheer survival.

Been here before, my blood whispers. It makes me wonder if we age merely because the business of living is such a burden. Especially when some of humanity thinks it’s best to greedily tread upon the backs of everyone else.

Still, it’s Imbolc. And I’m fortunate, as such things go. The kids are healthy, the dogs are content, there are seeds to plant and stories to tell. Rebuilding and recovery feels familiar because I’ve been doing it all my life. I build, I make, I create, something comes along and wipes everything out, I pick myself back up and build, make, create. Rinse lather repeat, so on, so forth, ad nauseam, ad infinitum.

I tell myself each time I’m lucky to have ruins to build upon, a foundation to use. Even if the ruins are completely gone something in me still remembers the towers, and that can’t be erased. Not until I stop breathing, anyway, and at my lowest it’s sheer stubborn spite that keeps the bellows of my lungs operational.

What, you thought it was hope? Nah. It’s sheer fuck you that keeps me going through the deepest night. I could wish it wasn’t, but I’m old enough to know working with what I am is easier than tormenting myself with what I’m told I should be. Pointing myself in my best guess of the right direction and using spite as fuel to get me there is far more effective.

Been here before, my soul whispers.

You’d think it would get easier. But, like writing books, each one only teaches me how to deal with a particular, not really a general. What’s strengthened instead, each time, is that sheer stubborn spite rising when even mute endurance fails me.

I don’t write this to open old wounds or to congratulate myself. I write this to tell you–yes, you reading this–that you’re not alone. If you’re exhausted, if you think, “I should be doing better, more, something else”, believe me, it’s okay, you’re in good company. All our coping has been focused on sheer survival, the biggest purveyor of constant news-cycle trauma has been muzzled (however temporarily, though that’s a post for another day), and now we’re left in the ruins, staring at smoking wreckage and exhausted by the mere idea of attempting to rebuild anything at all.

It might be faint comfort that we’re not alone. Still, I’ll take it. I mean, there’s nothing else on offer, so one might as well.

Been here before, after all.

Some Victories, Not All

The dogs are quite upset that I won’t go anywhere without finishing my coffee. I try to tell them it’s for the best, that dragging me anywhere uncaffeinated is a Very Bad Idea, but since they’ve never known1 the glory of tea or a latte they are unwilling to be convinced.

Yesterday was… not very productive. I should have known that two days of normal work would require a day of threadbare wandering the house, muttering to myself and being utterly unable to settle or produce anything like real text. I did roll around in a couple trunk novels and change a hair color in the portal fantasy–what on earth did we ever do without Ctrl-F, I ask you–and savaged myself internally for being so apparently lazy I can’t produce at my usual rate during a pandemic and attempted fascist coup.

I’ll take “Things you say to yourself that you would never dream of saying to a friend” for $400, Alex.2

I do know what we did without Ctrl-F; I wrote two novellas on a manual typewriter when I was a very young sprout. Both are resting safely in a landfill somewhere; I couldn’t go back to retrieve them like a gecko running back to eat a tail they left in a predator’s claws, even if I wanted to. Still, both burn in me, and sometimes I think of them and my old diaries, safe amid tons of rubbish.

When you have to throw away things that matter to you to survive, their ghosts can still comfort you. The important thing was that my adult caregivers–I don’t really want to call them parents–couldn’t grab and befoul them. Some victories, even though Pyrrhic, are still worth celebrating.

Not all. Just some.

Anyway, I’m vertical, if not technically awake, and sucking on some lovely espresso-ground caffeine sent by a dear friend. The dogs are patrolling up and down the hall, ready to nudge me for where the leashes hang near the sliding glass door to the deck upon the very instant I seem ready to take them for walkies. Yesterday held no thunderstorms–for which said dogs are grateful, even if I am slightly disappointed–despite the unsettled rain-sun-rain bands moving through. That’s probably the cause of the throbbing headache I barely even noticed all day, being occupied with kicking myself for being unable to work.

I even went so far as to think “it’s raining, I don’t deserve to be in this house because I’m not working, I should go out and stand in the rain and be miserable.” I know it doesn’t make sense, but apparently control over making myself feel bad is the only control I feel like I have left with the world spinning so violently.

Fortunately I did not go stand in the rain. For one thing, the dogs would insist on accompanying me, and I didn’t want them cold or wet. For another, I realized it was a ridiculous thought, though it recurred at jet-takeoff volume inside my head all throughout the day. Instead, I made myself hot chocolate, texted friends, snuggled the dogs, attempted to read, touched shelves of books, and tried to watch Richard Armitage smoldering in a cravat.

Finally, I settled in bed last night with old war documentaries. I don’t know why they’re so soothing–probably the fact that the situations in them are long done with, nothing I can affect either way, and the narrator’s voice stays at a steady droning pitch throughout, maybe. It does mean my dreams are mostly in sepia with weird flashes of hypersaturated color instead of all-color, which gave me a bit of startlement when I surfaced this morning. I thought holy shit, have I lost dreaming in color too?

I have absorbed a bare minimum of caffeine now, so am probably safe to leave the house for dog-walking and the running of the Boxnoggin. Said Boxnoggin is prancing up and down the hall, attempting to drag me forth by sheer force of will; Miss B has settled on my feet as I type, on the principle that the instant I move she will be alerted and ready to supervise and heeeeerd me.

Suppose I’d best get going, then. This is the downside of priding oneself on sheer endurance; one can’t even mope in the rain like a silly romantic poet.

Be gentle with yourselves today, dear Reader. I know it’s rough, but it’s survival, and that is a victory. A non-Pyrrhic one, even.

Over and out.