Good Friday and An Update

It’s Good Friday and I honestly feel like I am missing time or something because how can it already be Easter time?  It was just Christmas an eyeblink ago.

That’s not even mentioning the fact of when Easter is actually falling and Lord, Himself Up High has a sense of humor and that’s no mistake.

I will be alone yet not alone this holiday.  My charming roommate is off at a con, making us all proud (and I’ve already heard from people about my absence being noted etc etc) and my parents have plans with their churches.

I am considering on how I want to celebrate this holiday. If I want to try and make it to church with my parents which involves getting up pretty much with the dawn if I want to join them at their church.   If I want to try and marshal my strength to attempt one of the churches nearer to me.   Or if I want to have a private service by myself in the backyard.

The not-alone part comes from the fact that I’m spending Saturday and Sunday afternoons with my parents.  Mostly hanging out and watching things and just being together.    I know that my lack of a dedicated church home bothers them, but there’s too much right now that I still have to work through before I can come back to that search.  That is its own post.

So I am weirdly in between for this weekend and it might turn out to be a good thing, letting my brain untangle several things it’s been pounding on as I attempt to let my body rest as much as I can.   Fear isn’t the mind-killer for me, Depression/Anxiety are and they’ve been hitting harder this week.   I endure, but it takes its toll.   I haven’t really been writing this week, but I’ve been burning through books at some thing like my old college pace.  So far this week I’ve gone through at least 3 800+ page books, which tells me that while part of my brain is still struggling to fight back through the fog, the other creative parts are alive and kicking.

To everyone who celebrates,  Happy Easter and Happy Passover.   I hope it is everything you needed.

 

 

 

No Timeline for Grief

So one of my mothers died two weeks ago and we’d been on deathwatch for 3 weeks before that. It was impossible to go back home for many reasons so we kept going as best we could until it happened and then we were able to take some time (thank God for jobs with bereavement leave) and go celebrate her life in a way that she would hve appreciated.

So we took a trip to New Orleans and it was eye-opening and cathartic and amazing. And then we came home and reality descended on us again.

Mom’s ashes showed up in the mail and it was like we reset back to square one on the grief cycle. Dr. Hawking died after living for five decades with the same disease that took Mom in under one.  Hopped forward two squares and then back three on the cycle.

So there’s a lot been going on. And it’s been exhausting in a way that didn’t leave a lot of time for anything that wasn’t focused on taking the next breath.

In coming back from the far place that grief takes you to, I’ve been nesting in some of my comfort fiction. So I’ve reread A Wrinkle In Time and the Fionavar Tapestry and several of my favorite longer fanfictions. Not all of them end happily, sometimes there’s a kind of comfort in just the space between spaces and a well-turned phrase in the mouth of a beloved character. Sometimes it’s a well-earned rest and a “You come too” that will never fail to make me cry. There’s a good cleanse in tears brought by a good book or fanfic.

I’ve also picked up and finished and re-read a poetry collection by Amanda Lovelace, titled “the princess saves herself in this one.” It’s raw and powerful and truthful in the kinds of ways that good poetry often is. I couldn’t put it down and then it was over too quickly so I started back at the first page. I would definitely recommend this to anyone (though mind the trigger warnings at the beginning of the book) who enjoys good poetry or the lightning effect of spoken truth to power briefly captured in verse.

So it’s been a bit of a time lately and I’m only just now really coming back to being. It’s a slow process and I’m impatient, so I have a tendency to run faster than I can actually handle and therefore set myself back further than where I had started.

So be kind and patient with yourselves.   Treat yourselves gently, you’re worth it.   And if you’d care to, leave a favorite comfort fic/book/album/show in the comments.

On the Other Side Of February…

Having a day job is a blessing most days, but damn if sometimes it can get in the way of writing. Especially when it comes to having the energy to actually sit and write. This goes double for when you are disabled.

So yeah, when last we left the Lone Ranger, we’ve had some truly horrible family news that I’ll go into detail later on when I can, suffice to say it’s a situation that all too many people are familiar with and who I deeply wish that no one ever had to go through this. I have also lost not one but both the laptops that I had been using for writing and working. Both of them were definitely older than laptops generally live, one was five years old and one was closer to ten years old, both had linux on them, and bless, I do love that operating system. Both of their screen died completely and the drives are being sketchy, so plugging in a separate screen to get stuff off them isn’t working as well as I hoped.

So I’m writing this from a shiny new Dell Chromebook style thing. At least I had some of the tax return left.

But in the writing realm, it’s been a little harder of a slog than normal. The depression has been hitting very hard. February is historically a horrible month for me, so really the best part of the month was getting to see Black Panther. I can’t wait until I get to see it again. It was…indescribable how much everything was so good and so necessary and so brilliant. I need this to have its own separate franchise – it was that good.

I’ve also been reading when and where I could. Sometimes being too tired to write also means too tired to read. I have a stack of books that deserve longer reviews and I’ll do them – it just may take some time. Two of the books I’ve read have been Gray Widow’s Walk and Gray Widow’s Web by Dan Jolley (full disclosure, I know Dan in the way that panelists at cons know each other. You sit on more than one panel together, etc. ). Also, these books are fantastic, I couldn’t put them down and blitzed through them so fast and then re-read them. They’re fast paced and fun and horrible and amazing in the same ways that comics are, which isn’t so much a surprise since Dan’s also a comics writer. These books have a kickass female hero, a fascinating set of twists and turns, and his prose makes me sit and gasp or laugh or just marvel at the sentence structure (writers who read other writer’s books get hung up on weird things, what can I say?). Anyways, these books are awesome. So if you like Black Widow or Wonder Woman or Jessica Jones or Shuri…give these books a try. I think you’ll love them.

There’s a third book on the way too and I am EXCITE.

The other major thing that I did this month was write and submit a thing to a place and maybe it’ll get in and maybe it won’t, but I’m super proud of myself for submitting it. It was non fiction and pretty personal which just made the submitting jitters that much worse. More on that when I can.

Disability Day of Mourning 2018

Today is the Disability Day of Mourning. The day we take to remember all the disabled people who have been murdered by caregivers, parents, relatives, etc for nothing other than the fact that they were disabled.

It’s especially poignant this year because with HR620 weakening the ADA, the fights over the ACA, and then FL’s Baker Act being overhauled and the fact that with the recent shootings, mental health stigma is at an all time high and both the mentally ill and the disabled are currently being demonized more in the press.

There’s talk here and there about asylums and institutionalization and I can’t help but wonder how many more people are going to lose their lives or just up and disappear and we never really know what else happens to them.

I wonder if it’ll be me one day.

See;

I don’t need to be cured.
I don’t need to be fixed.
I won’t allow you to ignore me.
I won’t allow you to minimize me.
I don’t have to earn my personhood.
I’m not worthless.
I’m not broken.

I won’t be silent.  Because;

I AM disabled.
I AM a user of adaptive tech.
I AM a person.
I AM whole.
I AM worthy of respect.
I WILL defend myself and my peers.
I WILL call you out on your ableism.
I WILL keep advocating for accessibility.

Today we light a candle and say the names of the dead. Tomorrow we keep fighting.