Rebirth @ MindSay

There was a cross-post saved here that never made it onto this journal.  Instead, I've decided to take the title that made no good sense with the existing post (which is why it was titled differently elsewhere) and make something memorable (for me) out of it.

Life is back on its common roller coaster track.  I'm up, I'm down and on and off again.  One day I'm flying high on creativity or blissfully suffocating a crush for greater morality, and the next I'm sitting under a two ton boa of debt.  Over the course of a few quick hours I'm helping other people get placed into school-to-work programs, figuring out I've fucked myself on ticket recovery, scarfing down left-overs, nearly breaking down and deciding to cancel on Columbia, talking to my sister about the unfloatable nature of our feasts-on-anxiety family, and then calmly absorbing Coronas and NPH while trying to fix a computer for some chick I've never met.  And then a too-hot becandled bath lets the flesh drag off the bone and rest loosely over a bent frame as I devour a few pages of Friedman's assessment of our future.

In all this overwhelming (cue themes from movie) minute-by-minute redefinition of reality, I managed to drop the anxiety.  That stuff doesn't stick the way it did.  Oh, I can drag it out of the grave in my father's name and give it the consideration he would see due, but it throws itself back into the earth.  I hear a voice (oddly Jay-Z's) telling me to buckle the fuck down.  Matt Mahaffey reminds me of all my damned potential and the fact that just now, just for the first time, it's being realized.  Finally, someone halfway between Daniel Johns and Kenna Zemedkun reminds me that things are sometimes bad, but always beautiful.

The unsought optimism is at least welcomed.  Part of me knows that the upswing keeps coming, must keep coming, if slowly.  There's not really any other possibility.  Life gets better and better and better until you die.  Even when it's getting harder, it's getting better.

No, New Years isn't the proper day for reflections. At least not for me.

 

Since it is my Anniversary of my Would-Be-Death-Day (Happy Valentines Day, by the way,) I felt compelled to at least write something. Especially considering I've been absent for so long.

 

My lady "Love" has flown from view. But part of me isn't very surprised, that's just how things work out.

 

Yet, at the same time, I'm shown how really important things are to me. Places, people, everything. How important living is to me. It's kind of interesting, really. Of all the days the feel alive, it's this one. I see my life, and how open the road is. It's.. interesting. I've been taking things way too seriously. I've been trying to find meaning in things that have none. And it just doesn't matter. Especially allowing that fact to even cross my mind. I feel like a damn scientist at times. Trying to figuring how things work, and the mechanics behind everything -- the purpose.

 

It's only really dawned on me now that things don't need purpose to go on. Things continue to flow, and we need to look past all the bullshit and see life as just something. There to be whatever we make up it.

It's been so long since I've picked myself back up. For the longest time I thought I was dreaming. For the longest time I thought this world was such a wretched place. I mean, I still partially get away, but in different terms.

 

Regardless, my state of mind is improving. Fuck these counsellors and psychologists and medications. I forge my own path by leaning on myself. No longer crying for help and trying so desperately to seek people to lean on. I'm done. Finished. I almost feel as if I have died, like I'm a totally different person.

 

Maybe this is just the path I'm supposed to take. I suppose I shouldn't let anything try to shove me off of it. This is the way to be.

 

This is my life.

 

 

A few months ago I wrote a post about the passing of my fiancée's father.  I asked the audience, but really asked myself, if there would be the same devotion toward one of my family members as there was to him.

This weekend I found out.

My father's mother had a terrible disease that we knew would eventually kill her, but we didn't expect it to act so fast.

One day she was a fairly large woman, healthy in girth if nothing else, and then suddenly, inexplicably, she was a mirror image of Kristina's grandfather; comatose in bed, her mouth hanging open, her skin melting off her cheeks, her body arching involuntarily as she took deep breaths from an Oxygen mask.

And then, with no fanfare whatsoever, she was gone.

I wrote a short story inspired by her passing, but it has some material that could upset my family, so I won't include it in this blog.  At least not now.  But what I am going to do with it is submit it to writing contests and see where - if- I can place.  As I said before, my publishing efforts have been rejuvenated, and one way that I plan on getting an agent is by creating a body of work that has won writing contests, and using that as leverage.

So I'm going to start now, with the story of my grandmother's death.  I'll give you a list of contests I've submitted the piece too in future posts, and I'll keep you updated on my successes and failures.

I had an odd relationship with my grandmother.  I feel closer to her after writing her story than I did when she was alive.  I'm hoping something good can come out of that sad fact.