flames.

i sent my husband a video of myself attempting to blow out a flame-lit lantern. i tried to blow it out three times in the video before facing the camera and admitting ‘this is making me dizzy. please blow out the flames.’

before resorting to recording and sharing my flame-extinguishing failure shame, i attempted to blow the flames out (on multiple lanterns) several times. i even tried to cap the flame to put it out. it still didn’t go out. when i lifted the cap, the shrunken flame danced right up again like some mocking, little asshole.

i wasn’t half-assing these attempts. i was huffing and puffing like a wolf in a kids’ story trying to put these out, but those flames were not at all interested.

it felt like when you approach an automatic door, and it doesn’t open. you’re just unexpectedly standing there, staring at your own, dumb face in the reflection of the door that didn’t open. you look up at the motion censor like it has personally wronged you. like it should not just recognize you as a person, but should recognize you, personally. then some other random jackass comes up, and the automatic door just opens right up for them, and then closes right in your face.

and you start to wonder if you even have a soul anymore.

that’s what these stupid flames felt like. here i am, a grown-ass human, breathing on these seemingly normal flames with all of my might. forcing all that i have inside of me into a singular, focused stream of human-created wind specifically in the direction of this flame… and nothing.

nothing.

dead and buried.

It’s 2019. I’m looking at a site I started in 2013, and haven’t touched since 2014. Plenty of things have happened since then. Arguably the most life-changing and active span of years in my life so far, in fact. I’m not really sure that I want this post to be an actual update, though. I don’t want to start a ‘dear diary:’ kind of thing here. That feels like some Clarissa Explains It All kind of nonsense.

However, I do need to write something here because in the course of things happening, many of them were good – great, even, but then they started to go downhill, and here I am sitting at my desk on a Wednesday afternoon feeling like I have holes in my brain. Sometimes those holes feel like they squeeze together to form one giant, gaping hole directly through my skull and brain and skin where blood just lightly trickles down from my forehead, all down my face, and drips onto my chest. And I just sit there, dumbfounded, blinking through the dripping blood – not even considering what to do because this is my new normal. I know there’s nothing I can do. I don’t even have proper feelings about it all – they’re all stunted and incomplete.

Emotions are like earthworms. They’re just going about their business, digging through the soil that is everyday life, processing the various scenarios, and dispensing out their own version. A version that’s been run through their own filter, and that now fertilizes their home and helps it grow. My emotions now are like when someone takes a fucking tiller to a garden and breaks up all the dirt, shredding earthworms along with it. Maybe some are still alive and processing, but it’s just not the same anymore. And none of them are working at full capacity. Then there’s that thing about how if an earthworm gets split in two, it doesn’t die, it just becomes two earthworms. Is that even true? There was that one episode of Adventure Time…

For the past few months, I have been unwillingly battling with the side effects of a health issue that has left me wildly anemic. It’s funny that the main symptoms and of the disorder have been going on for years, and sure, they’ve disrupted my life plenty, but they’re nothing compared to the side effect of a handful of blood cells going rogue. It’s also a little bit incredible just how much you can ignore and reason away your problems when you just don’t have the energy to face them.

I used to be a person that knew things. A lot of things. I was that friend on reserve for if you ever found yourself on a game show and had the option to phone a friend for help with a piece of completely useless trivia. I used to think critically and organize and plan on large scales. I could notice small details and work out useful information based around them. Now those aspects of myself are dulled. They’re not completely gone, but where they used to be this helpful, fiery orb in the center of my own, personal solar system, they’re now more akin to little speckles of sunlight bleeding through the leaves of the trees over a quiet, shady street. A quiet, shady, always extremely fucking tired street.

My house is now littered with little, lavender-colored pads with notes like “stars aren’t shining yet” and “why won’t it write,” alongside doodles of bunnies and ghosts. Flamingo-shaped holders filled with multi-colored pens – the clicky-top kind, of course. Jotting every, little thought down has become a necessary part of my day.

 

While I’m scribbling on some pages and typing in some boxes, I have a couple of stories to tell and some illustrations to share. Please stick around. You’re exactly who I’d like to share them with.