Essay: The Wind Telephone

Source

I heard this story on the radio. In Japan, on a hill by the sea, the old, white bones of a phone booth stand. People go there to whisper messages to the dead for the wind to carry away. Little updates, gentle greetings, tears. They call it the Wind Telephone.

So this is my Wind Telephone call.

You aren't dead, but you are a ghost. I can talk and talk and talk to you, but you can't hear me, you're in your own world, your own afterlife. I tell you that I know what it's like, because we've both fallen into Hell, but landed in different circles. I don't know your circle. I just know mine, and every time I think I've trudged out of the tar of it, I find myself still trapped in the mire. So what can I say to you to give hope when I'm still sinking in the muck?

I know what it is to be your own hostage, rattling against your skin-cage, screaming soundlessly like in a nightmare, but you're wide awake. We have different ways of fighting our captors. I'm loud and impulsive and weapon-wielding and chattering. I throw lines into the dark and hope they find purchase. I spill myself in ugly, tumbling words. When I Jekyll-Hyde, everyone knows it. I'm a performer. I'm scared of falling into the black. I'm bright bile green: toxic, searing, but full of energy and expression.

But you don't throw lines. Like they told you to in the movies, you stand still as the quicksand eats you. Your words are weapons that are sharp on both ends. Whether you hold them or share them, they cut. You're the falling House of Usher, a slow crumble inward, a final devastating split on the horizon. You're a purple, appealing poison. You're the color of art in a quiet, shadowed gallery. 

And I don't know what to do, because your monster raises the hackles of my monster, and I'm afraid of letting them get too close. But that's what keeps happening. When I stare the ghost of you in the face, when you're that spectral self, I feel my monster shift and growl under my skin. Because I'm terrified that there's nothing I can do, and fear is my monster's favorite meat. It doesn't matter what chains I've looped around its neck. When it smells my helplessness, when it hears my closest loved ones mention its name and the things it's done, it will claw its way out. Not as powerful as before, but still with those hungry, seeking teeth.

There was another story I read this week. This woman wrote her friend's text messages into an AI, she computed him back to life. A linguistic echo. I can't help but think of your words. They're scattered here and there, extensions of yourself, red and pulsing and alive. No one writes like you. Surprising sets of sounds, details that become the DNA of a character. You write with such visceral physicality. Faced with your ghost, I can find your body in your poetry.

Which is how I wound up here, wind-telephoning. Because I don't know what else to do. Because holding it together isn't always an option. Because I'm afraid of ghosts.

Maybe you won't see this. Maybe you will, and you'll be angry with me. Good. Be angry. Be real. Hear me, talk to me. Let me help. 

Please, return my call. I'm waiting by the phone and listening to the wind.

Glitter, Sunshine, and Crippling Depression

I've been thinking about mental illness a lot in the past year, and there are several reasons for that. I've watched a few of my friends get brutalized by it. I've been getting reeeaaal into Maria Bamford's Netflix show.

Also, I guess I kinda had the largest mental health crisis of my life less than a year ago, so, I dunno, maybe that also got me thinking.

Seriously, great show. Source

Now, I'm an over-sharer extraordinaire. If over-sharing were a job skill, I'd be absolutely murdering the market for it. I'd be at an "able to afford Starbucks every day" level of obscene wealth. I'd maybe even stop taping my shoes together with electrical tape and actually buy new shoes.

Despite my need to talk about myself all the time always, I have largely avoided talking about what happened. And I'm not ready to get into a lot of it yet. It's not even because of the mental illness stigma, at least not wholly. Honestly, it's because I don't want my family to read about what happened, and I know they're reading this blog. Irrational as the thought is, I don't want to add to their giant list of ways in which I disappoint and/or worry them.

Which is absolutely a crazy, unrealistic concern. But that doesn't stop the worry from happening.

TL;DR: I'm not going to talk in detail about what happened last fall. Not yet, but maybe someday. But I am going to talk about how I got here, and where here is.

I've always been a quirky kid. Very dramatic, very imaginative, very blunt, very bad at blending in. I'm not bitter about those traits, but they have made my life kind of hard in places. I was prone to doing loud, crazy things, things that became embarrassing as soon as they happened. Licking other kids in the shower, eating a newt, tying imaginary elephants to my desk, telling people that the bumps on my arm were clusters of non-human DNA and that I'm an alien hybrid. 

Ya know, kid stuff.

And I've continued to be just as weird, with even greater confidence. I'm an ambitious person. I want to be successful in my creative endeavors, and my career, and my relationships. But all the weird stuff I do carries that baggage of guilt, and I quickly start hating myself for my strangeness. 

Not just strangeness. Anything that makes me "other" or not enough, because, dang it, I want to be the best. I want to be clever and funny and good at everything I do. When I don't live up to the ideal vision I've made for myself, I quickly turn to self-hate.

The thought process seems to be: "If I made this mistake, I must not be as smart as I thought. If I'm not as smart as I thought, then I must have a very bloated self-image and an unrealistic image of myself as a smart, capable person. I must be way off base. Ergo, I'm the dumbest creature on this planet, I'm the scum of the earth, and I deserve to be punched."

With that, there are also a lot of other thoughts buzzing through me, like: "I'm the stupid sibling; I'm an embarrassment to my family." "I can't even be an adult." "I'm not good enough to exist in this world." "I bring everyone down." "I was wrong to think I could keep up." "I'm a pity hire at my new job." 

"I should kill myself before I make things worse. It will be better for everyone."

I've mentioned these thoughts before. But here's something more: I don't believe them.

I really don't. I think I'm pretty damn smart. I think I make some good jokes. I'm okay with my weirdness because it led to me writing stories and creating art and making suuuper high quality friends.

That's the thing with whatever my brand of mental illness is. I'm still a glittery, sunshiny person, and I'm still confident, happy even. Hell, I have such high standards for myself that when I fail to measure up, I, uh, go off the deep end. That is some first class narcissism right there. 

It's just that these invasive thoughts come in and cloud my thinking. I see that they're ridiculous, but there are just so many of them, and the evidence is there (in the form of my mistakes) that my self-image is a little off. It hurts to look at my flaws. The cognitive dissonance can be crippling. My impulsive nature acts as a catalyst, and things get out of control.

I feel everything intensely. That's probably why I write, why I started creating so many imaginary worlds in the first place. They were vessels for the abundance of feelings that I've always had.

Last fall, I hit a critical moment in my job in which the massive volume of intense feelings that I encountered working in auto total loss claims became too much for me to handle. On top of that, I was getting little sleep, working longer and longer hours, and being told I wasn't doing enough. That I was too slow. My name plastered in red writing in a "shame list" for not being good enough. So my own thoughts ("I'm stupid, I'm worthless, I can't keep up") started piling on as well. 

My body ached from invisible injuries to my mind, and I didn't know how to explain that to anybody. I thought my panic attacks would literally explode my heart. 

Then, I stopped feeling entirely. That's when it all collapsed. Some piece of me broke away in an attempt to cope, and it opened a terrible path.

Like I said, I can't go into the details yet. But it was like living in the skin of a different person, a person I desperately wanted to destroy. I wanted to peel off my skin and emerge something less terrible, or maybe not emerge at all. 

I was a parasite to myself. Or, my depression was.

I want to talk about this stuff because if I don't, it will just be another secret sitting in my soul like cold iron, weighing me down. I feel uncomfortable interacting with people when they only know parts of the story and are afraid to ask about the rest. I worry about what they think of me, or whether they think they're walking on eggshells when they really aren't.

Also, I want this sort of thing to be talked about. Mental illness is entering more conversations, but the stigma remains, and so much of it is considered "off limits" when I don't think it should be.

Yeah, I'm incredibly embarrassed about what happened to me. I wish I weren't, and I don't think I should be, but I am. This is my clumsy attempt to bring up the elephant in the room (not the invisible one I tied to my desk as a child) and make it something OK for conversation. I'm not the only person who thinks like me. I think I'll always think like this, and always have nasty thoughts I'll have to chase out of my head like rats with a broom.

The other night, I asked Kelsey what she thinks of me, whether I seem depressed or what. She described me as cocky, and I took it as a compliment. Ten months ago, I don't think anyone could have described me as that.

If you have questions, ask 'em. If you want to tell me your story, please do! I'm going to keep being weird, and screwing up, and letting people down. But I'm also going to keep doing good stuff. As best I can. 

Because I can.

(Jasper the Cat Is) Bad At Puppies

I was seven when my brother was born. I don’t remember much about his birthday except that I was bitter and skeptical about the prospect of having another human around, especially one that was garnering so much attention and praise before he was even out of the womb. My primary memory of that day is of my grandparents easing the blow to my only child status by buying me a remote control car.

RadioShack’s 1998 Flamethrower. The stuff of legends.

I’d been pining for a remote control car since my own birth. I remember the rubbery smell of the tires, the whirs and clicks of the car’s tiny machinations. What a thrill, zipping it around my grandparents’ house, smashing it into ankles! I was pretty sure I didn’t have my parents’ love anymore, but hey, I had a small, battery-devouring racer that was almost as fast as someone taking a brisk walk.

Unfortunately, I don’t think my cat would accept a remote control car as a peace offering in response to the two little sisters we’ve just dumped on her.

Jasper the cat is a sweet, pudgy little lady who followed me when I was walking home, tipsy and singing, from a friend’s place in college. She’s shaped like a gourd and has some rough RBF, even for a cat. She has a speech impediment (I’m not even making this up. Cats can have speech impediments. Jasper doesn’t meow. She squeaks.). She has never scratched or bitten anyone, even when we cradle her like a baby and jiggle her tubby, pink belly. She’s a wonderful cat, but her Only Child Syndrome is out of control.

So when Jasper met Billie and Binx, our two canine additions to the family, she was displeased. We held up the sleepy puppies for her to see, and she gasped and hissed in Cade’s arms. Which we expected, given that she was afraid of a kitten who visited her once in Cade’s previous apartment. Then we put the pups in their own little room where Jasper could avoid them if she wanted, which she did want.

In the few days since we’ve acquired little Billie and littler Binx, Jasper has been wrestling with her sense of betrayal by holing herself up in Cade’s room and hissing at random items that she suspects have something to do with her baby sisters. Luckily, she’s consolable, and will rub on us and purr when we visit her in her sanctuary, and has even come out of hiding to sprawl across my keyboard in the study (until she hears a puppy growl in the next room, and she remembers that she’s supposed to be pouting). Sometimes, she’ll gently hiss at my hand before purring and head-butting it, just so I know that she’s still pissed, but not so pissed that she’d turn down a massage.

Photo taken seconds after the puppies yipped in the adjacent room. Not pictured: Jasper vanishing from the room, leaving behind a cat-shaped cloud.

Despite the hissing, growling, squeaking, and muttering (if cats could curse, we’d have washed her mouth out with soap many times by now), Jasper still hasn’t scratched or bitten us. Hopefully, she’ll stay as gentle with the puppies, if she ever gets over the situation enough to interact with them once they’re out of their puppy room.

I think she’ll be OK. She’s already calming down and allowing more puppy-scented things to get close to her. She even let me carry Billie and Binx past Cade’s room while she watched, unblinking. Just a little stink-eye, no hissing or hiding. When I put the puppies back in their kennels, she even let me rub her belly with my Chihuahua-tainted hand. She’ll get there eventually.

As for the puppies? They're oblivious to big sis. Billie talks a big game, growling and pouncing on the smaller Binx, but she's a wuss with car rides or dark rooms. She's super into person-climbing and will not rest until she's on your shoulder. Binx is more relaxed, but has been playing an intense game of The Floor Is Lava since she arrived at our house, and will only touch the hardwood after several minutes of growling debate. She likes to snuggle on laps to sleep, and her gentle kisses would be much sweeter if I didn't know that she's a pro at eating her own, um, "foul misdeeds." 

Billie is the one spreading her legs and appearing to hold in a fart like a proper lady, and Binx is the one who looks like she belongs to Bernie Sanders.

They're puppies. Stinky, rowdy, precious fur-potatoes. And Jasper isn't the only one who needs to adjust to them. 

Now then, I'd better jet. It's been too quiet for too long...

Bad At Moving: Part II

"But didn't you just move, Abi?"

"Well, yeah, but it's never too soon to destroy your relationships, empty your wallet, and break half of your belongings a second time!"

"But if you broke half of your belongings in the first move, and half in the second move, then wouldn't you have nothing at this point? How do you still have enough crap for 3 families boxed up in your living room?"

"I don't know, theoretical person, I don't know."

Just another one of the great mysteries of moving. Where did all this crap come from? Did my crap meet my roommates' crap and have little crap babies? Where will we house the crap babies???

And what the heck is this? It was in the "moving" tag so I'm rolling with it. Source.

So, in case one blog entry about moving wasn't stressful enough, here is my revised step-by-step "How to Move" guide, now that I've gone from an apartment to a house.

• Step 1: Don't do it. Don't bother moving. 
• Seriously, don't. 
• What, you want to have your roommates' blood on your hands? Because they'll definitely ask for it. And you'll ask for it too. Moving is a bloodbath. Have you seen the show Spartacus? It's about gladiators, injustice, and gory special effects. And it serves as a solid visualization of what your moving process is going to be like. 
• Well, aren't YOU a stubborn one. Current place not good enough for ya, huh? OoooOOOOoo, look at you, too special for your current home, too much time watching HGTV. Boohooboohoo.
• OK, fine. So you're moving. Acquire gloves, an entire store's worth of cleaning supplies, and some nerves of flippin' steel.
• Lay out your boxes for each room as though you're going to employ an orderly system with which to sort and store your modest belongings.
• Screw it. There's no time for order. Jam your obscene amount of crap into the sorry scraps of boxes your fiancee managed to snag from her job with a pizza shop. Don't mind the grease. If you're moving in the summer, you'll cover your stuff with plenty of your own grease anyway.
• Do as much as you can before your family arrives en masse one casual Saturday morning with 15 minutes notice. 
• They're gonna say stuff. They always say stuff. Bite your lip, kick the dumpster, and remind yourself that they have good intentions and they're the ones with the big-ass truck and the safety net for if you do something stupid again, which you will, because look at you. I mean, you thought moving was a good idea. What other "good ideas" are you going to come up with?
• ...
• From there it's kind of a whirlwind... I think...
• There was definitely some crying...
• Because, duh.
• Also drinking?
• And what the heck are those stains on the carpet? Melted crayons? Aren't you all adults here? Was there a ghost toddler?
• Make an offering of tears and stale tortilla chips to the ghost toddler to placate him or her.
• Drive back and forth between your two homes, unsure of where you should be staying while you're still "technically" in your old place. You don't win either way, because neither place has Wi-Fi, you poor sucker.
• ... it's hazy again, my dudes... lots of boxes... always with the boxes...
• And then boom! You're surrounded by boxes in your new place, and you've mangled your friendships, and most of your furniture looks like its been a prop in a monster truck rally.

And that's pretty much it. You wait a few weeks for your internet provider to extract their heads from their butts and get your new place set up so you can ignore the untouched boxes and watch Netflix. You wonder how they wrote "Abigail" as "Lavogabella" in their notes, even though you spelled your exceedingly common name for them. And then you complain about it on social media, even though Lavogabella is a better stage name than you could have come up with on your own.

There you have it! Abi has a new house! Er, an old house, rented from my uncle/employer (and now landlord). The tangled webs we weave.

Stay tuned for *drum roll*

...

BAD AT PUPPIES.

(It's a joke. Please don't call the Humane Society.)

What I Learned in Self-Publishing School Is:

(In case you missed the reference) Source

If you came by my booth at Pride, you probably noticed that there were 3 of me. There was Capital M Me (the me with the snaggly teeth and dangerously high levels of enthusiasm, given the heat index), then a blue-haired me (who was holding Capital M Me on a leash, but not the kinky kind, just the "keep calm and actually sell your product" kind), and finally, a super hot but moderately confused me (bless her soul). 

OK, so we're 3 different people (probably, hopefully), but my 2 companions served as extensions of myself and my product (my novel, Necessaries) at my booth. Without them, I would have crumpled in front of the crowd. I wouldn't have sold nearly as many books, I wouldn't have met the interesting people I did, and I guarantee that fewer people would have even approached my booth, much less tried to interact with me. I know these things because while the 2 of them took a break, I felt totally swamped by people coming up to spin the prize wheel and ask about the book and request business cards. I couldn't keep up with the (unexpected but extremely appreciated) crowd. People noticed that, and walked away rather than wait for a chance to chat.

TL;DR: Having multiple people at my booth was lifesaver.

BUT.  They also made me realize that I don't know how to explain my own content.

As I mentioned in my melancholy follow-up Pride post, being self-published means you are your own marketing team. In my efforts to market myself and my writing, I've created things like this website, and a Facebook page, and who knows how many author pages on other websites. In the process, I've shared boatloads of information about myself, and also random reviews, and goofy commentary on my life, and even some serious writing about modern social issues. My content is a strange mish-mash of experience, opinion, and art.

So, when promoting my website, my other "me's" had to come up with a way to succinctly describe what I do. One of them mentioned that I write about my experiences in self-publishing. At the time, I was like, "Yeah, I've totally written about my self-publishing journey. That seems legit." But now, I'm not so sure. 

Which means it's time to remedy that! Today, I'll give you an introductory post on where I am with my writing and why I chose self-publishing. I'll go into greater detail on specific topics in future posts, so if you are curious about anything in particular, now is the time to bring it up to me so I can plan to address it.

How I Got Here (and Where Is Here?)

Imagine it. A grid of identical cubicles, gray and tomb-like under the sour glow of the overhead lights. The constant electronic chatter of ringing phones, the overlapping voices of the damned souls who must answer them. The faint but acrid odor of burnt popcorn. 

There, sitting in one of the sad little boxes, is me, about 2 years ago. 

I was a total loss claims representative. I was charged with telling people in crisis that their car - a huge portion of their asset pool, often the most expensive item they own - was a total loss, and that I had a non-negotiable settlement amount for them. And most people really didn't want to have that conversation. And as the insurance company I worked for increased mandatory overtime and created actual "shame lists" to punish people who took the time to do their jobs right, I stopped being able to let the awful things customers said to me slide off my back. I stopped feeling quite as numb when I saw pictures of blood-covered cars. I became a raw nerve. Panic attacks, nightmares, drinking huge amounts of alcohol to quiet my eternally racing heart and knock myself out before I could do real damage to myself.

I did have one good coping mechanism, and that was writing Necessaries.

I've always loved telling stories. I started drawing comics as soon as I could hold a pencil. I invented dozens of deeply involved, character-driven games to play with my brother (Dr. Faustus in space was a particularly... interesting one). But it took working a shitty, nightmarish job to get me to focus on writing a complete novel. I could escape into another world for a while, and the act of concentrating on the writing helped me to stop thinking about the stress of my job.

Eventually, things came to a head at work. Some dark stuff happened. There are several months of my life that are just blurs in my memory. I left that hell, and wound up with a better job at a small wealth management office. And I published Necessaries.

Why did I go the self-publishing route? These are my personal reasons:

• This is my first novel. I believe it's good, and my pre-readers had positive things to say about it. But it has a long way to go. I didn't have the money for an editor, so the polishing that my friends and family and I did to the book were enough for me, but probably not enough for a larger publishing house. So, I didn't have the funds to invest, and since I had no previous writing out there for people to see and give feedback on, I was hesitant to waste a lot of time and money on a first project. In a way, I'm testing the waters with this novel, and the waters are feeling pretty fine.
• On an emotional level, I needed to be done with this book and make it immediately available to my friends and family. I wrote this book during the worst few years of my life. It was a lifesaver for me, but it also carries a lot of painful baggage. Making Necessaries so easily available was cathartic for me, and served as evidence that I'd come through a terrible time but had come out on the other side with something valuable. It was like a message to my friends that I was OK, and it was an invitation for them to come close again and look at the pieces of my heart I'd preserved in the book.
• I wanted to develop a readership. A lot of literary agents won't consider an author unless they have a following. Having Necessaries out there, marketing it myself, and writing regularly on this site and others make me more visible. For my next book, I'll be able to show the agents I query that there are interested readers out there, and I wouldn't have those readers had I not published Necessaries.
• I still consider writing a hobby. Kinda. I'd like to change that, but as it stands, writing isn't my day job. It's getting harder and harder for writers to survive as career authors. Self-publishing gives me full control over my book. How it's presented, what's on the cover, everything down to the price. I can organize special events like giveaways because of my status as a self-publisher. I'm free to experiment without someone taking a cut of my profits, and I don't have to worry that my publisher will slack in their marketing, since I'm the one in charge. A sloppy publisher can kill their own books, and if sales plummet, my chances of getting back on board with them could be slim.
• Self-publishing may be the way of the future. More and more authors are putting their work out there like this, which means the book market is becoming more diverse. It also means more competition. However, in an increasingly self-serve society, it wouldn't surprise me if the tides turn away from traditional publishing soon. In fact, the turn has already begun.
• I can always traditionally publish in the future. For now, I can bring in a little cash, get my name known, and acquire some feedback. Perhaps in the future, I'll be able to afford that editor, and will have developed the industry know-how to sell a publisher on the story. (By the way... I never approached a publisher with Necessaries, so I don't know how it would have been received.)

In summary, emotional, financial, and self-branding reasons drove my decision. My name is out there now. I have a book under my belt, and I'm learning about how to sell my book and myself, because you really do have to sell both. 

I'll be honest. I've put a lot more money into this thing than I've gotten out. I've taken the book to a self-published book fair and to Pride, and I'm constantly seeking out new places to show Necessaries off. Despite the expense, every time I do something like run an ad on Amazon (also a benefit of self-publishing) or do a reading at a writing conference, I get a little boost in sales, I make new connections, and my name gets spread a little further.

This is where I am. My first novel is in print, and has sold a few dozen copies, nothing wild. But I have readers on my blog, and folks who interact with me on Facebook, and complete strangers who came across my book online and wrote wonderfully encouraging reviews. 

And I'm having a terrific time. I'm learning some strange and fantastic and frustrating things about the book industry. I'm getting a better idea of how I want to handle publishing my next book. Even the way I write is improving thanks to meeting other writers, reading other self-published fiction, and explaining/selling my book to potential readers.

In future posts, I'll go into greater detail about what I've done, whether the stuff I've done has worked, my general observations on the world of self-publishing, the unexpected lessons I've learned, and where I plan to go from here. If you have a particular question or topic you want to know more about, comment and ask me! Or you can message me on Facebook. 

Until next time! Much love! :D