#ive been trying to write this poem for literal months

[wlw-mood]

I NEED TO BE EUTHANIZED OH MY GOD?!?!!?

#.txt #sorry being dramatic here #fs #mhm yeah its about him go figure #UR TELLING ME. THE FIRST POEM I WROTE ABOUT HIM WAS FROM 7 MONTHS AGO?!?!? SEVEN?!?!? #IVE BEEN INSANE ABOUT THIS GUY FOR *SEVEN* MONTHS?!???!!?!?????? #someone fucking put me down #i just looked in my notebook cause i was curious when the first one was written. LAST NOVEMBER. #LAST NOVEMBER. #somebody set me on fire #hes gotten FOUR poems #four........ #was thinking about writing a 5th today erm.... #i literally screamed im home alone in my house thinking about SEVEN months #ok moving on. its weird i finally feel a little not incredibly attached to him like. idk how long the feeling will last #but its genuine its nof me trying to make myself detatched cause my feelings got hurt or something #just since i slept over (a week and a half ago) i felt euphoric for a few days then kind of mellowed out #no strong powerful anguish no overwhelming joy just like yeah thats a guy #i mean dont get it twisted hes my friend also hes not just SOME guy #its just im not like craving seeing him. i actually kind of dont want to? its weird. im kind of appreciating the distance #hes been texting me lately. he never texts ever but maybe hes doing it cause hes out of state rn and bored #he says he misses me 😌 slay ! idk im being insane. ill make another text post about not fs related things that are insane in a min

[theundergroundwoman]

Why do you think female Eastern European authors never gain any noteriety? Ive been looking into Lesbian and Bisexual authors for pride month and so many are from Eastern Europe. I have an IGS degree concentrating in EE literature and poetry and I can only remember reading one Akhmatova poem. That was the extent of women's writing. Like whats the deal?

I assume by notoriety you mean positive fame, right? but do you mean gain popularity in the west or at home? because apart from the general mysoginy which affects all women everywhere, for eastern european women trying to gain respect and popularity in the west, the mysoginy is enhanced because of certain harmful stereotypes/literally made up bullshit. on top of that they also need to deal with the prejudice against eastern europeans in the west as a whole. I’m sure akhmatova and tsvetaeva are well known in russia, and in serbia we include our female authors into mandatory school reading (+ I remember we also read tsvetaeva and akhmatova alongside mayakovsky), so their lack of inclusion is certainly a bigger problem outside of their home countries and outside of ee. if you aren’t from ee and took that degree I wouldn’t be as surprised, though it would still be insane. but either way, regardless of where you’re from, it’s probably mysoginy 👍🏻

#another obstacle that factors into ee authors in general struggling to gain popularity in the west #is the fact that our work rarely gets translated into english lmao #ask

[magdalenafemme]

by l.g

#i literally could not hash out that part abt the candy #its still kinda meh #but its better than before #ive been trying to write this poem for literal months #trying to write a poem about ''this is the closest thing i can get to a confession'' #here are boring tags #my poetry #queue feel something holy in her touch #poetry #poems #poets #love poetry #love poems #love poets #lesbian poems #lesbian poetry #lesbian poets #poets on tumblr #spilled ink #writeblr #typography #poem typography #poetry typography #''i'm in love with you'' and other things you don't hear

[riceccakes]

where's that post that's like "i don't want to be perceived" cause same

#life feels like shit #i like genuinely hate having to leave the house again #im sure a lot of people are happy #and thats great #but im constantly trying to stop myself from having a panic attack because people scare the fuck out of me #and school is shit #i dont care if it only started #im gonna fail #or at least get a B in my physics course which is basically failing to my mom #i would literally do anything just to stay home tomorrow instead of having a stacked day at uni #also i have an ear infection and i am uncomfortable #i literally have a lab due tomorrow and i havent touched it and i dont want to #and i havent replied to any emails because #energy? who? #could you write a poem just in the tags? #thatd be a fun game #how am i already burnt out #ive been at uni for less than a month

[melforbes]

seaglass blue annotations

hello! i just posted the last chapter and thought i’d put together some ~fun context~ for that fic. it got way way more attention than i ever expected and for something i feel i didn’t put that much effort into i think i did in the end put a lot of effort into it so i might as well talk about it and answer some potential questions.

my favorite book of all time is the sunlit night by rebecca dinerstein (yes, that one) and something i find really compelling about that book is how sparing the prose is, forcing the reader to fill in certain gaps, and i think having to fill in those gaps makes the book a really acquired taste with which either you love it or hate it and there’s not really an in-between

i also really adore how in that book the natural world backdrop comes to life, something i find really challenging to write. recently i even read into thin air, the book about the 1996 mount everest disaster, and even though the writing was superb, i still had to google what the hillary step was because i couldn’t picture it on my own. i don’t know how people write nature because to me it feels damn near impossible, but this sparing approach really worked, so i thought i might try it out. i tend to be longwinded (gestures vaguely at this post) and wanted to have certain parts of this be a lot smaller and more contained without negating impact. whether or not i made it work is anyone’s guess. definitely not my normal style, so to speak

based on the comments i’ve received i think this might be everyone’s favorite part. in my mind age of consent by new order was playing in the background. in pretty much every fic i have a scene like this one and all of them are based on the poem first base gold by rh*annon mcg*vin from her book branches (censored because she has a tumblr and i don’t want her seeing this haha)

i absolutely can’t do the poem justice by describing what it’s about, but the simplest, most basic interpretation of the poem is that there is no better place to kiss than right here, right now, because of the past. i really like that imagery and tend to use it a lot. she as a writer has been a big inspiration for me and if you’ve read my fic true minds i should add that the nonfiction inspiration for that was directly as a result of one of her youtube videos. i particularly love how the last paragraph (stanza? im not a poet) is one big run-on sentence that’s jovial and tongue-in-cheek and colloquial and straightforward. it feels triumphant in a quiet way to me and i love how it’s done. obviously my attempts at something similar are nowhere near as insightful, but still, the most basic image of this is that there is no better place to kiss, and that’s how i felt about the two of them finding pudding in the supermarket

this part is autobiographical; while writing this last year, i went through six months of intravenous drug treatment, a month and a half of which involved long days of doctor visits on every weekday. when you’re on stuff like that for a long time you end up with a central line for better access (potential plot hole in all of this: scully never had one) but for a month and a half i got poked almost every day and strangely enough it got harder over time. the first couple you never feel, but a week or two later you start flinching, and if the needle goes in the same vein each time, it hurts the more it gets prodded. i reached a point toward the end of the in-office visits in which i would bleed a lot every time i got poked, and i can’t watch anything like that happen to me so i was looking away each time, and when i felt that the nurse was done, i would look back over, and sometimes i would be looking down at a pool of blood that i hadn’t expected to see. it’s weird, you don’t actually feel yourself bleeding, i would’ve expected a hot bloody feeling but instead it felt like nothing. and when i say a pool i mean that it would drip down beneath my elbow, stain the sheet they’d put underneath, and i wouldn’t get all of it off until i showered. i didn’t necessarily find it scary, but it was surreal and kind of pulled me out of normalizing the experience i was having. for a very long time needing iv drugs was my greatest fear and i was surrounded by that then and fine, and then, there was blood all over my arm, and like, haha, this is actually not fine. you’d think something else would’ve been scarier, but it wasn’t. and now looking back at this paragraph i wish i’d edited it differently but hey that’s life

i’d never really understood the purpose of religion as a self-driven part of life until i took anatomy in college. i was raised catholic and though culturally i understand having a religion and being raised with one, i’ve never really reached for religion when i wanted answers, and i haven’t personally understood why that’s someone’s first option. and i know there’s been plenty of commentary on the hypocrisy of dana scully as a catholic who believes in science, yada yada yada, i think everyone has read all of that by now. but what struck me while learning anatomy is that there is a kind of neuron we don’t know the function of. there are four kinds of neurons, and one of them is still a mystery to us. and then, there’s all of these different parts of human bodies that exist in a certain perfect way, but why do they exist like that? to support life, yes, but why is it that we can make comparisons? why were irises not the same color? and we name valves of the heart after religious figures. we are so hell-bent on meaning that something literal will never be enough. and all of that made me think that dana scully has god to fill in what science won’t answer, at least not yet. and there’s definitely a bigger conversation about science as denial of indigenous cultures that i am nowhere near qualified to start. after taking those classes, i think i would be more shocked if she wasn’t religious. you can ignore pretty much all of the paragraph above but it was important to me that at some point in this fic she willingly conceded that she didn’t know what would happen and that she didn’t have answers. with illness, there is no logic, there’s no thinking your way out of it, and i think that would plague her for a long time. to me, she only would accept her death when she could say she had no idea what would happen, she has no answers, there’s nothing filling in her gaps anymore, and she’s comfortable with that. and i put all of that in a paragraph about my thoughts on god because it made sense to me. there are times that just feel like you’re in a movie and there’s no one else you can say caused them. it’s not enough to build belief on but it’s enough to bring a certain kind of wonder. also one time my parents insisted on watching stripes because it was so funny and when watching it none of us found it funny at all and my parents grimaced and were like what were we on that made that good back in the day so that’s in here now haha

and now, the biggest question: does she die at the end? when i came up with the idea for this fic, i knew the beginning and ending but not the middle, and i posted this as a smaller project (ie: chapters below 3,000 words) while illness made my bigger projects harder to work on and essentially flew by the seat of my pants the whole time. i wrote the last line a long long time ago and have always seen the ending as written as the concrete ending. when i started writing this, i never intended for there to be a definitive answer to whether or not she dies. i like premature endings (the ending of girls burn brighter comes to mind) and i think that this works better without saying whether or not she lives. and i also have a hard time with giving a definitive answer because this fic very much is about death and having her die would, of course, be traumatic, but showing her living instead i think ruins any takeaways people could have. i’ve never had cancer but as a chronically ill person i think i can speak to how you never actually win with illness; the best you can do is tie, and sometimes, no matter how much effort you put in, you “lose” anyway, you lose spectacularly, and all of your effort was for nothing. i wholeheartedly believe that humans can’t emotionally or logically process natural disasters or illness, hence why much of the talk about illness in this is from mulder’s perspective as he experiences her terminal illness secondhand; that way, he doesn’t need to (but still likely will) find logic or reason or meaning for death from a terminal illness, so his discoveries and his coping mechanisms aren’t as urgently needed. had i written a chapter that describes how she lives, i think that the discussion of death in this would be voided altogether. and i also don’t believe the ending would be much different whether she lives or dies; there’s still the need for death acceptance and talking about dying, whether or not she lives, and none of the story in this fic would have happened had the characters known she would live. the whole point is not knowing.

for a little while i toyed with writing an unofficial sequel of sorts in which i spelled out what i think happens after the ending, but after realizing that that would end up being longer than the original fic and would also have some massive plot holes, i decided against it. i do have my own version and i don’t want to share that version because i never really intended for my version to be some kind of genuine sequel in which every question gets answered and everything is wrapped up and happy ever after and whatnot. it was just where my brain wandered in the same way it wanders when i watch an open-ended movie. all of that to say, if you think she lives, then she lives. if you think she dies, then she dies. it’s your decision. i’d much rather you choose than me. i never marked this as “major character” death on ao3 because, well, she doesn’t die in this fic. whether or not she dies after the fic ends, that’s for you to decide. 

thank you for taking the time to read my writing. i never expected this to blow up (it blew up for me at least, for a while it was my most popular fic ever, with i think thousands more hits than anything else i’d written) and the response has been mind-boggling and wonderful. i don’t respond to comments often because it makes me feel like a pompous jerk (”thank you for enjoying this! i, too, enjoy this thing i have written! oh ho ho!” is how it sounds to me in my head, whereas when other writers respond to comments to me it just looks like thanks man have a good day, feel free to call me a weenie) but i’ve appreciated all of them very much. THANK YOU! i hope your new year is a Whole Lot Less Shit than 2020. i don’t plan on writing more msr because i don’t really have any ideas for them. thank you for making my last time special <3

[yuutta]

top 5 gifsets you've made (as in, your personal favs and not necessarily most notes)

oh man idk if its bad that all of these edits are like over 6 months old lol (although in my defense ive been giffing very little for the past several months):

5.https://yuutta.tumblr.com/post/631609608592621569/atla-the-nine-enneagram-types - ok when i first posted this one i wasnt happy w it at all buut looking back it actually looks quite nice i think

4.https://yuutta.tumblr.com/post/629633792698646528/katara-the-monomyth-the-heros-journey-the - i had a lot of fun w this. im certainly not smart/literate enough to write meta but i love edits that allow for some pseduo-meta.. like trying to map kataras arc to these steps

3.https://yuutta.tumblr.com/post/633133442458075136/children-of-war-by-visit-ba-sing-se - very happy w how the colors/blending turned out. also the original poem was so good

2.https://yuutta.tumblr.com/post/629540796668035072/atla-the-12-literary-archetypes-insp - i had SO much fun making this one too.. w like trying to figure out which character i thought best fit which category. and i was rly happy w the end result !!

1. https://yuutta.tumblr.com/post/635952361685336064/top-10-atla-fight-scenes-as-voted-by-my - I liked this one so much i ended up making another 15 sets in this exact style ghjk

thanks so much for the ask!!! it was rly fun searching through my old edits to pick my faves & remembering how much fun i had making them :’)

ask me my top 5 anything

#thank u sm!!!! #ask games #aang-the-monk

[lesbianbernardsumner]

Hey! Its thing >:)!

Its the thing i was teasing at in that post last night, and technically for like... four months? five? huh its been a bit since i second changed my url huh. Im not gonna go check or anything. If I were a bit more patient i wouldve waited for the archive collection become canon but im not. funfacterdroid is just more of my bran! Anyway! This post is my first impressions and opinions on each song on Back to the Egg! The Wings album i temporarily renamed myself after. (told ya i was gonna ramble wasnt i ydbfyufjd). It also happens to be the only wings album i havent listened to yet. And sure theres a bunch of singles and b-sides i havent listened to either, but this is the last one! I figured it should get some of its own treatment! I know that its gonna sound different to London Town and the two before it, cause McCulloch and English arent here. I’ve also heard that this album is bad and people called Paul a sellout because he transitioned to New Wave. New Wave is my favorite genre and I guess Wings werent ever that far from it? But they’re still a rock band at heart so i dont know how that change is going to fare. Enough introduction: Lets just go track by track! -Side One: Sunny Side Up-

Reception: Its just some radio garble, an instrumental meant to introduce the album. dont really have any opinions on it. Getting Closer: JAHBUDHSAUHJDHS WOAH WOAH WOAH!!! I didnt expect such a threatening title to be so upbeat. Like... opposite of Beware My Love. I do think its odd that there is barely any backup singing? Its not horrible just weird that this song, out of all the openers, doesnt. That outro is very much meant to be like a darker part of the song, like the dream sequence from A Day In The Life, but god dammit this song is just so upbeat! so weirdly cheerful and gentle! And... only 3 minutes? Rockshow and Jet were 4... eh those albums had a lot less songs, this one has 13 not counting Reception! Same as London Town, which i also really like! We’re Open Tonight: Oooohhh!! Very soft, I think I know what its about but when taken literally, to me it sounds like a quaint little shop trying to lure you in, sinisterly. I think the bass is making it sound evil to me, but thats a great thing! Clearly its trying to be like another I’m Carrying but that song fucking sucks!!!!!! I also really like how its only 1 minute, something so haunting about it. Not sure if thats positive or negative but the songs cool! Spin It On: hHEHEYEHY!! Getting Closer.... 2! kinda. Its much much faster and i can barely understand the words hes saying... or what hes spinning. The backing vocals are really cool though. the lyrics mention a pinball table? Y.. you know pinball doesn't spin right? it falls.... Questionable lyrics aside, theres really not a lot of SPEEDY Wings songs! Glad that one of the few is also extremely good!

Again and Again and Again: WOW OKAY! this is sung by denny, all of these songs start pretty fast unlike a good chunk of their past work, but i really like that! But it also means i cannot process a single thing denny is saying, i think he said something about a school? and being in a bad situation? ah whatever. Denny used to be in an R&B band and i really think thats going to work here! This isnt an exactly a Rhythm-y or Bluesey song, but He’s clearly having fun! thats why i love wings in general, its easy to tell that the band was having fun recording a song! Old Siam, Sir: A-hmm. Paul’s doing his squeaky voice again... I guess that can work sometimes but its absolutely not complimenting the piano in the background. Also, I feel like a squeaky voice wouldnt work the best for a story song. A story thats pretty incomprehensible too? Who is this lady! What the fuck is this village!! This is the song you wanted to make 4 minutes? and it fades out too... how much did they record... Arrow Through Me: So this is the one that the critics liked? Its the most synth heavy which i understand why people like, I like synths too! I like how the bass (which i think is also from a synth?) lines up perfectly with the horns! Its alright, it might grow on me later, but now its just a passable song. One i wouldnt skip. Plus I really like the reverb effects, the whole album has em but this one really makes use!! Kinda bad overall though.

-Side Two: Over Easy- Rockestra Theme: Just an instrumental. But one thats really important to music history! I don’t actually know the full story to this one, but I do know that i really like it! Plus the vocal effects on Paul’s... Scatting i guess you could call it? Whatever it is, it works! To You: This sounds... eerily like Getting Closer. But bad... Eh I like that organ. Not much to say really... theres only like one verse. After the Ball / Million Miles: Oh cool another medley. Last one we got was two albums ago! I guess since this is technically two songs id have to... review them both? After the Ball is exactly what it sounds like. A gentle rock song about seeing your love after a party :)! Pretty standard for wings. Million Miles! Sounds a lot like After the Ball but with an accordian? Fuck I’m not complaining. But also who the fuck is Deo. Winter Rose / Love Awake: Uh- Something is,,, wrong with Paul’s voice. like he damaged it? I mean its not horrible it just kinda takes me out of the emersion? Oh we’re already on Love Awake! his voice is fine now..! Man this song is mediocre! No wonder the 70s are regarded as lame./lh Weird that Linda isn’t singing backup here? Or if she is that Denny’s voice is just drowning her out. Winter Rose itself is kinda lame but its... sweeter I guess?  The Broadcast: SINISTER!!!!!!! I do not know who is talking but this sounds... dystopian. I don’t even know what the poem is about its just... the whole song is slightly off. But i mean that in a good way! So Glad to See You Here: MAN! They were trying so hard to be punk... Okay as a punk song this sounds horrible! But as a song in general i like it! It’s not mixed the best but i really like the lyrics! And I-HOLY SHIT WE’RE OPEN TONIGHT PART TWO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I really didnt expect that,,, thats.... genuinely cool! Baby’s Request: Oh the finale! H..huh... Jazzy! And its about going to sleep.. i think? Regardless, Paul’s good at writing songs to fall asleep to, this isnt an exception at all!! Although it is weird that at the end the same horn plays as the one in Thrillington’s Monkberry Moon Delight... Its probably just a coincidence, i thought it was funny though. ---- Okay! Overall, I liked Sunny Side-Up more as a whole since i like 4/6 of its songs, but MAN So Glad to See You Here and Baby’s Request are REALLLY GOOD-But then again. I only listened to all of these songs once, and i wont listen to them again until ive finished writing this post, just to keep my first impressions fresh. I don’t really know what else to say that album was fun as hell! So I’d give Back To The Egg a... 7.8/10! I really didnt expect to like it this much. even though New Wave is my favorite music genre, i didnt think paul would be able to do it justice! Especially since the genre was just starting itself up... heh.... hope it gets archived soon.

#vialogue #rambling #BACKTOTHEEGGARCHIVECOLLECTION IS FAKE NOW!!! IM FREE TO BE FUNFACTERDROID AGAIN!!!!!! #also if youve listened to it feel free to share your opinions too... #now. i can.. make a playlist i guess? #im not good at making playlists at all dyshbfdshj #i just go to a band's tab and shuffle all of their music #anyway. im going to leech off these songs for like 4 weeks now bye bye/lh #temporary sequeuetary #<- no way in hell im posting this immediately yusgbu #long post

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

Production ask game if its still going, Andrea Chenier or Werther

Hello! 19th-century operas about 18th-century poets, go!

Andrea Chenier:

Disclaimer: I’m not delusional enough to say I know this opera super-well because I don’t, but I know enough to say “Let’s do this anyway.”

I do feel like this opera could work outside of period, but I would personally prefer to set it in period because a) I feel like that’s where it makes most sense, b) I’m a sucker for anything related to the French Revolution, and c) I’m also a sucker for Rococo stuff. (Related: give me all the Rococo for Act I.)

I believe this opera is about two things: class conflict and mob mentality. 

Class Conflict: One of the reasons I want all the Rococo for Act I is to set up that inevitable revolution: you have all the grandeur on one hand, and people who are starving in the streets, or being worked to the bone for nothing, on the other. So there should be both incredibly over-the-top 18th-century setpieces and costumes and extremely ragged, muted costumes for the peasants. Chenier should be somewhere between the two: maybe a stylish but muted-color costume for him. And as for the whole “coming up with a poem” plotline of the first act, I’d try to make it clear that at first, he’s trying to come up with something that’ll fit his audience’s sensibilities, but he can’t because the reality of poverty and tyranny cannot be ignored. I’m not 100% sure how I’d do that, though. I’d also have the peasants turn a little bit destructive to further emphasize how out-of-touch everyone at the ball has to be in order to continue as if nothing ever happened- the evidence is right there, with the room having been partially destroyed.

Mob Mentality: There’s this really wonderful interplay going on between characters and chorus: the characters are able to manipulate the chorus for better or worse (mostly worse), and there’s this general atmosphere of intrigue where almost no one can trust anyone else- betrayal runs rampant, and not even young boys are safe from the zeal for the Revolution. Am I saying the chorus is necessarily bad? No (and in Act I, despite whatever damage they cause, they are good). However, their noble ideas are twisted by their own sense of “you are even suspected without cause and you die”. With that, I’d try to emphasize the inescapability of the chorus (maybe through having them onstage more often) and have the set (and also possibly chorus) literally close in on the principals until it’s just a small space in Act IV.

Also, lots of dark muted colors for Acts II-IV, except for the very end, which has this transcendent, light-filled “Liebestod” feeling, so make it bright and open the set back up as Chenier and Maddalena decide to take control of their own end and go out together. :)

Werther:

Period: It does not matter super-much to me, although personally, I really like the idea of an early-20th-century Werther who’s drawn to existentialist and/or nihilist ideas although he cannot bring himself to fully accept them.

Costumes: Since everyone in this opera is part of this sober-minded village except Werther, a lot of subdued colors and styles for the costumes- pretty, okay, but bland. Werther, on the other hand, is dressed in what was once a very nice out-of-period (partly too far back and partly too far forward) yellow-and-blue outfit but has now become a little faded around the edges and looks more like one of those outfits you see wanderers wearing in paintings. But it has to be yellow and blue. Come on @ every production that doesn’t have him wear yellow and blue.

The way the prelude got staged in the 2014 Met production broke my heart in so many ways and it was good, so I’d do something like that. Also, I really want to see Charlotte running through the snow, so I’d stage That One Interlude too. (All the onstage snow!)

Sets: The outdoor sets should be really beautiful and should capture the specific months (July, September, December), while the indoor sets should be more...stifling.

Psychological elements are everything in this opera, especially in regards to both Werther and Charlotte, who both seem like they’re losing their minds slowly because of all the societal pressure. They both try to lose themselves in other things, from writing to daily married life to reading to religion, but their own love and all the baggage that come with it are undeniable and inescapable. So whoever Werther and Charlotte are played by, they’d have to be really good actors in order to portray that kind of psychological anguish (also, Charlotte commits suicide after Werther dies. You know she does.)

I’d also try to do something with the Christmas-carol bookend: despite everything that’s happened, ultimately, nothing changes. It’s still that little, innocent, stifling village with the children happily singing, oblivious to the wider world and the problems that come with it. I’m not sure how best to capture that (maybe because I’m not an experienced director), but I have that idea, and that’s the beginning. :)

I hope you enjoy!

[poetic-beats]

Hello. Please Read.

Hi, 

As you will notice my blog has changed up recently. I have neglected it over the past 8-9 months and just recently got back onto posting my musings and works on here. I never stopped writing I just didnt come onto this tumblr to share.

I am amazed at how many followers I have thank you all I am so ever grateful to have such amazing caring followers who will message me and reach out to me.

I am always here for you too anon or private messaging its cool and if you ever wanna talk off tumblr that can happen to i have a discord an insta and twitter. 

I have recently been posting about my teespring and now my patreon i created late last night.

I don’t want to spam you all with SUPPORT ME links and such too much. I really don’t.

I am waiting on getting a new psychiatrist my old one laughed at my GP when he asked me to be referred back to her as she discharged me on the 3rd appointment with her. (my old amazing psychiatrist retired).

Long story short I’ve gotta complain to PALS escalate complaints GP has to meet with me and write a referral form and reasoning as to why I need to go to a whole other psychiatrists place outside of my village catchment area. 

She also sent the most awful horrible final discharge letter knowing that we’d discussed I’d need PIP (DLA) because I am not able to work rn. I am mentally unstable I believe I am in the midst of a big Bipolar depressive relapse and my periods have started again (implant) making my BPD and in general emotions all over the place. I need to get medication besides my anti depressants FOR the bipolar. 

I need therapy. I need PIP. But I would have to present a letter and the letter would be my discharge one. In which she is unprofessional and trashes me to pieces. I’d never get PIP with it no one would.

I am also being referred to a specialist in London for FND testing google FND HOPE for more info on that if you dont know what it is.

I also was diagnosed in march after a trip to the hospital and 3 months bed bound with FGID. I have just got a referral letter in to see a dietician. It may sound mild but it left me in agonising pain dizziness blurry vision and i couldnt even keep liquids down hence i ended up in hospital on fluids)

This is not a pity story nor a sob story. I just wanted to clarify and add background as to why I am attempting a more flexible online business model for myself aka merch on teespring....patreon rewards such as commission pieces and now Ko-fi. 

I can barely stand for longer than 10 mins still and if im out walking I can just about manage 30mins on a good day before i get severe uncontrollable movements usually in my arms. Legit was in Holland and Barrett getting the white vego bars and my hand jerked and the chocolate went flying with force and hit the back of the display shelf. I struggle to even grip things such as knife and fork. I shake badly in my hands like tremors etc. My mind is fuzzy..i was scared i’d lose my ability to write i literally forgot the word for ‘window’ and ‘coaster’ ive also misread words entirely. Like i came out of a shop thinking i’d got my mum salmon and cream cheese it was salmon and cucumber. Like what?? 

I also go catatonic i wasnt aware of this til my mum witnessed it multiple times over easter bank holiday. This could either be my Bipolar or a symptom of the FND i dont really know tbh. Ive been dissociating a lot too. And just today i had an hour or so of on and off full body shock like feeling jerks. Oh and sometimes i cannot even swallow my own saliva. In fact this happens a lot. and often leads to me gagging and puking if i cant get to a bin or toilet to stand and spit it out until my body decides it’ll let me swallow again. 

My balance and spatial awareness is off too last week i hit into the door twice and now have a giant ass bruise all the way up my arm. it was one day after the other. So that probs made it bruise worse. 

Okay this is a long ass post I apologise.

Again I guess ultimately i am explaining this all to you. Because of my anxiety. I always feel like being a writer or creator. Isnt a ‘real’job. or that people will send me hate and nasty comments. Like when around a year ago i was doing comissions some people would message me asking about it. I’d tell them it was a £1 for 5 poems (really undersold my work) and they’d shout at me in caps telling me it should be free or tell me to get a real job. I mean if you’d pay for a poetry book or novel why shouldnt you pay for effecitvely what would have been an ebook of an independent writer?

I just dont want any hate. And i know this post could go either of two ways. Either hate even more for me because it could be seen as a sob story pity guilty trip thing which I REALLY AM NOT trying to do. 

Or it could deter potential nasty messages or comments because people might realise oh okay shes legit unable to work rn at least. and she cant even get benefits because my ex psychiatrist is a twothole who hates me and the mentally ill in general. 

But who knows.

Link for my Ko-fi is in this whole ass text post just click some where and it’ll show ya.

#please read #read #long post #poetry #poet #poets of tumblr #prsnl #not poetry #support #ko-fi #commissions #comissions #commission #poetry community

[yes-arah-blog]

Not your fault ; soins personnels series 1

Honestly, I don’t exactly know what this blog is gonna be about ; and i’m not quite sure how to start an article off so i’ll just start of with my best shot and introduce myself. Hi, if you couldn’t tell my name’s Arah. The title basically says it all, and here’s the first ‘warning’. i’m about to write some personal self acceptance shit, and it may be a little explicit. I think this is the part where I say I warned you. 

For a long time i’ve almost been raising myself, and i’ve went through a lot of what you could call, hardships. Going through these though have actuality taught me a lot of self acceptance and other important characteristics. I’m gonna start from the beginning so hopefully you can kinda see an overview here. Basically from the time I was nine, I was a child to a single mother. We weren’t rich and a lot of the time my mom was gone during the night trying to do jobs to get any cash she could. She worked hard, and tried to make do with what she could. Fast forward a year later she decided to make a life altering decision, that we didn’t know at the time and move to Hawaii. 

Little did I know that this was the beginning to a long walk through hell. She didn’t technically have a house set up on the islands so we just kinda moved from house to house, until eventually she got an small apartment and meet my step dad. Fast forward another year, she marry’s my step dad and we move back to the states and it all starts to go down hill. It was fine the first couple weeks we got there until about two months in. My mom started going at all night and day, would get in constant fight’s with my step dad, and suddenly decided it would be fun to make my life hell. In a summary my days were usually, if not the same, very similar to this. 

I would wake up for school, and depending on what shift my step dad was on, he would either be sleeping or off to work. I’d take the bus to school and I would walk back after school and my mom wouldn’t be there still. My step dad would come home from work shortly after and we would spend time together. Those were basically the weekends to and sometimes if we were lucky my mother would come home before midnight. 

If you’ve noticed this should NEVER be a routinely thing for anyone. Around the age of fifteen I got my first phone. It was around Christmas and my step dad’s parents had even put it on their plan. My mom, however was furious. Whenever she brought up a fight it would usually revolve around two things. 

1. Money, and always ‘needing’ more of it

2. Me and my personal life. 

It got to a point where she would attack me over as something as little as a phone. I remember the epiphany I had in one particular fight however. To make a long story short I had found some very illegal drugs in her car, she woke me up, my step dad woke up. Then she attacked me (Like an actual attack, as in jumping on my back and pulling my hair, some full on Jersey shores shit here folks) and it ended with me going in the hospital. This would one of the first times i’d be quite literally on the brink of death. I remember my vision being blurry, and I had a burning sensation in the back of my throat and it felt like my head was being stabbed with a knife. I really thought to myself, that I never wanted to get so angry to the point that I would physically attack someone. 

Obviously being in an abusive household with a drug addict parent toke a mental tole on me. It saddens me because I do in fact realize that some of victims blame them self’s for something completely out of their control. To get to my point I DON’T CARE WHAT ANYONE SAYS IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT AND THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU ! Within the span of ten years ive been through a life time of hurt, and for the longest time I did blame myself for the series of unfortunate events happening around me. 

Unfortunately we live in a screwed up society, that when those of us who are brave enough to speak up about our problem’s (Weather that be mental or physical) we either get shot down and called attention whores. Or we get degraded by those who encourage us to help, get sent to these psychiatric facility’s ; were put on a bunch of drugs when maybe, all we really need was something as simple as a hug and for someone to tell us that were gonna be okay. There’s this poem I like to read sometimes, and it goes like this. 

I don’t like 

depending on people

because people 

leave

all the time. 

Because at the end of the day

all you have is 

yourself

and that has to be 

enough.

- A.M. 

Honestly i’ve always been terrible at explaining things or trying to get my point across. And I guess what i’m trying to get at is bad things happen to good people all the time. It really suck’s and I know it’s easy to break down and I know it’s not fair but ; it’s how you continue to live your life is what matters. Because in the end, in the final analysis of this question it’s not always why but instead it’s how we intend to respond to the tragedy. 

In a realization I can see how negative thing’s keep happening ; and we start to question what is morally right and wrong. But in this questioning please remember the strongest people are the one’s who break down when nobody can see. They’re the teenagers up at three a.m. crying because of whatever reason, and they’re the single parents working past three p.m. to provide for their children. Please realize that stability isn’t always shown where everyone can see ; kindness isn’t weakness and sometimes people cry not because their weak but because they’ve been being strong for everyone else for a long time.

 It is okay to break down and it is okay to cry, and scream. But it is never okay to blame yourself. 

Sometime’s life may seem like a huge over rated Shakespearean tragedy, but when you look back you’ll realize it was just full of hardships. You’re going to be okay. Occasionally we just have to find some serenity in life and take it day by day ; just slow down from the rush that everyone’s in and take a deep breath every so often. Understand the bigger picture may not be black and white, but instead have a lot of grey area. You may not honestly be able to look back and say “Yeah, this is why I did this”. ‘Cause sometimes, both the good and bad things are out of your control. 

When you’re passing through struggles you may not be okay until you let go. Hell, you may not even be okay until you admit that you’re not okay. But if you can keep going. If you can keep getting up knowing you’re gonna get pushed down again ; Ive said this a lot and ill try to make this my last time but you’ll be okay. We’re the broken society, the stereotypes, the emotional bunch. I think in a way we’ve all been broken, we’ve got knocked down, we’ve felt a type of pain you cant get rid of with medicine and chicken soup ; but we’ve got back up. minute after minute, day after day and year after year. We cry river’s, bleed ourselves more than a war, but we never run. There’s always a way to get back up, and it may take a long time to realize that ; Not gonna lie, life can be a kick in the ass but eventually we reach a certain point. 

We reach a point where we don’t care. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s not ; my advice is this : Do what you love and do it unapologetically. 

#article #blog #blogpost #abuse #rant

[unsexy-leprechaun]

Stormy Weather 2 Review (spoilers)

so yeah, the latest ep was a clip show.

- at least it came as part of a block rather than a stand alone anticipated episode

-did they really need to include the transformation sequences of rena and cara in the flashback.

- nora was present which is always a plus

-there was some new content and an organic reason to be flashing back at least

-stormy’s motive was kind of meh like she is teased about being akumafied and so becomes akumafied.

-we did get some new character perspectives like nathalie and gabe so we get a bit more villain motivation.

-they unfortunately seem to be going the ‘look gabe is a good parent deep down’ route rather than just pretending to be kind to adri to keep him placated which is what i had originally taken from the hug scene.

-they really did try to make it look like chloe has changed even though all they did is make her a hero. any development ends with each ep, like this akuma was caused by chloe being her regular self again.

-yeah they really put chat and bug’s transformations in the flashback (in water and ice versions at least), as well as having their normal transformations in current time

-the volcano causing the earth to move away from the sun thing was... interesting science. i get the feeling that it was originally the volcano causing an ash cloud that spreads around the world and blocks out the sun, which is a thing that does cause ice ages, rather than.... whatever actually happened, its kind of vague how the planet misaligned from a volcano. 

- i do absolutely love that they just describe the battle from a civillian perspective, like yeah they really do dumb weird shit that saves the day and its amazing.

- they have chloe using her bee status to say she is better than ladynoir at their job which is... interesting characterisation when she looks up to ladybug but wtv ive given up on her arc making sense.

- marinette has literally spend full days with adrien acting like a functioning human being (mostly) in kung food and gamer and gorizilla, but sure lets pretend writing a posted note is progress. and that shes never been able to talk to him normally.

- I’m salty about plagg saying ladybug ‘stood them up’ on the candle rooftop when she said she probs wouldnt be there but sure whatever floats ur boat.

-THIS BOY RECOGNISES MATCHING HANDWRITING FROM A LETTER FROM MONTHS AGO, BUT DOESNT PICK UP ON THE TONS OF MORE OBVIOUS STUFF UP TIL NOW. yeah ok, sure. his perceptiveness is well established as awful and yet... plot convenience. I’ll take it.

-OH MY GOOOOOODDDD, URGHHHHH. ‘writes you a romantic poem on a heart card and send it to you on valentines day’ *remembers she has photos of u in her room and blurts out about a crush on you before denying it* yeah friend valentines. at least he’s consistant

- he remembers the luka scene which gives me hives from having to watch again, i’m not super caring about the shipping stuff but luka being on screen activates my fight or flight, i need to spray holy water at the screen.

- because of that he deduces they cant be the same person writing like ? mari could be in love with 2 people, or have written it before luka was a thing, but yeah at least he isnt taking handwritting profiles as fact.

#miraculous ladybug #stormy weather 2

[theotherpages]

National Poetry Month #9 - Catullus - Catullus IV

Every rock and roll band occasionally does a ballad. Why? I have no idea, but I assume that they need something slow and easy to sing after bouts of energetic screaming and bashing. In more general terms, even when you’re really good at something, you need to try other things from time to time.

Today we’re going to hop in the Wayback Machine and go sixteen centuries back before Grimald, and talk about about Catullus ( Gaius Valerius Catullus) a Roman poet from the first century BCE. Some 116 of his poems survive to the present day. I was amused to see that half of these are still part of the current AP Latin syllabus.

Catullus, like Grimald, lived in a time of war and turbulence, near the end of the Roman Republic.  He wrote a wide variety of poems, including many short epigrams, and also many poems to his live interest, Clodia. He was a fan of the Greek poet Sappho, so his pet name for her was Lesbia. To students who have studied Latin in school, Catullus was sampled repeatedly, but with much care by our teachers. He could be humorous, and he loved a good insult, but much of it is so sexually explicit that it is difficult to discuss in polite company. Whenever there is a literal and a deeper meaning, teachers were quick to steer conversation into safer waters - which leads us to today’s poem, which has always been one of my favorites.

I think it shows, beautifully, that when the rock & roll poet of his era decided to write something serious instead, the result can be lyrical and memorable. Here it is first, in the original Latin: (don’t worry, you can skip down, I don’t really expect you to read it)

Catullus IV

Phaselus ille, quem videtis, hospites, ait fuisse navium celerrimus, neque ullius natantis impetum trabis nequisse praeterire, sive palmulis opus foret volare sive linteō. Et hoc negat minacis hadriatici negāre litus Insulāsve Cycladās Rhodumque nobilem horridamque Thraciam Propontida trucemve Ponticum sinum, ubi iste post phaselus antea fuit comāta silva; nam Cyrōtiō in iugō loquente saepe sibilum edidit coma. Amastri Pontica et Cytore buxifer, tibi haec fuisse et esse cognitissima ait phaselus, ultimā ex origine tuō stetisse dicit in cacūmine, tuō imbuisse palmulās in aequore, et inde tot per impotentia fretā erum tulisse (laevă sive dexterā vocaret aura, sive utrumque Iuppiter simul secundus incidisset in pedem), neque ulla vota litoralibus deis sibi esse facta, cum veniret a mari novissimo hunc ad usque limpidum lacum. Sed haec prius fuere: nunc reconditā senet quiete seque dedicat tibi, gemelle Castor et gemelle Castoris. 

-- Catullus

And here is my favorite translation (and yes, I had to use the Wayback machine to find it. I wrote it down in 1975). It is about a boat the speaker once traveled on, that he now sees at rest. There are some nice metaphors here on youth and age, excitement, and reaching the end of life. It has a different viewpoint, but bears some similarities to  Tennyson’s Ulysses.

Catullus IV

This ship, friends, tells us it has sailed, Declares it flew upon the sea And, birdlike, flew more rapidly Than all the rest. Swift ships have failed To catch her when they race with oar and sheet. All met with quick defeat, She won the Adriatic’s praise And praise of the Cyclades, Of noble Rhodes, of Thracian seas, Windy and rough, and of the bays Of savage Pontus: she’s made journeys there When other’s wouldn’t dare. Before she traveled far away, Her mast in old Cytoris wood Was once a stately tree and stood And spoke in whispers, and they say Amastis’ and Cytoris’ summits heard Her softly murmured word. This ship says these things were known To them, when she with rustling hair Stood lonely on a summit there: That she in waters madly blown Would steep her palms, and gliding coolly by Scorn every stormy sky. I sailed with her, and I saw how She tacked to right and left and knew The winds of Jupiter which blew Upon her sails or on her bow, She made no vows to gods who ruled the seas But weathered all storms with ease. She made her final Odyssey To this calm bay where she will stay And age in peace and where she may Repose, protected from the sea. Sacred to Castor and his twin, This Ship Has made her final trip. -- Catullus

I remembered this so well, in fact, many decades later, that when I wrote Ethos, the fifth book in The Republic of Dreams, I made one of the key elements of the story a boat named the Tyche (Fortune), whose existence mirror’s Catullus poem (perhaps with a bit bumper ride, though). One of the voices of the series, poet Natalia Yeka, writes an homage to it, echoing Catullus:

 Last Voyage of the Tyche (in the style of Catullus IV)

[Written upon seeing the boat at anchor off Ashkelon]

This boat you see before you, my friends,   Was once the fastest of ships. If her sails and spars could speak, they would attest   How, birdlike, she flew upon the swells, And fled more rapidly before the wind than all the rest. Swift ships of many flags have failed to catch her   As they raced with engine, oar, and unfurled sheet, Every one of them met with quick defeat,   For never was any other hull even half so fleet. She sailed the steep Dalmatian coast,  Flew swiftly through Aegean seas Trading from Rhodes to Thracian shores.   In times of mystery, intrigue, and war, She crossed the Red, Black, and Alborán with ease. Through raging storms and writhing waves,   Round rocky shoals and windswept bays, She’s taken her fearless crew to places where   Other captains would never dare. The trees from which her soul was made   Once stood stately on a mountainside, Weathering wind and rain and conversing with the sky   Asking Aeolus to teach them to fly. And you know, my friends, that he answered. You see her now at rest, not in her accustomed waters deep,   But in the stillness of this harbor. She has made her final Odyssey and earned her sleep   As once she earned her keep, There is only one question I must answer:   Tell me, does Fortune have a daughter? – Natalia Yeka, American Poet (22nd Century CE)

Do you think my high school Latin teacher would be impressed that I still remember this stuff 42 years later? --Steve

#catullus #catullus IV #catullus 4 #national poetry month #rome #roman #latin #poem #poet #poetry #the other pages #theotherpages.org #the republic of dreams #ethos #natalia yeka

[glisteria]

all of the nsfw asks pls ?

(lowkey doin it bc u asked even tho i wanna do it anyways)

1. Are looks important in a relationship?•In my personal opinion? No. If you focus truly on the outside you may never find someone you connect with that is pretty too yknow? If that makes sense??

2. Are relationships ever worth it?• Of course

3. Are you a virgin?•No

4. Are you in a relationship?•God i wish i was

5. Are you in love?•Wouldnt classify it as love? but maybe

6. Are you single this year?• Uhhh for the most part

7. Can you commit to one person?• Yes

8. Describe your crush•Well you see im weird and like boy a guy AND a girl so ill give u 2 description? The guy is loud and stupidly funny and is a dweeb. The girl is cute asf and very smart and talented plus i keep circling back to acting like a school girl over her so 👀

9. Describe your perfect mate• Someone i can talk with. Make jokes and be comfortable around. Someone who understands my weird mood shifts or try’s to understand

10. Do you believe in love at first sight?• Maybe

11. Do you ever want to get married?•Depends ask me in 10 or so years

12. Do you forgive betrayal?•Depends on how bad it was

13. Do you get jealous easily?•Honestly situational but sometimes yes

14. Do you have a crush on anyone?•Ya yeet

15. Do you have any piercings?•Oh dude ya i have 3 per ear and would like more

16. Do you have any tattoos?•Cat on my inner right ankle (want more tho)

17. Do you like kissing in public?•Yes

20. Do you shower every day?•Try to but #depression

21. Do you think someone has feelings for you?•Haha i thought so but then he decided he didnt wanna be around me :)

22. Do you think someone is thinking about you right now?•Hope so. maybe not im a dISASTER

23. Do you think you can last in a relationship for 6 months and not cheat?• Yes

24. Do you think you’ll be married in 5 years?• 🤷🏻‍♀️

25. Do you want to be in a relationship this year?• Plz

26. Has anyone told you they don’t want to ever lose you?• Yes

27. Has someone ever written a song or poem for you?• No but i for them

28. Have you ever been cheated on?• No

29. Have you ever cheated on someone?•No but i was ‘the other girl once’ and i regret

30. Have you ever considered plastic surgery? If so, what would you change about your body?•Idk smth about my stomach? Breast reduction

31. Have you ever cried over a guy/girl?•Oh yea all the time

32. Have you ever experienced unrequited love?• HA yes

33. Have you ever had sex with a man?•Yes

34. Have you ever had sex with a woman?•Not technically

35. Have you ever kissed someone older than you?• 👀 yes

36. Have you ever liked one of your best friends?• Oh yes the cliché friends to lovers trope. Yes ive fallen for friends

37. Have you ever liked someone who your friends hated?• OH YES

38. Have you ever liked someone you didn’t expect to?• 👀 Sophomore year looking @ u

39. Have you ever wanted someone you couldn’t have?• Do idols count

40. Have you ever written a song or poem for someone?• Ya

41. Have you had sex so far this year?• HA in a dream yea

42. How long can you just kiss until your hands start to wander?• Depends on the persons preferences

43. How long was your longest relationship?•6 months

44. How many boyfriends/girlfriends have you had?• I dunno 6?

45. How many people did you kiss in 2012/2013?• Considering i was 13/14 from what i can remember not many

46. How many times did you have sex last year?��� 0

47. How old are you?• 18

48. If the person you like says they like someone else, what would you say?•Id support them because the heart wants what it wants

49. If you have a boyfriend/girlfriend, what is your favorite thing about him/her?• Physically probably their eyes and hands

50. If your first true love knocked on your door with apology and presents, would you accept?•No absolutely not

51. Is there a boy/girl who you would do absolutely everything for?•Yes multiple

52. Is there anyone you’ve given up on? Why?• Yes and because i cared too much and he cared not at all

53. Is there someone mad because you’re dating/talking to the person you are?• I have friends who dont like my other friends if that counts

54. Is there someone you will never forget?• Of couese

55. Share a relationship story.• Haha i dunno. Most are bad

56. State 8 facts about your body• I have a tattoo. I have horrible acne. My right ankle cracks if i bend it. I have a random hard spot on my right leg. I have a large belly. I have a freckle on the outside of my right hand. 3 holes in each ear. I have large brown eyes

57. Things you want to say to an ex• Please stop toying with my even though you are out of my life

58. What are five ways to win your heart?• Be kind to me. Dont pressure me into anything and let me be the way i am. Plz dont make fun of my obsession with kpop or certain games. Food? Literally just like me. Bam you got me

59. What do you look like? (Post a picture!)• HNNNNN ill send (the asker) a selfie

60. What is the biggest age difference between you and any of your partners?• 2 years

61. What is the first thing you notice in someone?• Personality wise probably sense of humor and physically eyes and hands bc dont talk to me i love em

62. What is the sexiest thing someone could ever do for/to you?• Like me?

63. What is your definition of “having sex”?• Situational imo

64. What is your definition of cheating?• Romantic/Sexual advances or actions with someone that isnt your partner without exolicit permission

65. What is your favourite foreplay routine?• Idk kiss me and let’s figure it out

66. What is your favourite roleplay?• Not gonna out myself

67. What is your idea of the perfect date?• Listen to music and talk

68. What is your sexual orientation?• Idk? I like someone for who they are not what they are

69. What turns you off?• I dunno honestly been too long

70. What turns you on?• haha not gonna out myself too much but uhh anything on my neck/behind my ears. Praise like fuck

71. What was your kinkiest wet dream?• Never had a wet dream :)

72. What words do you like to hear during sex?• My name honestly

73. What’s something sweet you’d like someone to do for you?• Idk. Write something about me on their page? Tag me in smth nice? hug me? come to ohio and socialize with me? (come see the nutcracker and phantom of the opera with me this month plz plz)

74. What’s the most superficial characteristic you look for?• Idk

75. What’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for you?• I honestly dont know?

76. What’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever done for someone?• I dunno. Wrote a song to make them feel better? Sent them a whole care package when they were depressed? idk

77. What’s your opinion on age differences in relationships?• As long as its legal idc

78. What’s your dirtiest secret?• O boyo if you wanna know you gotta dm me

79. When was the last time you felt jealous? Why?• Literally any time my friends do something without me or with a new friend

80. When was the last time you told someone you loved them?• Other than friendly and parents probably about a month? i just masked it as friendly?

81. Who are five people you find attractive?•The Person who asked this 👀•Literally all my kpop boys• uhh

82. Who is the last person you hugged?•My dad

83. Who was your first kiss with?• His name was John

84. Why did your last relationship fail?• He decided his ex who was manipulative was better than me

85. Would you ever date someone off of the Internet?• Yes. I actually have

#asks #musicrazorsuicide

[gogh-bot-blog]

Everything Else

Originally published in Gravel magazine.

Mozart was crazy. Flat fucking crazy. Batshit, I hear. But his music’s not crazy; it’s balanced, it’s nimble, it’s crystalline clear. There’s harmony, logic. You listen to these, you don’t hear his doubts or his debts or disease. You scan through the score and put fingers on keys and you play. And everything else goes away. Everything else goes away… — “Everything Else”, Next to Normal   My favorite confessional poet is Anne Sexton, who committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning at age 45. A book of her poetry, published posthumously, featured her therapist:   I have words for you, Dr. Y., / words for sale. / Words that have been hoarded up, / waiting for the pleasure act of coming out, / hugger-mugger, higgiliy-piggily / onto the stage.   When I was in kindergarten, a boy hit me in the forehead with a toy truck during playtime because I asked to play with him. I sat in the corner and cried. Eventually, the teacher called me over. What’s wrong? she asked me. I don’t have any friends, I replied, sniffling. The teacher called all of the kids to the front of the classroom and asked them to raise their hands if they were my friend. Everybody raised their hands. I don’t know why, but this was probably the moment that I became crazy.   Or maybe I was crazy all along.   She laughed when I told her this story. She said it was incredibly sad and funny. I’m glad she saw how funny it was. Then she asked me, have you ever written about this?

Eunoia is a dated term for mental health. Literally, it means beautiful thinking. However, some of the most beautiful thinking has been done by people with mental illness. Consider the incredible artistic achievements of people like Vincent van Gogh, Virginia Woolf, and Sylvia Plath. And if you look for mental illness in artists, writers, poets, musicians; the list goes on.   We were running about Whole Foods. I say running because she kept forgetting things on her list and going back. We probably circled around the store three or four times, picking up various items along the way. She was in constant motion. Couldn’t stand in one place. Got excited over a jug of coffee. Perhaps she didn’t even notice, but I did: a slight fidget, balancing on one foot at the cash register. We looked at the things she’d ended up buying and laughed. Talking constantly. I am attuned to these kinds of things. She had told me, though, that she felt manic. I wished I felt as manic as she did, but I was not; rather, I was plagued by a familiar moroseness, a heaviness.   Asked about JS, I mused well, I think you’d win a fight with her.   A few months after the breakup with JS, I fucked a fashion designer from the city. He was kind of cute, dyed hair and a stutter. He slept in my bed with his arm around my waist. I slept uneasily. In my dream, I saw JS. It was the first time in a while I’d seen her face in my dreams. I don’t remember what she said, but I woke up all at once warm and shivering, cold sweat dripping down my forehead. I snuck out from the boy’s grasp and went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. Looking into the mirror, I thought how strange it was. I started to cry. He gave me his shirt afterwards.   I don’t usually see people’s faces in my dreams. I rarely ever learn a person’s face. This is a condition known as congenital prosopagnosia. In fact, I only come to individualize the faces of people I’m in love with. When I told her this, she said it was very romantic. I did not tell her that I had come to know her face.   There is a thing known as a flow state: when words come out of your brain like blood seeping from a tapped vein, an insatiable passion for the task at hand. Manics often get into flow states. The world is poetry, you breathe it like air. Maybe this is part of why we are so successful in art. Love is also like a flow state.   She’s a doctoral student in the psychology department. But she told me that she used to write as if seized by a certain fervor for it, for the language, for poetry. I imagined Van Gogh and his passion for painting, his insatiable hunger. I thought I wanted to kiss those lips stained with yellow paint. Yellow, the color of the edges of a street, the boundaries of a self crossed like two neurons, the actualization of a synesthetic dream. To imbibe it is to take all of that in, the passion, life thrust under your tongue. I wanted that.   When I was a child, I sat by myself at recess. The teachers saw that I was always alone; they gave me chalk to draw on the sidewalk. My hands dusted with pastel yellow, I would watch the other kids play. It’s not easy for me to admit, but I hated them. I truly hated them. My heart was so full of hate that I couldn’t bear to watch them anymore, and I would go to the bathroom and cry. I’ve never been a good person.   Sadness is part of the human condition, said one of my writing professors, a woman who seemed perpetually rather flummoxed by the world. Without it, you’d be a monster. I wanted to ask, with sadness, am I not a monster?   For me it was different. I, too, was seized by passions; but they occurred for me in successions, a pattern sometimes disapprovingly called serial monogamy. I was like that with my writing, too. But when I was engrossed in the page, or lost in her eyes, everything but the space between my canvas and I disappeared. Everything else goes away.   I wrote constantly when I was in love with JS. Everything I felt was transferred to the page. She was my muse; she was the gasoline to the fire behind my eyes.   Kay Redfield Jamison wrote an entire book about the connections between mental illness, particularly bipolar disorder, and artistic talent. It’s called Touched with Fire.   My heart has holes in it. They’ve been there for a long time; before JS, I’m sure. But maybe I could have ignored them before that. Not anymore. I wanted to patch them up, fill them with cement, or gorilla glue the pieces back together and pretend that it was the same as it was before. A clean canvas, a blank page, a fresh start. But it’s never been the same. I’ve always been different from other people. Maybe that is why I write. To escape the sadness of being alone. The desolation, the emptiness, the misery of a life condemned to this certain loneliness.   Sometimes I try to fill the holes with other people’s loneliness. It never works. I knew right away that she wouldn’t be a suitable shape to fit there, like a square peg in the round hole of what I really needed. I was filled with this dread of knowing. But when I looked at her I would forget.   Everything else goes away.   I was ten years old when I first decided I was going to kill myself. I wanted to slice off my arm with an old circular saw, patched with rust, and die in a pool of blood on the hard cement floor of my garage. I daydreamed about it, wondered endlessly what it would be like to die there, cold and alone and smeared with bright red, a baptism in blood.   It was Anne Sexton’s therapist, Dr. Martin Orne, who encouraged her to write poetry. Perhaps he thought that poetry would be a form of healing, a way to expel her demons through the pen, exorcism in the act of creation. Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard, she said. I am a collection of dismantled almosts, she said. Suicide is, after all, the opposite of the poem.   But suicides have a special language. Like carpenters they want to know which tools. They never ask why build.   Lithium is like an emotional straightjacket, or at least like wearing a shirt that’s too tight. You can’t breathe. You can’t feel the way you felt before, not manic or depressed or happy or sad or anything. You wonder if you can even write. I didn’t write for months after I started taking it.   She told me she feels sadness only fleetingly. We’re opposites, I guess; two sides of the same coin. I live in a state of melancholy permeated briefly by manic interludes. But I wonder if mania is really like happiness. Or is it like a saccharine substitute for happiness, itself almost a deeper form of sadness?   I remember hanging upside-down on one of the hospital couches and pacing up and down the long hallway, smiling cheerfully at anybody I passed along the way. The doctor informed me point-blank that I was manic. I’m happy, I said. There’s nothing to be happy about, she told me.   Although the official diagnostic term was changed to bipolar disorder in the DSM-IV, maybe this is why some people identify more with the older term manic depression. Vincent Van Gogh’s stay at the little yellow house in Arles, France, from February 1888 until he was committed at the St. Remy asylum in 1889, was arguably the most prolific period of his entire career as a painter. He believed that the growing disruption of his inner chaos stirred within him this compulsive creativity: The more I am spent, ill, a broken pitcher, by so much more I am an artist... a kind of melancholy remains within us when we think that one could have created life at less cost than creating art. His time in Arles culminated in an episode wherein he cut off a portion of his left ear and attempted to give it as a gift to a prostitute, requesting she keep this object like a treasure.   Perhaps, in the end, this is the ultimate display of love: to give a piece of oneself to the other. To be something more than a memory, something tangible, something real. It’s a distinctly human error, this drive to be treasured.   I was sitting across my kitchen table from her. She was wearing my pajama pants and my sweatshirt, an oversized blue one that falls in folds around her thin wrists. I thought it looked better on her than it did on me. She had a look of deep consternation as she studied. I was quiet. I was watching her mannerisms, an absent-minded gesture of her fingers as she stared into the screen. The harshly azureous light of her laptop illuminated a sharpness in her almost perfectly symmetrical face, a ubiquitously beautiful face.   Perhaps it is not simply that the artistic temperament comes in tandem with emotional pitfalls, but that inner turmoil fuels the creation of art. If Van Gogh had not been crazy, would he have painted at all? Perhaps, like his brother Theo, he would have settled to be an art dealer, and never dirtied his hands with the business of creation.   Do you ever feel like I do, that you know a lot of people, but you’re still very lonely? But sometimes, maybe just when the stars align quite right, I meet someone that sees me. That looks at me like I’m not invisible.   She came up to me in the courtyard one day, a small green space in between the psychology buildings that’s mostly overgrown with ivy and shrubs. I was pacing back and forth, taking long drags and blowing smoke into the October sky. She asked me to bum a cigarette and smiled and said, I’ve seen you out here. You have a very thoughtful walk.   You always say the right thing, Elliot. You toss out aphorisms like you’re handing out daisies, she said. (Aphorism: either a pithy observation that contains a general truth; or, a concise statement of a scientific principle.)   And you know it’s just a sonata away. And you play, and you play. And everything else goes away. Everything else goes away. Everything else goes away...   She says she finds solace in her loneliness. I wonder if I could ever come to view things the same way. I’ve been alone for a long time, since my childhood. It wasn’t a tragic childhood. But it was solitary. For my whole life, I’ve wanted to find whatever it is that breaks down this invisible wall that divides us, that brings the fragments of people together into one, into a mosaic of shared humanity that I’ve never quite fit into.   I feel like I can tell you anything, she said. You’re very understanding. I feel like you understand me. I smiled sadly.   Is talking easily about something the same thing as healing a wound? About her family, about foster care, about the scar on her thigh? She gave a small laugh, like it wasn’t really a big deal. It’s not my place to say something like are you really okay? No. I couldn’t heal her. She couldn’t heal me. I just wanted to listen, to understand you in the way I have never been understood. That’s why I write.   Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet, raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon, leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,   I thought to call JS. It rang only twice; I knew she’d blocked my number months ago. I wanted to say, but I was always there for you. I wanted to say, but I loved you. I wanted to say, but I need you, I need you, I need you. Please. Two rings. Silence. leaving the page of the book carelessly open, something unsaid, the phone off the hook and the love, whatever it was, an infection.   She told me about enneagrams, a theoretical model of personality. She told me that I was a type four, the individualist, which she qualified as the suffering artist: expressive, dramatic, self-absorbed, temperamental. In love chiefly with my sadness. I wanted to say, and you are not?   I’ve changed, she says.   But why are you still here?   We read Maggie Nelson’s Bluets. Her voice grew incredibly impassioned as she read aloud: I say something about how clinical psychology forces everything we love into the pathological or the delusional or the biologically explicable, that if what I was feeling wasn’t love then I am forced to admit that I don’t know what love is, or, more simply, that I loved a bad man.   Sometimes I would wait in the spot where JS and I would always meet together before class, as if she’d appear there again if I waited long enough. She never did. I found myself there, cold, alone, staring at the sky in its seemingly infinite vastness. Eventually I stopped waiting.   I want to write again, she told me one day, sitting outside the front of her house, smoking a cigarette. The smoke drifted into the gray sky and faded like the unintelligible, inexplicable fragments of a dream upon waking. You should, I said. It was the best healing I knew of.

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