Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: creative writing, fiction, flash fiction, religion, short story, spirituality, story, writing
Nothing happened. Well of course nothing happened. Clare hadn’t really been expecting a clap of thunder and the magical appearance of the Devil in her dormitory room that night and you weren’t either if you had any sense. This is the point where most people would have left it and forgotten the whole thing ever happened by the time they woke up the next morning. In Clare’s case, however, that is not what happened.
Clare had always wanted to believe in Good Things like God and Family and Policemen. She was a nice girl and she did believe in these things, really she did, except for one or two little questions that she’d have liked to have answered. Like, if the police are there for my protection, why are the only dealings I’m ever likely to have with them either after I’ve done something wrong, or after something terrible has already happened to me?
In short, Clare was just a tiny bit too intelligent to be happy while not being quite intelligent enough to realise that this is a very common human problem. So when she considered her offer to sell her soul to the Devil for the knowledge of whether Hell and Heaven actually exist she hit upon one serious logical flaw that prevented such a bargain from ever being consumated.
Hmmm, she thought, I’ve inadvertently caught the Devil within a paradox. Even if the Devil did want to take me up on my bargain he’d have had to show up in some dramatic instantaneous way that proved to me exactly what I’d wanted to know before I’d ever signed the contract. Having my proof right in front of me already there would be no possible incentive for me to then turn around and sign a contract giving him my soul for further reinforcement of that knowledge.
This was the moment when Clare came up with the idea to advertise her offer of her soul over the internet. (to be cont.)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: creative writing, fiction, flash fiction, religion, short story, spirituality, story, writing
The first offer went out as a joke, late one night in the dorms at university. The group was discussing the usual things - God, religion, the afterlife and what have you, and Clare said, to sound clever and make a subtle reference to Faust that she hoped her peers would be impressed by “Hey, I’d sell my soul for the answers to these questions.”
“Would you?” asked Dobson, the boy Clare had a crush on.
“Absolutely.” It was out there now, she thought, she might as well come up with some sort of justification. The group was smiling, a few had laughed, but Dobson wouldn’t let her get away so easily which was, of course, exactly why she liked him. She put her head to one side for a second, in a way she hoped looked cute and thoughtful, until she had a follow-up.
“I’d sell my soul just to know there really were any answers. Wouldn’t it be worth it, even if all you got was a few seconds glimpse of Hell or even just to have the Devil himself show up in person? No matter that you, personally, were now doomed- you’d know that God and Heaven must be out there also.”
The answer went over well (she fancied she was making headway even though she hadn’t spoken any more to Dobson directly), but later on that night when Clare was tucked into her narrow dorm room bed she remembered what she’d said and she had the realisation that she’d spoken truthfully. Alone in the dark, she spoke the words aloud: ”I’d sell my soul for a glimpse of Hell, because it would be enough just to know that Heaven existed.”
Luckily for her reputation, Clare had a single occupancy dorm room. (to be continued)
Filed under: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorders, overeaters anonymous | Tags: anorexia, bulimia, depression, eating disorder recovery, eating disorder treatment, eating disorders, overeaters anonymous, pro-ana, proana, recovery, suicide
i wish i was someone reliable. i wish i was the kind of people other people could turn to for help or support in hard times. i’m not though. my eating disorder makes sure of that.
my friend jenn who killed herself a few months ago found that out the hard way. it wasn’t that i didn’t want to stay in touch, it’s that i was too involved with myself to spare her a second thought. in fairness to us both, of course, the exact same thing could have been said of her. every six months or so i might send her an email asking how she was and she’d respond and ask how i was and the answer on both sides was always “not so good.” then she’d ask me to stay in touch and i’d promise that i would, and she’d send me her phone number and i’d say i’d try to call, and then i wouldn’t call and i’d stop mailing her.
after she died my mom found a piece of mail from Jenn in my weeks of unopened backed-up mail (it’s all junk anyway so why bother checking it?). my mom didn’t want to upset me, but she felt guilty for hiding the note from me so eventually she told me and i got it.
it’s a birthday card. it says, basically, happy birthday and get in touch!!!
my birthday was the 21st of march. jenn killed herself less than ten days after my birthday. and i wonder, how fucking passive agressive is that? i mean, seriously, a birthday card? i hope it wasn’t a well planned suicide because, seriously, sending a birthday card instead of an i’m-planning-to-off-myself card strikes me as pretty tacky.
i want to recover so that i’m the kind of person who would have been in touch, regardless of the difference it would have made. i want to recover so that i’m the kind of person you can rely on. right now, though, don’t even think of relying on me. i’m too much disorder, not enough Vanessa.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: creative writing, fiction, flash fiction, short story, story, writing
by the way – don’t let the title fool you, this story contains “adult” themes and strong language.
The happiest day of my life? Well, that must have been the day I learned what my name meant in English. Don’t laugh yet! Let me tell you how it happened…
I come from a very tiny village near the border between Thailand and Cambodia. In my village the poor people cannot feed their family if there is a flood or a drought that disrupts the planting season, so one way to survive is to sell one of your daughters for some money so that you can feed your other sons and daughters.
So one day my father came to me and I was very young still and he told me I was going away to New York City where I would always have food to eat and nice clean places to sleep instead of the floor of our hut and he told me it would be a better life for me and I should always be grateful and obedient to the ones that gave me this opportunity. He also told me what my name meant in English. He told me it meant pretty bird, and that’s why I had been chosen out of all the children, because my name was so special.
I don’t know… I like to think perhaps he was just repeating what the slave buyers told him to say, or else he was trying to make things easier on me. I hate to think that my own father might be in on the joke. I don’t remember very much about him but I don’t think he was a bad man. I remember my mother looked unhappy when he told me what my name meant, but I think my mother always looked unhappy. I don’t remember any times I saw her smiling.
Every time I heard my name from then until I made it to America there was always someone laughing. Yes, I see you are smiling also. It seems funny to you that I might have thought my name meant pretty bird, doesn’t it? No, don’t worry, you won’t offend me. When I came here one day I learned from one of the girls I worked with that Fan Ku in English sounds quite similar to “Fuck You.” She thought it was quite funny also.
I think that day was my first day of freedom. If my name had all along been just a sick joke for them it meant I didn’t have to be grateful or obedient. So I worked hard and held back what money I could from my clients, I smiled and I said “pretty bird” to them and they gave me big tips and repeat business, and when I had a little money I ran away and opened my first business. I called it the Pretty Bird Nail Salon.
Fuck You, America. Pretty Bird says, fuck you.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: creative writing, fiction, flash fiction, science fiction, short story, story, writing
My only memory of my mortal life is of a rocky windswept coastline in the aftermath of a storm during one of many long forgotten summers. The waves crash, the wind tries to steal my loose hanging zipped down jacket from my shoulders and I reach down to zip myself up against the elements. Just that, and the sea, and the rocks, and the smell of salt and rotting seaweed. It isn’t much perhaps, but it’s the one great treasure I have protected from the growing swell of time I’ve put behind me.
It’s easy enough to have a great number of facts within one’s mind, you see, but memories make far more extravagant use of that finite store of grey matter. The feel and smell and texture of even a very brief event wastes far more brain space than you might imagine. This means that even a few thousand years of life extension necessitates the replacement of almost all early memories with the bare facts of one’s prior history.
When one’s life stretches on into millenia the choices of what to keep and what to store in some great electronic database you’ll probably never re-visit and what to throw away forever become more wrenching. Can I possibly lose my first kiss or my only remaining memory of childhood? Do I sacrifice every last trace of my students from my days at InterSpec, replacing them with the threadbare fact that I was once a teacher in that hallowed institution? Will my current wife ever forgive me if I let go of our early days of courtship? Has she already lost them, and will she ever know the difference if I never forget the dates of our anniversaries?
All of these, and the memory of making the decisions, have gone out of my mind forever. A few are on some easily accessed recordings that I’ve never yet been tempted to re-visit. Perhaps next year, or the year after. That shoreline, though, I have held on to. I suppose I have a soft spot for lost oceans.
Filed under: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorders, overeaters anonymous | Tags: anorexia, bulimia, depression, eating disorder recovery, eating disorder treatment, eating disorders, mental illness, overeaters anonymous, pro-ana, proana
So, I’ve been thinking about mental illness in general, and the basic things people with any form of mental illness have in common with one another. For me one of these similarities is best demonstrated when I try to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t share my distorted view of reality.
People who don’t share my distortions often mean well but they embark on conversations that are destined to be, in my mind, pointless and frustrating for both of us. I think this is an experience common to all sufferers of mental illness, from depression to schizophrenia.
For a depressed person, the a typical conversation started might be something like “Hey, maybe if you got out more, got up and got involved in stuff, you’d feel better!” For an anorexic it might be “Your weight is fine where it is. Why don’t you just maintain where you are now?” For a bulimic it could be “You only get so hungry later on because you skip breakfast. Why don’t you just eat a decent breakfast and then you might not feel like you have to binge later on.”
The thing all these conversations have in common is that they go on the assumption that a reasonable argument or suggestion will make a lightbulb go off in our heads and all of a sudden we will realize the errors in our thinking and either be cured or at least begin to make progress. The problem is, of course, that at least in my experience the entire point of having a mental illness is that it has no connection to ration thought whatsoever.
So please. No matter how many times you explain to me that Up is Up and Black is Black and 2 + 2 = 4 you are not going to have any effect on the part of me that knows in my heart that Up is Pineapple, Black is Paisley, and Left and Right are conspiring against me. Regardless of whether I am a good girl and nod my head and say oh yes, i see now, up is up, down is down, it will not change me thinking that Up is Pineapple. It doesn’t mean I don’t understand that Up is different from Down, it means that this information is irrelevant to the part of me that has an eating disorder.
The key for me in recovery, of course, is accepting that while I may still believe deep down in my heart that Up is Pineapple I have to act as though Up was Up anyway and ignore any obsessive pineapple related thoughts as best I can. But you can’t do that for me, and no amount of explanations as to the Upness of Up will make it any easier.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: children's story, creative writing, fiction, flash fiction, science fiction, short story, space, story, writing
Once upon a time a little probe was sent out into outer space to look for life and adventure out far beyond its home here in the solar system.
He was a brave little probe, all studded and bristling with sensors and scopes to see and taste and feel what worlds beyond our own might have to offer.
The smart scientists who made him were very proud of their little probe. What a fine thing it was to see him launching up into the sky, the end result of all their years of hard work finally going out into the wilds of space to earn its fortune. The scientists threw a party to say goodbye and they waved him on his way with joy in their hearts and perhaps a tear or two in their eyes.
Up, up, and away he blasted on tails of fire through the atmosphere! Then came the long and patient years of travel through the cold vacuum seas of space that separate one star from another.
How lonely our brave little probe must have been, to spend so many days with nothing more than space dust as his company. He cheered himself a bit by singing “Here I am, here I am, here I am” back to the scientists who’d sent him and “Here I come, here I come, here I come” out to whoever or whatever awated him at the end of his long journey.
Then at last his destination came in view. This had been so long in coming that many of the young scientists who’d sent him out had become the grandmas and grandpas of a whole new batch of young scientists who’d learned in school about the little probe and watched and waited alongside their mothers and grandmothers for news of other planets.
And what did the little probe find? What pictures did he send back to his friends back at home who waited so eagerly to learn about the galaxy? Why, even I don’t know the answer.
Perhaps he found cities filled with strange bug eyed alien monsters.
Or perhaps he found a supernova, a star in the middle of a huge explosion!
Maybe he found itty bitty forms of life, no bigger than a germ or a bacteria. Or huge gas planets in every color of the rainboy. Maybe he found a friend, a fellow probe sent from a distant planet where the aliens who lived there were as curious about himself as he was about them.
I can’t tell you what he found because it hasn’t happened yet, but one day if we all dream hard enough our little probes will visit the stars to tell them “Here I am, here I am, come visit with me.”
i might get my brother to illustrate this one. he suggested i try a childrens book a couple weeks ago. but for now the pictures will have to be supplied by your imaginations 
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: creative writing, fiction, flash fiction, science fiction, short story, story, writing
Laws of Physics
When designing a new universe it is necessary first to come up with a scheme within which to order the distribution of things like matter, energy, time, magic, happiness, etc. The laws for your new universe will need to be broad enough to allow your vision to be expressed, but firm enough so that the whole thing doesn’t come apart under the first slight strain or unforseen contingency.
Some technical minded Gods have a tendency to create a mess of ornate and complex laws of physics to govern the matter and energy within their universes. They create numerous constants and special cases, they fill their matter up with particles of every size and flavour imagineable, in short they go a bit overboard from the very beginning. This approach may appeal to some, but it also has some serious drawbacks. We have found that it often leads intelligent societies to pick and niggle away at the physical laws, inevitably finding loopholes and inconsistencies within the structure of their particular reality. Paradoxically, the more work a deity puts in to closing loopholes and planning every eventuality the more determined most races will become to poke into every little corner, looking for the a string they can pull to make the fabric of the universe unravel.
Thus we would like to remind you, gently but firmly, that some of the finest and most well ordered universes have been built on the dinner plate model, where everything sits together on a flat surface and a simple force pushes everything downward in the same direction. The dinner plate may seem to modern deities a worn out option, it may seem dull and overused and tired, but it has the benefit of having stood the test of time in many versions of reality. Thus it is that while we certainly encourage you to be creative when you go forth in designing basic laws for your new reality we think it is important to remember that simpler is often better in these situations.
Filed under: politics | Tags: adultery, John Edwards, love child, PBS, politics
last night the PBS program “NOW” featured John Edwards and his war on poverty.
Mostly this blog is about my eating disorder or my fiction writing. but once in a while i do get political, and most of the time when I get political it means something so far to the left I have to stop short to just barely avoid entering communism territory. I consider Barack Obama basically a conservative.
I considered all of the democratic candidates for president (apart from Kucinich) conservative, in fact, which left me free to support the one I liked best and/or thought was the most electable. Hence, Barack Obama. But I had a soft spot for John Edwards because he talked about and seemed to really care about poverty.
Another thing I have a soft spot for is PBS, because I can’t take most TV news sources (I get too annoyed too quickly to absorb any information). So I love my News Hour and on friday nights I watch with nerdy glee as Washington Week follows the McGlaughlin group. NOW is the last of the half hour shows, and I like it okay except for the fact that it’s so biased towards progressive issues that it’s like watching my brain being fed back to me. Don’t think I’m weird but I actually enjoy hearing a diversity of viewpoints in my news sources.
Last night John Edwards was on NOW, and most of the time that would have been great! I had a soft spot for the guy, I care passionately about the issue, I love the PBS in depth sort of coverage.
The thing is, John Edwards just got caught by the National Enquirer sneaking into a hotel late at night to visit his mistress, who they allege is also the mother of his illegitimate child. John Edwards was accused of having an affair with this woman during the campaign, and denied it. I remember reading about it and thinking it was awful- the guy’s wife has cancer, he’s running for president, and if it was true it would just be too horrible for words. But since he wasn’t in any danger of actually winning the nomination I basically decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. No harm, no foul, and hey the guy was talking about poverty!
The thing is, now there seems to be pretty good evidence that it was all true. Now, I’m not some fancy pants PBS reporter or anything, and I’m sure the interview was taped before this all happened, but don’t you think a thing like that would rate a voice over mention in a show that gives Edwards such an admiring portrait and a gigantic platform? I think poverty is important- way more important than who a guy sleeps with even if his wife does have cancer- but, c’mon people. Tell me about his war on poverty, but don’t pretend this guy is clean and perfect. Mention the fact that he just got caught the night before with his pants down (metaphorically. find out more by following the link at the beginning of this blog post).
John Edwards, poverty fighting scumbag. If that’s the real story then that’s what I expect to hear from NOW with David Broncoccio, no matter how progressive leaning his show is.
Filed under: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorders, overeaters anonymous | Tags: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorder treatment, eating disorders, overeaters anonymous
i once posted about the phrase “that’s the eating disorder talking” (i HATE the phrase and please follow the link if you’d like to know why). now i’m taking on another old standby phrase of the recovery police, “if you do such and such the eating disorder wins.” i’ve decided we can do without this concept entirely, thank you very much.
it’s silly, really. it’s casting Mr. Eating Disorder as an olde tyme movie villain with evil in its heart and wax in its moustache saying “do this and the girl gets it!” we can’t go letting the eating disorder WIN, now can we? oh deary-me no, we musn’t!
except if there’s one thing i have learned through hard and long experience its that the eating disorder isn’t a seperate person (no matter how much you wish it was) and it never really wins (no matter how much you want it to). as someone who has said about a thousand times ”okay! i give up! the eating disorder wins now and i am never ever ever going to try recovery again, ever.” i can tell you for sure that the eating disorder never wins.
for as long as you remain alive, by definition, the eating disorder hasn’t won because there’s always room for hope and for recovery. i can’t speak to whether or not anything exists beyond death, but i would say that even if a person dies of suicide or directly of an eating disorder the eating disorder hasn’t won, not really. in the memories of the people that matter there’s always a lot more to a person’s life than their disorder, even if it killed them. it’s the same as any addiction- there’s a lot more to who an addict was than their addiction even when they die of an overdose. to me the idea of an eating disorder winning would mean it was all that was left, that it completely erased and did away with the human being behind the bulimia or anorexia or compulsive overeating. short of that it hasn’t won, not really, has it?
the point being, i hereby banish the phrase “do that and the eating disorder wins” from my presence. it no longer has any meaning for me. sometimes i’m going to do the “bad” thing. maybe right now i’m still doing the “bad” things a lot more than the right ones. irrelevant. my choice to do the wrong thing means that i’m choosing to make things a lot harder on myself and make recovery take a lot longer than it otherwise might. bad choices are still bad choices- i’m not going all alice in wonderland on you or anything. but bad choices aren’t the end of the world, the eating disorder hasn’t and cannot and will not win, no matter how many bad choices i may make, because that would mean i can’t just turn around and start making some good ones. and that’s the kind of thinking that turns a bad few days into months and months of relapse.
question settled. the eating disorder cannot win, so don’t go talking like it has a gun to my head and if i put a foot wrong it will pull the trigger. i can promise you that if that were the case i would IMMEDIATELY put a foot wrong and insist that it do its worse, just to get rid of the awful feeling of imprending doom hanging over ever minor choice or decision!
