A shower of inconsiderate bastards

Credit goes to my darling, brilliant sister for this title. This little (d)evolved mothering brain of mine has me hard done by and cleverness, when it comes to snippy turns of phrase, continue to elude me.

Me in all my rodent glory during my last shift at work on Maui :(

So it’s been a while hasn’t it dear readers. About three~ish months or so to be exact and I am the worser for it. The great folly of the perception of creative value in the world is that we as a society believe that making, writing, doing etc. is all done with a goal of selling to the consumer and as a result the creator benefits off of their consumption and uptake of said production. I have found it’s an inverse of that. I make for me as a way to feel real and then the byproduct is that there is a niche of consumers (in my case ,reluctant readers) who derive some positive experience from what I make. I am at your mercy really not the other way around.

Without this silly little blog as an activity of self-sharpening and grounding in the present, I have felt myself unmoored from my life. My family went through a massive move once again and the whole process knocked me back and pinned me down under a crushing load of anxiety, stress and grief. It’s been a herculean effort to pull myself out of the pit and it’s going…ok I will say. I am not in the clear yet. Living with mental health issues, as most of us well now, can be mightily debilitating. It is made even more so in a world that thinks you should just shut up and put on a brave face/be grateful your shit isn’t quite as shite as someone else’s. Totally unfair, as we all have shit and comparison is not a nice game to play. I share these things in the hopes that it normalises talking about the challenges of living in our world in a realistic way. I don’t want to bypass the sadness that flows alongside the joys. I want to sit here and make a space that feels like we can be both grateful for the good and resentful for the suck. Among all the other insane financial and emotional-personal costs that come with moving to a new state, the physical act of bringing ourselves, a tiny human, two giant ass dogs and one cat god across to the mainland to begin a whole new life was incredibly challenging and this is the second time we have done it. Last time we made a move like this, I wrote a pact to the universe I would never do it again. This time I experienced a full 24 hour panic attack as my PTSD from the last move was triggered and I had to push through it in spite of the crushing sense of doom because…well I’m a mom and what choice do I have.

Listen, jaysus, sorry for the rambling darkness there just we don’t want to be sugarcoating reality now do we precious? Things are really hard, and I have a lot of grief in my heart for having to say goodbye again to a beloved community of people who were my Ohana, my kin, and it’s all just very tender. What with all the labour that went into this move, months of planning and packing and selling and cleaning, I let this site fall to the wayside. I let myself fall to the wayside. It is very easy to do that when you have that pesky little issue where you conflate your value with your productivity. You know beloveds, the one where you have learned a masochistic measure of reward in that you delay the good thing (be it rest, peeing, eating or play) until you meet all the random expectations you have set for yourself based on the world’s external notions of worth, in order to determine that you are worthy of life. PHEW say that ten times fast standing on your head with a mouth full of jellybeans.

So…now I live in an apartment in Southern California. We are significantly nearer to family which is delightful for both our amazing daughter and her doting grandparents who are but an hour away. Living in an apartment sucks balls. Years ago when I moved to a house I vowed never to return to the hamster wheel of hellish doom that is being sardined into a box of human existence aka apartment life. Yet, here I am again. It’s fine, I am fine, my daughter who cannot sleep anymore because of the ignorant people living their human lives stomping about our heads and waking her up is fine. They are the ‘inconsiderate bastards’ in my life right now. To be fair they are simply existing, they know not what stress they awaken in me. I forgive them even as I silently mouth “FUCK YOU” to the ceiling while I nurse my crying baby.

We will make it through this. I tell myself this in every hard experience, I have made it through all my worst days thus far and I will this one and the next and all that is awaiting me. So the sun will set and I will keep on and as time goes on the pain will soften and life will fall into a pattern of peace to some extent. I am trying my best sweet ones and I hope this gives you some encouragement that if you are going through hard times you are absolutely not alone and I hold you in my heart as I hope to be held in yours. I missed you. Together we will see the sun rise.