Oh, The Things I See, a flash fiction I wrote for my creative writing class.

From where I stand, the view is clear. Hardly noticed unless it’s dark, I sit here and recollect my thoughts of how I got to where I am today, and the people who have touched me.

I have been around long enough to have seen when the pair first moved in. We lived together in that small apartment looking over the city, this couple and I. My friends were so young and unsure about where life would take them, but I have seen this stage of life before, and I assure them as they climb in to bed down the hall from one another that they will rise tomorrow and the next day, just as unsure but with even more purpose.

It wasn’t long before my roommates moved in to the same room. I was left where I was originally settled, not that I minded, but I couldn’t say that I didn’t see this new arrangement coming. I don’t condemn them for their behavior. On the contrary, I only aim to shed a light on what they didn’t see before.

I still remember the first fight that the two had. There was a miscommunication, as there always is in these sorts of matters. The female, Heidi walked out of the room with tears in her eyes. Her love followed quickly behind, and when Heidi faced me knowing I had heard everything before she could explain, her lover saw what I was pained to see. Quickly, another light I offered this time for him to see the grief this miscommunication caused. A minute after apologies were rushed, they returned to their room and it was as if the fight had never happened before.

One of my favorite things to see was what I call The Big Dinner. Candles were lit, a home cooked meal was created, and Heidi was busy testing what her love had most recently created. He was a man who made video games, something that Heidi adored as a pass time. He didn’t bring the dinner out on a plate until Heidi reached the end of the game and was faced with the ceremonious credits scene.

I read on the screen behind her, “You’ve saved the world. Will you be a part and save mine?”

If I was able, I would have wept the moment Heidi turned to find her love on one knee, a ring in a box.

I have to admit that I was surprised and also delighted to move in with the couple in their new house. The neighborhood was nice, suburban, and not too far from the city but also not too close to the country. It was just right. It was perfect for the newlyweds. I couldn't attend their wedding, but I lived with the dream they lived in every day so it was all the same to me.

One of my last memories will be the child they bring home from the hospital which they just rushed off to. I fear that the child will be my undoing. It will be an accident, but I have had a life lived well among these two, soon to be three, and I will regret nothing.

I am only a lamp after all, but oh, the things I see.

Catastrophic Thinking, a short story I wrote for my creative writing class.

With the best of intentions, I crawl in to bed at precisely 8:46 in the evening. This is after I have brushed my teeth, gone to the bathroom, taken a shower, cleansed my face from the day, and taken a glass of water with me to the bedroom. I am quite certain that if I get in to bed at 8:46 in the evening, I will have estimated the correct amount of time to fall asleep by 9:00PM.

I want to fall asleep by 9:00PM because I have set out an endeavor to awake by my alarm clock at 7:00AM. This grants me an allowance of ten hours in which I may rest which is honestly more than enough. In all likelihood I will wake up earlier than that if I am truly to fall asleep by 9:00PM.

However, as insomnia would have it, by 9:13PM my heart is racing as the ideas gallop across my brain and in to words. I hear my voice reading a bedtime story to me. I’m intrigued and delighted so much that I surrender any attempts to fall asleep and spring from the bed. There will be no sleep until this idea is placed on a memo and tucked away for when I have more time.

I don’t get back into bed until 10:57PM. By now, I know that if I can force myself into slumber, I will not even get eight hours of sleep, which is commonly known as the correct amount of sleep required for good health. If I don’t have good health, then I am not going to be very good at anything I have to do tomorrow. So, I really need to fall asleep. Like, now.

I sigh and open one eye to sneak the time reading on my alarm clock. Somehow, my alarm clock has malfunctioned. It now reads 11:21PM. How can this be? Did I doze off into a nap? I don’t feel like I did, but then again, it could have been one of those cat naps where time jolts forward and you feel energized and ready for the day. The only problem is that I don’t want to feel ready for the day. I want to feel exhausted. Maybe I’ve just been thinking too long and time trickled with each rabbit hole I jump through. I look at the clock again and realize I’ve lost another twenty minutes.

At this rate, I am not going to get a healthy amount of sleep. This means I won’t want to wake up at 7:00AM. If I don’t get up at 7:00AM, then I am not going to want to work out. If I don’t work out, then I am not going to lose weight and build muscles and boost my metabolism and get more endorphins. If I don’t get all of that, I will fall into a rut of exhaustion and depression first thing when I wake up.

I check the clock again. I’ve lost an hour thinking about all the weight I need to lose and in all the places I wish I could thin out. My hips. My thighs. My stomach. My arms.

Now, I am beginning to ponder if it will be worth it to go to class in the morning at all. Perhaps, I should sacrifice class and regrettably my grade for what really matters in life: my job. My job is needed to make money. I need money to take care of my son, my husband, and my obsession with organic food which is ridiculously over priced. But wait, I don’t want to forget school or I’ll have wasted all this time working so hard to stick with it and get good grades. I’ll have wasted every morning I didn’t sleep in when I desperately wanted to, but I can’t fall asleep and it’s -- I sneak another look at the clock -- already 2:00AM.

I might as well call in to work. I can stay home and keep my son in my arms all day. We can have an impromptu Mother-Son date at the park. We have look like all of those ads about having a family where everyone is smiling and laughing at the funniest thing in the world.

Wait, how am I going to do that? My son is three years old. My son is testing his boundaries every fifteen minutes and driving me up the wall. If I don’t get any sleep, my son will have to face off with my grumpy attitude and then I’ll be the worst mother in the world because I can’t fall asleep to take care of my son.

I can’t fall asleep for my son. I can’t fall asleep for my job. I can’t fall asleep for my school work and classes. I can’t fall asleep for my happiness. I can’t fall asleep.

It’s 3:00AM and I start to feel very small against this mountain of regret for things not yet to pass. The future seems to miserable and the past only proves the pattern waiting for me. If I am destined to fail, why bother trying at all?

I’ve started to cry about not being able to get to sleep and how it’s going to ruin my life at 3:13AM. I give in to the miserable acceptance that I will never get my life together on a schedule that so many other people seem to run the pace of. I begin to curl into a ball beneath the covers when the door cracks open to my bedroom.

In comes my husband with a blanket bundle in his arms. My son peaks out from beneath the blankets with sleepy eyes and mumbles, “Hi Mama.” My thoughts stop. My heart races in their place.

“Someone couldn’t get to sleep,” My husband explains of our son. I thought he had spoken of me. He brings the bundle to my side of the bed and I wrap my arms around his shoulders. He is warm and comforting. My husband slips into bed on the other side, wrapping his arms around me.

In a quick moment, I hear my son begin to snore. His eyes are closed tight. I smile and new thoughts swim in a calm pool of my mind. I am the key to my son getting any sleep tonight. I am the comfort my husband comes home from work to. My arms are the strongest thing in existence because they hold my whole world in their hands.

If I don’t wake tomorrow at 7:00AM, then I will sleep with my son beside me. My husband will wake up an hour or so later, and I will awaken because the bed springs back up without his weight. I will have enough time to shower and drive to class. I will feel so good about getting out of class that I will smile at work today. My smile could be the comfort someone else needs. It most definitely will be the comfort my son reaches for when I return home for the day, and when I get in to bed tomorrow night at 8:46PM, the knowledge that I can reflect the world that I hold in my arms tonight will prepare me for a brighter morning.

I don’t know what time it was when I finally fell asleep, but I do know in whose arms I was in and whose arms were in mine. This is no catastrophe.

Letting go.

(This is a copy and paste of a blog post I just did on Passing Notes and Conversations. Since it's all about me lately.. It belongs here, too.)

There are very few things in life that I don't want to talk about on my (or this) blog. There are very few things that I won't put in to words because I like honesty and I like expressing pain and happiness when it comes. I seldom care if it's humiliating for others to read and what they will think because it's already out there, off my chest, out of this tight cage where I keep all things hidden. However, there are still a few things that I just can't talk about.

The worst of all about this is that it's the one thing I want to talk about the most, but I know it would cause too much harm to anyone it is about (including myself). Thus, I have to be as vague as possible.

My biggest pet peeve in the entire universe of pet peeves is people who are given ample opportunity to fix or have a solution to a conflict they complain about, yet they don't take it. It bugs me to no end when the universe is working in such a way that all they have to do is to take a step forward, but they continue to stay in the past.

I don't know why this is my biggest pet peeve. I don't know if this is some allusion to myself and hating myself because I am just like them, or if it's because they are truly the most annoying and difficult people in the world because their step could be the next big thing. If they would just take that step, it could influence the world so much around them, and the world wouldn't be such a shitty place to them or others... But alas.. They won't take it.

I find myself hoping they will take it every time. I build up expectations and standards for everyone who ever needs to take that step, and I get so pissed off when they don't do it. Genuine anger. That's my anger, my problem. And I have to learn to let... that.. go.

That's what's holding me back. I literally have to

let it go.. 

And I don't know how. It is the hardest thing in the world for me right now. I have been in a depressed rut for over a week. I literally wake up and struggle to get out of bed even though I've slept already for 12 hours. I have skipped Tuesday -  Thursday classes just this week because I can't decide if it's worth it in the grand scheme of things. It won't change the person I love, and it won't make them be proud of me.. And if disappointment is what I get from them the most, it's still an emotion, right? It's still something?

I am trying desperately not to eat because I feel like it's only counter-productive with what I want to do with my weightless. Yet, after not eating, I end up binge-ing out...which is counter-productive to my weightless. Dum dum dum. And everything around me just seems so dull.. even though I have reason to celebrate. Up until this week, I was doing fantastic in school. I have a new job opportunity at work which is actually fantastic. It will provide full-time hours and benefits. I've never had either (officially). Oh, and vacation time. Health insurance. (Also never had before). I am at a gym that is just about costing us nothing every month. They just announced in April that they will be expanding - which includes child care. I will pay $10 a month for a 24-Hr gym with child care. There are a lot of good things going on lately, but because I can't let this one thing go.. Even if I realize that I have to let it go.. I can't enjoy any of it.

I sit here in a pool of depression because letting go of this one thing, means letting go of the people I've cared most about, the people I've hoped the most about would change so that things could be easier between us. I hope that it wouldn't have to be so hard anymore. I have to let it go because I've become that person that all I have to do is take one step and it's fixed. But because I refuse to take that step, I have expectations and standards of them, the people I care so much for, but they will never meet them because my expectations are not their own... And they may never be. And thus, I've become the problem.

I'm causing the problem between us. I want too much, and when I get disappointed - no, when my world gets shattered... That's it. Why live anymore? I don't want to hide the fact that last week, I almost did it. I almost left the world, but... Something in me told me to call someone. Message someone. Do anything. There are people who care about you right at this very second who are available to take your plea of help. They love you, and won't see it as a burden. They just want you safe and alive and to hear that you'll be okay.

It is the hardest thing and most depressing thing in the world to be the very thing you cannot stand. I'm also taking a group-therapy session that is going to cut me open a lot more and make me realize my denials and hopefully in the end, recover from it. After the first week of answering questions, that's when I made this realization. I also realized if I continued with this study, I am going to be opening every wound that I've tried so hard to hide in order to be a normal functioning member of society. I am going to get back on medication, even though I've hid from it because I want so much to be just like everyone else and to not be over emotional in the negative ways that I am.. But even when I did hide everything, I still had outbursts of anger, manic depression, and fits of rage that almost split me in to another persona that I began to call Her. I would watch Her do all of these awful things because I didn't want to admit that I was making myself worse, and that it was me that I could no longer stop in it's path... I think Her is gone, now, though. I admitted that it was me who was the monster, and not she. I think that destroyed her.. But it also destroyed me. I was not getting better, and I was not hiding it very well. And everyone close to me was beginning to notice.

So I guess I've been lying so much that now I realize I'm going to need to take the medication again, and just like you, I know it's the biggest pain in the ass to find a doctor under your insurance, to make sure you can pay the ungodly amounts for the psychiatrist, the prescriptions, AND the expensive counseling. And you have to try all the damn medications, and the one that works best for you, and to do that you have to be on them for a couple of damn months and possible feel WORSE than you were before, and then when you change you have to wait another few damn months to get off the effects of whatever it used to be, in order to feel what might come.

And then you have to find time in the middle of everything else in your life to go to the damn things, to sit in the appointment rooms waiting for your appointment which started two hours ago to finally call you in so you can be in and out -- and late for work, or class, or picking up your kid. Thank God school will be done in May 15th. My only goal is to reach it.

I feel you Catie. I really do. The line that scared me the most of your last blog post was that you were going to fight this if it kills you, and I don't want to end on that note because lately that thought has been way too close for comfort and all I want to do is get help. I know it will be a pain in the dick to get there, but if I hadn't buried it so much, I might be there by now and that much closer to being as 'normal' as I can be while drugged. I've been trying to take the cowardice and easy way out for so long, and it's caught up. I can't anymore. I can't. I've got to go and take it... Otherwise, I may never be able to truly let go. Really let go.



So... Good luck to both of us.
Miranda