Tide

The tides have ebbed and our drowning has passed for a time. Might it be easier to swim next time? I'm unsure.

I've been overwhelmed in the last two days. From a barren absence, from a quiet loneliness, from despair, fear and distance to a step into the light. Dry eyes, wide smile and a restful slumber. A gluttony of basking in the presence of each other. Of quiet time, of excited time. Of overwhelmed, over grateful. Peace. Its such a wild swing.

The far, far a head is always an uncertain creature and we can't know where her serpent tail twists and turns beyond the moment in our hands. Still we remain the hopeful. The grateful. The happy. The excited. Excited. If it's great now, imagine it later.

My desire to learn, to share and grow, to be there, passive or active in my actions. Is to be there. For you. To learn what its like to not fight, to not have to struggle for something, but to have and care for it.

At the same time you fill me with an amazing fire. An energy, a blazing eye that seeks no more but focuses. Fueled by this great joy, it surges towards some kind of greatness. My bones mend in the flames. My skin is knitted and I am reborn in the fire.

I am happy.

I

I poison and mend myself at the same time with my choice in music.

Remember?

Do we remember struggle as we once did? Do we recall that the world was never meant to be easy for us? Do we recall that those lucky enough in one aspect of life may not be in another?

We don't have dragons any more. We don't have Vikings. We don't have savages or cruel masters. Not those who read this. And if they do not in the way the books, and the movies show. Not the way the world wants to paint itself.

The monsters are the men and women in clean pressed suits and tall glass towers. The Vikings come as emails or neat paper notices in the mail.

Struggle comes different and this world was meant to show it struggle.

Remember fighting for something? I don't.

Remember feeling oppressed and subjected and fearing for your life? I don't.

Our struggles come different, glamorized, nevertheless we were meant to struggle for we are human and we err and we struggle in our errs.

The world is painted and yet I see through the paint. I see the canvas and board beneath.

What is more beautiful and right then something that is fought for?

We, humans who idolize love, expect it to come neatly, beautifully upon our laps. No shining knight. No fair maiden. The knights come with tarnished armour and worn horses, splintered shields and dulled blades. The maidens come with torn dresses, ragged hands and breath, with a wild look in their eyes, fearful or angry. Not the glimmering. Not the shining. The world, broken and beautiful as it is.

Why do you think we invented fiction? Because it doesn't shine and someone, some poor writer in a dimly lit road watched the world struggle and wished for once no one did so wrote about the happily ever after story in love that we all seek.

They wrote the gritty in-between. They wrote the struggle, the sadness and the tears. The pulled hair and hems, the fists clenched and beat against a wall, a door, a pillow before weak hands unfold in laps and the tears drip into them. They wrote of the fight with the great beast. Of the screaming horse, of the shattered shield and the horror of near death. They wrote of life. Of love. Of the human spirit, beautiful in its imperfection. Its the making of the greatest story. Because of the struggle in-between.

Immediate satisfaction. Immediate resolution. Resolve and you will be absolved. There was a time when these things would take time. When kings and queens would rise and fall for the sake of a lover. For the sake of the heart. To do what they believed was right because we are people and bound by what makes them who they are. They would wait in the world, with the dark around them.

So quick and perfect we expect the world to be in the modern age, that we forget that hearts are for ever the same. They do no evolve. They have always desired the same thing. Love and kindness. Love and kindness. Love and kindness.

We forget that it does not come in a neat package. We forget it does not arrive as a small green frog. It does not come as a easy ride through the woods to kiss the princess. We forget that it does not come as simple and easy. It comes as something to work with and work for.

It comes as a struggle.

Something worth a thousand fights when you know its right. It comes as something so much more special.

Isn't it the fairytale we read about? Isn't it the patience and the most beautiful struggle, of seeing two people who want to be together, come together? Two people defend and love one another is something in fiction made real. It is a struggle, but it will make what will be so much more beautiful.

Salt and Peper

I've been sexually assaulted three times in my life.

I use this term more broadly then most people would.

Each time I didn't think it was at the time, I just knew after the fact, that I didn't like it and felt ashamed of myself.

Most of the shame comes from me thinking myself a coward. My envisioning of myself is often as a strong woman. Most of my female characters are fiercely independent one way or another.

The first time it was something minor. Something sprung on me, and I didn't care for it, but it last only a second and after I said that I didn't like it and it was never done again.

The other two times time were related. I was heavily intoxicated on both occasions. What I was after was companion ship. After months and months of feeling rejected and abandoned, and largely isolated from men, I craved the attention, something to make me feel a little more human. But the person I sought comfort with wanted something else. Whether or not he was too drunk to realize it, putting his hand over my mouth as I drunkenly tried to protest was something I'm not comfortable with. Something that still lingers when I recall that instance.

It lingers when I saw him there after with other women.

There was an ignorance afterwards, and it was because of the shame brought about him. The shame of being a notch on the belt. The shame of having succumbed. The shame of being thought weak, when I was only reaching out in the wrong way.

I thought laying with him was taking the choices of my body into my own hands and in a way it was, for I chose to lie next to him and be associated with him.

No one should be shamed for their choices. What I didn't get to choose should not be my shame, but his.

Emotionally, I didn't know what was happening and afterwards, I really came to realize who I wanted to be as a person and how much making a stand for what I truly wanted, and hiding behind farces was not going to make me happy. It was going to make me quiet and ashamed of the person that I was, rather than proud. I am proud of what I did after, of how I it made me change my decisions afterwards what I wanted in life.

There is a sad a bitter silence I've noticed about this topic. Women unsure, startled by what has happened and feeling ashamed they let it happen to themselves when it shouldn't have happened. When we go into the arms of another human, we seek and desire comfort and trust. If its taken from us, then we should hold no shame for what someone else has done to us. We should be proud, always.

I've only ever spoken once to one other person about all this, properly and more than this piece lets on.

You

I miss you right now. I missed you in the moment just past and I miss you in the moments to come. I miss being next to you. I miss holding your hand and whispering quietly in the morning. I miss a shoulder to lean on.

I miss you. I miss you so much.

Back to Jack

I was fourteen when I had this need to make alternative worlds. It gave me comfort in the nasty school hallways, with vicious women and wicked men. There were at least people as good as me. I had stranger people around them. I needed to be a hero, but I'm not a selfish person and couldn't do it alone. I needed a team. I needed support and people to interact with, who would help me as much as I helped them. People who had more confidence then me. People who had less.

This world was of course very different from my own. There were many more characters and their powers were much more advanced and fantastical. In my stories now, I remain largely human. It makes the struggles so much more exciting when you have to face them not with wings and super strength, but with personal intelligence and ingenuity. But at the time having wings and a tale was exciting. Most of my real life friends had a power or two. Blessed by some Buffy the Vampire Slayer esque fluke that allowed each little story to run across my high school life and create them. Very few of those people and character transcended the change and dimensional shift I created in my mind, when I wanted something more real and I wanted less baggage to go with it. Yet Jack, with his roots in one of my very first stories made it through.

According to my story, I met Jack at the Library. My home library, where I used to volunteer. His family recently moved him away from his old group of friends. The previous friends had introduced him to drumming, music, alternative religions and people with alternative life styles. Fearful of their son's mental safety as well as the safety of his immortal soul, they moved town. A smaller town, where there were less children, fewer streets and a more conservative town. Why not mine?

Holding the hand of his little sister as they made their way to the restricted Harry Potters, Jack realized he was being watched by myself. Seeing the wild fear ebb slightly with a flickering flame of curiosity, I offered him some help in checking out some other titles like that of Rowling.

I was lucky. He was still angered by his parents taking him away from his new found friends and so decided to warm to me. He expressed his sin-sear interest in  A few nights later, while introducing him to a shared friend, I discovered his gift.  It violently assailed my other friend, but he remained in tacked and there after Jack was protected, often becoming the source of knowledge for a coming adventure or solution to one I had placed myself in. He was protected at all cost and his struggle with a deep foreknowledge was enough. He needed no wings, no tail, no super strength, no fangs. It was the greatest and most terrible gift.

But he came at a time of my early transition from Public School to high school, from writing fan fiction to becoming a writer, and my constant story writing with him helped flesh out and mature my ideas. And he would end up being the thing I strived for, fantasy, but tempered with human struggle. Of course I didn't know it then. All I wanted was a friend to come on adventures with, who was the same as me physically.

It's kind of a simple meeting, but what  started was my writing journey. My friend Jack's protected me against everyone, taking me into hiding when worried I was threatened. He's struggled to better himself despite his disability and fear of people, so that the world does no harm to them as it has to him. Often, when the chips are down, he is the most reliable.

He's been shot in one adventure, made hero in another and was the first one to be given a girlfriend, Lola March, who is still around the outskirts of my story.

Four Other Mes: The Fourth Me

The Fourth me....

Recap, the four characters I've created represent an aspect of my personality and I use each of them in different scenarios of my life to explore ideas, fears and help face things I'm unsure of. I've made the first when I was 14 years old and carried them in my life in one format or another since then, which include University and various personal crisis. I'm writing about them in the order they were created.

The fourth me...

How do I explain Brandon?

Brandon is unfortunate. The most unfortunate in plot, in responsibility and yet I find so much comfort in his character. Especially with the foolish wave of vampire hatred. Stupid Twilight.

At 6'2, Brandon is tall and lean, leaner than Jack, with dark brown, nearly black hair, and the same sand colour eyes as his brother, though they are often seen as darker. His face is more pointed than Oliver's with a thinner mouth, paler skin and shadows under his eyes. His hands are often seen as longer than average. He is two years older than Oliver.

Brandon is part vampire part werewolf. He does not transform into a beast, nor does his heart not beat. He does lust for blood, though less frequently then most vampires. His powers include teleportation (though not as strong as Cody's), telekentics, super strength (on par with Oliver as a human), super healing as well as a grasp of martial arts. Sunlight does not bother him and no food bothers him either. Of the four, he is the most deeply immersed in the ideas and fantasies of other worlds.

Brother to Oliver, Brandon was the other survivor of the family massacre, abducted by those who perpetrated it at the age of fourteen. Genetically, he carries the werewolf gene, but it's recessive, but none the less active. Prior to his abduction, he had a slightly stronger sense of smell, but that was as far as it went. He was abducted by an old line of vampires, who attempted to turn him, but it failed due to his recessive werewolf gene. Stuck between vampire, werewolf and human, he was kept on by the three vampires as a servant, forced to kill on command, once slaughtering an entire village. He was reunited with his younger brother at the age of 19, having finally been released from his bondage. Realizing he could make amends for his actions by caring for his new family, he took upon the duty of herding Oliver when he transformed, being the only one unaffected by his bites.

Brandon is the leader of the four, initially by age, but then as well by experience. He is currently running a security firm, often financing the schooling for the other three by this means. He was the first to drive, the first to own property and the first to have a child, Eli.

Brandon is quiet. Reserved, and much like Jack, he does not trust people completely.

He represents the more animal in me, the primal things I need. The aggression both physical and sexual. Growing comfortable with ideas of sex was something I used Brandon for. But it wasn't just that. It was ideas of new responsibility. He is the one who learned to deal with things, dark things, alone in the dark, and take a clear mind away from it, to make hard choices, for the good of those around him, to protect and guide to safety. He goes into trouble, with careful calculation and thought placed into his actions.

But it wasn't just that. He is the leader, and its that stillness I try to emulate. Brandon is the cold eye in the dark, the watcher, the loner, who, while loves his family can function alone, can meet me in a dark street and walk me the rest of the way home.