Emje McCarty's Blog, page 13

daily doodles with demons

i’m still dealing with some crazy–let’s call it menopausal? emotions. i am all over the place. angry when i feel overlooked…pissy at everyone…& wondering if there is any hope for someone like me.
it doesn’t help that i am editing my novel & the narrator is a suicidal runaway mom. now i’m in her head…which came out of my head…my brain is like some sort of m.c. esher sketch right now….
but! i try to keep doodling so i don’t fly away & into oblivion.
right now i have run away & am hiding from my kids…but i’m sure i will wander back sooner rather than later.

another whispered love spell

despite my obsession with his forgiving me & letting me back into his life in whatever capacity, i have come to realize i do have a full & fulfilling life of my own. i do have a family.
my new deck of tarot cards have been crazy supportive of my examining my feelings for my long ago ex…the one i have never really gotten over despite drowning myself in so many other relationships (or because of?) there is something buried there that i need to dig out. aggressively if necessary. after i finish editing my novel for publication (again) i will read through those ’94-’96 journals (again.)
meanwhile, today i drew a tarot card about finding magic in the mundane. last night i had the epiphany that i would never be truly alone as i do have a family, my four children. why it took me 18 years to accept this is beyond me. i am nothing if not a slow learner.

(the above image is another self-portrait using a gustav klimt painting; it can be found in my book the invisible exhibitionist)

me again

(in lieu of mailing yet another letter to the man…i am posting it here. this is an exercise in figuring myself out in regards to my feelings for him)

march 10th, 2024
new moon

so i’ve been swimming through this darkness since like right before valentine’s day. an intense feeling of sorrow, lovelessness, aloneliness…. like i’m broken. just broken.
yesterday i started wondering if it had anything to do with you. i woke up from an amazing dream where i had moved to philadelphia to be near you, but you were moving to hawaii to be near val. i went to see you in your bar, wearing some flimsy dress and you said, “where are you going?” and i answered “no where fast.” then you kissed me, & i was so happy that i remembered how to kiss you. i held onto the dream all day as if it were a blanket to keep me warm.
so, yeah, i began to wonder if this gaping hole in me had anything to do with losing you, twenty-eight years ago.
i dug out my journals. i read through what i had for ’94 through ’96 and have to say, i really don’t blame you for hating me. i really fucked things up. but i did love you, beyond reason. i loved you with all my heart. i just didn’t know how not to fuck things up. our breakup started just before valentine’s day ’96 & went on for most of march. then i started to bury myself in other men.
in my journals i made some crazy vow to never to settle for anything less than the love i knew with you. but i’ll tell you something, that vow was broken before the ink had even dried. i right away started burying myself in other men. lesser men. i never found a love like i had with you. i faked it a few times. i got obsessed a time or two. but i never found it again & often settled for way way less than i had with you.
apparently creating a black hole where my heart used to be.
so i’m falling into this hole. i don’t want to die. despite hating myself, i don’t want to be someone else. i’m not trying to stop my fall. i’m just falling. wondering if there is a bottom to all this sorrow. maybe when i find the bottom to this awful alonely feeling, i will be able to heal.
maybe, probably, i will always have a hole where you used to be.
little voices tell me to get over it. to move on. that i shouldn’t look to another to complete me.
but the little voices are wrong. i know that now. you were my one & only, and i am never going to feel about another person the way i feel about you.
and that—loving a person for thirty years even when i didn’t know how to do it—is not a sign of my being weak or delusional; it is not a flaw in my character. my loving you all these years & loving you still is a good thing, a strength of character. i like that i have the capacity for such a big love, & i will not apologize for it or dismiss myself as crazy. refusing to give up hope despite no evidence of a requited love might be quixotic, but i am going to choose to admire myself for it.
so i imagine you driving down my street. i imagine you walking up my walk. i keep believing in a day when i will see you again.
& i wonder if you can feel it too. i wonder if you stop sometimes during the day because a vivid memory of me…or thought of me…makes you stop to catch your breath.
in the meantime, i am putting the caustic, self-loathing, hateful bits of me on ice. in regards to you & me, i am sending the cynical bitch part of me out for cigarettes and putting the innocent & pure, the playful, curious, & true parts of me in charge of loving you.

xoxo

(the image is from my book of self portraits, the invisible exhibitionist, and was drawn for this man i love still using the painting “the kiss” by gustav klimt)

confusion perfume: split-apart

this funk i have been in coincides with the time, 28 years ago, that i lost the love of my life through my own fuck ups.
i have been meditating on it a lot, trying to work my way back out of the darkness.

not an imposter?

so i’m on lunch break from teaching high school students about my art (at an event at the kickapoo valley reserve) & i’m all like–am i qualified? & then i realize that no one else is more qualified to teach about my art.
no one else more qualified to babble on about how important it is to experiment & to express oneself using as much ink as possible.
so i was happy to realize that.
& no one has tarred & feathered me yet….

(image is a random art journal page)

saint nobody page ten

daily doodles while wrestling with demons

i think i need an exorcism.
i feel so rabid & like the most horrid person ever.

confusion perfume: burn the motherfuckers down

i’m going to park this here for a minute. i’m looking for a place (magazine, etc) to publish these so i will probably pull it down again.
if anyone knows a periodical that might like me…please let me know.

i’m fine; how are you?

(i’m not fine.)
i decided to do one of my old style journal pages…hoping maybe it would help.
so.
if you were the one person who bought a copy of my novel little skeletons, hold on to that. if i ever become famous it will be a collector’s item as that novel is no longer available.
in other news…does anyone know a publisher who likes speculative fiction? dark fiction? i subscribed to poets & writers magazine in a moment of optimism. hopefully i will use it as something more than padding for my recycle bin….

crone of blades

i have a new tarot deck. the liberation tarot deck that i got through pm press.
i have had it since january, trying to do daily draws. it’s an awesome deck. what amazes me about it is that i have drawn the same card 15 times now, over one quarter of my draws if i had done a draw every day (which i haven’t). sometimes i draw the crone of blades for several days in a row despite my shuffling & cutting the deck before every draw.

art work by cole m. james

so i’m pretty much accepting that i am the crone of blades….

i am still struggling. massive depression. anxiety. not able to do much more than binge watch the tv show shameless…. my life is in turmoil…what’s new? i guess i just need to draw on my crone of blades qualities….

(top image is from my series “stolen” that was also included in my book the invisible exhibitionist)