HastyWords's Blog, page 24

ALL THE SHADE

I’m a big fan of black and white photography. Landscapes and portraits. It’s simple and yet a complex mix of shade, of brightness and hues.

When it comes to experiences black and white just won’t do. I want bold and soft. Pastel and neon.

I want to live in a world full of colorful personalities, ideas, music, art, sound, laughter and beauty. Surrounded by it. Hugged by it. Held safe by it.

I want to see the many different blacks and the thousands of shades of white playing inside all other colors. Changing them from dark to light to dark again.

I can’t imagine a world where we can’t describe things with color. People, places, smells, and sounds made more full, more powerful, and more understood because of color.

Black and white are beautiful colors but they aren’t the only ones. Next time you laugh at a joke ask yourself… what color did your laughter sound like.

I LOVED THE EIGHTIES

I loved the ‘80s. So many cool memories. Music made life better in so many ways. I mean…

You could walk like an Egyptian, dance with somebody that loved you, do the Safety Dance, or you could just Beat it.

In the ‘80s you could spin somebody round… like a record, walk this way, pour some sugar on someone, hit someone with your best shot, blind someone with science, dance with yourself, or be addicted to love.

It was a time when girls just wanted to have fun and we were all just livin on a prayer. When we weren’t having a total eclipse of the heart we were hungry like the wolf. We would go from never gonna give you up to another one bites the dust. From what’s love got to do with it to love shack.

Huey Lewis believed in the power of love and Foreigner wanted to know what love was. And Madonna just wanted her papa to stop preaching.

And Jenny. Tommy Tutone spent the ‘80s calling her and trying to make her his. And I think all of us tried calling her too. I wonder if he ever reached her…

I loved Rock n Roll. I wanted to know what love was. I didn’t want to hear doves cry. I felt like a super freak. I wanted Bette Davis eyes.

I loved the ‘80s.

FINDING PERSPECTIVE

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.” ~ Douglas Adams

Perspective is something a creative mind is always seeking. It can be crazy and reality all at once. It can be ugly and beautiful. The glass can be half empty, half full, or it can be as George Carlin once said too big.

I have met people who have rigid perspectives. They are very black and white. They rarely understand things unless they experience those things themselves. They have a hard time understanding different points of view. They are quick to make assumptions and act on them as factual or truthful.

In my opinion you can train yourself to have a malleable perspective. It takes work. But once you get in the habit it’s like a muscle. Sit and look at an object, a place, or a person and brainstorm all the ways they can be seen. Where they might have come from. Where they might be going. And then research as if their very existence holds the key to an important part of life. And then compare your brainstorm to the facts you found. How did your perspective change? How many times did it change?

And then how can you use your perspective to change yourself and how you exist in the world.

Try looking at something you see everyday with a new perspective.

A Trauma Dad Post

When Your Dad Tries to Kill You

I hope you read the post above. Byron can also be found writing on Vocal.com.

From the moment I met Byron I liked him. He had a good heart and I didn’t need much more than words on a piece of paper to know that. He started out as a friend and for all I knew, at the time, that’s all that he ever would be.

Flash forward…. I was getting a divorce and had already decided not to date. It was just me and my girl and I was so happy about that. Some more time passed before the idea of meeting and possibly dating became a topic. It never occurred to me to even consider dating someone from another country. I mean how would that even work. And then we were an “US” and have been for gosh what 5 or 6 years?

I say all this because I knew he had a traumatic past before I decided to date him. Note: even the word traumatic seems too tame a word to describe his life. There was full disclosure and open communication. I knew what statistics say about childhood trauma.

I never, not once, felt him to be abusive. We had to figure things out. Learn how to communicate. There were some issues with learning to trust because neither of us wanted to repeat past mistakes. But never once did I ever feel anything but a loving heart behind that rib cage of his.

He’s good through and through but he had to work really hard to become who he is. The choices he has made often included a harder path that took determination.

I admire him. Who he is. The choices he had made. And how hard he continues to try to do better and be better. And he has helped me too. I’m better because of him. I’m happier because of him.

So if you feel like you need improvement then make the effort. You have choices. You can be different.

When you make love the core of all that you do then even your mistakes will fall into place. There is peace to be found there.

IT’S THE JOURNEY

There is a moment when you realize that your journey is yours. That moment is different for everyone. That moment for me was when I needed brain surgery. They say life flashes before your eyes when you are faced with the possibility of no tomorrow. And though we all face that possibility every second… rarely do we feel it as acutely as when someone we love dies or we are faced with our own death.

People who love us hope we know what we are doing. They may feel like they know better. They may even stress about your choices but… it’s not their journey.

Your regrets will be your regrets. Your joys will be yours. Nobody… not even those who love and want the best for you can know what your future holds.

As a Christian I often think about death and what it means. How does death change my journey. How should I change how I plan for my life. And I know Heaven is something Christians often take comfort in. But it’s never been the reason for my journey or for the plans I make.

Death isn’t the point. It’s never been the point. Life… what we are given and how we use it is the point. What lies beyond matters not and if it does then I don’t feel we are doing life right.

Learning how to love is the point of life. It just is. Learning how to love isn’t easy and it’s not intuitive. It’s hard because it’s about us and them. It’s about sacrifice and joy and tears and healing and surviving. It’s about searching and learning.

I choose to love and have never once regretted even the most painful lessons love taught me. And I have so much more to learn. And I love that.

THE EMPTY SPACE

We were taking pictures. It was a fun night. But with most fun nights where I was hanging out with friends the anxiety was intense. I look at this picture and I see it. That fraction of a second right before the big smile that says “life is good and I am good”. Except I was rarely ever good during this time of my life.

I thought I had everything but I was stuck in the quicksand of a life that was broken. And I didn’t understand how it was broken.

Maybe it was self love. The lack of it rather.

Self love.

It’s just something I hear other women say. I see them strive for it. Struggle for it. Hurt for it.

And I suppose all the empty I felt was just space waiting for me to understand what it meant to love myself.

I love other people. I’ve always thought that filled me up. But… if it ever did it never stayed. I suppose I felt entitled to love I felt I’d earned. And all that expectation led to disappointment. Over and over again.

I wasn’t ever not enough for them. It was always that I wasn’t enough for me. So maybe… self love is worth looking into.

STUPID ASSASSIN by Byron Hamel

My boyfriend, Byron Hamel, entered a writing contest on Vocal. He’s a brilliant writer and there is no end to the stories he tells. He has been focusing on scripts but took some time to write this short story.

Please read it and then hit like if you do. Then come back and tell me if you enjoyed it

https://vocal.media/criminal/stupid-assassin-qk30up089m?fbclid=IwAR3hbCej-d0V2kIgRTGg1LdTNDFYwnFKblhOMvB1G0VRW5rFk9XpusRgm3I

GRRR… JUST EAT BETTER

You know what is annoying?

When someone says they have a problem and the response is “just eat better and exercise”.

I have a headache.
I have depression.
I broke my ankle.
I have arthritis.
I have cancer.
I was born with diabetes.

“Just eat better and exercise.”

Everytime a medical journal posts new findings about a disorder or disease several people say “all you have to do is eat healthy and exercise”.

Look…

I’m not the best at eating healthy and exercising but I try. It’s a balance and I’ve under done it and over done it in cycles. I’m still trying to figure it out.

I do absolutely think it’s important. And we are all different so what’s healthy for one isn’t healthy for everyone. We should each figure our bodies out and care enough to do what’s best for it. Therefore, there is no JUST eat healthy and exercise.

For years I went to the doctor complaining that part of my right leg was falling asleep. It just felt weird. 4 doctors with varying expertise basically said lose weight and it’ll go away. It took falling on ice and thinking I had a concussion to find out I had a brain tumor.

Healthy and fit people get sick and sometimes they die from disease. Thank goodness for doctors and medicine and education and science and faith and music and…

Sigh…

I guess this is a rant. It’s on my mind. I guess I feel like people who say “just eat better and exercise” are as bad as those who say “ all you have to do is pray hard enough”.

I’m over it. It’s just another way people have gotten into the habit of dismissing other people and their concerns.

THE OTHER TERROR

I remember reading the passage below when I was suffering from depression and thinking how perfectly it described how I felt in the darkest moment of my life. There are terrors you can’t see.

I didn’t understand depression until I had it. I had to come face to face with that unseen terror. And it’s hard to describe with words. How effectively terrifying it is. It forms and molds your own thoughts into weapons meant to destroy you. Just as your body can produce antibodies to kill you physically your brain can produce thoughts to destroy you emotionally.

David Foster Wallace fought major depressive disorder for more than 20 years before taking his own life. He understood the battle. He tried for years to live only to end up trapped by that other terror.

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
― David Foster Wallace

ASK FOR IT

I feel like this sometimes.

It’s lack of sleep. It’s a butt load of disappointments piling up. It’s a whole lot of tired mind and tired body. And a little bit of self-destruction saying “why try” and “why do you think you deserve good things?”

Reality is…. everything is fine when I feel this way. Depression doesn’t need a reason to visit. The world is what it was, is, and will be. I’ll dig through pictures and songs to remind me that life is worth living outside of my head. And it is worth living. My soul and my heart know that.

Wisdom says we should ask for what we need.

And maybe we all could appreciate some nice distracting happy comments, gifs, songs, jokes, and vibes. So ask for them if you need them.