Kern Carter's Blog, page 45
April 18, 2022
Call For Submissions — Forgiving Yourself
When we normally speak of forgiveness, it typically involves someone else. We’ve all been through shit, and if you want to keep anyone in your life, forgiveness is something you’ll need to get accustomed to. As many times as you’ve felt you’ve been wronged in your life, there are likely just as many times that you’ve needed someone to forgive you.
But what about forgiving yourself? I’m someone who is guilty of reflecting on the past and continually blaming myself for what I felt were bad decisions. I’m much better at letting go and being more kind to myself, but it’s also hard to release some of the guilt I feel.
For this week’s writing prompt, tell us about how you handle forgiveness. And we don’t mean forgiving someone else, we mean forgiving yourself. Are you still punishing yourself for past mistakes? Have you let go of whatever hurt you’ve caused and if so, how are you moving on?
Same rules as always:You can submit to this or ANY of our past writing prompts. Just scroll through our previous newsletters. They’ll be marked “Call for Submissions.”If you’re already a writer for CRY, go ahead and submit.Be as creative as you want in your submissions. As long as you stick to the topic, we’ll consider it.Just because you submit doesn’t mean we’ll post. If you haven’t heard back from us in three days, consider that a pass.[image error]Call For Submissions — Forgiving Yourself was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
April 16, 2022
April 15, 2022
Salvador: Dissecting the anatomy of someone I both love and hate
Photo by Milo Weiler on UnsplashLet’s start this story from the beginning. Before there were presumptions and call-outs. Before there were accusations and talks of “boundaries,” before there were nights spent out and nights spent in, before there were soccer games and drunken antics, and before there was hurt.
Let’s start this story from the very beginning. When I was just a girl you knew nothing about except the colour her hair and you were just a boy who walked into a room while I happened to be there.
An encounter took place in a colourful living room. Me in jeans on a bean bag, you in a suit on an armchair, both of us choosing stances and clothes that matched our personalities — our contradictions.
I said something you agreed with, you said something I didn't, and back and forth and back and forth until we called it a night. But, regardless of what we didn’t have in common, we sure as hell had the same start. Two people thrust into a world where our skin colour separated us from the people that we were surrounded by, but our class separated us from the people we looked like. We were both foreigners in a world, in a country that was supposed to be our home. And when you are a rare species, when you are used to looking around and finding no one that looks like you and then suddenly you see someone whose reflection matches yours, that bonds you in a beautiful and dangerous way.
You told me your stories and I told you mine. You laughed at my expressions and I laughed at your jokes. And then overnight, something changed. I caught you looking at me - once, twice, three times, and every time I asked you what you were doing, you turned away, embarrassed.
I caught you holding me, putting your arms around me, whispering in my ear, and then suddenly, one night, I looked at you and felt something. Something foreign. Something I never thought I could feel. Something I thought and had been led to believe you were feeling too. But after every glance, every midnight conversation, every sharing of intimacy, the next morning you would look at me as if I were a stranger—one you didn’t hold hands with and tell secrets to and stare at intermittently. I realised that I was both a stranger and a comfort to you, and despite which side I wanted to be on. Ultimately, on every occasion, it would be you that made that decision.
Somewhere in the middle of knowing, somewhere in the middle of being intelligent enough to know better, I told you how I was feeling and you did not respond with warmth, you did not respond with care. You stood up and looked at me, not adoringly as you did at night, not detached as you were in the mornings, but somehow repulsed and terrified. You stood up and left the room. I sat down and cried with the feeling that I’d been pulled into liking, into loving, only to be told that it was all in my head.
I processed this over the days, weeks, and months that followed while you avoided and ignored me. I talked about it daily because I felt like if I kept feelings this strong, this confused, this hurt to myself I was literally going to explode. But the talking didn't help. I thought it strange, I thought it hurtful that the one person you sat closest to the most was suddenly someone to be avoided, someone to be ignored. And things hurt, it hurt.
But suddenly you’re on my side again. I am pulled back in. I am pulled to the surface only to drown another time. Only to drown a second time. Only to drown a third time. And I am told with every pull-up, with every ounce of water that fills my lungs that it is all in my head. I’m the one who fucked things up. I’m the one who needed help enough to know that you meant nothing by those stares, you meant nothing by holding my hand.
It is too much for me. I start throwing up in the mornings. I start throwing up at night. I start to get moments of disassociation, but I have to clarify as sternly as I can that this was not based on your weakness but mine. I was as much a perpetrator as I was the victim, regardless of who pulled on the rope stronger. If only I liked myself more, if only I loved myself more, I would have gotten off the boat. I would have gotten off the rollercoaster that made me physically sick. But I didn't. I chose to stay because as low as the lows were, as fucked up as all of this was (whether it was intentional or not); my brain and my body, in those years, were so starved of affection that I cherished and held onto those rare moments that I got from you as if they were oxygen pulling me back from the brink of death.
Suddenly, again, you drive an hour through towns to see me in the middle of the night. Suddenly, out of nowhere, you send a text telling me you really appreciate me and suddenly, almost weeks later, there is someone else. Someone who is not me. Someone who could never be me. Someone who fits your standards and your mothers, and someone you value enough to not let sink.
And then as soon as I find comfort in someone else, as soon as I find solace in someone who thinks I’m intelligent, who thinks I’m pretty, who thinks it's not all in my head—I am pulled back in. You tell me, suddenly, I wasn't crazy all this time, there is suddenly something you’re feeling. I was always on the boat. I thought I was drowning again, but that was in my head. You were always attempting to pull me back to the surface.
You said you had some decisions to make, which I interpreted as some person to choose out of the two of us—between me and her. And lacking an ounce of self-respect, I waited and waited and waited to see if you would choose, to see if you could possibly see what I saw and what everyone else who ever observed us seemed to see and choose me. Until suddenly, one night, you grabbed my hand, kissed me, and held onto me like I was the glue that was needed to put you back together. In that magical moment, I thought “ this is what it feels like to be chosen first. This is what it feels to not be a second option. This is what it feels like to be loved.”
Only I wasn’t loved. It turns out I wasn’t chosen. It turns out you had plans to meet her the next day. It turns out I was sinking all along and I did something I thought I could never do to get to a boat that was already half gone. You “really, really, really liked me.” You “really, really, really appreciated me,” but none of that could ever be enough.
Let’s start from the end. Let’s start from the unforgivable, which I won’t talk about. From the screaming and crying and weeping and doing it for the most part in silence because there were things I didn't want people to know about you. There was a sophistication, a reputation you needed to uphold and I had no intention of wrecking it regardless of how you had wrecked mine. And so, no one could know what you did or failed to do, the secrets I kept for you, or the secrets I kept because of you, because you needed to be a good person. You needed to stay a good person, both in my eyes, and everyone else's. I owed you that much for making me feel loved for even a second. Regardless of what was done to me, I refused to be the thing that made you sink.
But now I realise you were always sinking. Sinking, sinking, sinking. And the way that I chose to sink myself was by trying to keep you afloat. I was always trying to save you even though I have never been the best swimmer and your weight was far too heavy for me to carry.
Let’s start with the realisations. The therapy, the pills, the reading and re-reading of messages, the over and under-analysing of conversations, and physical touch. The knowledge that what I felt was real. Realer than anything I’ve written on any page. There was love there, at least for me; it was more than a crush, at least for me. But for you, it was an opportunity to gaslight. An opportunity to manipulate. An opportunity to exercise your power. Whether you were aware of any of this or not. Whether your trauma was so deep that it pulled you into doing things against your very nature, mine was deep too. I was deeply scarred and you knew the details of this more than anyone else. You pulled the damage out of me with questions and probes, and I told you about the boyfriend that was so abusive I was sure that if I stayed with him I would have died. I told you about things that happened to me when I was a little girl — another secret I had to keep to protect someone that was bound to me by blood. And you knew all that. You knew all that and more. And still, you chose to destroy instead of help. You chose to deepen the wound instead of mending it. You chose to disappear.
Let me clarify, it was never your responsibility to mend me. It was never your responsibility to pick up a million pieces of glass off the floor when you hadn’t been involved in shattering the vase. It was never your responsibility to try to glue them together, even though I spent nearly every sacred night we had trying to see which piece of yours fit the other, squeezing the glue out of my tube so much that it was nearly empty—just so I could help. Just so I could fix something I dearly loved, and even if you didn’t ask for any of it, the least you could have done is not break my pieces any further. The least you could have done was not scatter them about so wildly that I didn't know which piece of glass was where and questioned if it could ever be found again.
Ours was not a love story, as beautiful as I may sometimes make it sound. It was a very comforting yet strange and messed-up friendship. Though it had all the ingredients to be a fairytale—the feelings, the conflict, the desire—the way you chose to mix the ingredients together and pull the cake out of the oven made the ending burnt, tragic and sour.
You do not get to walk away unscathed. You do not get to affect my ability to trust, to love forever, and walk away unmarked. You do not get to tell me you’ll always have my back and then disappear when I need you the absolute most. When you do something that dark, callous, and unforgivable, it leaves a permanent taint on you. Salvador, you do not get to be the good guy in this story. You do not get to be the good guy ever.
No matter how much anyone knows or says, the fact remains—you fucked up. You fucked me up. And you can walk in your suit with your sophistication. You can wear that mask that only I ever seemed to be able to pull off. But you do not get to leave me in the ruins of a fire that you created.
I won't let you. The world won't let you. Even if the only thing that ever haunts you is yourself, only more aggressively than it did before, know you deserve every ghost. Know you deserve every demon. Know you deserve every hurt.
And most of all, know that you don't deserve me.
I don’t know if you know how hard it was for me to write this — a story that is only half mine. Memory is a selective bitch. There were so many good times, so many laughs. There were so many times when I felt so, so happy being around you that I crossed out all the bad and the awful and eventually, the unforgivable.
It took me weeks and months to process what had happened. Weeks and months to figure out my self-worth. Weeks and months to figure out that I was not and was never the one at fault. And though it should have been anger I felt with every fibre of my being. This is not anger. This was never about anger. This is about hurt.
To dissect you is to dissect the anatomy of someone I both love and hate. There were times I can’t ever forget: on more than one occasion, you held my hair while I threw up and tucked me safely into bed afterwards. You pushed someone down as soon as they became a threat to me. You asked me if I’d eaten at 3 am, brought a burger to me when I said I hadn’t, and then begged me to eat it. We danced around the courtyard with each other clumsily. You only giving in to it because I was so pushy. I laughed at your lack of rhythm and you laughed and complained about my attempts to take the lead. Spending a whole day and night together, which mainly consisted of you staring at me like I was the answer to a question you’d long since forgotten. And me, enamoured, staring right back. This situation is both plausible and implausible. It is both fixable and irreparable. It is love and like and damage and chaos when two very broken people come together. It’s a lot. We’re a lot.
There is no salve or ointment that can make this ending better. No magic balm or quotation. No holy book or sage or blessed water. What I think and have always thought would help, is knowing that it hurt you too. Does it? Does my crying and weeping because of the absolute unforgivable ending, hurt you sometimes? Do the panic attacks and sedatives I took to numb that pain disturb you at all, or do you think I am too sensitive?
Are you immune to any pain you can’t see? Are you immune to any pain you can’t feel? I know with certainty, and not due to callousness nor want for revenge, that I would feel a bit better if I knew that in the deepest and darkest of nights when you try to fall asleep but your brain won’t co-operate, that it was because of me. And that every time you couldn’t face or ignore me wasn’t because you couldn’t stand my presence anymore, but because what you did bothered you—that you cared enough for me to know that hurting me so thoroughly bothered you.
It’s weird, but I need you to keep everything I ever gave you; every note, every memento. I need you, almost for the sake of me, to remember that it happened, to remember that we happened and cherish some part of it so much that you don’t want to ever let go of it, that you don’t want to ever let go of me. ‘Cause regardless of how much it sometimes hurts, when you needed someone—when you needed me—I was there. I was always there.
Let’s start from the very beginning when the only thing I knew about you was that you were a boy and did not recognize that you were someone who would both tenderly and tragically break my heart.
To put the pieces back together, let's start from that.
[image error]Salvador: Dissecting the anatomy of someone I both love and hate was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
April 14, 2022
Take a Fast Car and Keep on Driving
Photo by Caio Silva on UnsplashThe year was 1988 when in just four chords Tracy Chapman reminded us that the saddest thing in the world was not the absence of hope, but the loss of it.
Seven years before my birth, using the unique metaphor of speeding along in a fast car in the prime of your youth with someone you love and thinking that with a person this special and with a night this glowing and with a car this fast, that regardless of your current situation the possibilities and, most importantly, the hope for a brighter future were infinite. This idea, this metaphor, and the progression of its story bring me to tears every time I hear the beginning strums of those four chords.
“Maybe together we can get somewhere
Any place is better
Starting from zero got nothing to lose
Maybe we’ll make something
Me myself I got nothing to prove”
Years pass, but not enough for the fast car of hope to slow down. Even though you’re not who, what, or where you thought you would be, in your mind that car and that hope still cruise through the sparkling night. So you do what you can to keep it going. You fill it with gas, and you wash and shine it every now and then, with the knowledge that one day in the not-so-distant future you will be in the passenger seat.
“I got a plan to get us out of here
I been working at the convenience store
Managed to save just a little bit of money”
But as they do to everyone, the pages of the calendar turn. The unexpected, an awful certainty of living, strikes, and you are left in a stalled car. In a frozen state of hope as you pause your dreams, as you pause your epic getaway to deal with the unexpected, the cruel; and mostly, the undeserved.
“See my old man’s got a problem
He live with the bottle that’s the way it is
He says his body’s too old for working
His body’s too young to look like his
My mama went off and left him
She wanted more from life than he could give
I said somebody’s got to take care of him
So I quit school and that’s what I did”
As you are paused in this state of unexpected tragedy, nostalgia frequently hits you and you remember those nights when with his trusted arm around you and the wind blasting past you through the windows, you saw a person you thought could lead you out. You saw a way out. That memory is so precious and alive in your head that you hold onto it as if it is oxygen bringing you back from the brink of death. Accordingly, you convince yourself that the car is not stalled but merely parked. And as soon as you find the keys hidden in some foreign pocket of your purse the two of you, together, will speed far far away from this place and drive oh so hopefully into the night once more.
Again, the pages of the calendar fly. Again, time passes. And that trusted hand that once held your shoulder has now become calloused, old and wrinkled; and most painful of all has lost hope that that once shiny and new car could ever be capable of getting you anywhere.
You wash that car though, now alone. You keep it as shiny and fresh as you can while you attend to every burden and duty required of you until you can pack your battered suitcase and leave.
“I got a job that pays all our bills
You stay out drinking late at the bar
See more of your friends than you do of your kids
I’d always hoped for better
Thought maybe together you and me would find it”
Decades pass and nostalgia and hope make way for some form of acceptance. That car is now rusty and permanently parked in your garage. That night so long ago that you can barely remember the face of the man who tenderly held the wheel in one hand and your shoulder in the other.
“And your arm felt nice wrapped ‘round my shoulder
And I had a feeling that I belonged
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone”
You are near the end of your time now. Your hair is grey and lacking shine. And most painful of all, you are in the exact same place as you were all those years and nights ago. Except your getaway partner is now long gone and the mechanics you’ve hired have all declared the car a write-off. But, as much as your hand now sometimes shakes, as much as it is now wrinkled, in the very darkest hours of the night you think of that special time and that special feeling and you store every ounce of faith that you can in not only the hope but the fact that that rusty old thing you once cherished so much can still take you anywhere you want to go. And just as fast as you need it to.
“You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so you can fly away?
You gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way”
It was 1988, long before I was born or had any concept of years, that Tracy Chapman reminded us, both tragically and beautifully, that with age comes not only the loss of hope but the perseverance of it. And ultimately, it is our choice whether we choose to have faith in that steering wheel that so long ago drove us so enchantingly fast through the night and that made us think, for the happiest and most hopeful of moments, that we could not only be anything we choose but everything we want.
[image error]Take a Fast Car and Keep on Driving was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Immortal Skin
GENETIC LOTTERY
My skin was always a point of discussion amongst the kids at school. My skin wasn’t pale or greenish, I had eyebags but they weren’t the colour of the night sky, and I wasn’t cold-blooded like they expected undead species to be. It was unique because people never seemed to pinpoint just what I was. I usually got called a werewolf or a sun elf with malformed ears but never a vampire with the spirit of a firefly in daylight.
Public schools in Masadam-Yae kept the same crowds of about fifty students a grade and although your friend group fluctuated by class, you got to know everyone and their faces, their backgrounds, their quirks; they all became normal. In school, I was normal.
Even when puberty played the genetic lottery on my behalf. At home, however, everything went downhill. Suddenly the normalcy and freedom I enjoyed as a kid became a shackled coffin filled with medication and water — which doesn’t taste bad, the humans truly make wondrous things — and a promise of a better life.
We tell love-stricken people not to chase a broken heart. I think we should tell confidence-stricken people not to chase shattered skin.
SINS MOUNTAINS
I don’t remember my first bumps. Or my first pimples. Or my first popping sprees. It’s not that I have a bad memory, but rather, it became so repetitive that its origins became trivial. Why do I need to remember these olden times of standing in the mirror and trying to scar my back to pop a pimple? Or the itchy burn of rubbing alcohol across my face?
For a while, I had a snappy nightly routine. I bathed quickly, dried quickly, put on medication on my face, back, and shoulders as prescribed, then I rubbed lotion on the rest of my skin and dressed. All in about thirty minutes. It didn’t stop there. I was an early bird: I went to bed at sunset in my sparkly red coffin and woke up before the sun to get ready for school.
I look back in a faint regret and an attempt to go back to those times. I was more productive and more inspired to be productive. I didn’t dwindle in my head or on my skin like I do now. I believed that I could get rid of my acne and have a solid life.
I’d look back and say that I was naive, but in fact, I think it was more hopeful. It was a goal that I hoped to achieve and I’m happy that my younger self had good goal-setting standards even if she couldn’t get the hang of it in school.
I remember the year before the pandemic, sitting in my human chemistry class, and arguing with my friends about who had the worst acne. Whose skin was the most messed up. Who was stressed the most about being ugly.
My friends reassured me. They said I barely had anything, no new pimples, no new breakouts, just skin about as dead as I am that would fade over time. I specifically remember my tall, sun elf friend Afiyah, as she sighed, annoyed with our bickering and remarked, in about as many words, “with or without your skin, you’re beautiful. Stop worrying about something only skin deep.”
The theory of our lands is the Supercontinential Theory. It states that at first, our home planet, Terre, was comprised of one continent named Aphasa Sins. All of our ancestral species met there years ago, in the very centre where the Sins Mountains would’ve stood sharp, and divided each continent amongst each other.
To my ancestor, the vampire with the golden skin and ripples of bumps, standing awkwardly amongst the group, trying to fit in with the visibly more deathly vampires; I’d like to talk. I need to know how you saw the world. I need to know if it was skin-deep.
GRANITE MINES
Karma is certainly real. It swipes back and it swipes fast. I don’t think I’d have time to dodge a swing from karma. She’s not hesitant and she hits hard. Once she starts, she’s relentless until the tides have evened out.
I remember going to my skin doctor, a ghastly old troll with a heart of rainbow crystal and glass, when I began to have strange spots and rings on my skin. The rings were rough and covered my belly, especially on my right side. But I couldn’t understand these patches and rings because they couldn’t be what my sister thought they were. They never burned! I was more curious than I was frightened by the prospect of them.
That day, in the large treehouse office, I remember joking about my sister’s eczema. Now there karma was, only minutes later, swinging the jokes right back in my face as my dear troll dermatologist laughed and said I just had some eczema.
She didn’t necessarily stop there however.
The first time I genuinely cried about my skin was when my arms had become infected with eczema. There were patches amongst patches of rough, itchy, flecks of skin that flared up when touched by water. They reminded me of the abandoned granite mine in the far west. Layers upon layers of streaky reds drowning out the pale flesh.
I hated every inch of it. I wore long sleeves much more frequently, disregarding the weather or the conditions of the place at the time. I wore long sleeves when the sky was blue and the sun was at a standstill in the middle of it. I wore long sleeves when the faint smog ran uphill from the nearby city and covered my evening in orange sweat. I wore long sleeves when the snow was laid out to my knees and above.
My sister tried to brush it off for me. Her yearly experiences with eczema meant that she was used to seeing the patches, to feeling the burn. But she understood how I felt as well and she took a sensitivity to it. I’m sure she fixed my sadness up with a hug, some warm blood, and bone marrow.
In hindsight, it reminded me that I wasn’t this all-confident, uncaring skin beast. I had negative feelings about my skin and I could express them in a way that I absolutely loathed but happened anyways. The care from my sister truly helped me. The relatability of our differing yet shared experience is what tied us together more.
I think our ties are much stronger than those that tie the entrance to the mines shut. I suppose it can be tested.
COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE
Science says that masks give you acne. Cool and all, but masks actually give me a confidence boost. The pandemic made me look at myself and accept that I might be well and truly hideous. But it also made me remember that if I accepted people by face value, I’m only worth my skin. I care less about it now.
But masks make me feel good. I can mouth lyrics to a song or give a soft smile to something I like or just straight up ignore people. If I can’t hear them, they don’t exist, correct? When I’m on the bus, I live by that proclamation.
And yeah, they weigh my nose down and make it a little bit harder to breathe when running so my lungs fill up with blood and I cough more, alongside the unwanted soggy mask when it’s too humid and you’re breathing too hard. But what’s a good omen without a bad one? They say beauty is pain and masks are gorgeous.
Don’t forget that people are creative. The other day, on the train of course, I saw a dragon-born human with a frilly poppy pink mask that also had a translucent piece that came down to their chest. There was a popular faeri mask that was covered in real foliage and due to their ability to naturally keep plants alive, the flowers were always in full bloom. The golems had a mask made of layers of obsidian that they could edge into their skin and make it look like it was a part of their body.
The popular vampire mask was one decorated with little metal coffins along its top edge. The coffins bounce off of the fabric when we move. I have one as well but I don’t wear it that often. I think I look great in medical masks anyways.
This covering of my skin, although people may say it’s counterproductive and I actually don’t have any confidence, there’s a sense of beauty with not seeing someone’s whole face that I associate my confidence with. Masks make people have to look deeper inside. They can’t take you at face value because there’s so much face missing. They can’t be skin deep, if much of the skin is covered. They have to go deeper. That is where I find my confidence.
I remember first-year drama class, where we studied the art of commedia dell’arte, a somewhat improvised drama form where you take on a mask and that corresponds with the character. You physically become them. Somehow, putting on the mask and becoming someone else was very liberating, it made me confident.
It must’ve, considering I did the play-pretend weep where you bawl your eyes out loudly in the centre of the stage with your knees on the floor. Without the mask, I would not have had the confidence to throw my dignity away and have fun. I think it works here too.
They may be baby steps but I look forward to a day where my acne, my eczema, and my scars from both don’t matter. But I got time. I’m not going anywhere until I become a multi-centurion vampire like my grandmother.
Until then, I’m going to play the role of the pedrolino. I might be funny enough.
— Heleza Vavelgeite
[image error]Immortal Skin was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Did the streamer kidnap live? Users resell the video
The clip was immediately placed on the virtual black market, through the dark web portals that allow you to trade everything
April 13, 2022
The Point
As I ponder on I see no resolve —
No rhyme, no reason to endure,
With every triumph, I feel no victory,
Still, I step, blindly gimping towards the misleading feeble light in the distance, and I know not why.
What’s the point of unearthing perspective
If it’s to grasp the insulting truth,
The truth that knowledge is but a curse?
What’s the point of fixing my bed,
If it’s merely a reminder that my restless nights are but hours of carnage I withstand just to inevitably force myself to endure tomorrow?
What’s the point of joy,
If it’s merely a reminder of how much you hate your smile?
What’s the point of reaching out and having those you love taste the truth,
If it doesn’t solve anything,
If it only brings them pain,
The pain that shapes the pity you never wanted,
The pity that turns to guilt,
The guilt you desperately yearn to shed?
What’s the point of writing this down,
If nobody listens, even when you tell them,
Straight to their face…
What’s the point?
[image error]The Point was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
