Selma In The City

I haven’t done a quiz for a while.
This is quite a cool one.

Which one of the 7 deadly sins are you?

Find out here.

I am anger.

Apparently, it is good that I stand up for what I believe but sometimes I can fly off the handle too easily. Sometimes these quizzes are so accurate they freak me out.
Have fun.

Writers Island, a great place to get writing prompts, is on hiatus for a while. I enjoy the challenge of writing fiction from a prompt so I have decided to start a series of prompts on my own, right here every Saturday. I would love it if anyone would care to join me.

Ever checked your stats and what search engine terms get people to your blog? There are some wild and woolly ones out there, but also some incredibly inspirational ones. That’s what gave me the idea to use search engine terms as writing prompts. I mean, I just couldn’t come up with prompts as good as this on my own.

The prompt this week is an absolute gift. I couldn’t believe it. There is so much you can do with it.

I Hate Love.

Can you believe it? Someone typed that into Google and it brought them to my blog. It is fantastic.

So please, join with me in writing whatever takes your fancy when you hear the phrase

I Hate Love.

You can write fiction, poetry, non-fiction, even include photography or art. Just leave a link to your piece in the comments section of this post. My only stipulation is that what you write must be a new piece inspired by the prompt. I would love, love, love if you would join me. I will post a new prompt every Saturday (a little earlier than this.) Why not give it a go?

Here’s my story -

It was nothing but a lie. Love. Splitting me open from head to toe until my soul was exposed, making me think I wanted an existence I never could have envisaged. Love, love, hooray for love. Love never dies. I hate love.

I am afraid of things I never considered as frightening before. Like sunlight and mirrors. I cannot bring myself to stand in front of the huge mirror in the drawing room. Its gilded frame jumps out at me with its burgeoning fruits of the forests and its mocking cherubs. Leering at me, taunting me with its reminder of what I really am.

Some call a mirror a looking glass. Look within and see yourself, see how you appear to the world. I cannot look, transfixed forever like Narcissus, because then I will know that there is no undoing what has been done, that I am diminished, that there is truth in myth. I will see the horror of what I truly am, no reflection, unable to capture the light, the mirror recognising only my absence, a monster drinking the blood of others. Vampire.

Love. I did it for love. Gideon begged me. We’ll be together forever, he said. Immortal. Roaming the world as we please. All you have to do is drink the blood.

The blood is acrid. You gag on it. Whoever said vampires crave the taste of it was deluded. We crave the effects of it. The dull, untarnished bliss. The momentary pulse of life in our deadened veins. The heat, the pull of it just like a prayer. But the taste is worse than death.

I endured the transformation. I feasted on Gideon’s blood – my master – like a virgin thrown into a state of rapture, filling my mouth, my head, my heart with ice and a burning blankness. I was numb by the end of it. I wished I could die in the normal sense. My regret was immediate. But I followed his instructions, a supplicant on my knees, drinking the blood of the innocent Gideon had killed minutes before, a rabid animal.

Each night I kill. I ravage. I feast. It is easier than breathing. I walk above the ground. There is no evidence of my pursuit.

Some of us taunt our victims, hungry for their pleas, their cries for mercy. I do not. I kill swiftly. I take no pleasure in seeing the light go out in another’s eyes. For each night, without fail, I remember what I once was. Alive. A human girl. In love.

Gideon left shortly after my transformation. He said I had changed. I have heard that it happens. Your otherworldly self can be opposite to the self that existed in the real world. You are brutal. You are fierce. It comes as no surprise – I drink the blood of humans to survive, lashing at the tender skin on their throats like I am piercing the luscious skin of a peach.

Gideon imagined me as some kind of ethereal princess, drinking blood from a jewelled goblet, wearing velvet gowns and silken shoes, my beauty captured in time for all eternity. He did not imagine I would turn into a charred stain of myself, clutching and moaning at the shadows as the realisation of the depth of my fate drove me to madness.

I love you but I hate you, he said as I lay on the ground, spent from draining the blood from four victims in a row, my mouth bloated, my tongue distended.

What does that mean? I called after him as he walked away into the maw of the night. How can you hate me and also love me? The thought was unfathomable.

The word alone hangs like a wraith. I must face this till the end of the world. I have tried to die, to starve myself of the blood but I lost control of my mind, of my senses, and killed solidly for twenty four hours.

It is quiet in this old house. I killed the people who dwelled within it. Their photographs line the walls. Their smiles assail me, accuse me. See what you’ve done, they cry. This is all you can be for thousands of years.

Evermore. I hear it in birdsong as I huddle and cower from the early morning. Evermore. I hear it in the clock chiming midnight over and over. Evermore. I feel it in the taste of the blood. I am tainted, I am doomed. I trusted in love and it wove me a rope which will forever bind me. I am in despair. Each night as sunset falls I utter the only three words that sustain me, over and over, no stirring anthem, just a torrent of loss and anguish. A cry only ever made in the dark – I hate love.

A child’s face in the middle of the night, small in the gloom, waking from a dream. Patterns of light cast from the moon, pale ribbons on dark wood floors.

A circle of ricotta in the middle of the plate, grainy, soft, makes me think that maybe the moon is made of cheese. The plate sits on a tablecloth edged with lace, pretty as a wedding gown, reminiscent of grand Victorian tea rooms full of Royal Albert china.

Stars tinged with yellow, miracles of brightness. Clouds, the softest of all, the fairy floss only angels can eat.

Milk in glass bottles, so solid the colour of it fills your eyes. Eggs, so smooth and flawless you wouldn’t dare put a crack in the shade of them.

Doves and bunnies and puppies and butterflies and certain kinds of cats. Sheets on the line, billowing as if people are thrusting themselves against them.

Front doors, back doors, window frames. Tall ceilings that seem to go on forever.

Roses, azaleas, snowdrops, snowflakes. Lilies, daisies, sugar, ice. Sea spray leaving trails on sand. That is the colour of white.

A white flag, signifying the surrender of labels and barriers should be erected right across the world and named the great white hope forcing us to realise that maybe it’s not so hard to learn to love one another.

We can walk in light, white and clear and inhale its purity and not be afraid. We can appreciate the silence, the stillness of white in all its forms as it folds itself like a cloak over the land. Because white needn’t be broken or tense or empty. Or the colour of goodbye.

Because white is the colour upon which our world is built, bold, skilfully cut. Luminous stone springing into an ivory morning.

I have egg on my face but I wish I didn’t. I’ve been going on about how great it is that my sister saw the light and kicked out her abusive, no-good husband. How she’s ready to start afresh and break this cycle of abuse and dependency she’s found herself in. How she’s realised she doesn’t need a man to make her happy. Looks like I was wasting my breath because the spawn of the devil incarnate is back.

Actually, he never left. That whole song and dance about her kicking him out a couple of weeks ago was just a smoke screen. She was just telling us what she thought we wanted to hear.

I was really happy all day today. I had a good night out last night with people I count as really good friends, creative, enthusiastic people who inspired me so much that when I got home I stayed up and wrote until three in the morning.

I had a good day at work. I was told that I was an invaluable part of the company. Me, invaluable, to Cruella De Ville and her sidekick husband? I felt like asking if I could get that in writing. Preferably signed in blood.

When I got home I knew something was up when I saw that my Mum had left me five messages. I immediately thought something had happened to my Dad and was cross that my Mum hadn’t called me on my mobile. (She hates calling people on their mobiles and always worries she’ll call when someone is sitting on the toilet.)

But I digress -

Mum told me the bad news this evening. My sister and her ex are back together and want to try again. I couldn’t believe it. A thousand cliches hit me at once when I heard the news. You could have knocked me over with a feather. It hit me like a ton of bricks, a bolt out of the blue, a sledgehammer, a lightning strike. I was quite literally (and in true Aussie style) a stunned mullet.

OK, so I know I’m being a little facetious right now but I’m struggling. I feel like I’m trying to wash a sink full of dishes and no matter what I do the washing-up liquid won’t froth and the dishcloth won’t wipe the plates clean. I am in one of the lower circles of Hell where I have been sentenced to an eternity as a cleaner washing the dirty dishes of the entire world. And it sucks.

I’ve been spending the evening reading about battered wife syndrome and it makes for sobering reading.

My sister is stuck in that cycle now and I am afraid she might not make it out alive. I’m afraid that giving someone too many second chances makes him unable to modify his behaviour, makes him answerable to no one. I’m afraid that getting into the habit of making a hundred and one excuses for behaviour that is at worst, horrifying, and at best, unacceptable, allows a view of reality to be created that leads you to think that is all there is. That is all you should expect.

Most of all, I am afraid my mother is not going to live through it. ‘It’s so hard to stand back and watch someone hurt your child, your baby,’ she said today. ‘I don’t think I can stand it any more.’

I don’t think I can stand it any more, either. I don’t want to face that it is happening - that my jolly, little sister who used to dream of being one of the kids in the Von Trapp family - may have to endure further beatings from a man she claims to not be able to live without. I keep waiting for that moment when you are having a nightmare that is particularly gruesome and you wake with a flood of relief as you realise the whole thing was just a bad dream; but the moment never comes.

If I were a poker player right now I would fold. The stakes are too high for me. But I can’t. I can’t just leave the game can I?

How bad does it have to get before you walk away? I ranted on the phone to my sister just an hour ago. How bad does it have to get?

She hung up on me and when I called back the phone was off the hook. Perhaps this is how it’s going to be from now on, our days full of conversations we will never have. I wish I had inhaled her voice when I could, just in case it’s years before I hear it again.

The moon is full and low in the sky. The light it casts is creamy. My skin is silver by moonlight. I am awash with the magical glow of it. I wonder if my sister sees that moon, and if on some level she senses I am also gazing up at its brilliance. And I wonder if it affords her some comfort.

One of the prompts from Cricket’s Slice Of Life this week is a necessary evil. Oh, those necessary evils of life, the things we don’t like but know must happen, like work or taxes or interfering in-laws. We all endure them, those unpleasant necessities, but do you think that sometimes a necessary evil can transform itself and become a necessary good?

Here is my story……

My Mum sent me to therapy for the first time when I was 17 because she thought my outlook on life was too dark. She was also worried about my neatness. My bedroom was very orderly. I used to arrange the clothes in my wardrobe according to colour and season. My books were in alphabetical order. Everything in my room had its rightful place. My mum had seen a show about a serial killer who had a tendency to neatness coupled with a tendency to quote from the Book of Revelation. I think she thought it was a growing trend among teenagers. What she didn’t realise was that order, cleanliness, neatness, was my way of coping with the growing disorder in my mind.

I’m not mad, bad or dangerous to know but I do suffer from a significant anxiety disorder. Sometimes things are so bleak I can’t break free from the bonds of it and I don’t want to get out of bed. Due to a kind of freaky metabolism I cannot stomach antidepressants, so I go it alone, the Lone Wolf on Depression Highway. But don’t feel bad for me because I have learned a lot from therapy. Invaluable stuff that I wouldn’t have known otherwise. And it helps. Life is tough enough, stressful enough for most of the people I know without me dumping my shit on them. It helps to have an objective party to confide in.

When I was younger I changed therapists like a swinging voter changes his mind. Like any doctor, or hairdresser or the guy who makes your morning coffee – it takes a while to find the perfect fit.

For the past few years I have been seeing Sarah who is a psychologist. I see her infrequently which most psychologists recommend against but Sarah knows if I have to commit to a weekly therapy session then I just won’t go at all. So she indulges me in my need to feel I am a person who doesn’t need therapy.

I don’t like to open up too much. I have a lot of dark recesses, unexplored corridors in my psyche that even I would be reluctant to delve into. When people ask me to tell them about myself I generally pause like a chessplayer pondering his next move and try, usually quite deftly, I might add, to change the subject.

Sarah and I paced around each other when we first met as if we were boxers in a ring, waiting for the other to throw the first punch. I was surprised by how much she didn’t badger me, how she let a silence rise and settle between us that was unforced and calming.

At first I was quite belligerent. I tend to take the path of most resistance when going to therapy. Sarah sat in her floral prints with her sensible shoes and birdlike face, completely prepared to let the session lapse into silence while I thought: ‘Could this be more of a necessary evil?’

After the first session I was really pissed off. I went on a fully-fledged rant driving home in the car, mocking Sarah and her concerned tone.

So tell me how you’re feeling.
You can say anything you want here.
Open up.
Tell me how you really feel…..

By the time I got home I had worked myself up into a state, vowing to never set foot in Sarah’s office again. But the session had cost me nearly two hundred dollars, so I thought I might as well try and incorporate some of Sarah’s suggestions for dealing with my anxiety into my everyday life.

There were many wonderful suggestions – the mood journal, the gratitude list, ways to recognize anxiety triggers, and other methods for actively engaging in life.

It is easy to fall into a negative view of your life, as if you are caught in a terrible film you can’t help but watch. It is more difficult, but possible, to view your life in a positive light. It is a matter of perspective.

Two of Sarah’s methods have helped me achieve this. The first is a technique she calls looking out the window. We play a game. I have to look out the window and find one thing – it can be anything I like – but it must be one thing that makes me feel better for having seen it.

You would think this is a relatively easy thing to do but when you are mad at the world and everything in it, it becomes difficult to put on the rose-coloured glasses. Now I can look out the window and see a tree with leaves the colour of the green velvet dress my grandmother made for me one Christmas. It was so soft I felt like I was wrapped in a cloud. Or I can see two young boys walking along the street, making funny noises and laughing so hard they have to clutch their sides.

Or a petrolhead with a pimped up Subaru Impreza and a number plate that says SexC 1. Or a girl throwing a stick for her dog who attempts to catch it with such enthusiasm that he splatters and slides in the dirt.

There are hundreds of things every day I am better off for seeing. I am grateful that I finally realise that.

The other exercise Sarah gets me to do is the I Am list. It is quite a metaphysical exercise. I have to imagine myself free of all possessions, all ties, all expectations and then I have to make a list of who I am, of the essence of me that is left when each of those things is taken out of the equation.

I am kindness. I am joy. I am colour. I am a sigh that splits the wind. I am light at the edges of the dark. I am good news, bad news, sorrow, sadness. I am hope.

Sarah’s methods have helped me to see the poetry in everyday life. To see that even in the darkness, the bleakness, the mire, there can be one little thing that gives you a boost. It was Sarah who told me to start this blog. She knew I had grown frustrated with my attempts at getting my novels published and suggested I blog as a way of allowing myself to develop as a writer. I will always be grateful to her for that suggestion.

So you see, sometimes what starts off as a necessary evil, can actually end up being a necessary good. Like a life half full or a life half empty; it’s all in the way you look at it.