Stressed: a cry for help?

This is most definitely a cry for help, a call for validation, a plea for comfort. What THIS IS MOST ABSOLUTELY NOT, is a call for advice or an invitation for criticism. This is literally me not feeling able to express what I am feeling effectively to the people around be and turning to strangers on the internet to feel a sense of community.

So here I go. What’s on my mind today leading me to stop all the lifeing and adulting I’m trying to appear good at, to write this.

Today started with a crisis, a family member thought they were dying. I woke up to pee at 4:30 am, trying to go to sleep again so I could wake for my 5:30 am, and here is this person with an odd pain, about to call all the emergency services and I’m lost even before I’ve found my witts. The family member decided exercise would fix it, told me not to worry about it, and was off to start the day. I’m mildly traumatized now laying in bed wondering how I will find the strength to deal with funeral planning, and learning to live without this family member.

I did not make the alarm, or the alarm after the alarm. What I did not miss was a phone call that should have been a whole lot of blessing but just came at an odd time. But the person offering the opportunity walks with GOD in their soul, because they helped me figure it out, and now I can say that blessing was well received, and in between panic and rage, I had a good moment to settle into being grateful that good people exist.

Then comes the chaos…my eldest child, whom I would love to say is the product of his environment and not my obvious epic parenting fail, proceeded to try his best to get under my skin. This is a regular occurrence, I’ve grown accustomed to the accusations of not being enough. the indignant insistence that my responses to his behaviors are somehow proof of my own incompetence at humanity and his various infractions against me being justified because nobody else will lift a finger, a note, or a pot spoon in my defense. And why should they? It is after all a problem of mine of my own making and such my yolk alone to suffer. NO?

All of this while making breakfast and the cup of tea I forgot to drink. I was making breakfast though, not because it was part of my routine but because my dad is staying with us. He’s on medication, recovering from a major illness. I think this experience, the hellish details you will probably be able to read about during my next mental breakdown, has been the most significant event of my life so far.

You see, my parents are the most solid and steadfast people in my life, my dad more than my mom, because until now he has always been there. Always present and willing to step in and help which has been a thing through all other storms in life has been a comfort. Hell, it has been one of the immutable truths of my existence, my daddy is that rock that stands against all things and prevails.

And he almost died. And there was nothing I could do about it.

He’s recovering, but if any part of that depends on me being even competent at anything is more responsibility than being a small business owner, one of the hoard of the unappreciated (Teacher), a woman, a mother, and a wife. Well maybe not being a mother, that’s huge, and while the one kid seems to be an alien or pod person, the others are pretty okay ish so I figure I’m holding my own in as much as anyone can hold their own in that arena.

So with the weight of all of that, and the taking of the middle child to school and hoping that today is the day she is the picture of perfection to the teacher to whom she has not been the picture of perfect studenthood, the potholes, the rasta men who seem to like to take ought with my driving choices despite there own daredevil antics on the road, on the way to the job that has me in a state of cognitive fatigue and all other aspects of adulting…there was this dude who decided to angle his car not quite into oncoming traffic to allow his kid to pass across, instead of taking the kid to the pedestrian crossing in front of the school. Decided to loudly and obnoxiously verbally abuse me for not taking his slight angle and almost outstretched arm as a red light and a soul-deep obligation to fit into his desires and convenience.

I am not at all regretful in saying that I stopped calling him some of the filthiest things my mind was able to come up with in the moment, which in hindsight wasn’t the best I could do given the span of my vocabulary. But I think what happened in my head is the most important.

I started berating myself for not handling stress well. It’s something I have heard said about me time and again, and I guess something I have internalized to be true. Even as I sit here and the lady inside my head grumbles that that man should have dropped his kid off to school like a good parent, instead of releasing the child into oncoming traffic should be flogged with a cassie bush, I am here contemplating how I could have taken it better.

W T F self.

Yh that’s all I can manage right now. Thanks.

Why I stopped writing, what I’ve been up to, and why I wanna start writing again.

Why I stopped writing.

I would love to blame COVID, or mechanical issues, or something profound but I stopped writing because, in all the hubbub and trappings of being called a writer, I got caught up and lost sight of why I started this journey.

I published, there was an article, there were calls to perform my poetry, there were interviews, there was attention, and then a heavy dose of imposter syndrome. Who was I kidding, what was I playing at? Who was I trying to fool into thinking I was great like…? What could I do to the last piece? When and what would I publish again? How could I be a better writer while being everything to everyone in every way?!?

I psyched myself out and gave all the voices, including my own, that said I couldn’t/shouldn’t and wouldn’t flood me. Days turned to weeks, weeks to months, months to promises of ‘I’ll do it soon’, ‘I’ll make time’, and then life hit me. Life has been life-ing hard these last few…eons? eras? Life got loud, rude, and intrusive, and everyone around me seemed to have me convinced that their way was the only way but none of the ways were suited to my feet.

I find that in the last few years, I’ve found myself twisted and turned in all sorts of directions I had never thought to find myself in. Acquired experiences and people. I never, ever, eeeeeever, thought I would. I took on positions and titles and was assigned importances and phylososphies by folks who looking back had no right to determine who I was supposed to be.

And in the maelstrom of confusion, I have lost me. And lost my way to my keyboard and the fact that this is my catharsis, or at least a very big part of my catharsis. In the end, I can’t blame any one thing in any one aspect of my life as to why I stopped belching myself out into the world freely and as I saw fit. I can’t blame anyone for bottling it all up and not wanting to examine myself in words even in those dark times.

I’m not here to make any grandiose promises to anyone, including myself about anything. I’m just cracking creaky knuckles and trying to battle through the rust in order to do something I know my soul needs.

Which brings me to what I’ve been up to: *chuckles, shakes my head* where to begin. Grammarly is at this point going crazy with my nutball turn of phrase but that’s okay I think…but back to business.

I started a business. Yep, I now own a winery. A teeny tiny little brewery where we make fruit wines, from fruits grown and harvested right in little Antigua and Barbuda. We registered in 2020 and kinda didn’t know what came next. Then in 2021 we kinda just thrust out there and today I am proud to say, that every small step, every little challenge overcome has been food to my soul. I’m proud of what we are putting out and enthusiastic to see where this adventure leads. All while sitting in the quiet of the process letting the sound of fermentation soothe me, the packaging enthuses me and the sharing with others brings that positive vibe. It’s called Ladli Brews, if ever you are in the neighborhood, check us out.

I’ve been mothering. Those crazy teenage years have come and for the most part, I’m hoping are close to over. The two eldest tribesmen are almost through A-levels and Trade school respectively. I should be relieved but the teens of today, the village of today, and the me of today have made for a tumultuous few years. Loud, messy, ugly crying, screaming, to the end of all the ropes years. It’s been a joy, a source of depression, a hot hell of anger, and a swell of pride. An emotional roller coaster that has added a line of greys and a whole new slew of questions about life, life-ing, and life choices. The little one is just about to finish primary and hopefully, experience from the others will make this transition smoother and saner.

I joined a team. I was recruited dammit, by one of the best friends I never knew I needed. I joined a team of virtual classroom admins, for the ministry of education. Voluntarily and for the good of the nation, the children, and my livelihood. It was an era of long nights, and even longer lessons in new tech, and new pedagogy, all under a whirlwind of changing gobblygook policies or lack thereof that has me on the verge of calling it quits. My students though, still give me life, an escape from my internal monologue, and just a little hope for the future. So I’m still teaching, hoping to GOD I’m making a difference to someone.

I’ve been wife-ing. Trying to be the supportive spouse to the now self-employed/radio personality chief. Which is no easy feat for a recluse like me. It does not always go smoothly, there has been some reshuffling of expectations, mostly mine, mostly of myself, and mostly of just how much balance one can achieve in the world where one’s whole existence is supposed to be preformative. Yuck.

I got sick, yep. Fibroid, his name is Norbert, because nothing that causes so much trouble should remain nameless. It’s under control now, it’s really not that bad, but it’s a thing that I now live with that I’m pretty sure has something to do with my thought process so I’m throwing him on in here.

I’ve had the chance to travel. For the first time since becoming a mother, I got a chance to just go somewhere. The somewhere was China, the reason was a training course, and OH MY GOD did I love every wonderful, terrifying, new, different, moment of stepping out of this role, this space, this life I hadn’t realized was confining me so! It felt so good to go, and learn, and meet so many interesting people from so many places that until then were little more than pages on an atlas. It was crazy awesome! And it’s great to be back, having rubbed shoulders with so many different perspectives.

I tried to help. I joined a club. It’s called Good Humams 268 Inc. Check it out if you have the time. I joined to help because the case is a worthy one. It’s a young club, a new venture, but damn is it bursting with potential. It’s exhilarating and exhausting and exciting and illuminating. It’s a trip and a steep learning curve for a girl who never ever planned to be part of any sort of service organization.

Your girl has been busy, over-scheduled, overworked, underpaid, and very very pressed for any sort of time. Too busy to think, too busy to write, too busy to take care of herself right.

And so she comes back here, to sort out the jumbled thoughts, to contemplate the next steps, to just talk it out against someone or no one. To just make noise and hope that at some point clarity is attained. Yes, I want to come back and write and I’m gonna publish this one instead of holding it in my drafts for fear of not living up to whatever nobody but me expects of me.

I come back for the freedom, the expression, the hell of it. to be randomly me all over again.

The decision.

She walked as if in a daze through the pavilion of the chief council, past the statue of the hero Prince Klass, a name the elders had insisted he keep, a name that would let no one forget the hell from which they had escaped. She sat on the steps leading up to the great statue, swathed in his ceremonial dress, weapon, and face raised to the sky in what she always imagined to be a triumphant cry.

Today, She did not wonder as she usually did as to how the stone workers had made the bronze so finely, that the cloth seemed to be woven of strands, that the weapons showed the knots and grooves of wood or that the sandals had the rough edges of leather. It seemed so obvious now, the working had been one of the magic users, the obsidian children. The children whose existence stemmed from that same night when rat island had turned black, a shimmering mass of obsidian stone, and the military might of the slavers and their kith was shorn asunder.

Today she wondered of Klass himself. How he had turned on the traitor who would have warned the masters. If he had felt remorse as the blood spilled from the killing blow he himself had had to deliver to quiet that betrayal. She wondered if his heart had been heavy after the fact, or if it was relief. Did he grieve after the deed was done or did he see it as another casualty for their freedom?

She placed her hand over her belly and wondered if the body she had left in the clearing of the park, under the shedding flamboyant tree should have evoked something other than scorn, something other than hot angry hate. If when it was all done and she was faced with the product of their union if she would be saddened by the thought of him or the telling of his story that would be inevitable.

It wasn’t until she saw the face of a passerby, the shock and horror of the woman’s mortified visage that she snapped from her veneer. She took the small mirror from her little bag and there they were, deep green irises circling her pupils. Confirming that she was one of the obsidian children, one of the cursed, the magic users. As one of the blighted she knew what was to come, the militiamen, the iron bars around the cart taking her dazed and sluggish form to the mystery known only as the farm. She had seen the eyes of one such soul one time in her childhood, a woman not much older than she was now, her eyes a chilling blood red, the woman would have been beautiful except for the slack way her face hung, the hollowness in her otherwise brilliant eyes.

Hand still laid on her belly, she knew the decision had been made, she would not be made into that pretty-eyed husk. The woman had been right to be terrified, she lifted her voice once again and held the killing note. She was the cursed, she was the scorned, but for her child, she would not be one of the taken.

_{Footnote: Prince Klass is an Antiguan and Barbudan national hero, he was the leader of a famously failed slave rebellion on the island, and he still stands today as a symbol of freedom, and a reminder of the people to rail against tyranny and oppression. In my story, the rebellion did not fail.}

Cold again

Cold again, shivering freezing cold. He hit the icy water, and was yanked back out again in short order. The boat rocked its nauseating motion hitting wall after wall of water, and new wet cold splashes assaulted the senses.

Cold even as small whisps of steam rose from the hoodie and jeans and socks and shirts. What if it happened again? He did not like the cold, he did not know the stranger, he did not want another plung into the icy inky black of the bay. But if it happened again the little wooden dingy on the inky black tentacles of the Rhedonda expansion he was sure that it would not end well.

He closed his eyes tightly, tried not to think of the cold, tried not to long for the warm, tried not to envision the boys. He had heard stories of mothers drowning their babies like rats, babies with rainbow eyes and strange abilities, babies born with features that didn’t look human, mothers giving babies back to the expanse that seemed to reach out and touch their babies without them knowing. But this was not the time to wonder why him, why his mother, and if his brothers would okay without him, if they would be just like him.

He tamped down on the fear as he felt his hand again begin to warm, because wood and fire did not mix and everyone knew that black streaks in the bay were things to be wary of.

What if he’s taking me to Rhedonda? What if he is giving me back to the exapanse?

He took a chance and opened one eye slightly, just enough to locate the stranger, the tall stranger, who almost looked like a militia man in the blue trousers with the pockets on the leg and black shirt, though his boots were skuffed and worn unlike the shiny armament of the milita men. His hair was long, secured in braids than ran down his neck toward his back, but it was the eyes in his caramel face. Eyes now amber that the boy knew could be red red like the devil the preacher man said was at the heart of the expanse.

The eyes settled on him and he closed his own again. But he felt the weight of the stare, he felt it like a weight settling on his flesh. He felt curiosity, tension, wariness, tension all trussed up in that stare.

“Just control your hands kid. Just control til we reach her.” a voice somewhere between rustling leaves and flute music.

Who was she? Who had sent for him? How did she know when and where? Where were they going?

“It’s a good place, good people, she helps…people like us.” as if he could read minds, a new burst of fear, a new effort to tamp it down. But it was a little less hot, a less urgent, a little less close to the surface. He chanced another glance. Amber eyes held something new, something he was not sure he had seen since his mother had gone to the farm, something that maybe means that she was indeed able to help people like them.

It’s been a while

Yeah, it’s been a minute and I could give 10000000000.0 excuses as to why. Prime among them being imposter syndrome, a touch of depression, and the mounting changes that covid has visited on us all. I could continue to use those as a shield between me and the yearning to clickity clack my form of catharsis into the universe.

I could say that I started to die by my own lofty expectations of who and what I wanted to be and what I wanted to present of myself to the world. I could tell you that life has become work, work and more work. Regale you with excerpts from my inner monologue, and all the crap that has encompasses that hellscape but I won’t. He he.

And all those parts of the telling would be true but they really are just bits, they really are just symptoms of a disease that I myself have yet to name. A disease that I believe is coming to its end phase because I am fed up of hiding, dulling myself, saying less (an insipid term in this modern vernacular if you ask me), and just not being gloriously randomly me.

I mean I’ve grown so the me I present now isn’t the me I was when I first started this, I am now stronger in my conviction to be who I am and to keep learning who that is as life keeps knocking me keel over kettle (Is that the phrase? No? It feels right so its the one). So here we are, at the start of another one of our conversations. I have myself a glass of wine and an urge to engage.

Sadly all I have right now that I wanna put out there is work-related. I’ve done the remote learning thing, the google classroom thing and while it has been a challenge I feel all the better for it. Why? Why you ask? Well because it’s made life easier, more organized for my messy self, and offered me a level of security against a lot of the issues that arise when one is steeped in the business of teenage academia. What’s crazy is the amount of bad press associated with it and the fact that it all seems to be levered against the teaching service. Like really Broonhilda, really? We aren’t taking pot shots at internet providers, politicians, ourselves and/or the tiktok generation? Have you seen some of the content on tiktok? Send those suckers to film school please and thank you, Hollywood, Bollywood, and all the woods need them. The lack of equity in the cussing out has to be the most frustrating as well as the most amusing part of all of it. Anywho…

I’ve also found that I’ve expanded my social circle to a point where at times it feels uncomfortably large, which is fine because I now know it’s perfectly okay to not engage when my people meter is full. I also now fully acknowledge that opinions are like assholes, essential for some things but often full of shit, so really not to be taken too seriously. I’m rambling again, meandering though words because it feels right, abling on lyrically, not precisely sure where all this goes.

I wanna be random again, I think, no more of this structured non-sense. None of this to be a success in the blogging world BS, I don’t need that, this is my journal, my exposition on everything and nothing and anything. A means of escape and release and maybe even comradery where it presents itself.

It does not at this point feel like work like it did before, and so I am here and comfortable and letting the words flow from my fingers and fall from my lips in ways that for far too long I have refused to let them because I honestly don’t know. And who gives a crap it’s the past.

Yeah, that’s it, I’m done for the day. Bye.

With Love