30 Day Challenge: Check It, Day 5(?) –

May 9, 2012

“This is the last song I will ever sing/no I’ve changed my mind again” I closed all my online accounts, took a few valium and took a walk. My phone kept buzzing in my handbag – e-mail notifications. I walked into a few bars downtown but am not a bar-by-myself person, not even with meds. […]

30 Day Challenge: Check It, Day 4

May 2, 2012

With the resurgence of satanic symptoms, it seems a will-to-live post is appropriate. So, today, I live for the work of Andy Prokh.

30 Day Challenge: Day 3, Check It

Apr 27, 2012

This isn’t really a challenge any more, partly because I am no longer pining over death like a 12 year old over Justin Bieber, partly because my collection of magic is endless.  I could go at least 1,000 days by dipping into my own art collection, bookshelves, iTunes library, Pinterest. I don’t feel like dying […]

30 Day Challenge, Check it, Day 2

Apr 25, 2012

Today was awful. The Complex PTSD is back and with it Major Depression and they’re unrelenting. I wake up in fear – not mortal or physical fear – psychic fear. I drag myself out of bed and get the girls – 2 & 3 – up, get their oatmeal ready and go to collect the […]

30 Day Challenge: Check it. Day 1.

Apr 25, 2012

30-Day-Challenge is all over the place. I abhor reality television and celebrity magazines, but occasionally something will appear on the screen that somehow captivates me. Even if it isn’t captivating. Some of the mental health blogs I follow are posting within it’s borders, but I can’t find a map. Web searches yield challenges of every […]

Wait, what?

Sitting in the window watching for my kids’ bus. A car pulls up and a boy, 7 or 8 in baseball getup, gets out and runs to the back of the house across the street. The car, silver, idles – a man inside. I start to hear pounding, as of fists on a door. The pitch […]

Quiet, Muted Despair

The depression is ingrained after so many years – there almost every day – but every day seems to have it’s own manifestation. I almost wish I was at my worst so I could hospitalize and be cared for. I wish I was dead but am not suicidal, the ideation is there but not the […]

Boston, Summer 1983 – Paper Girl ends my not-so-promising hoodlum career

A few more minor events stand out. There was a girl, 10 or 11, who had a paper route on North Beacon.  My little gang – my Lebanese neighbors, a Jamaican girl from across the street – and I secretly mocked her.  She must have been the only white girl in the neighborhood besides me.  […]

Something lighter – Papercuts

Patrick Gannon is an American cut-paper artist who works and lives in Japan. His work has been shown in galleries throughout the US, Europe and Asia.

Waking the Dragon of Slumbering CPTSD

I didn’t know I had Complex PTSD until I was 36 years old. I deliberately turned off my trauma – tossed it, pretended it never happened – when Social Services removed my sister and I from our mother’s custody and placed us with our newly sober and forever ex-criminal father. We never talked about our […]