High School Can Be So Rough, Can Be So Mean, Hold Onto, Onto Your Innocence, Stand Your Ground When Everybody's Givin' In

--"This One's For The Girls", Martina McBride

I have never thought of myself as a mentor. I have enough trouble keeping my life sorted that I don't need the worry of being someone's role model. Like that famous philosopher once said, I can only be responsible for what I do and not what everybody I know does. I try to lead a good life and follow God's example, but I've never thought of myself as someone especially worthy of emulation.

However, with all this speculating about what life is going to be like with a little Breanne or little Greg in the house, I've sort of re-examined my life and attempted to search for instances where I was a good teacher for someone. Hell's bells, it was very slim pickings, indeed. I've decided I've lead a life full of going against the grain, openly disobeying figures of authority, and out and out being horridly wicked and worthy of punishment. This doesn't necessarily mean I regret any of my choices. What it does mean is that the only thing I have to give a person who wanted to follow in my footsteps is the best of luck. It may have worked out for me, but I know very easily it could have gone all so wrong. Time and time again, I look back on my life and come up short of a full bushel of shining and bright moments to pass along to someone who looked up to me. If anything, a lot of my life could be used as a primer for what not to do when presented with a certain situation.

I did have one exemplary moment, though.

----

"She didn't, mother... Did she?" I asked at the dinner table with my parents.

"God's honest truth, honey. I don't know what your cousin was thinking in the least. Why, it's got your aunt all befuddled."

I took another bite of dinner, looking incredulous at the facts presented to me. In the course of one afternoon, my cousin Katie, my dear nine-year-old cousin Katie, had sneaked off school after second period, proceeded to try and walk home, and then hid from her parents when they went searching for her. It was unbelieveable and shocking. She'd always been one of the good ones in the family. Aside from Shelly, who was practically a saint, Katie could always be counted on being mindful of her elders, being polite and well-mannered, and, well, having more sense than to run away from school. This didn't sound like her at all.

Quite frankly, it sounded like something I would do.

"What's she doing with Katie?"

"Nothing right now. It isn't like she has a lot of experience punishing Katie--not for anything serious, anyway. That was her on the phone earlier. She was asking for my advice."

"Because you're stricter than her?"

My mother gave me a confused look, which prompted my daddy to laugh. She shook her head and sighed, indicating the answer should have been obvious.

"No, because I've had experience dealing with a willful child."

"Oh," I said. "I'm supposing that would be me."

Again, my daddy laughed.

At the time I thought it was slightly unfair that she even bring up my past record. I thought of myself as some type of prisoner and wondered if those records shouldn't be sealed now, seeing as I was on the path to being reformed. Didn't I just have a heart-to-heart with my mother about how I was old enough to make my own decisions? Didn't she just re-affirm that I was as mature as she'd ever seen me and how she trusted me more now than she'd ever had? Where did all that talk go? But now I see it was kind of like how my daddy says, "Walking through your life is like walking through snow. You can always look back and see where you've been." My mother wasn't saying anything particularly nasty about me, she was merely pointing out that, while I had had a record of getting into trouble, she had been building up a record of having to deal with a hellion like me.

"Actually, that's what I wanted to talk to you about, Breanne. I'd suggested that we might drop you by their way so you can talk to Katie for your aunt."

"Why in gracious Providence would I ever want to do that?"

"She looks up to you. She'll listen to you."

I pause a second and then nodded my head in recognition.

"Besides, you know your aunt. Katie can't take anything your aunt or your uncle says seriously. Mike and Ryan got away with everything and Katie, if she had half a mind for it, could probably get away with the same.

"I just thought it might do her more good hearing advice from you than from me."

"Maybe. It'd kind of be how they send ex-junkies into classes to illustrate to them the pitfalls of drugs."

"Exactly, honey. So you'll do it?"

I put down my utensils and looked my mother in the eyes.

She was serious about this whole intervention thing. I thought to myself that I had misjudged her opinion of me. Never before had she trusted me enough to give advice to anyone. Before then I always had the impression she thought everything out of my mouth was utter folly. I mean--I've written countless poems about how inconsequential she made me feel growing up and a lot of it stemmed from the fact that I never felt I had a voice. That dinner was the first time I understood that, even though my mother didn't always show it right away, she'd been listening to me all along.

I made up my mind to do it.

----

I love my cousin. I love her like she was my own sister. I honestly don't know what I'd do if I were to ever lose. She's been a part of my daily life since I can remember. Shelly and I may have been closer friends in the beginning, but I've been friends with Katie a lot longer. People always say that being an only child makes a person spoiled and gives them a sense of entitlement. I don't know if all that's true. All I can tell you is that what it does is make you feel lonely. Incredibly lonely. Try as I might to fill it up with people from school, people from church, and people I've met elsewhere, I never felt like I had that one person I could come to in my family before Katie. Torry was my deepest confidant, but, through it all, she never really felt like blook. Patrick's like my older brother, but he too, at best, feels like a brother that moved out of the house before I really got to know him. Katie, of anyone, feels like my sister. We grew up in around the same neighborhood. I saw her just as much as I saw Torry or Shelly. What's more I'd always had this protective streak about her in much the same vein Shelly once had a protective streak over me. Katie will always be in my heart.

Katie will always be somewhat dense too.

She's intelligent and all, but sometimes getting her on the same train of thought as myself is like trying to herd seahorses.

"Well, your first mistake, sugar, was not picking out a destination beforehand. Wandering aimlessly through the streets isn't much of a plan."

"I wasn't planning this, Breanne."

"That much is obvious, darling."

I patted her on the head as if she were a dog. I had decided to approach the situation with as much levity and humor as possible. My mother had probably expected me to come in with fire and brimstone, spinning tales of how scared I had felt all those times I had run away. She probably wanted me to recount the time I had almost been stolen away by some creep a few years back. But my intention wasn't to put the fear of God into her. Besides, hearing my mother warn me of all the dangers of striking off on my own hadn't dissuaded me. I had the same feeling that it wouldn't do much good for Katie either. No, having something scare you to death is the only way you'll ever learn that with every decision you have to factor in the risks involved. My intention was to show her that I supported her choices and that I wasn't going to mother her into being safer. Nope, I wanted to show her I was her friend so I was going to do what all friends do. I was going to mock her tirelessly for her ineptitude.

She swatted my hand away.

"Shut up."

"Katie, I was an old pro at this by the time I was your age."

"It sounds like you were proud."

"Not proud, just aware that I had a talent for it."

"A talent for running away?"

"Strange as that may sound, yeah. Do you think I should write a book about my experiences?" I joked with her.

We laid down on our backs on her bed. Staring at the ceiling with her, moonlight filtering through her curtains, I realized that this was the first time I'd ever tried explaining to her about my leaving home all those times. Before, with her, she had had to get all her information from her parents or, worse yet, from my parents. She'd never heard it directly from me. I told Torry a bit about why while it was happening. I even opened up to Shelly a time or two, but I had never told Katie any of it.

I guess I've never really been comfortable explaining myself to anyone. Eeyore is the first real person who got me to spill all my secrets. It wasn't out of shame or anger that I didn't say much about what I'd done. It was more that I've always been a live-for-the-moment type of person. My daddy likens my personality to an "any-bullride-you-can-walk-away-from" personality. I'd run away, but I'd survived each time. What more did I need to say about it? I guess I've never really understood all those people who have battled back disease and then gone on to tell everybody in earshot how excruciating the experience was and how wonderful it feels to have beaten it. I've always been more of one to look forward to every day after the ordeal. I can't really see myself dwelling on the sadness in my life. That's why it's always been one of my unintentional secrets, this running away business. It's one of my quirks. Again, I can only be Breanne--no more, no less.

"Did you ever get scared?"

"Me? Never," I lied. I wasn't about to start crushing her perfect image of me.

"I was scared."

"And you haven't even hit high school yet. Lord help us all once you reach the big kids."

But I felt it in the way she laid on her bed. I don't know exactly what caused her to decide to ditch school. She hadn't opened up to me about the exact nature of her problems, but I could tell there was a story behind it. There always is. Something told me this wasn't the first day she had decided to run away.

The parallels were staggering. I had been around nine or ten when I first started acting out, started leaving home without permission. Those first few times were mostly about getting away from my mother yelling all the time. I'd leave for a half hour or an hour. My mother would be all worried and instruct me never to do it again. The funny thing is she would never yell at me. She'd be so glad to have me home, I'd still be punished, but the yelling would stop. I didn't care so much about the groundings and the no allowances. Those I could handle. What I couldn't take was the being yelled at part and being told I couldn't yell back. It was really hypocritical the way my mother would say yelling wasn't a lady-like way to act, but then yell herself. I remembered, though. There I'd be, doing my damndest to plead my case (as much as a nine-year-old's vocabulary would allow me to plead my case), and she'd be doing nothing but shouting over me. It wasn't fair. I would even throw in some "please, thank you's" like she had taught me, but those never did the trick either. The only thing that got her to cease was my running away.

After that, it became a reflex. I'd get in trouble, they'd hem and haw, and then I'd come back. It really started seeming like it wasn't a big deal.

"High school is kind of scary, isn't it?"

"It ain't no picnic, sugar."

"Yeah."

I couldn't figure it out. Four years ago, my biggest problem was my mother and I ran away because home wasn't looking so good. For me, school was like a refuge from the storm. I had friends in school, I had lovable teachers in school, what's more, I was kind of the center of attention in school. I could be as insouciant and bratty as I wanted at school and the rest of my class loved it. They would praise me to the high heavens as if I were The Hen of the henhouse. I could do no wrong there.

To me, it sounded like home for my cousin Katie was the refuge and school was the storm. It didn't make sense to me. But we all have our lots in life and this was Katie's.

I decided on a new tact.

"I'm only joking, Katie. I love being at school. All my friends are there, I can feel myself getting smarter everyday there, and it's just plain fun."

"I don't know. I hate school so far. I just want to stay home."

"Well, you can't do that."

I wanted to believe that Katie was just like me. She was every bit friendly as I was. She smiled like everything was wonderful all the time. She knew all the right things to say. I wanted to believe that she was like a miniature version of me.

But she wasn't.

The truth was Katie, when she wasn't around family, was slightly shy and awkward.

"Is that why you walked home today so early? Because you wanted to go home, darling?"

"Yes."

"Well, that's just silly. You should have walked over to my school. We could have spent the day together."

She laughed. I continued.

"Next time, you want to go home from school, Miss Katie, promise me something."

"What?"

"Just promise me you'll take to me first. Who knows? I might come with you."

She laughed again.

I couldn't picture my cousin of the million teeth and radiant smile ever being down on herself. But, then again, I wasn't with her every minute of the day. I didn't know how well she was adjusting to school and to being exposed to something new everyday. I didn't know if she was able to handle it on her own. I'd hate to think of someone in my family as being weak. Katie did fit the bill, though. There was a reason why I always thought I had to look after her. Maybe that was why, because she lacked a certain fire I always took for granted was in everyone I knew.

"Can I try to guess why you ran away?"

"I guess, but you'll never understand why."

"Fifteen bucks and a shoeshine says I do."

"Okay, guess."

"It's because everyone thinks you're so pretty and they hound you all day wanting to be near you, right?"

She tried not laughing, but she was having a hard time of it. So I pushed her over the edge by tickling her a little.

"That's it, isn't it? My cousin the beauty queen. Should I start calling you Miss Mini-Macon? Would you like that?"

The way I saw it all she needed was some confidence in herself. She needed someone to tell her that she had positive attributes that made her worthwhile to be around. Vanity isn't the most cherished trait to fan, but I knew it would have an immediate effect on Katie. I needed something she could believe. I knew it would be far easier to convince her she was pretty than intelligent or charming. Those qualities I would build up later. As my daddy always says, "When you're building a sand castle, you've got to gather the dirt first before sculpting." Katie needed something she could arm herself with tomorrow so she wouldn't be tempted to come walking home to mommy again. She needed to have the boost to get her through the day.

She shook her to deny my allegations vehemently.

I started noticing her twirling her hair anyway, though.

"I'll tell you a secret, Katie. If I had been half as pretty at your age, I don't think I would have ever ran away at all. Unfortunately, I wasn't as blessed as you were and I think that's what made life so hard for me, you know? You're really lucky."

"I am?"

"Sure. Just think, if you're this gorgeous now, imagine how popular you're going to be in high school. You'll be making everyone envious."

She laughed one last time and I knew I had hooked her. The next day she'd walk into class all puffed-up and assured. She'd walk into class knowing she had something over the rest of her classmates, something they couldn't dare take away from her. She had the praise of somebody she admired a great deal. It wouldn't matter so much what they thought of her as long as she could hold it in her heart that I was proud of her.

My mother's mistake hadn't been in trying to get me to become wonderful. That's a noble goal, to be sure. No, my mother's mistake was not thinking I was already some kind of wonderful already like I thought of Katie.

That's when I discovered the difference between being somebody's role model and being somebody's mother. It was the one time I could honestly say I did a good thing for someone who admired me and the one time I made a conscious effort to set a good example. I'm not a mentor... yet. But for that one day I felt what it was like to help somebody who didn't know better along their path to becoming a better and more well-rounded person. To this day when I look at Katie, I can't help but think I assisted in making her who she is today.

And I'm proud of her because of that little piece of me, that confidence, she always carries around with her.

"I love you, Katie. There's no reason for you to get heart trying to come home from school by yourself."

"I know."

"Besides, everyone in this family knows I'm the one who runs away..." I said as I was leaving her room that night. She looked up at me, wondering what I was going to say.

"...and no one likes a copycat," I said laughing as I left.

Breanne

How Did You Go So Far Without Your Heart, I Know It's Hard, But You Gotta Do Your Part, I'm Through With Short Cuts

--"New York Minute", Whispertown2000

There wasn't anything easy about the way Joshua and Brandy got along. That's what she tells me anyway. She tells me everyday while she was with him it seemed impossible that the two of them were meant for one another. She had long hours. He worked out of the condo they shared at odd hours, seemingly on a whim. She liked getting directly to the point. He preferred belaboring the point as to give the complete story. She nourished change. He was seemingly stuck in his ways. There were some days where she contemplate the chain of events that lead her to where she was. She would contemplate the possible reasons she might have ever been attracted to him in the first place.

I have no reason to doubt her. Brandy's always been a very forthright person. However, I have debated with her the idea that someone she claims to be her soul mate could have caused her even the occasional bout of agony. Chalk it up to the Romantic in me, but I've always held dear the notion that when two people are meant for each other that they rarely fight. Even if they do, it's the pitifully intangible subjects they squabble over. They fight about where to go to dinner or whether or not to vacation in Hawaii or Colorado. What they don't do is fight about the big stuff. They don't go into depth over differences in opinion and they do go into depth over whose fault something is. They just don't. In my ideal world, I would have people believe that the person I was destined for get along swimmingly without a hint of trouble. I'd like to believe in that world.

She thinks that's why I have so many missteps with the people I've gone out with. I try too hard to peg people into these holes I've created. Then, when they dare not to fit, I turn them loose. Coming from a doctor, the advice that there are some ailments that were never meant to be corrected seems incorrect somehow. After all, if a young woman's inability to calculate the tip bothers me, isn't it my duty to show her how it's done? Or if another young woman's predilection runs to getting me to become a fanatic of NASCAR do I not have the right to turn the tables and actually attempt to break her of her fanaticism? Isn't complete happiness the reward for being patient enough, working hard enough, to find the woman of your dreams?

Brandy says no.

Brandy says that there is no perfection that one can stumble upon. She says that the person you were meant to end up with is also the person you meant to drive you the craziest you've ever been sometimes. Simply because they don't agree with you or necessarily like you all the time doesn't mean they don't love you. It's when you can for the most part accept their idiosyncracies rather than change them that you know you've found someone worth hanging onto. As she likes to say, love never means having to say you're sorry, but it also means never having to say you'll try to be better.

She's the only person I've ever met who has been completely happy with the way her life has turned out. Me, if the person I thought I was supposed to spend the rest of my life died on me, I'd be devastated. She only thinks about now and then. To her the times they spent arguing or disagreeing are just as sweet as the times they spent in each other's arms. To her it wouldn't have seemed as special if their relationship had all been hearts and giggles, it wouldn't have seemed as substantial if the entire duration had consisted of nothing but fluff. She's glad to have the hills and valleys of their journey together. She says she'd much rather have that than a flat road the entire way. Sure, you might complain a bit about the ups and downs of an arduous journey, but you'll also remember it for being so difficult and for having gone through it. No one remembers a walk that's made easily. You might as well have walked down the block and back. She asks me to believe that adversity is what cements two people together. She asks me to believe that there are no short cuts, no easy fixes, or simple answers.

I loved Joshua, but we didn't always get along, she tells me. I still wouldn't change anything, though. He will always remain the love of my life and no one will ever compare to him.

And you know what? I finally believe her.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

I've Been Looking So Long At These Pictures Of You, That I Almost Believe That They're Real

--"Pictures of You", The Cure

One genre of music I've come to appreciate in my life is the new wave classics that formed the background music of my growing up. Bands like The Cure, Depeche Mode, Psychedelic Furs, &c... for me never go out of style. I can hear one of their songs and still maintain that it holds up just as well as it did fifteen, even twenty, years ago.

On that very compelling reason alone I probably would have gone to see the new Tom Hanks produced British film, Starter for Ten. I probably would have gladly paid my eleven dollars, gone to the Arclight, and sat for close to two hours listening to their amazing soundtrack. With tracks from The Cure, The Smiths, Psychedelic Furs, Tears for Fears, Echo & The Bunnymen--it's a veritable who's who of the music that was very much part of the landscape of 80s. As I sat watching the movie, I kept on commenting to myself how well the soundtrack blended into the story. I also kept agreeing with the choices made. Each song, just from my own life, was like a audio shorthand to what type of emotion the characters were experiencing. As soon as the first few notes played, I remembered what kind of scenes played out for me while that song was playing and, damn it all, if I didn't see that same type of scene playing out before my eyes.

Aside from the music, though, I had a skulking suspicion that this movie was right up my alley for another reason.

I'm a sucker for coming-of-age movies and this movie had coming-of-age stinking off of it from a mile away.

From the official site:

Starter for Ten is a romantic comedy set in the mid-eighties about a working-class kid (James McAvoy) as he navigates through the turbulent first year at University. On his way to achieving his long-held ambition to appear on University Challenge, he falls in love with his beautiful teammate and forms a plan to win her heart through his advanced general knowledge skills. Starter for Ten is a charming coming of age comedy about loyalty, class, falling in love and the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Based on David Nicholls best selling novel and directed by newcomer Tom Vaughan.

there was nothing in the world
that I ever wanted more
than to feel you deep in my heart

As I was driving home from the film last night, I was trying to figure out where this obsession with coming-of-age stories stemmed from. It's been so long that everyone who knows me knows I like coming-of-age stories, that I had forgotten myself what was the inciting incident, to use the business parlance. I couldn't remember what pushed me down this path to this adolescent melodrama addiction. I sorted through my memories and came to the conclusion that I wasn't born this way. Sure, I liked shows like The Wonder Years and movies like Stand By Me, but early on I never made a conscious effort to soak up as much of the genre as I could like I do now. Back then, quality work was just quality work and I never made distinctions about what I was seeing. It wasn't until later on that I started to sort out the kinds of stories I immediately gravitated towards.

Where it started I believe is in the idea that I never really had a good coming-of-age tale to tell people. I got older, definitely, but I didn't have tales of big romantic troubles and processes of growth I had to battle through. Back in my teens and earlier than that, I had some hiccups along the way, but nothing that made any sense if told in isolated incidents. The closest I came to a good heartbreaking story of learning to grow up was the story of my being too shy to come out at the bathroom my first school dance. Even that, though, was not as traumatic as I'd like to believe it to be. It doesn't scar for life. If anything, I employ in the same way I use any other anecdote, for purposes of amusement and not confession.

That absence of anything concrete I could point to as a story of growth and change is the foundation for a lot of my character. I think it's the reason why i gravitate towards people younger than me as acquaintances and friends. I live vicariously through them whenever they regale me with tales of how they coped with adversity in matters of the heart and soul. The first of these friends was Jina, who is five years younger than me. I think that's where it started. Yes, she was intelligent and, yes, we communicated easily. However, a lot of my initial interest in her was the fact she was going through experiences I never really felt I had gone through. I came to fall in love with hearing about this other life that everyone else seemed to lead that I never got a chance to. Everyone who came after her, followed the same pattern, even to this day. Breanne fascinated me to tears with her stories of struggling against her parents for a semblance of independence, whereas my own struggles for the same rights with my parents were relatively painless. Tara confessed to me all her insecurities about starting college and losing friends from high school, of trying to forge her own identity, whereas I made up my mind rather quickly about going to USC (maybe too quickly) and never really felt any huge swell of sadness at leaving most of my high school buddies behind. DeAnn spun tales of getting into trouble that I never would have dreamed of even attempting. And, Carly, who is some fourteen years younger than me, I've admitted that one of the biggest reasons I think we're friends is the fact she doesn't mind sharing some of what her life entails. Looking back, I seem to make friends pretty quickly with people who have lead interesting lives I can mine for stories.

In a sense, watching and writing coming-of-age stories are my feeble attempts to fill a hole in my character. I guess I've always felt a lack of doing terribly impressive or exciting. Somewhere along the way I figured that it was probably too late for me to have my coming-of-age and that the best I could do was try to understand everyone else's experiences. I'm like a sponge when it comes to people telling stories of this nature to me. That reason too is why I got involved so heavily in reading blogs; I crave the intimacy and the raw emotions that other people seemed to have felt that I never got to feel.

I'm not saying I didn't have moments where I felt confused or lost and had to puzzle my way through. But my times always came later than everyone else and when I was in a state of mind more conducive to piece my way through it. I had very few troubling moments in my teens, a little more in college, and even more recently. But I've always felt some or all of those times should have come earlier.

That's the only reason I can give why I'm still drawn to movies like Starter for Ten , because it's almost like Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap. These movies with their characters in turmoil undergoing a transformation is my little way of putting right what once went wrong with my life. For those few hours, I get to feel what it's like to do, say, and feel those things when it could've happened instead of when it actually did.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Sometimes We Make The Mistake, Of Thinking Everything That Looks Good Is Great, We All Seem To Go For What Shines

--"All That Glitters Isn't Gold", The Cover Girls

"It isn't the end of the world, Breannie. It'll turn up eventually," he told me on the phone that night. I wanted to believe him, but the despondent child in me who had spent the better part of the afternoon looking for the gold necklace my father had given me knew the odds of my finding it were worse than finding a cat taking a shower. I'd tore up my bed, ransacked through my closets, and emptied my drawers from their chests. I'd come across nothing. It was reaching well into dinner time and the time my daddy usually came home. I knew I'd have to tell him it was lost and gone forever. My mother would scold me. Then she would turn right around to him and remind him that she had said I was too young to keep such a valuable item. She'd remind him that she had suggested waiting until I was out of high school to bestow it on me. Sure, I'd be upset that I was foolish enough to lose it, but I'd be more upset to know my mother was right and that, however you looked at it, my daddy would have to agree with her.

"Have you checked your bathroom?"

"Twice."

"No luck?"

"No luck, darling? I'm telling you I never wear it except for special occasions. I wasn't even wearing it out today. I was just trying it on to see if it matched my dress. Tell me truthfully, of all the fools you know, Eeyore, I'm the biggest, right?"

"You're not a fool. Things get lost. That's their nature."

As I spoke into the cordless phone, I did a quick reconnaisance of the balcony on the off-chance the necklace had mysteriously walked itself outside to take in the view. I couldn't see how it would have been out there, but when a man's desperate for water, he'll drink from the horse's trough, as my daddy says. I couldn't afford to be entirely sensible when setting down limits for my search.

The necklace was gorgeous. It had been eighteen karats of an aureate hue so brilliant it made me smile just to look upon it. I had gotten it for my tenth birthday after much pleading back and forth between my parents. My daddy finally had told my mother that I was old enough to be responsible for it and that it was high time I had something nice to wear. My mother had scoffed. She had said that I wouldn't appreciate it and I'd lose it in the first few months.

I almost had. On that camping trip when I was ten I had had the necklace taken from me by that mysterious red-eyed boy only to have it mysteriously show up back in the cabin later on that day. After that, I had been extra mindful of it. I had treated it with the utmost importance. I had treated it like it was going to be the last necklace I would ever receive in my life. On one hand, it was foolish of me to think that it would be an ornament I'd wear for my entire life. What looks good on a ten-year-old slip of a girl probably wouldn't look as charming on a twenty-six-year-old (almost twenty-seven-year-old) woman. On the other hand, it was something I had planned on saving for my own daughter someday and the loss of it was affecting me more for that sentimental value than its actual value. My father could afford to replace it. My mother might raise a huff, but in the end it wouldn't be like I would go necklace-less.

To me, though, I'd always know that it wasn't the original one my father and I had painstakingly picked out. It wouldn't be true. It would just be a pale imitation.

"I have to find it, Patrick. I have to."

"I understand that, but does it have to be."

"Hell's bells, when do you want me to find it? Next week? Next year? What good would that do me?"

"I'm just saying that maybe you need to step back from the situation. Take a break, Breanne. Maybe with a clear mind you'll remember where it is."

He had a point. I had been fairly frantic in my looking. For three hours straight I'd looked in every alcove and nook of my room. With every disappointment, I only became more intent on finding it if it was the last thing I do. I was like the dog who had buried its bone in the backyard, but couldn't remember where. Eventually it would dig so many holes it had forgotten why it had wanted the bone in the first place. I knew why I wanted my necklace, but possibly I was doing more harm than good in trying to find it. For all I knew, tossing around errant piles of clothes, scattering loosely piled papers, and scooching furniture around might have only served to obscure where the necklace was in the first place.

"Ten minutes. I'm going to rest for ten minutes. Then I'm going to start looking again. Does that suit you?"

I plopped down on my bed like Raggedy Ann, exhausted from my efforts. All I wanted to do was find this stupid necklace, put it back where it belonged in its jewelry box, and go on with the rest of the day without having to face my parents and admit I'd been wicked once again.

"It isn't like they'll blame you," he said.

"Yes, they will. You and I both know they will."

"Okay, they will. But I'm thinking they won't be that mad."

"It's expensive."

"Yeah, there's that. But it isn't like you lost it wearing it out somewhere. You're sure you lost it in the house, right?"

"Yes."

"Then it'll turn up. If you explain it like that to them, they can't get too angry with you, Breanne."

I wanted to believe him. I did. But he only knew my parents from what I told him. He couldn't pick up on the nuances and subtleties that made them them. It was like when you draw somebody a map of a place you'd been to. In your head you could pick out landmarks, knew where to turn instinctively, and plain had the bump of direction at all times. Placing it on a map for him, however, made you realize the layout was a lot more complicated than you realized. There would never be any way I could fully explain how I knew my parents would be cross about losing my necklace. I just knew they would.

It had value to them, I thought, because they had paid a lot for it. I believed that would be their biggest concern, that they had wasted all this money on, only to have me go and lose it like a redheaded step-child. I thought the inevitable loss in trust would be the result of being entrusted with something of worth to them and managing to misplace it. In my head, it would have been akin to them handing me out $500 and my going, oops, and losing it down the sewer. I felt that awful. I didn't know what to do with myself. Stupidity didn't even come close to describing how I was feeling. Shame was closer. I felt like they were never going to trust me with anything valuable again. That was destined to be my secret shame. It could be twenty years from that point and I could be living on my own, but they would still recount the story of how when I was fourteen I had lost that one gold necklace my father had given me. "That's why we had to cut her out of the will, don't you know? We can't trust letting her inherit anything. She might lose it all." Those were the thoughts that were flashing through my head.

Still laying on my bed, not really talking to Patrick, I had just decided to resume looking when my daddy unexpectedly came to my door. I quickly got off the phone and stood up to face him.

"What happened in here, tiger? Freak hurricaine?" he laughed, surveying the damage I had inflicted nearby.

"Sort of."

At first, I was just going to hide it. I had planned to spend a few more hours more puttering around, hoping against hope that the next place I looked would be where it would be found. It hurt too much to imagine the disappointment in my daddy's eyes if I did tell him what a fool I'd been. I didn't want that. I probably would've done anything to avoid that.

Yet there was a part of me that knew that was what the younger me would have done--played fast and loose with the truth to get away with something. But the older me had made great strides in proving myself to them, especially to my mother. I had told her my feelings about not wanting to do those beauty paegeants any more. I had made it clear to her that I wanted to discontinue my dance lessons at least for awhile, maybe forever. Finally, I had successfully negotiated my way into proving I was capable of choosing my own friends, even if they were more mature than they would have liked. I couldn't start being fuzzy with the truth now.

"Daddy, there's something I have to tell you."

"What is it?" he asked, motioning for me to sit on the bed as he walked up to me.

"I wasn't going to tell you this, but I lost your necklace."

He sat down beside me.

"I wasn't aware I had a necklace, tiger," he laughed.

"Hell's bells, you know what I mean. I lost the neclace, the one you gave me for my tenth birthday."

"I see. And you looked everywhere?"

I turned my face to him and looked into his cocoa brown eyes. People always say I have a knack for looking other people directly in the eye. It didn't matter if I was lying, telling a joke, or being deadly serious. I can always reach into that part of me that is courageous and stare into the face of my opposition. The words, sure, I might stumble over. And I may not like what comes after I say what I have to say. The owning up, though, and the taking responsibility I've always been quite good at, when given the chance. I wasn't afraid to meet him eye-to-eye. I didn't have anything to hide or being ashamed about. Worried about? Yes. Ashamed? No.

I would take my lumps like the dutiful daughter I was trying to be.

"Don't worry about it then. We'll just have to get you another one for your next birthday?"

I was shocked. He didn't even break into teeniest bit of frustration. Hell, he didn't even think it was important enough to call my mother into our small tete-a-tete. I could have told him that I'd broken a fingernail and met more anxiety than I was seeing and hearing.

"You're not mad?"

"Why would I be mad? It was an accident."

"That's what Patrick said. But it was so expensive."

"It's not like we won't be able to eat just because you lost one necklace."

"But it was so valuable and I lost it."

I was more upset about it than he was. I was more confused than a kangaroo at a rodeo.

Just then my daddy laughed and got up from my bed. He patted me on the head, kissed me on the forehead, straightened his clothes a bit, and started to walk out the door. I quickly got up myself and followed him to the doorway.

"I don't understand," I said to him as he began walking down the upstairs hallway.

"Honestly, Breanne, you're the most valuable thing to us. That's the reason we gave you the necklace. As long as we don't lose you, I'm not too concerned about one piece of jewelry that probably wasn't going to fit you for too much longer anyway."

I smiled at his back.

"Still. Let me break the news to your mother."

----

I never got a replacement for my gold necklace from my father on my fifteenth birthday. Instead, on that birthday, in a tent I was given a gold necklace that probably cost only one hundred dollars if it cost a penny, by somebody who comes pretty damn close to cherishing me as much as my parents do. It has a simple koala charm that hangs off of it because I do have a great fondness for koalas.

It may not match in monetary value the necklace I lost that day, but it too is a reminder of how valuable I am to the people who are important to me.

This will be the necklace I shall pass onto my child when he or she is old enough to wear a necklace because it isn't the value of that piece that matters. It's the idea that it's something that is given with love to somebody who is valuable to you.

That's all that matters.

Breanne

Is This The Kind Of Fate You Could Contemplate, A Breakdown At My Very Sight, I Promise Hidden Words of Tenderness In Every Single Line That I Write

--"If Looks Could Kill", Camera Obscura

This past Saturday started off horribly. Well, maybe horribly is too strong of a word. I went to lunch with my fellow USC alum, Miss Ilessa, at the Arclight for the express purposes of being able to catch Ghost Rider. Lunch was good so I can't say the whole experience was tainted. It's a bad state of affairs, though, when the highlight of going to the movies is eating lunch beforehand. We had a good talk, got to know her all over again, and then headed into the movie. I won't launch into full detail of how awful I thought the movie was, but I did compare it to "gargling a watermelon, skydiving with a Volvo strapped to your back, and paddling through a sea of broken glass all rolled into one."

Sufficed to say I was one unhappy customer.

Later on, I parted company with Ilessa, to get to the real meat of that day's activities. I drove further on into Los Angeles to the El Rey Theatre on Wilshire to go see my second favorite band in the whole world, Camera Obscura.

And that's when, as they say, things started looking up.

I don't know if I've ever detailed how I got into those plucky minstrels from Glasgow, Scotland, but it's kind of a circuitous route. B. and I were struggling to find a lovely post to grace last year's Mother's Day edition of this site. As always, I suggested we start with a song and work backwards. I knew it wasn't going to be about my mom because, unlike Breanne's mom, I really don't have much to say about mine. I never had the great tragedies or lofty heights that my friend and her mom shared. I'm not much for family in general. My relationship with my mom is what it is, serviceable. Due to this fact, it fell to Breanne to find something appropriately interesting to write. We started scouring the Internet for songs about mothers, loving your mom, and stuff like that. However, we couldn't find anything appropriate. It wasn't until we started doing searches on her mom's name, Jean Holins, that a so-called gift landed right at our feet. We found a song so perfect, so amazing, I still remark to this day that it was some form of serendipity that lead us to the promised land.

That song was this:

--"I Love My Jean" (live on KEXP 2-12-07, probably the most heart-melting version of the song I've heard so far)

And from that song my talented and extremely wonderful friend wrote this:

There's Not A Bonnie Flower, That Springs, By A Fountain, Shaw, Or Green, There's Not A Bonnie Bird That Sings, But Minds Me O, My Jean

That song still brings tears to my eyes, I won't lie. Sure, I know it's only because it's based on an enduring poem by Robert Burns and because it reminds me of Avonlea as well. Yet it's more than that. I'm totally in love with Tracyanne Campbell's voice. I don't know if it's the accent, her unique phrasing of the lyrics, or the fact her voice is in a register reserved for the likes of Allison Krauss, who is still one of my favorite singers. All I know is that from that point forward I couldn't get enough of Camera Obscura. I bought all their albums and downloaded as much as I could get my filthy hands on in a matter of two weeks. Every new song was like finding an old friend and every time Tracyanne, bless her little heart, opened her mouth I was astounded at how beautiful she can make the English language sound. Yes, I'm a sucker for accents and, yes, it doesn't hurt that a lot of the songs she writes touch on the same feelings of loss, regret, forlorness, alienation, and plain stress of life that I seem to always revolve my own writing around, but I can't pay her a higher compliment than saying the reason I like Camera Obscura the most is the fact their music makes me happy.

So it was that I went into my second Camera Obscura show ever on Saturday with high expectations and a twitter in my heart. Their first show had been a gleeful affair and I was hoping this show would follow suit.

I wasn't disappointed.

From "Tears for Affairs" to "Suspended from Class," I was in heaven. Every song sounded as good, if not better, than they did on the album. It was a wonder I got through the whole show without losing my voice because I was singing and screaming right along with the band throughout the entire show. Let me reiterate, I truly think Tracyanne has a unique gift in her voice. It's just pretty, which I know is a simple way to describe a voice, but that's the whole summation of the power and prowess she uses her instrument. She could write a song about garbage heaps and filthy sewers, and all I'd think was I really must see these alluring and dazzling locations she's singing about. The rest of the band also deserves praise. Everyone follows Tracyanne's lead to create a real bang-up job of making wonderful music together. An especially whopping round of applause goes to Carey Lander, the band's keyboardist (and resident redhead... sigh). I didn't know this until I saw their first show, but apparently she handles all the back-up vocals on their albums. I had thought up until that point that they simply dubbed Tracyanne on the recordings. I don't think I was alone in this assumption. Every time I've seen them play, though, Carey has handled her back-up vocals duties with aplomb and determination. It must be rough to be drowned out by such a stong lyrical presence like Camera Obscura's lead singer, but Carey has quite a good voice in her own right. I especially love her backing of Tracyanne in the song "If Looks Could Kill". The two voices blend so well together.

After the show I caught up with Ilessa again and I told her all about my wonderful night over breakfast at one in the morning at The Kettle over in Manhattan Beach. I must have talked her ear off and every word out of my mouth had to be, "you should have been there. It was great." In fact, my only regrets were the facts that I hadn't met her earlier in the month and that the concert sold out so quickly I was unable to procure tickets for her.

Hmmm. There's always next time. Believe me, when they come rolling in again, I'm going to be going to as many shows as possible. I know, I just know, that damn voice is going to haunt me until I can see them live in concert again.

All in all, the day started off sucky, but it ended on one of the most perfect notes I've ever experienced. And all those notes came courtesy of one amazing singer named Miss Tracyanne and one amazing band named Camera Obscura.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Eh, one more for good measure...

"Shine Like A New Pin"

Hey Now, Hey Now, When The World Comes In, They Come, They Come, To Build A Wall Between Us, We Know They Won't Win

--"Don't Dream It's Over" (cover), Sixpence None The Richer

Rachel once said, "Right is right even if no one does it, and wrong is wrong even if everyone does it." I happen to agree with that sentiment. With every fiber of my being I have always advocated for doing what you think is right, what makes you happiest, and what you think is the most advantageous for you. I don't abide making concessions simply because they are easier or because it's what's expected of you. Settling on a solution that benefits everyone or some idea of the greater good is dandy for most people, but it isn't my idea of a goal. As many of you know, I would rather stick to my beliefs even if they don't agree with the population in general than risk compromising my ideals.

I bring this up because there is a situation at work that has left me belittled and, frankly worn out at the end of each day. While I'm there all I do is stress and attempt to get by as best as I can without irritating the wound any more. The originating incident I believed to be a small one, hardly worth the effort my co-workers seem to be exerting in making known their dissatisfaction with me, but I'm hardly the one to be an impartial arbiter of such disputes. I came to work yesterday having already forgotten the whole affair that transpired on Friday. However, they seem hell-bent on retaining their rancor for an indefinite period of time. Needless to say, the silent treatment, the refusal to make eye contact, hell, the blatant attempt to pretend my existence has been dismissed, has all lead up to a situation where I honestly dread going into work these days. That hasn't been the case in the ten months since I've been there.

Everyone is telling me I should be the bigger man and take the first step into patching things up. Breanne's is advising I place the blame solely on me, attributing my side of the conflict to over-reacting and being in the fury of the moment. Carly's telling me to come up with a statement where no one is at fault and, instead, chalk it up to the situation getting out of hand. Lastly, my new friend Ilessa is saying that I should joke my way through it. Maybe if I don't acknowledge there's tension between us, then they won't either.

All that is well and good, but that simply ain't me. I never admit fault where I don't see fault. I never act falsely to smooth things over if I don't feel like being jolly and gleeful. They are wrong and I am right. It's as simple as that. This is not to say I don't want all this pussyfooting around each other to come to an end. I would love for the work environment to be returned to the status quo. I'm just not about to sacrifice my principles over shouldering the blame for someone else and placating people just to avoid a little discomfort.

I'm better than that. Way better.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

You're The Light In My Deepest Darkest Hour, You're My Saviour When I Fall, And You May Not Think, I Care For You

--"How Deep Is Your Love", The Bee Gees

I laid in my bed shaking. Outside the noise of rain hitting the earth sounded like somebody had turned the shower fully on and neglected to turn it off. It wasn't that the patter was a constant drone; it was the fact it was so loud that bothered me. It was unnatural. It was unsettling. Needless to say, I couldn't sleep no matter how hard I tried. Yet if it has merely been the rain and merely a restless night, I do believe I would've been okay. However, something more ominous had accompanied the storm and it was this something that had caused me to shake almost rather uncontrollably.

The thunder sounded like hoofbeats, far-off but still loud enough to jolt you awake. Like hoofbeats, they signalled something approaching, something coming. The expectation was the nightmare.

I'm not proud to admit it, but I am afraid of thunder. It scares me for no explainable reason. My daddy once told me that it hearkens back to ancient times. My fear, he said, was something primitive, instinctual in the same vein people run away even before they realize what they are running away from. It is nothing to be ashamed of. It's something you've just got to be aware of and recognize for what it is. As he puts it, "the only reason birds fly is because they got better sense than to try and swim."

But when you're a fourteen-year-old girl who should be more in control of her fears, that kind of advice truly does not help. I was a slave to my emotions and my emotions were telling me to hide away in the closet until the big, bad thunder went away on its own. I disliked knowing that I had any sort of weakness. Being vulnerable put me in the position of having to acknowledge that there are some situations that I wasn't equipped to handle on my own. After all, if my immediate response to a little noise was to run away, it's no wonder other situations seemed to get the best of me. Hell's bells, it's a wonder I hadn't developed into a full-fledged agorophobe, afraid to tread outside my parents' house for fear of being stricken down from above. I was supposed to be stronger than this. Somebody my age was supposed to be braver than this.

But I wasn't.

I tried shutting my eyes for what felt like the eighteenth time that night. I wished the thunder away as if it were a phantom I could dispel by not believing in it. Yet as hard and as often as I wished it away, it would come back a few minutes later, ruining what little progress I had made in trying to sleep. The phantom lived yet and the phantom was in me.

That's when I decided to get up and do something desperate. I placed my bathrobe over the sweats and one of my dad's old t-shirts he had given me. I crept as quiet as a church mouse to my bedroom door and listened above the rain outside to hear if either of my parents was stirring. Hearing no noise in the hallway, I opened my door slowly. I peeked my head out the door, ready to duck back inside should somebody catch me. No one was about. I decided to risk it and started tip-toeing down the hallway towards my parents' bedroom. Every step creaked. Every footfall whispered to me to turn around. Teenagers don't head for their mothers when they're scared. They're supposed to face their problems on their own. I was a letdown to every independent free-thinker between the ages of eleven and eighteen. I didn't care, though. At the point in time I had worked myself into such a tizzy all I really wanted was my mother.

By the time I reach their doorway, I was kicking myself figuratively for being this weak. I grabbed the doorknob feeling the shame in every inch of my body, threatening to break at any moment. This was going to be something I'd regret.

I walked in.


when you know down inside
that I really do

I approached my parents' bed from my mother's side. I lifted the covers carefully as not to disturb either one of them. When I slid in, I half-expected my mother to tell me to turn right around and go back to my room. I was sure she wouldn't understand. But, if she woke up, she never said anything. She never even let me know there was a problem. Laying there, feeling my mother beside me, believing she would keep me safe from whatever harm may be out there in the middle of the storm, I finally felt comfortable that night. She would protect me, I was sure of it.

It's been said that as a little girl I loved my daddy more than my mother. I don't think it was that as much as I understood him better. He is like me. He is always quick with a smile and a "how do you do?" He is always there to give great advice and has this bottom-line of trying to make the other person comfortable. What I didn't understand then was that I'm like my mother too--quick to put her two cents in even when not asked, stubborn, and too proud for her own good sometimes.

You would think at that age when my mother and I disagreed about so much and had been involved in so many fights, it's my daddy I would have wanted to be near. You would have thought that he would've understood more about why I was this scared. But, just as my fear of thunder was something instinctual, I think the reason I approached my mother was just as instinctual. True, I understood my father more and he probably could have explained and comforted me more. But I didn't want to talk it over and have it all laid out.

I just wanted to be near somebody that loved me, somebody who would hold me through the night.

And if that's not a mother's job than I don't know what is.

Breanne

And There's Nothing Left To Say, And There's Nothing Left To Do, But Keep In Mind, From Time To Time, I'll Always Think The World Of You

--"Camden Town Rain", Mary Lou Lord

I wasn't planning on writing a poem today, but I had a good idea for one on the way home from the movies. The only problem I can forsee with this poem is that it's basically muse-less. I usually write my best stuff when I know who I'm writing to or about, but, fuck, this literally could be about anybody I ever loved, dated, been friends with, or had a crush on. The only caveat would be it would have been written at different times with each of them--some of them when I first met them, others later on, and others only after they left. It's kind of unique of that way because, though it has one sentiment, it's pretty much a sentiment I've had for a lot of people.

I don't know--I guess you can chalk this one up to every lounge singer's requisite song for his adoring female audience.

Or, as Stephen Lynch would say, "this one's for the ladies..."

Enjoy.

AT THE LAKE
by E. Patrick Taroc

Long have I wondered what we are
When facing a fate not yet gleamed.
We’re the virgin lake seen by none
Except the silence and the sun--
By dark, casting back a star,
By morning, mirroring the sky,
Our face reflecting the you and I
I had always hoped you had dreamed.

How to be water there are no ways;
A river can only run its course
From end to end without a thought
As to the chaos in which it’s caught.
Nor does a drop count all the days
It has spent settled upon ground;
Nor does it ever die when found
Dried by that last fanning force.

If unmarred by meddling hands,
This lake shall ever endure true
Because a lake can never break
From the sheer weight of its wake
And a lake levies no demands,
Just as every joy I’ve known
Has been spent being left alone
Within the quiet confines of you.

(02/15/07) Copyright 2007 E. Patrick Taroc

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

So Let Me On Down, Cause Time Has Made Me Strong, I'm Starting To Move On, I'm Gonna Say This Now, Your Chance Has Come And Gone

--"Too Little Too Late", Jojo

I was watching The Class, which is turning into one of my favorite new shows, last night and was startled to discover a very poignant scene amidst the hilarity. I'm not comparing it by any means to the great emotional heart-tuggers like Avonlea or Everwood, but as I sat watching Duncan make her confession to Nicole about why he dumped her ten years ago suddenly, I was actually moved to, well, write a post about it. All season it had been overtly mentioned that Duncan regretted losing the love of his life all those many years ago and called it the biggest mistake he ever made. Conversely, Nicole, continually found herself being torn between Duncan, the first love of her life, and Yonk, the man she eventually married. All season it was this big secret what broke them up in the first place, but I had the sense that it was something trivial and that the two of them truly were a case of bad timing and bad judgment. However, believing one thing and hearing it out loud are two quite different experiences.

Basically, last night Duncan admitted that the reason he broke up with her in high school was that she "was acting somewhat like a bitch" and that he just snapped. He tried to call her the next morning to patch things up, but her mom answered, and he was too embarrassed to call back for the next few days. He then went on to explain that a week after that he heard through the high school grapevine that she was already going out with this other guy and that was that. It was only later he found out she'd gone out with the new guy one time and that she had been secretly hoping the two of them would get back together eventually. Seeing his face when she told him, "it was just the one time," and him answering, "somebody eventually told me a year later, but by then it was too late," was heartbreaking. Compile that with seeing her confusion at his big revelation about why he did it:

"So it wasn't because I was a bitch all the time?"

"Nope."

"And I was only somewhat being a bitch that night. Not a raging bitch, but somewhat?"

"Yes."

"And here I thought it was this huge reason about why you didn't like me or why you thought we weren't meant for each other."

It literally tore me up inside because that sense of regret and emotional imprisonment is the stuff that truly gets to me. People always expect melodrama to arise out of illness or death, but I think the truly saddening experiences are the ones born out of being separated from somebody you were never meant to be separated from due to stupidity, dumb bad luck, or true misfortune. I don't care what anybody says, nothing hurts more knowing you could have been together with someone and you blew it.

Most of the time, I'm on the front of end of regretting a choice a made or a decision I came to. Most of the time I'm the one who is looking back on my life and trying to pinpoint where I went wrong.

There was one time, though, where I actually saw what it was like to be on the other end of someone's regret.

----

It was right after I had met DeAnn in July of '98 which would place the time at August, I think. I think the two of us had been going out for a month or so. Everything had been proceeding smoothly so with her so, of course, out of the blue I get a call from the ex who came before her, Miss Tara. I don't know if I've ever gone into detail just how bad my break-up with her had been, but I'm fairly sure I had. To borrow a device from Nabokov, it was bad (tears, four days). Not only had it happened on a four-day trip to visit her in Maryland, but the following eighteen months of trying to be friends with her proved to be excruciatingly bad. The whole experiment of whether or not the two of us could remain friends culminated in my being stood-up in Philadelphia in May of '98 after it had already been agreed that the main reason I was flying there at all was to see her. After that, both of us pretty much knew there was nothing left to salvage. I think we stopped talking right at the beginning of June of that year.

Yes, it came as quite a shock when I heard Tara's voice on the other end of the line asking me how I was doing and what I'd been up to. I've met a lot of women. I've dated a couple. Even after collecting such a large sample, I still maintain that Tara had the most melodious voice I have ever heard. There was nothing specific about it, but if could imagine what a woman's voice is supposed to sound like if you were picturing the most feminine and alluring voice possible it would be hers. It wasn't sexy or persuasive. It was just nice. Smooth. Soothing. And when she trained her voice to sing, that quality of perfection ramped up considerably. She was always the best singer of anybody I have ever known.

I just remember before I'd met DeAnn how broken I was and how I kept wishing, hope against hope, that Tara and I would get back together someday eventually. It's probably how everyone feels when that happens to them. But, for whatever reason, one always thinks one is the first person to ever feel heartache or loss. For whatever reason, one always believes no one else has ever felt the pain like we've felt. One always thinks one's case is different. But it isn't. I'm not going to say it was the heart rending loss that destroyed me for life because it wasn't. At most, it screwed up my last year at USC and perhaps contributed my not wanting to jumping head-first into the job market. A job? How could anyone expect me to look for a job when my heart was torn into a million flamable pieces? Like everyone else will tell you at the time it happens to them, to me it hurt like no other hurt and I didn't see any way past it.

However, by the time she called that August, I had literally forgotten how much it hurt. She asked me if I was still distressed. Distressed? Not really. She asked me if I ever thought about her still even after not talking for two months. I told her, yeah, of course I still thought about her. She was a large part of my life for a long time. But how I thought about her had changed. It's one thing to be alone and miserable, pining for the one that got away. It's another to have somebody new in your life who isn't better or worse than your last girlfriend, just different. At that time, with my relationship with DeAnn being so new and all, different was good. Different meant I didn't have to worry about what Tara's high school friends thought of me because DeAnn was older than Tara had been when we had first started going out. Different meant I didn't have to contend with Tara's very proper and strict parents. Different meant I didn't have to be fumbling around with someone who was so unsure of herself. DeAnn may have her faults, but she'll never let you know she gets flustered. Her reaction to being confused was to take charge of the situation despite not always having the best solution. At the time, that's what I needed.

Eventually the conversation with Tara turned to the matter of her coming to visit California again in two weeks' time. She wanted to know if we could meet up again. At first, I was torn as to whether I should see her for old time's sake or if I should allow whatever we had between us die. I was very close to saying it was a good idea to meet up when I heard it. The way her voice sounded wasn't merely the pleasant tones I'd been accustomed to from her. Her voice also carried something that reminded me of somebody else.

Namely, it reminded me of me when I had been so anxious to see her again in Philadelphia. It reminded me of the person when I was still waiting around for her. It wasn't desperation per se, but she definitely sounded like a person who was still holding the door open for me to come back through.

The only thing was I'd already shut that door two months' prior.

That's when I told her about DeAnn and how happy she made me. Tara tried to be a good sport about it, but there was a definite tinge of disappointment in her voice. I don't think she ever fully expected me to meet someone else. To her I'd always been somebody who could serve as a back-up plan. I attempted to do my best to let her know that I no longer harbored any ill will towards her, but it was probably for the best we stopped speaking. I didn't want to lead her on into think something could be salvaged should DeAnn and I wither later on down the line. Tara was a sweet girl and there was a time I loved her to bits and pieces, but she had had her opportunity and being with her had ceased being a goal of mine. Whether or not my new relationship with DeAnn managed to last, I knew, I finally knew that Tara would never be it again.

I think like The Class there are some people who you'll always be close with, no matter how long the two of you are apart. That's like me and B. But there are other people who you can come to be attached to for a time, but once it's over, it's over. With those people you can't linger onto the hope that you can keep on reliving the happy memories you shared once. With those people it isn't possible to go back to.

With those people, you end up adopting the attitude that Duncan and Nicole share (for now). You have your one chance and you just have to make it count, otherwise, you could end up regretting it ten years down the line and allow it to eat you alive.

I don't know if Tara still feels it to this day, but I knew she felt it by the end of the conversation. And, yes, I do believe we ended the conversation by stating that we loved each other, but it was more like the pronouncment of affection you give to an old friend who is moving away for good to Stockholm. It was good to say, but it only held that quality because I knew it would be the last time I'd ever to say it to her.

There would be no second chances for us.

I remember the first thing I did after getting off the phone with her was to call DeAnn at home. I needed to be reminded of what I had gained at that point because what I'd lost just didn't seem to matter any more.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

It's Steadily Creeping Up On The Family, Exactly How Many Days We Got Lasting, While You Laughing We're Passing, Passing Away

--"The Crossroads", Bone, Thugs, N Harmony

I waited outside her hospital room, utilizing the only power left to me, denial. Figuring if I refused to see how she was doing, if I didn't allow my mind form a mental sketch of the beginning of the end, then maybe the end wouldn't come. I played the game that children play, if I can't see it, then it isn't true. And I so wanted it not to be true. This just couldn't be happening to her. More to the point, it shouldn't be happening to her. Not to her. Not to Jennifer.

I don't know why we do it, focus on the stupid stuff that has no bearing on the situation on hand, so I can't tell you why it became important to me to focus on the fact that I had Jack in the Box that day. Nor can I reveal to you some mystical reason why I was trying to compile the contents of said lunch and trying to remember the exact total of the meal. I should have walked inside already. She'd asked specifically to see me. Yeah, it was about two weeks after other people had found out, but that day, that specific day, she felt okay to show me what she'd been hiding all those months after she'd found out herself. She was broken and she was never going to be fixed again. I guess the whole revolution of my thoughts around Jack in the Box was a distraction mechanism. If I'd found out with everyone else, seen with everyone else, been lumped in with everyone else, perhaps I could have hidden among the flock. My reaction would have been their reaction. My tears would have been their tears. But, no, she had to single me out so that I would have nowhere to hide.

My waiting out on the hallway, trying to bring about the biggest smile I could fake, could have been construed as being nervous. However, nervousness, I think, is reserved for events we hope to see--promotions we hope to get, proposals we hope to be answered positively, times we hope we will remember always. That time was different. It was akin to fear. I was fearful I would see her lying in the hospital bed, worse off than I could have ever imagined, and never being able to forget that image ever. That was my nightmare I was trying to avoid. It's true what they say, when you know it's going to be the last hurrah, you really will go out of your way to avoid having the last image you see of a person be at their worst. Because part of what was racing through my mind, besides burger wrappers, was the notion I could walk away and have my last memories of her be happy ones. Sure, it'd be the cowardly thing to do, but I was trying to convince myself that would have been what she wanted. After all, didn't she try to hide her secret as long as possible? Wasn't she trying to spare everyone's feelings so they wouldn't pity her? I didn't understand why couldn't things just go back to when I, when all of us, were just skipping along in blissful ignorance.

Five minutes had raced by before I knew it and I was still standing like a doofus outside her door.

I could have prevented it. I had been friends with someone who went to become a researcher studying something pretty damn close to what she had. Maybe if I hadn't screwed up that friendship like I did all my friendships, I could have been able to call her and ask for her assistance. All of this was really preventable. All of this really my fault.

I could have saved her.

I don't know what made me walk in finally. Possibly, it could have been standing out in the hallway far too long and the questioning glances I was beginning to receive. Whatever it was, I walked away, prepared for the worst, steeling myself to be the emotional wreck I always knew I was capable of being. She knew me. She knew I tended to block out unpleasantries such as the inconsequential matter of my friends dying. I had to pretend I didn't care to stop myself from caring too much. It'd be like poking a hole in the dam. I wasn't built to just let a trickle through. If I let a small piece of what I wanted to feel through, the whole facade would come down. That's why I thought it better for all involved if I saved my genuine feelings for her for places like this, my writing. I was more comfortable with getting it all down on paper, choosing my words carefully, without having the unfortunate side effect of my face and my eyes betraying the suffering behind every word. No one should have to say out loud that their friend is dying. I didn't want to say that to her. I didn't want to apologize that she was sick. I didn't want to tell her it was unfair, that she didn't deserve it, or that it should have been me. She knew all that. Besides, saying all those things gave the dying power. It granted the sadness and the grief a strength all their own, that silence did not.

Again, if I never had to say it, it wouldn't be true.

So, yeah, I walked in there prepared to lose myself in the tears I thought she deserved. I wanted it implicitly shown that I would miss her horribly. I wanted her to believe that at least one person cared about her enough to absolutely lose it in front of her.

But that never happened. I walked in there and she was smiling broadly. She treated it like I was visiting her at home. And we talked as if the two of us were merely sitting on the couch, catching up on silly Dawson's Creek re-runs. We joked, we laughed, and we didn't discuss the fact all of this was going on in a hospital. Not, at first, at least. We treated my visit, my two-hour visit, as if her being in that bed was where I saw her every week and as if all the wires, tubes, and machinery strewn about her where pieces of furniture she had chosen to decorate her bedroom with. Everything was normal. Everything was exactly the way it always was.

It wasn't until I was about to leave, that she broached the subject.

"So the doctors I might go really soon, Patrick."

"Oh, really?" I asked. I wanted to ask if she meant leaving the hospital, but, the way she said it, I knew it was a stupid question to ask.

"When I go I want you to do a small favor for me."

"Shoot."

"Say something nice about me. Something cheery maybe."

"Cheery. Got it. Anything else before I go?"

"No, that's it. Just promise me when you come back, you'll let me hear what you wrote."

"If I get something good going."

"When you get done, and you will, promise me you'll read it."

I don't know--maybe it was the way she said it, but suddenly I caught her drift. She didn't just want me to write something cheery for someone else to read. She wanted me to read it when she was gone in front of everyone she knew. Not only that, she wanted to hear it before everyone else. Or because she knew she would never get the opportunity to hear it with everyone else.

And that was it. That was the extent of my first visit to her in the hospital. The first of many, but not as many as I would have liked. That was also the only time I've ever written something I was proud of in one shot. It's probably because I wasn't writing it so I would be proud of it, but that she would be proud of it. I finished it within hours of leaving that room and I read it to her the next day.

And we never talked about her leaving again.

She died with a smile on her face a couple of months later and everyone else got to hear what I always knew about her.

Jennifer's Eulogy

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

I Could Want Somebody Else, I Could Need Somebody Else, I Could Love Somebody Other Than You, But I Don't Want To

--"I Don't Want To", Ashley Monroe

He had been following her all month, studying her habits, learning all the new routines she had picked up since he had been gone. It was a study in psychology, this attempting to figure out why she did the things she did. Some of them he remembered, like the way she folded her towels just so or the way she kissed her parents' picture good night before she went to bed. That hadn't changed. Some things, however, were new. Surprising. She had taken up to sleeping in the middle of the bed recently. That troubled him slightly. Part of him still felt like it was their bed. They had always shared it. She had always taken the left and he, the right. She shouldn't have changed that, he thought. It angered him that she could put that agreement aside so readily.

But even that he could forgive. He didn't want her missing him for the rest of her days. Of course, he still wanted her with him, but, if she couldn't, then why not pray for her to move on?

What he couldn't forgive was how much it still hurt him, seeing her in all her hazy happiness. The first few days after he had passed had been hard for her. He had spied on her even then. He had watched her cry on the balcony, their balcony, for days and days, waiting there as if she were waiting for him to come home from work just like it was any other day. He had listened in on her as she talked to her parents about how rough it was and how she was considering moving back home with them. He had sat on the bathroom counter and watched her contemplating ending it all by slitting her wrists in the warmed-up bath tub.

Through all that he had suffered right along with her.

Where was he now when she needed him most? Unable to help her. Unable to hold her. Unable to have her in his arms at all. It was torture for him in every sense of the word. It was a daily reminder of how much their lives intertwined for the better and how incomplete her life was without him. What it also was a painful viewing of how much agony he was causing her.

That first week he contemplated moving on, leaving her in peace like they all told him he should be doing. The dead belong with the dead; the living, with the living. It was some bad mojo when you mix the two. There ain't a damn thing you can do for her now, they said. You gotta come along with us to the better place. They didn't understand, though. They couldn't contemplate the bond between him and her. It was sacred. Impenetrable. Rock solid as they come. Something like him being able to tell her how much she loved her wasn't going to stop him from worrying about her, from wanting to be with her, from loving her. It was merely an obstacle on their road to true happiness. He had decided to remain behind for as long as it took for her to move past this. He wanted to see her smile and mean it. He wanted her to tell her friends that she was finally happy again and for that to be the truth. He wanted all these things for her because he still loved her and always would.

That second week he had attempted to contact her. He tried writing his name in the fog on the bathroom mirror. Yet he could never nail down the trick. He could never concentrate quite enough, focus quite so sharply to get it done. He only ended up making random holes in the periphery. Nothing she could interpret as a message from beyond the grave and certainly nothing that would evoke the response he was hoping for. He next tried saying something to her. He would sit on the couch for hours and hours with her, trying to say hello. Or hi. Or even a death-rattling moan. He would have even settled for that if it had gotten her attention. But, like the writing, he couldn't even manage to utter a single peep. Moving the furniture, clawing at the walls, even appearing as an image in front of her all proved fruitless. He might as well as have been the wind. That too frustrated him that he wanted her to notice him so badly but there was no means by which to accomplish that.

He also noticed that she seemed to cry less. And, while she still couldn't force a smile to her face, she did seem less bleak. After she had scared him with the bath tub incident, he noticed she never tried again. That was a good thing. It meant she was miserable, but not hopeless. He didn't want her feeling without hope. He was there and that meant there was always hope for them to be together again.

The third week he listened in as she began to make plans to maybe do coffee with some friends. They had wanted to know if there was anything they could do to cheer her up. Oh, it's fine, she had said. I'll be okay. But they had insisted and she had left that one afternoon, after weeks of being cooped up in the house, to spend one hour with the people who were still alive who loved her the most. That's when he had found out he was trapped in the house. He had tried to follow her. He had tried really hard, but something, some force, had prevented his going beyond the front door. It had been like knocking into a pool of jello. He didn't so much smack into a wall as be bounced back by it. After she had gone, he had pressed every inch of the household for a back door, a secret exit not blocked off by the gelitanous mass. No such luck. He was trapped in the house.

He began to wonder where she was, what she was doing. It frustrated him that he couldn't follow her to the coffee shop and hear what she was talking about. He wanted to know what she was thinking, what she was saying about him. After weeks of being privy to everything about her life, he had gotten used to the accessibility and felt the absence like a gaping hole when it was gone. He couldn't reconcile his feelings regarding the emptiness. It finally felt like he was losing her.

All this time worrying about her losing him and how she was coping, and he never stopped to consider that this might mean he wouldn't have her any more. He saw where all this was going. Soon, maybe in a month, maybe shorter, she would start going back to work. He would be trapped in this house without her. After that? Maybe she would start seeing other people, other men, and he wouldn't be able to follow her to make sure they were the right kind of guy for her.

Worse yet, he'd be stuck here if she decided to take one of them home. He'd be compelled to watch his wife make love to somebody else. He knew how that would make him feel. It would tear him up inside like a thousand razor blades to the heart.

He didn't want to see that happen.

Now here it was the fourth week and she was finally able to crack a smile. It was small, to be sure, but it was there. She had been rifling through the old picture albums, reminescing over pictures of the two of them. When she reached the picture of them in Cabo she paused for a moment. That's when he saw it. It cracked the veneer of her restlessness, her impatience. He saw the hint of a smile that told him she still had good memories of them both. That's when he saw she was still in love with him. He watched as she slowly worked her way through the rest of the photo album. She never smiled again, but he knew it was there. He knew the feelings for him were still there. He knew she still wanted to be with him... forever. She was trapped just like him, he realized. She wanted to be with him but she was stuck here.

Well, he began to think, I could help her with that. Couldn't I?

Dangerous thoughts started to work their magic into what passed as his intellect now.

If she wants to be with me and I want to be with her, why can't I help that along? It's what we both want. We were supposed to be together. We need to be together, he thought.

That's when he made up his mind what he had to do. He needed to do the impossible. He needed to make his form substantial enough so he could reach out and touch her. He needed to be able to make himself solid enough so he could affect things in the real world, so that he wouldn't pass right through them. He needed to be able to use his hands to move things physically. He needed to do that.

He needed to kill her.


there is no good out there for me now

So it was on the last night of the fourth week after he died that she came walking up the staircase to their bedroom (where she now slept in the middle of the bed). So it was that he matched her step for step up the creaky stairs. So it was he moved in close behind her as she reached the top landing.

Then, swinging around her so he could be facing her, to look into the beautiful face of the woman he loved, would always love, he finally appeared to her. If her face registered any shock, it was lost in the absolutely joy her smile displayed. She could see him at last. That's the emotion he saw first when she finally set eyes on him for the first time in a long time. She was smiling at last. She was happy finally.

He tried to remember not to get distracted. He tried to focus. He couldn't lose focus on what needed to be done. He had to do this. He had to do.

For her.

He watched as her face turned to abject horror as he shoved her backwards down the stairs. He listened to the awful screams her mouth made as she tumbled faster and faster to the bottom. He felt the earth move beneath his feet surprisingly as her body cascaded into the walls, the railing, and every step along the way. Then he watched as the life began to fade from her. Slowly it melted away like ice on the floor.

They would finally be together again.

Breanne

And Then I Want To Go Away And See, Well If You're Never Gonna Let Me Feel Alright, And If You're Never Gonna Let Me Go Away

--"About the Picture", Smoosh
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I used to be so good at it, this walking away thing. I used to be able to find the smallest excuse and turn it to my advantage. It could be something as trifling as not paying enough attention to me when I was talking about the girl I was seeing at the time. Or it could be something that was a huge deal, but I could have very easily let go like them moving on with their lives when I wasn't prepared to move on with mine. Whatever the excuse, I thought it better to cut out the person who was causing me pain entirely rather than hope for the relationship to progress to a better state. That's actually the way I preferred it. My life functioned much simpler that way. It was a system and it worked for me.

Then I got on this whole regret and second chances crusade where I started to believe that it was never too late to patch things up with people. And it worked too. I reached out for people and got fairly positive responses back. Jina, for instance, still amazes me that she's even willing to let me know how she's doing every once in awhile after the way I treated her. I began to feel good that maybe walking away from someone wasn't the life-ending stigma I thought it was. I learned that you can come home again and all will be forgiven.

However, lately, I find myself in a quagmire of confusion. I find myself enamored over someone who I constantly question my importance to. One can compare it to being told how vital one is to a job, but everyday catching glimpses of just how inconsequential one is. How do react when someone is telling you one thing but showing you another? That's the way I feel about her sometimes. Everyone always says that actions speak louder than words and, from her actions, I get the distinct sense that in the scope of things I'm not very important to her. I'm not going to lie to you; it hurts to feel like you matter so little to someone who matters so much to you. Days, a couple of weeks maybe, will go by and I'll finally resign myself to the fact that there is no hope for anything more than what I have no. I resign myself to the fact that what I have is good enough. And then she'll call and say, "hey, we should definitely do lunch" or she'll call and say she saw the perfect gift for me. Part of me thinks it's just a case of guilty conscience, but then a bigger part of me (foolishly maybe) thinks there is something substantial there to build on.

I've told people about this problem. I've told B. and Brandy, and a couple of people at work and even family members, but I can never quite explain how fully stuck I feel. I would say she's just jerking my chain if I actually thought it was that, but it doesn't feel like that. It just honestly feels like she's too busy with her life to appropriate any more time for me into it. That only leads me to keep hoping that it'll get better in the future. Maybe she'll become less busy. Maybe she'll have more time in the future when all indications point to the fact that she'll even have less time in the future and my importance to her will continue to dwindle away to nothingness.

And yet I stay, partly because I think she is like one of those rare creatures who I'll still be friends with twenty years from now. She's that special and unique.

But it's also partly because I'm afraid to walk away from her now, only to regret it later and want to find her again a year or two from now when it's too late. I made that mistake with so many people. I don't want to experience that with her. The last thing I want to realize five years from now is how important she really was to me and how I flubbed it all again by giving up too soon.

So here I remain, stuck, feeling like I want to be a bigger part of her life, yet feeling too grateful that I'm a small part of it to complain. Here I sit, thinking the intelligent choice would be to end it all and cease all these feelings of frustration at the role relegated to me, but emotionally feeling invested into the friendship at hand and believing it may be the biggest mistake of my life to abandon ship.

The truth is I don't know where it's going. All I can ascertain is where it's at now and feeling whiny that where it's at now is not where I want it to be. Is that enough to move onto greener pastures, more accessibile opportunities with other people? I don't know. Basically, all I know is how she makes me feel when she makes me feel we are close, we are connected in some way. All I know is how empty I think a part of my life would be if she were not in it. All I can do is continue hoping that the time I'm investing in this will pay off in the days to come, when everything isn't so complex.

She's got me on a short tether and the sad part is she hasn't even begun to realize how special she's become to me. It's like Caitlin would say, I continue to know her in the hopes that someday I'll have a reason important enough to know her.

I'm stuck and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing yet.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

And She Turned Around And Took Me By The Hand, And Said I've Lost Control Again, And How I'll Never Know Just Why Or Understand

--"She's Lost Control" (cover), 10,000 Maniacs

Having completed my first project, I was discussing with Carly tonight some possible names I've been mulling over for my new screenplay. I don't know if the names will work out (she might be right in stating that Matryoshka is not a name that simply rolls off the tongue), but I'm fairly excited about the basic plot points of the story. Like most of my efforts in fiction, it involves an individual who is not exactly honest and the trouble it leads him into. Except in this instance, I planned him to be a kind of loner who survives by conning people out of their money and persuading his friends into providing him the rest. Then one night, fresh from convincing some yuppies to "invest" in his promising new business, he walks out into a pair of teenagers being attacked by a group of men. So far, it seems like a straight-up "wrong place at the wrong time" story. Nothing too out of the ordinary, right? At first, he attempts to do what most of us would do in this situation. He tries to walk away and pretend he doesn't see anything. That's when the twist kicks in.

The two men shapeshift into werewolves.

This, more surprisingly, prompts our guy to follow suit and change into one himself.

And then the story talks off from there. The way I have it plotted now, it'll have the requisite hard-boiled edge, plenty of plot twists, and what I think is an interesting take on the whole werewolf theme. So far, I think I've got an original story that doesn't follow any of the tired supernatural conventions. It's not going to be a rehash of Underworld, An American Werewolf in London, or any of the other conventions you see in every movie of the genre. I've got a specific take on the beasts and I think it would work well with a thriller rather than a horror film. The main point I'm trying to go for is that he's a con artist who just happens to be a werewolf.

In that vein, I'm setting myself up with some very specific ground rules:

1. NO FUCKING VAMPIRES! I cannot stress this enough. Just because you want to include one supernatural creature does not mean you should leave the door open for all the mystical menagerie to come intruding in. In fact, I'm setting my foot down on it being mystical or magical. There will be no rituals or ancient writing involved. They won't call everything by their latin translation. And I'm getting pretty close to doing away with anything that could be construed as mystical and magical like full moons or silver bullets. I'll probably end up keeping the last two items, if only because I do away with those it may actually be slipping out of the genre, but I'm going to make it quite clear from the onset this isn't your daddy's werewolf film. Truthfully, I'm considering just naming the characters something mundane and far from tough-sounding. For instance, instead of naming the so-called bad guy in the screenplay something menacing like Spike or Thrasher, he's going to be called "Phil". I don't know--there's something ironic (and, yes, comical) of having this eight-foot tall mass of muscle, teeth, and claws be called Phil by his friends and enemies alike.

But, yes, I am shutting the door on ever including vampires into anything I write. As Breanne would say, Vampires can kiss my lily-white ass.

2. There's not going to be this menacing fifty or hundred strong pack roaming the city. At most, I'm setting a cap at two dozen in big cities and them being almost unheard of in rural areas. In my story, you'll probably be able to count the number of werewolves you see on one hand. I don't want it to be about how many I can get on-screen at one time. I want every character to have a name, a story, and the audience to be personally invested in what happens to them, be they wolfen or not. I want it to be like the old Aces Wild novels, where if you get bit by a werewolf you die. I don't want a situation where new ones are made left and right. I want it to be something wholly unexpected. 95% is the percentage I'm shooting for. 95% of the people who get attacked and bit die. 3% live but are never able to handle the change and are lost in the wilderness forever. It's only the remaining 2% who are able to control it and still live among city-dwellers. This is a very important detail for me because I want it to be a case where the beasts are less a society unto themselves, but more or less are a loosely connected collection of outsiders.

3. I don't want the experience of being a werewolf being akin to a disease or hard addiction. I don't want it to be this excruciating experience that ravishes a man's sanity or free will. I want to paint it as a picture of being an acceptable addiction, like drinking or smoking. It isn't so much they lack all control over themselves when they're changed; it's just that power and the thrill are so enticing. Again, this refers back to rule #1. I don't want their struggles to be about some "other" beast taking control over their body. I want it to be a more spiritual and psychological battle for control. The idea should be that every one of them should know the consequences for changing and the damage they're capable of, and still having full control to undergo the transformation at will when it suits them. That's probably why I want to take out all references to the full moon or silver being able to harm them because it reeks of cheese to me.

4. I don't want there to be some governing body over the werewolves. There's not going to be a great congress with delegates from every part of the country. No ruling organization oversees or keeps in check every pocket of werewolves. Everyone pretty much makes up the rules as they go along, which is how it should be. One thing I hate to see in a movie about anything supernatural is the idea of politicking being integral to their survival. If I was a werewolf, the last thing on my mind would be taking orders from anybody or having to adhere to any rules whatsoever.


when the change is gone, when the urge is gone,
to lose control, when here we come

It's this last part that's always drawn me to wolves and werewolves. I like this notion that epitomize of the wildness and savaqery that lay in everyone. In each of us lays an inner beast that does not rely on intelligence or rationality to make decisions. There's a part of us that is guided by instinct and raw emotion. I've always preached doing what makes one happiest, damn the consequences, and a wolf speaks to me of that kind of mission statement.

Everyone is fascinated by some kind of unexplainable creature because they see themselves in it. It's why Brandy always goes on and on about having a personal fairy that helps her out because she's always had this desire to help people out herself. It's why Breanne is always researching and telling ghost stories because she identifies with the idea of being present somewhere and yet disregarded at the same time. It's been a nagging hang-up for her for as long as I've known her. It's why there have always been supernatural tales from the time language was invented, because people have a need to invest personality quirks, traits, and desires into something bigger than themselves to make sense of it all.

It's why I live werewolves so much because I guess I have a need to express all these moments of rage, anger, and destructiveness that I keep bottled up sometimes. There's been plenty of times when different people have seen it come out. I'm not exactly known for keeping my frustration in check a lot of the time, but something tells me there's a lot more darker thoughts and actions that I keep in check. If a werewolf is not the perfect metaphor for allowing those inner demons to surface then I don't know what is.

That's why I think this story is important to me because, in a sense, it's just another means to getting to the bottom of what makes me tick.

Also, I really hate vampires and think there are way too many crappy vampire movies already out there.

It's time somebody--namely, me--makes a crappy werewolf movie.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers