life

I believe there are people out there that long for blogs to become a thing again. Between youtube, twitter, instagram, tiktok, podcasts, tumblr, reddit…I don’t know, it feels like there’s some exhaustion brewing with it all. I’m not saying it’s a lot of people, but maybe some. Or maybe it’s just me. I miss blogs, and I know there are still popular blogs around. I’m not talking about popular blogs. I miss reading blogs written by any old anybody, about anything.

The constant theme of my creative endeavors, online and offline, is the deep longing to create. Up until recently, I haven’t really had the mental or physical space to create. I’ve tried and failed…a lot. That’s kind of how this blog happened. I started it with the intention to write little stream of consciousness blogs, short stories, slice of life ramblings, and post some other stuff I get up to. The reality is that I get a spurt of energy every two years, post a bunch of shit that’s the equivalent of flinging spaghetti at the wall, then delete it later when I’m sober and embarrassed. I’ve decided to start trying. Even if no one ever reads this blog besides me, and my page views never amount to more than me just refreshing my own website.

When I started this blog in 2015, I was a 22-year-old community college student. I was helping caretake for family, and tutoring other students for money (writing their papers for them). My life left me with little energy to actually do anything for myself. At the time I couldn’t pinpoint why I felt so exhausted by it all, but a lot of it had to do with my mental health and how socially isolated I was. In 2018, after feeling I had gotten all I could out of my home and school life, I moved to Seattle. I was finally all on my own and life went from survival mode to hard mode. Even though it was hard, never before in my life had I felt happiness the way I did in Seattle. It was like life became bigger and brighter and more vivid.

I’m writing this blog entry in the year of our Lord 2020 on my couch, in my living room, in my house, in rural Pennsylvania, where I live with my boyfriend/UPS store notarized domestic partner, Eugene. It almost doesn’t feel real. A lot of wild times went down between moving to Seattle in 2018, meeting Gene in late 2019, then moving to Pennsylvania with him three months ago while in the midst of a pandemic. So I’m going to try to write about my life and the lives of the people around me (judiciously). I know I’ll be grateful to have some record of my life that I haven’t flushed down the toilet out of self-loathing.

Thanks, Jenn

Last night, my dream started with me inside the grocery store. I was walking around pushing a cart, down every aisle I was finding my belongings. But they were all items I haven’t owned in years. The sparkly blue denim clogs I lived in when I was ten-years-old were on top of the bananas. Loud patterned sundresses, regrettably given away, were hanging from the salad bar. The painting of The Spooky Girl, less regrettably given away, was leaning against a pyramid made up of boxes of Cap’n Crunch.

Then I was downstairs in my house, my mother and grandmother were sitting on the livingroom couches wearing Santa hats. The room was wallpapered with plastic red and green garland. A white Christmas tree had been set up, barren of ornaments and twiggy, so pure white it was hard to look at. I asked them why there were Christmas decorations out when we were only three days into summer, my mother exclaimed, “The new puppy has to have Christmas!” She gestured for me to go upstairs, as I did she added, “We are also getting a roommate! His name is Ted. He’s diabetic, don’t give him any ribbon candy.”

Outside the front door, a helicopter had landed on our front lawn. A man in a suit was coming in and out of it. He was placing down sleeping puppies, packed together in a line across the grass. I watched from behind the screen door. He finished getting them out of the helicopter, and I went outside to see. They woke up as soon as I sat down on our front stoop, jumping into my lap, getting in my face to inspect me. My hand went below the crowd of puppies and picked up one that was still sleeping. The man looked at him and said “He’s the runt of the litter. A blue-grey chihuahua dog.” I held the puppy close to my chest as I went back inside the house. He looked up at me, I remember saying over and over, “Hello Little Silver.”

I sat on the lid of the toilet in the downstairs bathroom, brushing Little Silver’s long hair as he slept in my lap. A man came in smoking a cigarette. He was Ted, the new roommate. Ted lifted Little Silver out of my lap, holding him so I could wash his small head. With his other arm, he gently touched my side, and I looked at his face. His closed lips were wrapped around the cigarette, but I heard him saying, “I’m sorry, I know it’s not fair.”

thats demented

a pile of puke disguised as words

l i v i n g r o o m

blue-grey chihuahua dogs need christmas too