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[witflitmanict]

A question for the youths

One of the things I find myself thinking most often when I talk to people younger than me is “Do you realize how fast things changed?”

I realize how old I must sound saying this, but the thing about working with children the entirety of your “adult” life is that you are just used to sounding old. It can’t be helped. When you make a living off of caring for the safety and wellbeing of others, and have a responsibility to educate and help raise them…you are going to sound old.

So I accept that I sound old here. Just as I accept that there are people out there who would consider my ripe old age to be old. It’s only fair, I certainly thought people past 30 were old for most of my life. 

But I don’t mean to sound old here. And I am not trying to talk about how things were in the old days. Certainly I am not trying to tell anyone that things were better in the past. I am simply amazed at how much has changed so fast. 

I was born in 1990. I am a queer, white, working class person. I went to schools that were pretty shitty, in a town that was shittier, until I moved to a new better school in a bigger more diverse but honestly just as shitty town. I was, thankfully, raised by very open minded people who did their damndest to instill in me the value of treating everyone around you as the complex being they are. This has always put me a bit at odds with much of society. 

When I was in school other students asked me if I was gay. They called me a fag, a lesbian, a freak and they suggested it would be better if I was dead. I was 12. 

While I never said the word, I had no problem having “tough, criminal” or “typical teenage boy” characters say the word fag. I type it here because it is what I typed then. It was thrown at me, and I had characters throw it out as a way to demean their enemies. I also had them say things were “gay” and that one I cannot promise I never used. 

When I was in school no one thought twice about the fact that we only had one black student in the class. And no one intervened when one other black student, a girl, came to school and students riddled her with questions like “Why do all black girls have short hair?” or said things like “Can I have her on my team? I heard black people are good at basketball.” I went home one day and asked my parents what the word “N****” meant and they told me in horrified voices that I should never say that word and asked me where I had heard it. When I told them, they told me they were not surprised, and to tell the teacher should I ever hear them say that word again. A similar thing happened a few years later with the word “ch***” thrown as my close, Asian friend. The students who said these words were told off by the teachers and principals, and maybe got detention. Nowadays, words like that usually mean an automatic suspension at a minimum. (At least where I am).

By the time I reached high school this was changing, admittedly. It was also a much more diverse area. But I have no doubt if I went back and talked to many of the students of color at my high school, they would have plenty of stories about microaggressions or even simple aggressions that were never dealt with. 

But it goes beyond the obvious things. Today I listened to a podcast where one of the hosts mentioned working on a show that’s whole premise was to take angry, nerdy boys and young men who had been unlucky in love, and teach them how to woo a woman. They told them that their anger towards women was legitimate, and could be used to attract them (although probably not in so many words). The other host asked when this was, suggesting the early 2000s. The first host hesitated a moment, before saying he thought it was as late as 2010, possibly even 2012. 

I was in university by that point. But that checks out. The word “incel” was only just starting to come into the vernacular. People at my college knew that “gay” was now a word that should not be said but back home even other “progressive” friends still used it to describe things they did not like. I believe “cringe” is probably closer to what it meant by then. No one had told the world that black lives matter, trans people only existed on the fringes of society, and women should be happy that they now had important jobs and know that sexism (like racism) was over. 

For god’s sake, I still had to argue with people that climate change (still called global warming) was real and that not all Muslims were terrorists in 2013. 

And all of that was barely a decade ago. That seems like a long time when a decade means half your life, I understand that, but it was a blink of an eye for most people. 

But for me, and many people like me, one day I suddenly woke up and found that most of what I had been saying for years was now considered the correct, common knowledge and that I was likely behind on recognizing my own biases. I found that the same people who had once fought me on issues like whether an all girls school should accept a trans woman or whether inner city neighborhoods had an increased number of “gang members” because of an inherent problem vs a systematic one…agreed with me. And what was worse, they often tried to now repeat to me the same things I had been saying for years. It was a whiplash I am not sure I have recovered from. 

And again, this is not to say that there is anything wrong with this. Nor is it even to tell young(er) people to be more forgiving of the mistakes older people make when trying to navigate the very complicated nature of politics, race, gender and sexuality. Be angry. You deserve that. It may drive me crazy sometime but hey, I drove lots of old(er) people crazy too when I was younger. 

But I really do wonder: do young people realize how quickly things changed? Because while I want to give you all the benefit of doubt, my own experience of being a young person makes me think that you probably do not. I certainly did not have a good gauge of how much the world had changed from the time my parents were teens (in the 70s) to when I was a teen (in the 2000s) and that was a much longer amount of time. Although it now feels like very little in the grand scheme of things. 

So how could you understand it? Perhaps you can, because you have better access to the media of 10, 20, even 30 or 40 years ago than I did growing up. You can watch our old movies and be horrified by what people do and say (I certainly am). But then I find that often you question how those things could be said or done at that time. And that’s the difference. I don’t wonder about that. There was no mention of body shaming or fatphobia when the movie Shallow Hal came out.  It was generally thought of as funny, and anyone who suggested it may not be, was told to be less sensitive. I suspect it was much the same as how people felt about blackface in the 20s. 

But Shallow Hal came out in 2001. 

(Is 2001 now a very long time ago to you? My current group of students was born mostly in 2003 and they are considered adults…so I suspect the answer is yes…)

(1355)

[witflitmanict]

I'm Still Here

Did you think I had left and given up already? I wouldn't blame you if you did. I made a plan and followed it for approximately three days and then...nope. Finished. 

Typical. I actually have been writing. I just have not completed anything. Or managed to get anything over 1000 words. So nothing has been posted because I wasn't hitting my goal. See? This is the problem with rules and regulations, they always end up hindering me... The reason I have not finished much is twofold: First, I have somehow gotten stupidly busy. My schedule went from "guess I'll be having a boring and also slightly poor October" to "and now every day of your calendar is filled with an obligation or two that shall take up all your time either attending them or preparing to attend them." It is possible that had I thought a few seconds ahead I would have realized that this is the case, but thinking ahead is not a strong point of mine. Second, I have been inexplicably tired. Actually it is not really inexplicable. It is just that the tiredness comes in starts and stops just as suddenly, which feels inexplicable. The tiredness has meant a lot of laying in bed trying to sleep which is another thing I am not good at as you may recall. This has meant less time to actively write. And so, like many writers out there, I have not managed to finish a single thing I am working on. And perhaps worse, none of them are even in a place where I could split them to post something on here...they are very, very much in progress. 

I am trying my best, my friend. 

I suppose there is a third reason that I should mention. It is the other thing that makes it very hard. 

You see I am very much in a rut. I think it could be argued that in most of my life I have felt in a rut, but for most of my life I have at least had an inkling of an idea of what to do next. That is not currently true. I think it has very much been untrue since around the time I turned 30, possibly even a bit earlier than that. I had a life goal that was not very glamorous I think, although it was very exciting, and I achieved it. And I enjoyed it, but I knew fairly early on that it was not going to be what I did for the rest of my life. 

My life goal was set at a very young age and it is one that I know many people who come from the sorts of places like I did share. It is a very common trope anyways. Person from a small town and a difficult family dreams of leaving and never coming back. I think perhaps the only thing that makes my situation a little unique is that I knew this was my goal from the time I was about 8 years old. I said as much to my mother, standing in the kitchen while my siblings argued over who would get to inherit the house when we grew up. I  happily told my mother I had no need to join in this argument because I would leave as soon as I could and not come back. 

And that is precisely what I did. I left to go to college and I never returned…

Ok not really. I did leave for college, and was gone for two years. But then I got horribly depressed and could not find my way out of a paper bag, and so I returned for the summer between my 2nd and 3rd year in college. It was not a great summer, but I (and my mother) made it through, and thankfully it was short, and so I left again…only to return for about a month after I graduated. This time it was more of a timing thing, but also…I was still definitely depressed.

But I did eventually make it work. I moved abroad at 23, and stayed abroad for a little over 8 years. Each time I succeeded in something I gave myself a new goal: travel to different countries, move to a different country, get a job as something other than an English teacher, create a potentially permanent life for yourself…

I did all that. By the time I was 30 I had lived in two different countries, traveled to about 25, gotten a job at an international school as a regular classroom teacher (what I had actually gone to school for…) and created a great support group that included friends, partners, and a fulfilling life.

And almost simultaneously my health was failing. Truthfully there were signs of it before I ever left: migraines that would last for days without relief until they simply ended on their own. Suicidal thoughts that sometimes turned towards action but never a full plan. Constant trips to the hospital for injuries I got doing fairly regular things. But I had been raised to not put any stock into these sorts of things and encouraged to figure it out on my own.

It will come as a surprise to no one that I had a full breakdown around 27. I did it alone in a foreign country, and came out of it alright, albeit with a bi-polar (II) diagnosis, and an action plan. So I packed up again and moved to a new city with a new job and some new meds. And while in the process of this I experienced near daily pain that eventually hospitalized me for a week when my system shut down and rejected anything put in it. Food, water, medication…it was not a fun time. 

And so I was diagnosed with celiacs and a soy allergy. And there was improvement after that. Until there wasn’t. Until the headaches returned, sometimes with nerve pain in my hands or shoulders or neck that was so severe that I could not move and would lay in agony or cry at my desk when my students were gone. Then I began to get sick any time I exercised, unable to breath, vomiting, or nearly collapsing in pain. I have always been active - martial arts, snowboarding, skateboarding, running…it is part of how I keep my mental health. So when I lost it, my mental health rapidly deteriorated too. Breakdowns, depression, panic attacks and rage returned and I began to only see a vague haze around me in my life in Japan. On the one hand, I loved it. It looked neat and tidy and likely enticing from afar. On the other hand I was miserable. I hated my existence and could not see any way of making it work. I could not find the next step because as far as I could tell any new step might put me at risk of not making it.

And then there was home, and all that was happening there. It is one thing to dream about leaving your family, and it is another thing to actually do it. Should you make that choice, you may find that it is hard to watch them fall apart and put themselves back together, only to fall apart again, when you are so far away and there is little you can do. 

So, I came back. 

And it is not a decision I regret. It was the right decision. But just as I knew my life in Japan was not what I had hoped it would be - the line at the end of the race - I know this is not right either. 

And so I have been a bit frozen. Unable to finish what I started this month as I wrestle with what the next, correct, step is.

So forgive me, gentle friend. I have good intentions, but sometimes life gets in the way. 

(1328)

[witflitmanict]

Podcast ads are getting to savvy.

Let’s talk about ads people.

….

Recently, when listening to podcasts, the same ad has been coming up over, and over, and over again. And it’s not the usual squarespace, Lomi or HelloFresh ad that each podcaster says with their own self respecting spin. In fact it’s not the podcaster or a podcaster at all. It’s a local ad by the local government, directing you to their website to check your name and see if you have any unclaimed assets. In order to get this ad you have to be basically exactly where I am, without driving too far in any direction, or the website would not apply to you. 

So the fact that this ad has been popping up has really gotten me thinking. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this ad actually might answer another question I had about podcasts recently; how is it that old, backlogged episodes have advertisements for current shows or tours? If you’re like me and you like a podcast, you probably go back to their old episodes and work your way towards the current stuff. And sometimes when you do that you can find that an episode which originally aired in 2020 has an ad at the beginning by the podcaster advertising their current tour. Which has always struck me as odd mostly because I lack in depth knowledge into how podcasts and sound files are made, but also because the only thing I can compare it to is video files and it seems like it would be exhausting to adjust the files the same way. 

Like I said, I am no sound engineer. And for that matter, I’m not actually a film or video person either, but I have worked tangentially in that field. You see I have a brother who is a video engineer (as well as a cameraman, editor, director, and general all around film guy), and I’ve assisted on enough projects to know that at a bare minimum he would have to cut out and replace the section of the video with the new ad. As far as I know podcast places are not like TV stations where there is a start and stop point in each video that tells the computer when to start playing the ads approved for this show. I’ve always assumed they are just files that have been uploaded to a server somewhere, where I as the consumer can then download and listen to them, or stream them. So even if it was a marked section that one could simply delete and then paste the new one…that would still be EXHAUSTING for something that has 300 episodes. And then there would be all the time spent having to export the work to a playable file.I mean yes, I assume sound files take significantly less time to export than video files but still…if you have to do that for all those episodes…talk about boring. 

And yeah ok I never did look up how sound exporting works (or ask the several friends I have who work as musicians…too much talking). But I did look into how ads are placed into podcasts, as that seemed like it could answer both questions. 

It turns out that, just as there are advertising firms that put and choose the ads for youtube videos or that run on the side of cheap websites, there are now ones that do the same for Podcasts. These agencies have the ability for the podcaster to go through and choose what kind of ads they want played on their podcast. Presumably, this same technology can also be applied for inserting ads into any of the episodes, old or new. So, while I had always assumed that podcasts worked as essentially one long sound file uploaded to a server that then can be downloaded from, it is clearly complex than that. Something in its coding, at least, is letting the advertising agency know that now is the time to play an ad, similar to how TV shows are broadcast, and that ad can be whatever they chose to in that moment. (or it’s just as simple as a podcast being a couple different files that stop and start with ads in between but…the world is usually more complicated than I imagine).

My continued quick search indicates that it was Spotify that started this trend on their own platform. They created a system that allowed podcasters to choose the kind of ads they would want played, and then would play them, rather than the podcaster having to record all the individual ads themselves. And it actually seems to have started earlier than I noticed; like as early as 3 or so years ago. (Although as someone who gets their podcasts off of the Apple podcast app, it may be that this was a case on spotify first, and you, dear reader, may have noticed it before me). ((or I am just slow on the uptake))

Regardless, I am quite happy that I hadn’t noticed it until now. Because as soon as I heard the first locally targeted ad my mind did not go “oh wow, that’s so cool!” but instead had an immediate “fuck.”

So…why don’t I like this new development? The local ad is annoying, which definitely is part of it, but annoying ads exist everywhere and I, like most people, largely skip through them. But this one wasn’t annoying me just because the guy’s voice is too earnest, or because the content of the ad has nothing to do with me…this one annoys me because it is local. And since it’s local, then it’s targeted. And one of the things that I did not realize until about a week ago is that apparently one reason I like podcasts is because their ads are not targeted.

I mean ok yes, they are targeted in the sense that people of a certain ilk are more likely to listen to certain podcasts. I’m going to listen to a podcast that largely fits into my political views, or talks about topics I am interested in, or teaches me something that I need to learn…and skip over the ones that don’t fulfill some interest of mine. And so the ads I get are going to be things that the podcasters believe people who like their podcast are also going to be interested in. So for me across many of my podcasts it’s a  lot of ads for the same things, or different versions of the same things. Green goods, internet related bits and pieces, the occasional media recommendation, and meal kit delivery apps are the most common. But even though they are targeted, they are not targeted at me. After all, I could in fact be nothing like the person listening to the same podcast on the other side of the country, except for the fact that we both listen to this podcast.

But the local ads are different. Now it is targeted at me. Or at least more precisely targeted at me than before. They now have some metric of me that they can surmise, and are thusly giving me a direct ad about it. 

That is really, really annoying. 

The internet already knows enough about me (and honestly it knows less about me than most people because of how long I lived abroad, and that is already too much for me). And now podcasts, something which have always seemed internet adjacent but not, in fact, the internet…they are going to get to know things about me too. Sure, right now it’s just my location, something they probably get from the download information, from my IP address or the cell tower I’m connected to…but what else could they get from me? Are they going to start looking at my account info? Will they have access to my age, sex, and other downloads? Will they start listening to me too??

Probably not. But I still don’t like the idea of it. And there doesn’t seem to be any way to opt out of this either. So I guess, for now, I’m stuck listening to the same local ad about something that doesn’t actually relate to me spoken by a guy who clearly took some dictation lessons. And honestly? I’d rather hear the same squarespace ad a couple more times. Sure, I’ll still never use it but at least it isn’t targeted. 

Word Count: 1407

[witflitmanict]

Trauma in the Living Place

As stated in the rules, if I miss one day I need to make it up the next day. Whether I missed 1 day or 2 days is a little up for debate because technically I did not think of this idea until I was in bed late on Oct. 1. It may have even been Oct. 2 by the time it truly occurred to me…but also I said for the month and well…it is the 3rd. 

Who cares? Here is a short essay based on a discussion my brother and I had last week.

….

When I was growing up I kinda knew that the world I was growing up in was off. Mostly I felt this because the TV was very good at showing me this. But I was also painfully aware of how cliche it was to compare your life to the people on TV because TV was fiction and life was real. I have always been far too painfully aware of my own existence. 

The thing is I look back on baby me and I think “Damn I was right.” 

The environment I grew up in was kinda fucked up. Not in a horrendously violent way, although it did have these peaks of violence, but more in just the way that every day felt like a battle and it felt like that for me from a very, very young age. And worse, as far as I could tell it felt like that for everyone around me. And I was pretty sure that couldn’t be right.

It was the therapist I started seeing after my most significant manic moment who pointed it out to me. This therapist, a kindly, sweatered, not that old man who had an office in an old apartment building in Japan that smelled like cedar and had sliding windows that opened up towards the railway, was the first one I had ever seen with any amount of seriousness. I had seen others before, but it’s hard to go to therapy when some of the things you struggle with most came at the hands of a therapist. Kinda puts a real damper on the whole trust bit. 

But this therapist, he was different. He didn’t just want to talk, he didn’t want to tell me what I could do to ‘improve my condition’ (shortcut to me - don’t tell me what to do). Instead he had a focused approach he wanted to do - EMDR.

EMDR, for those who don’t know, is a type of therapy that uses what to me, a lay person, comes across as almost a hypnotic approach. EMDR stands for “Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing”. And that is what the therapy is. Some therapists use a sound, some use a motion, others use light…but basically, they give you an external stimulus to focus on. Then, they ask you to share a traumatic memory. They guide you to go deeper and deeper into the memory, asking about details, asking you to locate where in your body you are feeling the memory (ie is your stomach tight, your neck flushed, etc) and then they try to help you relieve that emotion through breathing exercises, visual exercises, whatever. 

Here is a nifty little youtube video that tries to visualize it for you. 

How EMDR works? Look at this animation (English)

The point of this therapy is to try and deal with your trauma. It originated from a woman, Francine Shapiro, who said she noticed while working in the woods one day that moving her eyes side-to-side like this reduced her anxiety (or something like that, you’re on the internet you’ve got Google). She then took this movement and used it when working with trauma victims, and found that there was demonstrable improvement in their flashbacks and the way they reacted to the trauma. Thus, EMDR was born. It is, in fact a bit controversial as some people say it is just another type of exposure therapy but it is also recommended by a lot of health agencies to deal with trauma. And, as a personal aside, I found it incredibly helpful.

So, it was in one of these sessions, that my therapist asked me, essentially, what was the first time I remembered recognizing that the adults around me could not in fact take care of me. He was likely working off the theory that I had to “grow up” at too young an age, and it had left me quite affected. 

And so, I started in on the first strong memory I have of recognizing that adults are useless. I said I was about 9, maybe 8. I was at a friend’s house with my siblings. It was the sort of house that seemed to always have people about, but the mother was a wonderful woman who cared a lot about us, and her kids were about our age. This particular day there was a group of adults and some kids I was less familiar with. I remember this even now, some 20+ years later, that I was particularly curious about a bleach blond lady who seemed off to me. She just seemed like she was trying too hard, and I didn’t really like her…But it didn’t matter, the kids were in kid world and the adults were doing whatever adults do, so I just ignored her.

At least it didn’t matter until suddenly it really, really did. We were playing outside when an adult came rushing out and told us we all needed to get inside right this minute. It was clear this adult was panicked, and we were mostly all old enough to understand that an upset adult meant something dangerous, and obliged. We made our way inside and into my friend's room, the one farthest down the hall on the opposite side of the house. We sat on her bed and were wondering what was going on when we heard a lot of noise and looked out to see a man walking past her window to the back of the house.

The guy, I registered him only as “adult” at the time, had shaggy brownish blond hair, a white T-shirt and jeans. And a look on his face that sent me into a panic. It was intense. He didn’t look our way, instead he seemed really focused on something else. Something none of the rest of us could see. He walked with such purpose towards the back of the house and everything about him screamed danger. 

And in the panic that followed as we all realized that this must be why we had to come inside, I realized that my younger sister was nowhere to be found. She wasn’t in the room with us, and as far as I knew she wasn’t with my brother. So I went out and tried to get an adult’s attention. But they were in hysterics. That blonde lady was crying and the other women were trying to reassure her. My friend’s mom had her new baby in one hand and her phone in the other and was calling…her boyfriend. Not the cops. 

This is the moment where I first had the thought that adults really can’t do anything. I understood that we were in danger. That the man I had seen outside was a bad guy and he would hurt people. And rather than call the cops these grownass adults were calling the boyfriend of my friend’s mom who was all the way in Plymouth, a solid 20 minute drive at least. And more importantly, none of these adults seemed to have noticed that my baby sister was standing in the glassed in backroom, directly where that guy had been headed, playing pool by herself.

The guy came around the bushes and headed towards the sliding door of the pool room. And I yelled at my sister to get over here, so scared to go down and get her but desperate to get her out of there. The image of her looking up from chalking the pool stick and seeing me, and then the guy, as he began to kick the sliding door, is still pretty fresh in my head. 

For me, that’s where the memory ends. My brother remembers the next bit. We were all taken into the mom’s bedroom, and told to stay there until the adults came to get us. There was a lot of commotion going on, but my brother and his friend, they were old enough to recognize that they needed to do something to hide it, and put on some dumb 90s comedy. He doesn’t remember what it was, just that we all sat and watched it until the adults came and got us, and we went back home shortly after.

I guess my trauma figures that I don’t need to worry about the part where someone, another child really, took over the situation. But I do need to remember the moment I stood in the kitchen, looking at the adults, and recognized that they were not taking the right steps to protect us. That their flimsy plan of calling a boyfriend who would take at least 20 minutes to get there would not protect us from whatever was happening in that moment. And I remember that after this I began to view other adults with increasing distrust and a distinct impression that they would, in fact, not be able to take care of me or my siblings. 

I relayed this story to my therapist and he was stunned. Normally we would move into talk about how this felt and what I saw when I relayed it, but instead he asked me, eyes a little wide and voice full of concern, if I thought this was typical of my childhood. Did things like this happen often? 

Not really, I’m sure I told him. At least, things didn’t usually explode to this level. I mean sure I can remember other instances of being places where I knew there were dangerous adults. Dads who showed up to softball games they weren’t supposed to be at. Uncles or brothers or whatever of friends of mine that I just instinctively knew to stay away from. I knew that there were parts of the woods you could go to, and parts where the cops had been run over and shot at. But these things didn’t really have to do with my family directly. They were just around us. 

And that’s when he laid down a truth that struck so true that to this day I consider it one of the greatest revelations to have been revealed to me…”That is not a typical environment. It sounds like that whole town and a lot of the people you knew were dealing with a lot of trauma of their own. I think you have a really skewed perspective of what ‘normal’ is.”

Reader let me tell you that in the 27 or so years of my life that I had been grappling with the fact that my life was not like that on TV, never once had it occurred to me that I might actually be correct in thinking that my life was the odd one out. I had simply lived it knowing that TV was not real, and that my life wasn’t as bad as others. After all I wasn’t the kid of the guy who kicked in the back door and shattered that sliding door while a 7 year old ran up the stairs. I wasn’t related to the men who then grabbed him and held him down as they smashed the car door onto his head until he collapsed. Sure, I was friends with the girl whose dad would hit her and her brother with a switch, and I was close with the one whose dad disappeared and reappeared at softball games unexpectedly…but that wasn’t my trauma. My trauma was tame in comparison to that.

Except that, just by being around all that trauma, I had convinced myself that anything bad that happened to me or my family wasn’t that bad because I mean damn look at what the people around us dealt with. And of course my parents both worked in social service-like jobs, so we knew full well the reality of the world around us from a very young age. There were no starving children in Africa who would happily finish the food on our plates, there were starving kids in our town or the homeless shelter down the street. 

But it took seeing this therapist in his safe dusty office 9000 miles away from where I had been born for me to realize that all of this was really, really wrong. And to be clear here, there is nothing abnormal about towns like this. Places full of disenfranchised people whose only outlets, or only chance of survival, are drugs, drinking, and illicit activities exist everywhere, in all countries. But just because they are normal doesn’t mean they are ok. 

Places like the town I grew up in breed generational trauma that no one can get out of. And they distort what is “normal” for the people who grow up in them. And that distortion means that they are more likely to put up with things that are in fact traumatic for the entirety of their lives because, well, it could be worse couldn’t it? 

Except that just because something is normal doesn’t mean it’s the standard to base our lives on. And that then became a through line for so much more in my life. Yeah sure, I only got migraines once or twice a month, and that was a great decrease from growing up where I would get them weekly…but it’s probably not normal to be in that much pain, is it? Or for that matter, it isn’t normal that my stomach hurts and I want to throw up almost every day, or that my joints seem to ache so badly that I can’t move them sometimes…or for that matter, that soy seems to make my mouth feel like it is full of tiny little cuts. 

And once I realized that I needed to stop basing my idea of “normalcy” on what I grew up around and instead see what people outside of it all had to say, I gotta say, my life got a lot better. 

Word Count: 2397

[witflitmanict]

Toast Among Servants

A story excerpt with "toast" as the prompt.

…

Kaiah did not know what to do about the man stepping into her apartment. She watched him a bit apprehensively but after he did not offer her any hint as to what he was doing there she figured she ought to say something. 

“Uh…toast?” She asked, holding up the slice she held in her hand.

“Ah yes that would be lovely, thank you.” He said, nodding his head as though trying to convince himself what he was saying was true.

“K…” She muttered, setting her own slice back down on the counter. “Just uh…take a seat I guess…” 

She waved her gangly friend towards the stool by the island, then turned around and added some more slices of the cheap white bread to the toaster. 

“I’ve only got fake bread…” She glanced over her shoulder to see that he had sat, and was now fiddling with the hem of his jacket. It made her heart flutter. “Didn’t…well, didn’t really see any point going to a bakery.”

“Ah no no, that’s alright. I am familiar with your terrible eating habits.” Remy folded his hands together and smiled at her. It did nothing to quiet the disease in her stomach.

“Alright well…uh…what do you want on it?”

“Jam?” He asked, looking to see what she had on the counter, “Or maybe just whatever you’re having?”

“Butter and brown sugar…” She muttered. 

“Right…jam, please.”

Kaiah nodded and neither of them said anything more as she went about the task of getting them toast. She turned on the kettle while the bread toasted, and got the remaining berry jam out of the fridge, setting it and a new knife in front of him. Occasionally she glanced his way, but he seemed to be always looking off in the opposite direction. After a few minutes of silence she couldn’t contain it anymore. 

“Alright what are you doing here?” She plopped the pile of toast in front of him as she asked.

“Don’t want to eat your breakfast first?” He asked, catching the piece that had toppled off the top. “I seem to remember you always were much happier after a little toast or cereal…”

“Can’t eat cereal anymore. He saw to it that I could only taste the…the…”

“Carboard-esque flavoring?” Remmy offered and she snorted in supply, turning to grab the kettle off the counter as it began to boil.

“This is about him then?” She asked, splashing the hot water into the cups.

“Mmmm…” Remmy tried to sound noncommittal as he began to butter his slice of toast. “Really, lets eat breakfast first?”

Kaiah sighed and grabbed the next slice off the top of the stack. She spread the butter and sprinkled the brown sugar across it before raising it to her mouth and taking a bite, making sure to maintain eye contact with Remmy as she did so. 

Remmy smiled his usual shaky smile at her, and bit his own toast in response. For a few moments neither of them said anything, and the only sounds to be heard were the crunch of the bread, the sip of the tea, and the occasional car passing by outside the apartment. But as soon a Kaiah had the first slice of toast down and had gulped half her tea in a sip, she set to work.

“Remmy, why are you here?” She set the mug down and ignored the tea that splashed over the side.

Remmy sighed, probably recognizing that there was no point in trying to delay this any longer. He leaned across the counter and wiped up her spilt tea as he spoke.

“He wishes for you to return to him…he says you made me better.”

Kaiah swore. Then stood up from her stool and turned to the counter, grabbing another slice of toast and shoving it into the cooker.

“Kaiah please let me explain before you…just, please, listen?” Remmy sounded stressed. That was more than she could handle.

“You know it’s really, really not fair that you don’t also have the requirement of needing to be invited in.” She snapped at him, glaring down at the toast rather than him. “And where the hell did you get that key from anyways?”

“Well, this was my apartment…” Remmy muttered, glancing around the place. 

“Yeah, your apartment that you got to get away from him.” She glanced over her shoulder and glared at him, but Remmy was looking off towards the bedroom at the moment and missed it. The toast popped, so she collected it.

“I know…I am sorry Kaiah but if you will let me explain you will see that it is not nearly as bad as you think.”

“You have no idea what I’m thinking.” Kaiah added the new slices to the stack, before turning and grabbing another set from the bread bag.

“True, true but I…ah, I have known you for some time now. And I think I can guess…” Remmy took the toast she added to the stack and began to butter it.

“Oh yeah? Because if what you’re thinking even, remotely, has the idea that I am thinking ‘oh sure no problem let me just head back out at his beck and call’ then you are completely wrong.”

“Mmm no, no I definitely did not think that.”

“Then maybe you’re thinking I’m thinking ‘Oh jee, isn’t it swell that my good pal Remmy who got me such a great apartment that it totally forgives the time he helped hold me captive for a fucking maniac killing machine, has come to visit?”

“No, I doubt you feel that way either.” 

“Then tell me, Remmy, what do you think I’m thinking?” Kaiah rounded on him and practically threw the next slice of bread at him.

“I’m thinking you are probably very perturbed by my being here and also that you knew full well that moving into this apartment would not protect you from my, or his, return.”

Kaiah glared at him. That was too close.

Remmy finished buttering the slice he had and set it down on the plate in front of him. He plucked the bag of brown sugar that had titled onto the counter and sprinkled it across the slices on the plate. Then, he held them out to her. 

“Please, Kaiah, this is no easier for me than it is for you. Sit. Eat your breakfast. Drink your tea. And let me explain. I would not have come here if I really did not need to.”

In the back of Kaiah’s brain, the part that was still distantly connected to Remmy and all that came with him, she registered what he was saying as true. She took a settling breath in through her nose, feeling the way her stomach tightened as it expanded, then sat back down.

“Fine. But if I don’t like what you have to say I’m going to start throwing things.”

“Sounds like a fair deal.” Remmy smiled at her, and watched as she took one of the slices of toast he offered. 

Word Count: 1172

[witflitmanict]

Part 1: Rules and an explanation

Hello and welcome to my writing space. Here’s the deal. Three-ish nights ago I was laying in bed wide awake at a time when I should have been asleep with a thousand voices reverberating off my head and making it nigh impossible. (My NIGHTS are often NIGH). This happens a lot. Right off the bat - I’ve got ADHD and Bi-Polar II (so I am told anyways) so things like circulating thoughts that one cannot grasp onto long enough to actually look into are a common occurrence for me. And like many people with this sort of thing it most commonly strikes at night, when I am trying to get myself to settle in for the big dark. 

When this happens I try to solve it with a couple of neat tricks. Trick 1: Get up and Do A Thing. Usually this thing is dishes but my current roommate likes to do the dishes before she goes to bed so that one isn’t working out great these days. Trick 2: Distract your brain with something banal. The podcast Mysteries Abound was great for this. I loved the stories, but his calming voice and continuous change in stories kept me from getting too invested. But now it’s gone and I haven’t found a great replacement yet. Music can have a similar effect…or it can drive me up the wall because I get really, really, into the lyrics. Trick 3: Yoga. Breathing exercises. An attempt at mediation. Always a good one. And finally, Trick 5: Take some meds and lay on the floor while trying to get ahold of a single idea and then tease that single idea out as much as you can before you lose it, until you find yourself settling into a single pattern and then sleep. 

I am not a medical professional (actually I am an EMT but we don’t usually dole out sleeping advice) so take it all with a grain of salt. But the point is this: On said night when I could not sleep I thought to myself; “What else could I do to get my brain quiet?” And that led me to think about all the things that make my brain loud to begin with and to sum it all up I hit upon this: Maybe I should try writing things out more. 

Writing, you see, is something that comes naturally to me. At least, I feel it does. I’ve loved writing about as long as I’ve loved reading. And part of the reason I love writing is because somewhere between the neuron flashes in my brain and the sentences on the page, things have a way of sorting themselves out a bit. On paper it puts itself into an order that I cannot often get in my own mind. Ideas, thoughts, stories, the ever present monologue…they form into an orderly line and flow out onto the paper (or computer as the case may be). I mean sometimes it’s not that easy, sometimes I feel like I am doing the writing equivalent of splashing paint haphazardly onto a canvas. But even that creates something pretty pleasant. 

So, based on all that, I had this idea: For the month of October I will try to write each day. Something. Anything. Just get out some of what is pressing against my skull onto paper (the digital kind) and see if that does anything to quell some of what is in me. 

Now I know from past experiences of trying to stick to things like this that if I make too many rules then I simply won’t do it. I don’t like rules, especially ones that I cannot see the logic of. I like them even less when they are rules I impose on myself because I know that consequence for breaking them is going to be nothing because punishing yourself does nothing and also I am not one for lingering too long on guilt. In fact I usually rail against it. 

So, after some careful consideration, here are the rules I set out for myself:

Write each day

Write at least 1000 wordsish

Write anything - a diary entry, an expose, a short story, a poem…whatever

If you can’t think of what to write, then just find a prompt somewhere or ask someone for a prompt and then write to that

If you miss a day you have to make it up the next day, but if you write more than 1000 words one day it does not count towards the next day

Five rules seems like something I can follow. But then again, that was 3 days ago and this is the first time writing so…well, seems about right. 

Regardless, let’s give it a try, yeah? Who knows, maybe I’ll actually get through this one. 

Word Count: 798 (like I said, 1000ISH)