If

It's now seven years since my cousin's sudden death. This is the first year that I haven't been a complete basket case the month of the anniversary.

That's not to say I've forgotten. In fact, the opposite. Her death has sunk so deeply into the fibres of my muscles and the neural pathways of my brain that in many ways, it's simply a part of my body now. The way I walk now would not be the same way I would walk at this age if had she not died that day. There is no separating me from that night because to take everything that her death affected out of me with some magic vacuum would inevitably take away sinews, bone, and blood. The very shape of my heart -- my blood-pumping organ -- would be altered.

I'm not saying that's a good thing. I'm simply saying that that experience and me -- the person I am at the core of my being -- are inseparable. Even if my mind forgets one day, my body never will. Every cell of the past seven years has been built on that night.

What if she had not died that day?

With every passing day it becomes harder to imagine. I no longer remember what it was like to not feel that hollow ache of loss. I can't fathom what my faith would be like had my prayers for her life been answered. Perhaps I never would have turned my back. Perhaps I would still pray regularly. Perhaps I would still have friends and those in authority at college would not have given up on me. Perhaps my marriage would be better. Perhaps my in-laws would think I was nicer. Perhaps I would still be the inspiration I had wanted to be.

If she had lived... if she had lived, I wouldn't be so bitter and apathetic and numb now. People who tell you bitterness is a choice have not gone through the hell of loss, and if they have, they're lying. Bitterness is inevitable when everyone you love dies, when the few who live turn their backs on you after promising they would be there for you no matter what. Sure, the Bible says 'rejoice,' but even Jesus screamed on the cross, 'why have You forsaken me?'

If she had lived, I could be the happy person that everyone wants me to be. I wouldn't carry all this pain around with me, in the very marrow of my iron-stripped bones. No amount of counselling or therapy, no matter how specialised, will ever be able to suck her death out of the cells of my body. You could wipe my brain clean like a brand new hard drive, but my muscles will remember. My joints will remember. My heart will remember. My brain may not be able to tell you who, but my body will know that someone is dead who wasn't supposed to be. You can tell me it was her time all you want, but you're wrong. It's never time for a nine-year-old to die.

You can tell me it was Satan all you want... but God is sovereign even over Satan and He did nothing. Just let him waltz in and take her like a five-cent candy in the bowl at the bank. As if she was nothing and meant nothing. As if he (and I'm not sure if I mean God or Satan) thought we weren't going to notice.

If she hadn't died, I would never think of God like this.

Maybe this is what God meant when He said He would harden Pharoah's heart. I wish I could come back. I wish none of this had happened and I could love God again; I really do. I miss those days when everything was so clear. Difficult, but clear.

If she hadn't died, things would have been so much different... so much better. I could have been the person I should have been. I can't anymore. I can act like I am, but I'm not that wonderful person at my core anymore. And I wonder why I was spared when letting me live and her die only served to turn me into this emotional black hole.

Writing, Escape, and Control

Originally written 24 December 2021, 2.53am.

I started writing very young.

I took to the written word extremely quickly as a child. I was reading competently at age four and by the time I was eight I was attempting to write books of my own. I was constantly narrating the world in my mind as I watched events unfold, narrating as if I was narrating a book. Sometimes, it turned out, I was (though surprisingly few events in my novels have stemmed from real-life events).

When I was a young (and later an older) teenager, I holed up in my room, hiding from my mother's absolutely unpredictable rages and the awful words about any and all my minuscule failures rushing out of her mouth like swords to my battered soul, writing, on looseleaf, on scraps of schoolwork, on typewriters, on my beside table, on anything I could get my hands on. Writing and listening to music became the only two ways to drown out the horrible sounds of my later childhood and early teen years.

When I wrote, the world in my head dampened the sounds of the world where nobody cared and nobody listened. The aural effect of music filled in the gaps that writing couldn't. I stayed up late into the night and filled the silence with music -- music for enjoyment rather than to smother the awfulness -- and spun out dozens of alternate universes from a curious coalition of my brain and my fingers. At age fourteen I completed my first novel draft, and some seventeen more have followed suit since then.

I joined Facebook, then started this blog. My writing, heretofore a closely guarded secret, expanded onto platforms that people could read. The blog especially was a very raw and vulnerable place for me. Facebook, however, gave me a platform to hone skills I was weak on, such as succinctness (remember the 430-character limit?) and clarity. I had a moderately good run as a pseudo-comedy writer who simply spun everyday events into decently funny one-liners. As I aged and my mental health worsened and I started losing friends to depression, I slipped almost unconsciously into a storyteller/advocate style of writing. I told my own story with unflinching starkness, in hopes that the friends and family who read my vignettes would better understand and be better equipped to help their friends and family with depression. There are so many misconceptions surrounding mental illness in general and depression in particular, and I, as a writer on the inside of both, had a unique perspective -- and I thought maybe a sort of obligation -- to bring to the people. The act of writing about my experiences had the side benefit of helped me to clarify them and even to bring some modicum of healing to my now even-more-shipwrecked soul.

Then I met my husband. Or, more accurately, my in-laws.

Of course they were nice at first. They're still decently nice now, however, many wars were had on the topic of my Facebook posts.

To this day, I'm not sure what their issue is. There is a history of depression in the family, so it wasn't like they didn't understand. But essentially they forbade me from posting on Facebook. Not one single post about mental health was allowed. Not one iota of honesty about myself and my life was allowed. I fought this, tooth and nail. There were many screaming matches, and the wedding was nearly called off multiple times because I could not understand how they could say that they wanted me in their family, yet they wanted to chop off one of the very things that made me ME. Without writing, without honesty, I would not be the same person. That seemed to be exactly what they wanted.

Eventually, I gave in. I was just so tired of the screaming matches. I went back to writing on this blog (luckily I hadn't gotten to the point of telling them of its existence yet) because it was once again the only place I would write whatever I wanted to and not be torn to shreds for the next 4-5 business days.

In some ways, I regret that. I regret letting them control me like this. My husband is great, but his family is an absolutely impossible battlefield of land mines -- sorry, I mean unwritten expectations. The blog is a valuable outlet, but not writing as much as I used to makes me feel like I'm only half of a human being -- and a primarily-dead half-human being at that. I was finally beginning to come into myself as a communicator, and they casually stripped 25 years of writing, of ME, away from me like they were putting groceries away after running errands.

For as long as I can remember, crafting the written word has been a part of my life. And all it took were some overbearing in-laws to strip me of one of the three (3) things that has ever consistently brought me comfort over the course of this life filled with an almost-comical and certainly-unbelievable amount of death and misfortune.

They wonder now why I don't trust them. Why I don't talk. Why I come off as so rude, distant, and angry all the time. Nobody ever stops to think that that's what happens when you take away one of somebody's only coping mechanisms.

Pain And Choice

8 April 2022, 6.47pm.

I've lived my entire life being cut off by friends and relatives who tell me I'm 'too negative.'

Let's make a list of the things that make me 'negative,' shall we?

- 15ish years of childhood emotional abuse and manipulation by somebody in my household.

- 2004: only childhood friend moved two countries away and did not keep in touch.

- 5ish years of bullying and emotional abuse in junior/high school -- from Christians.

- 2009: first suicide attempt.

- 2014: aunt and uncle ugly-divorce.

- 2015: second aunt and uncle ugly-divorce.

- 2015: best friend dies. Found out through Facebook five days later. Unable to go to funeral due to distance and short notice.

- 2015: nine-year-old cousin dies.

- 2015: entire extended family implodes over some stupid financial dispute and aunt and uncle's divorce.

- 2016: grandfather dies. I was the only grandchild who didn't get to say goodbye.

- 2016: church gaslights and backstabs me.

- 2016: entire church leadership board tells me God can't love me because I'm 'too negative' and because I'm an artist.

- 2016: college best friend ghosts me. When asked, said I'm 'too personal' (whatever that even means).

- 2016: strung along and then ghosted by a guy I really liked.

- 2017: all my friends stop talking to me. Literally every single one of them.

- 2017: second suicide attempt.

- 2017: very good friend attempts suicide and is hospitalised for some time. All while I get told I'm being 'too needy' and 'too negative' when I share my struggle with similar things.

- 2018: strung along and dumped by a man.

- 2018: best dance friend dies suddenly.

- 2015-2019: bullied by EVERYONE at college for being 'too negative' over all these deaths (current tally: four in two years, plus extended family dissolving and church abuse concurrently).

- 2018: college program director who I admired and respected told me I wasn't trying hard enough despite knowing I was practicing 10 hours every DAY (60 unpaid hours training, tuition, and experience PER WEEK. For five years).

- 2019: eating disorder develops, third suicide attempt.

- 2018-19: voice teacher verbally abusing and gaslighting me because I improve so slowly.

- 2015-2020: unsuccessful job hunt. Applied to literally THOUSANDS of jobs across three provinces. Landed maybe three interviews and zero jobs.

- 2019: moved to a new city, landed a part-time job, was sexually harassed and stalked by my supervisor.

- 2020: two good friends die literally within 24 hours of each other.

- 2020: finally landed a job I loved. Lasted 30 days. Then Pandemic shut it down.

- 2020: in-laws refused to let me plan my own wedding; even resorting to screaming matches when I tried to insist on anything that I, the literal bride, wanted. Also they publicly dragged my father's name through the mud in an attempt to get their way (my father is probably the most honourable human being to walk the earth, next to Jesus).

- 2020: fourth suicide attempt.

- 2021: finally got into therapy, therapist told me I wasn't trying hard enough and that I was too stubborn and too sad.

- 2022: three good friends ghosted me. The only one to respond to my request for clarification said I was 'too much' for her.

- Present day: constantly screamed at by customers, gaslighted and lectured by my in-laws for existing, and told by people who are supposed to love me how stupid I am. Am saddled by unexpected debt in the thousands, rising cost of rent, and gas prices so high that I literally cannot afford to drive to my job, let alone visit my family several hours' drive away. I am not making enough at my full-time job to pay the bills and the debt.

I didn't choose any of this. Not one single thing on this list was something I chose or even had any say in.

You know where all of this pain went?

Nowhere.

It's all still there inside me. It does not shrink. It does not dissolve. It does not go away. Nearly thirty years of intolerable pain still teems in my soul, just below the surface. There are only distractions, never relief. And even distractions wear thin.

We are told to reach out when we are going through tough times. So that's what I did. But it turned out -- every single time -- that the amount and intensity of pain I was carrying exceeded the willingness of the people around me to help me.

Oh, they try to frame it as a them problem while subtly blaming me... 'you're too negative' is the honest version that some have been ballsy enough to actually say, but more often the phrase is more like 'I'm just in a fragile place right now and need to cut down on sources of stress in my life' or sometimes they just ghost me.

99% percent of these people -- ninety-nine percent -- had told me WITHIN THE PREVIOUS TWELVE MONTHS that it was okay not to be okay and that they would be there for me. And without fail, every single one of them has either outright abandoned me or severely distanced themselves from me.

Do you really think that this insane amount of pain is a choice? If you can't bear even the smallest amount of pain that I show you, how on earth do you expect me to bear the full weight of it by myself? Do you think I'm superhuman? News flash -- I'm not. Why do you think I reach out so relentlessly? Why do you think I put so much of it on others? Because I can't carry this anymore.

When this pain finally, mercifully kills me, know this -- not a single one of you do-gooders 'did the best you could.' You didn't do a damn thing. You left me to shoulder all this pain alone. You knew the pain I was in, and you left me alone to be crushed to death under the weight of it.

I did not choose any of this. And you lot only added to the burden.

Ten Years At The Edge

On 10 April 2012, I completed my first piece of choreography.

I had been choreographing in fits and starts for probably about a year and a half before that, and I had been seeing the dancers in my head since around 2001.

I've told the story on this blog about the catalyst that finally got a piece done. I had only just discovered Benesh Movement Notation as a tool for writing down the dances flooding my mind when I overheard my mother mocking my dream to my dad. The rage I felt fueled me to see through the task I set before myself -- namely, to complete choreography to the song Sing Your Freedom by White Heart. I hadn't put much thought into my song choice, but as I think back on it, that was probably a very fitting launchpad. After years of quietly bristling under my mother's authoritarian rule over my words, thoughts, attitude, and activities, I finally had the courage to do something that I wanted to do. She thought I was stupid, but I did it anyway. I still remember the thrill of realising I only had two more sets of eight to go, and then finishing the piece less than an hour later. I emerged that night with a fully-notated Benesh score (which I still have) and a renewed fire and passion for choreography which has yet to be snuffed out by the 'well-meaning advice' of those who claim to care about me.

Over the past ten years, I have been able to perform my choreography both on stage and on film. I've choreographed for musical theatre productions, fundraisers, talent shows, competitions, and short films. I had a piece place first in its category in (virtual) competition in summer 2020. I have been able to at least somewhat distill the pain of three MAJOR personal losses into highly emotional and touching dances that are highly praised by viewers. And to this day, whenever I hear music, I see dancers. They are my companions on long drives and late nights.

I write choreography not because I want to, but because I HAVE to. It's an almost irresistible impulse. There is no balance in the world if I'm not choreographing.

Ten years' worth of choreography -- some 1200 pages, set to roughly seven hours' worth of music.

While some of this has been scanned into the computer, put on backup drives, and (rarely) reprinted, every single thing I create starts out handwritten. Every single mark on these notation scores was drawn by hand (and probably erased and re-drawn at least three times).

Over the course of ten years, I've choreographed 116 pieces, which doesn't sound too impressive until you factor in the five-year performing arts degree and two years of that also independently working toward a musical theatre career (since the college sure wasn't interested in getting me actual experience let alone work in the field they were supposed to be training me for). I've also been working a legit full-time job for the past year and a half. In 2021 alone I choreographed twelve pieces -- all while working full time. This was something I never thought was possible (see also all my rants from 2012-13 about how I would never work a 9-to-5. And, technically, I'm still not, so 2012 me was right as well as stubborn). This year my goal is fourteen pieces this year, and I'm already over halfway there in less than four months. I am on pace for a 50-piece year -- in other words, to almost double my ten-year output by the end of 2023. And I'm working a 'real job' full time. All you who said it couldn't be done -- guess what, I'm doing it. Don't ever underestimate me.

I fully intend to expand my accomplishments in the relatively near future. Since I now have plenty of choreography to work with, it's time to get it seen (well, more regularly). I have at least two full-length shows planned for within the next five years, and I want to start busking this year. I also have a couple of dance films in active pre-production.

Do I wish I was farther along, doing bigger things, nicer films, larger shows, touring more? Yes. And I'd be lying if I said that didn't make me sad and frustrated sometimes. But I didn't quit. Despite all the detractors, I didn't quit.

We're still only at the edge of the dream, folks. There's so much more to come.