Negatively Positive

Not long ago, I was filling in a new-ish friend on some of my trauma lore -- 2015, the miscarriages, and the early years of my marriage.

 

That last bit is something I have not really spoken to anybody about. I had already learned that honesty was an offence punishable by public dismemberment and being buried alive, plus I couldn't reconcile being honest about the pain while simultaneously loving my husband. I shut down. I spent probably four years in an eternal present. I had no past and no future. No thoughts besides how to prevent the next blowup or smooth over the current one.

 

Early on, I had been messaging my friends about my confusion at his sudden change in attitude. How the calm, generous listener had overnight started screaming insults over basic use of the English language. Their response was unanimous: Leave him.

 

The thought was very tempting, I won't lie. But I had seen who he had been before, and I was unwilling to believe that kind act had been only an act. This isn't who he is. He wasn't always like that. It has to be just stress or something.

 

When I tried to explain this, with my rapidly-decreasing ability to think (let alone write) in comprehensible English, they escalated. I will not watch you self-destruct. If you don't leave him, I will not be a part of your life.

 

How do you respond to an ultimatum like that?

 

I had been friends with some of these people for over a decade. I had helped most of them through life-threatening crises of their own. I had offered so much time and energy to them freely, even in times when my own life was crumbling. Now I was in crisis, and they could not remember the times I had moved heaven and earth to help them through worse.

 

I don't have the mental capacity for your problems as well as my own, they told me, one by one. I can't handle your negativity. Don't bring me into your problems anymore.

 

But it won't always be like this. It'll get better... right? Marriage is hard and we're both learning and it'll get better, it just sucks right now.

 

I was speaking to an empty room by the end, with only my own voice for company.

 

It has to get better. This isn't who he really is. I made him a promise. I made a vow before God.

I promised. 

 

I hung onto that thought with all my strength. But my fingers were slipping. 

 

Five years earlier, when my world had crumbled around me, when the Angel of Death took a combine harvester to every part of my life, the friends who didn't die in the devastation turned on me: you're too negative. You always see the worst in everything.

 

Now, as my loving husband turned into a monster before my eyes, as I clung to the insane hope that this was only a season and not an eternal condemnation... my friends still left me. I chose to look for a sunrise while buried alive, and that still wasn't good enough.

 

When everybody died, I was too negative, too sad. When my husband turned out to be a real-life Jekyll and Hyde, I was too positive, too hopeful.

 

Make it make sense.

 

Like if you hate my guts and are just looking for an excuse to cut me out of your life -- this is a Pro-Tip, by the way, take notes -- just say you hate my guts. Just be honest. Don't do this 'you're too X' song and dance. It's like trying to kill a grizzly bear with a spoon -- it takes way longer than necessary, and everyone involved feels way more pain than they needed to.

What's more, I am sorely tempted to message every single one of those people who couldn't find a scrap of compassion in their hearts -- hearts that in some cases were still beating because of me -- and tell them you know what? I was f--king right.

 

We are coming up on another wedding anniversary. If anything, we are happier now than we were even in those early days of dating. And if I had followed their advice and left him, he would be dead and honestly I might be too.

 

 

P.S. -- Do you want to know what the problem was? Why my husband went from sweet, romantic, caring, and generous to angry, manipulative, vicious, and did I mention angry?

An allergy.

A food allergy to a very common seasoning.

By the time I convinced him to go to the doctor about it, it had mutated into five other major chronic health conditions which we are still trying get treatment for, to say nothing of the ongoing emotional fallout for both of us individually and in our marriage. Our marriage still exists only because I'm a stubborn German who is still too bitter about my uncle leaving my aunt (for literally zero reason) to give up on my own marriage for any reason at all.

Staring Down The Barrel Of The Unemployment Gun

Sorry I haven't posted much lately.

 

It's so odd... I look around and I can see the colours and I am happy, happier than I've been since before I graduated college. I can see the life around me, and I can see a faint, distant glow of opportunity.

 

But at the same time... I feel more than ever before the word 'failure' whispering through my mind. I follow through on so few of my grandiose plans. I'm too shy to collaborate with anybody in a meaningful way. I can't hold down a job for a significant amount of time without either my mental health or physical health (or both) collapsing is some spectacular way. I can't even keep up with the housework, let alone be present for my husband... and forget having time to do anything that makes me happy (but doesn't make me money).

For years now, my singular goal and only glimmer of hope was the possibility of working enough to save enough money to move to a place with more theatre opportunities. (Everyone says 'just make your own opportunities where you are!' but none of them have to deal with a brain that straight-up refuses to do anything unless there are boatloads of accolades at every second of the proceedings.) As we move solidly into our thirties, it is becoming apparent that we may never escape this (quite literal) hole in the ground. Despite my best efforts and my extreme mental and physical sacrifices, we may still wind up dying here in this open grave in this forgotten corner of the province.

My current work contract ends on 13 September and it has been made very clear that they have no other positions available (and I've seen enough of the inner workings of the organization to know that this is true). I am less than a month away from losing our only household income. And yet I can't bear the thought of going to work anymore. I want to retire. I am barely into my thirties and I want to retire. I'm just so spent. I have so little left to give anybody anymore, and I think the people who read my résumé can feel that somehow through the pages of dance and fast food and not much else.

I just want to lay down and close my eyes and never open them again. I don't have the mental or physical strength to gut my way through yet another 3-to-5-year job hunt. There are no more reserves. There are no more second winds. There is no more pushing through. I want to, but I can't. There quite literally is nothing left.

But I can't, because if I don't have an income, we will end up on the street.

Sun Rising

Yesterday was my last-ever fast food shift.

 

It doesn't feel real yet. There's still a part of me that expects to have to get up at 5.45am on Tuesday morning, because I have, every Tuesday, for nearly four years now.

I have a new job, in the theatre industry. I'm not on stage (or even backstage), but it's still theatre-adjacent, and it may very well be the closest I'll ever get to a sustainable career in the arts. I get to sit down on the job now -- that's a novelty. In fast food there literally is no sitting. There's barely even just-standing. You're always doing something, carrying something, stocking something, cleaning something, and you're always moving at full speed. Do that for 40 hours a week and... well, let's just say that my body hurt more after one fast food shift then it EVER hurt after any of the long weeks of dance rehearsals over my 20+ year dance career. The theatre is also paying me more to sit on a chair at a desk than fast food ever paid me to run myself absolutely ragged every single day.

I had been looking to switch careers for several years already. I was burnt out of fast food by June 2022, but held on to the job because I know now how hard it is to get a job in this economy... especially for somebody with a brain as broken as mine. I didn't want to leave until I knew I had something lined up. That didn't happen for almost two years.

After a year and a half of unsuccessful job-hunting, I injured my back pretty severely, and I'm pretty sure the restaurant only put up with my ever-increasing need for time off because even though I could hardly walk, I was still their fastest worker. (My doctor forbade me from doing any kitchen duties, and they had to schedule three people to take my place there. Prior to my injury, I worked the kitchen alone every morning.)

That back injury was a blessing in disguise.

When I finally got a doctor's note to cut my hours (which in itself was an adventure for another post), that finally left me with enough time (and more importantly, enough energy) to actually job hunt, and to actually follow up on leads and applications. And after two years, as we stared down the barrel of homelessness due to lack of income, I finally got a job -- an upgrade in nearly every way, in an industry and at an organization I liked and believed in.

As I walked home yesterday from my final fast food shift, I had sort-of-accidentally started playing Connie Scott's Forever Young album. And as I trudged through the final blocks of that final walk home, these words lilted over a bed of gentle keys into my ears...

You that are weary and in need of rest

You that are brokenhearted and oppressed

You shall find comfort here...

 

There'll be an ending to the twilight zone

There'll be a sunrise like you've never known

Morning will soon be here...

 

(from The Coming Dawn)

 

The sun is indeed rising. I can breathe for the first time since I was in Mary Poppins (July 2018). Maybe this is what hope feels like.

For years I was in a stupor -- get up, trudge to work, give everything I had, my soul, my spirit, for pennies with which to pay the growing bills, trudge home, stare at the wall in a fruitless attempt to find the energy to live, go to bed, dream of every possible horror life had to offer (if I even dreamt at all), then do it all again. I moved slowly, in a fog. The world around me was grey and cold and hard.

And now I'm waking up.

NF -- A Brief Overview

Been a while since we talked about music here. Something about having a day job and a husband cuts back a LOT on the music-listening time. It also doesn't help that said husband and I have VERY different musical tastes. While we've both introduced each other to a handful of new favourites, our music libraries as a whole remain 'his music' and 'my music.'

The one exception is the rapper NF.

NF has been on my radar for a long time, ever since How Could You Leave Us dropped. I saw it on social media, then the same year my college brought him in for a conference. As he was the only act at the conference who was NOT singing hipster worship, I attended purely on principle. I figured if there were more butts in seats at the not-hipster concerts, maybe they'd quit bringing in hipster acts.

The auditorium he performed to had a capacity of about a thousand people. It was not even half full.

I remember sitting in the pew, analysing every bar he gave us. With my mind steeped as it was in oceans of grief and the 'nothing is EVER good enough' rhetoric that my instructors poured into me like hot lead every single day, I simply thought his rhythm was a bit off... but I also remember thinking that I loved the lyrical concepts.

'I'll check back in five years. He's got potential to go somewhere, but he's not there yet,' I told myself.

Our paths crossed every so often. I remember seeing the Clouds video when it first came out (was thoroughly confused by it but noted the cleaner, sharper rhythms), and I was really impressed by his technical and storytelling skills on Story.

This past Friday we attended one of his stops on the Hope tour -- this time in an NHL arena that was definitely over half capacity with people very hyped to be there.

It was nothing at all like the show that gangly kid five years ago gave us.

Oh sure, the show was sophisticated and even I, a fairly seasoned (and jaded) performing artist with decades of experience, was truly wowed by some of the special effects, entrances, quick changes, and props. I actually feel as if I need to say 'spoiler alert' whenever I talk about this concert online because there was just so much sleight of hand and lovely surprises.

But over the past five years NF leaned into that lyrical strength he always had and leveled his rhythm game up alongside it. This show hits hard, both lyrically and musically, and that is exactly what I love in music -- all music. Hope (the song) alone is worth the price of admission to that show, and it was even before I saw all the live special effects. We bought Hope (the album) when it first dropped back in April, and that is the album that has truly made me a fan. I had bought Clouds shortly after it released, but that was more as a gift for my husband than for me. Hope, however, may just be NF's Darn Floor. In fact, I would go as far to say that NF is to rap was Terry Scott Taylor is to... almost every other genre of music. The lyrical incisiveness and the clear love for and dedication to their craft is very similar (though NF doesn't quote quite as much William Blake).

If, like me, you are thirsty for good music, NF needs to be in your collection.

Music Day - A Song In The Night

I'm surprised I haven't featured this one.

Silverwind was, vocally, the 'Christian' equivalent of ABBA, and I loved both equally. There's not a lot of call for soprano voices in CCM, and from the day I first heard this album I was enraptured by Betsy Hernandez's pure, clear voice (come to think of it, those are also the same vocal qualities Rick Florian has). My short-lived desire to be a singer was born then, listening to my dad's vinyl copy of the album I'm about to feature.

For me, this was a slow burner of a song. It was pretty, of course, and I could appreciate the lyrics even then, but I liked Forgiven better (ironically the one song on the album that didn't heavily feature Hernandez's fairy-like soprano voice). It was around 2016 when this song sprang into my mind out of nowhere and I spent the next eight hours choreographing the entire thing start-to-finish from scratch. I had never even thought about choreographing it (there were too many Daniel Amos songs ahead of it in the queue), but suddenly I saw the entire thing in my head, fully formed, and it was all I could do to write it all down before it was gone. It was one of maybe two dances I've made that I would suspect were divinely inspired. There were seventeen dancers, angels flooding the stage. I'm not normally one for angels, but that was what the piece demanded so that was what I wrote. This is probably one of the ones I would most like to see on stage before I die.

The song itself is written as a lullaby -- a rather more lush and fleshed-out lullaby (the song clocks in at nearly four a and half minutes long). It includes not only Silverwind's signature harmonies, but also a child choir. If you can tune out the oom-pah-pah-like bass line (I promise, it is literally the only kitschy part of the song), you will find a beautiful bed of piano work (I wish I knew who played piano on this so I can buy everything they ever played on), accentuated by some light synth touches.

There are several highlight moments here. The first is the second chorus. The first chorus features only the children singing the melody in unison on la la la, accompanied only by a gentle rhythm section. The first and second verses are lovely and touching but not overly arresting -- painting a picture of a frightened child singing a simple song to beat back the terrors of the night -- but after the second verse there's a short but hard stop and Betsy's voice, nearly a cappella, puts words to the melody that the children sang earlier.

Take me soon, O morning star

To the heavens where you are

Sailing on a silver wind

Take me where my dreams begin...

In recent years, I've begun to imagine singing this to any future children I might have. It's the only time I have ever really pictured having a child of my (our) own. But the angel theme that I suddenly associated with the song in 2016 is a hard one to break. It does make sense -- in 2016, I was still very much grieving the losses (read: deaths) that happened in 2015, including the death of my cousin at nine years old. And in the past year or two especially, I have developed a very intense longing for 'home' -- the heavens, beyond the stars, beyond the wall of sleep. It's much deeper than the suicidal urges I've fought off and on through the years. This is a pervasive longing -- not to die, necessarily, but to go to the place where things are Good. The words take me, morning star / To the heavens where you are (as it is sung later in the song) sometimes fill me with so much longing to go there that it brings me to tears. This song is a lullaby, but a very emotionally intense one, one with the aura of death.

The second major highlight moment is where is seems the song comes to an end. At this point, it's been a lovely but mellow lullaby. It slows to an ending with a repeated line and a cadence... then the piano surges into the space and a triumphant trumpet kicks off a repeat of the chorus...

The third highlight is after this repeat. The chorus is repeated again, but with the children singing a counterpoint line -- which is something you literally NEVER, EVER hear in CCM (yes, DA did it in Horrendous Disc, the song, a couple years earlier, but by then they were in the process of being relegated to the 'probably heresy' section in Christian music stores). It is absolutely otherworldly.

Title: A Song In The Night

Artist: Silverwind

Album: A Song In The Night

Year: 1982

iTunes here; YouTube here.

Shadows fade and then disappear

When voices rise up sweet and clear...

Music Day - Desert Rose

I really only have two criteria for Music Day posts: 1. It must be legally available for purchase; and 2. It should be a song that means a lot to me at the time of writing.

This is a song that I always glossed over. White Heart has so many loud, interesting complex songs that I was very confused by this ballad's immense popularity. If you mention the name 'White Heart' (to anybody who even knows who White Heart is), this is, nine times out of ten, the first song they mention. And that boggled my mind -- what about Let The Kingdom Come? What about Raging Of The Moon? What about Heaven Of My Heart? I do primarily listen for the lyrics more than the music, but in ten years of listening, I never 'got' the lyrics to this particular song.

Until now.

I am currently living in a VERY remote 'small town' that is literally an hour and a half drive from any other civilisation. There are no arts, no theatre, no dance classes, not even a freakin Staples. We've talked of moving but small tourist towns like this have a way of hiking grocery and gas prices so high that it is literally impossible to put together any kind of savings in order to actually do it (gas prices have been $1.43 a litre here since July; meanwhile my parents three hours north are zipping around on $1.17 gas. In the same province).

I don't have dance and I don't have money. I'm just watching my dream wither and die without practice. And I've been crying out to God, asking why He gave me this dream only to take it away again; terrified that I'm going to die in this literal hole in the ground, completely forgotten. I'm terrified of proving my program director right when he said I would never amount to anything.

Is this one of those desert experiences that so many people in the Bible went through -- Moses, the Israelites, Elijah, Jesus...? Is there still some important thing I'm supposed to do forty years from now and I just have to go through the motions until then?

I still feel angry and ignored sometimes when I think about how Brittney and M and my cousin died and I'm still here. It's not survivor's guilt so much as it is jealousy. They already live in a place where mercy is unreceipted, but I'm not lucky enough to get that chance. Given the choice between life and death, I would absolutely pick death. I'm not suicidal, per se, but I wouldn't fight death if it came for me. This world is not my home, and I want to go home. I don't even really know what 'home' is, but I know this world isn't it. I'm just so weary of life here.

And it's hard not to despair completely when all you see is the desert rising up on all sides -- literally.

(Forgot I was supposed to be doing a Music Day post. Pretending those last five paragraphs never happened.)

The song opens with a mellow but very classic '80s keyboard intro that hints at some of the haunting woodwind flavours that the band would explore in more depth on their next album Tales Of Wonder. And the tender, clear, angelic voice of Rick Florian (who I still maintain in the greatest singer to walk the face of the earth, even after five years of listening to music of all eras and genres while acquiring a BA in Music) comes in, painting a picture of an ocean of featureless sand and the tiny beauty drowning in it.

And you wonder

You wonder

Can you last much longer

This cloud you live under

Will it cover you?

The chorus features White Heart at their band-harmony peak. Harmony was something that White Heart always excelled at (their best-known line-ups featured a minimum of four competent vocalists), and it shimmers here, floating along on that bed of gentle keyboard that Mark Gersmehl weaves throughout the song.

Sometimes holiness

Can seem like emptiness

When you feel the whole world's laughing eyes

This is the part that resonates with me. I feel abandoned, alone, empty, tossed to the side, unwanted, unneeded, and useless. I feel like I and my life have been wasted and I'm just a shell of all my old dreams and potential just shuffling around waiting to die.

After the second chorus, the heretofore muted harmonies go from backdrop to centre stage, filling the song with layers and that beautiful '80s 'big' production. Chris McHugh's fantastic drums go a long way here too, and the effect is so lush and rich that it was several years of listening to this album non-stop (because of the title track and Storyline) before I realised that there isn't actually a verse here, only vocalising and a bit of vamping from Florian. (They pull off the same stunt in their song Let The Kingdom Come from their previous album, but that time they did it by distracting the listener with truly epic guitars, giant drums, and energetic rock vocals.)

Title: Desert Rose

Artist: White Heart

Album: Powerhouse

Year: 1990

Label: Sparrow Records

iTunes here; YouTube here.

Heaven knows

Heaven knows

He will hold your tender heart

Oh desert rose...

Music Day - Arise

 I've been playing this song a lot lately.

I was first introduced to Flyleaf in 2010 at 'Rock The River' in Edmonton. My best friend was a fan of theirs and continued feeding me a steady diet of their work. I bought most of their first two albums around that time. They enjoyed semi-regular rotation on my iTunes for a couple years... and then I forgot about them entirely.

Until my husband introduced me to Breaking Benjamin.

Both bands play similar levels of hard rock (or at least Flyleaf did at the time; I haven't heard a single note they've played since 2012's New Horizons). Breaking Benjamin led me back to Flyleaf, which now has a nostalgic shimmer, so of course now their appeal has increased in my books.

I didn't take much notice of this song when I first bought the CD, but I do remember thinking it was nice. Earlier this summer, I started craving this song. So, for most of the summer, I took it like a drug. I generally don't repeat songs, but I'd play this one three or four times in a row.

It's a song of sadness, but also hope. The vocals and the thick wall of guitars rise and fall together perfectly. The song feels a little bit like a prog rock song, though it clocks in under four and a half minutes. It kicks off with a muted bass, and immediately Lacey Sturm's vocals swoop in and brood right along with it with quiet determination.

Tell the swine

We will make it out alive

There's a note in the pages of the book

So sleep tonight

We'll sleep dreamlessly this time

When we awake, we'll know that everything's all right...

Then it crunches into the pre-chorus and chorus, spinning soaring guitars rising and falling above each other as Sturm cries out with a hope that perhaps she doesn't quite believe:

Hold on

To the world we all remember fighting for

There's still strength left in us yet...

Maybe it's the cultural context. We've now been in lockdown for most of the last year and a half. And the undiluted hatred I'm seeing among people I love and care for is so draining and everything feels so hopeless. I worry that we're past the point of no return, relationally. There are friendships and families and relationships that will be permanently damaged -- a LOT of them. And looking into the future and seeing those damaged relationships destroy the rest of my generation just sucks the wind out of my sails. Even if the virus was gone tomorrow; if all restrictions and all of the COVID-19 deaths stopped tonight, there would still be so much that will never be fixed. What hope is there? Everyone is so bitter and so angry.

Hold on

To the world we all remember dying for...

In March of 2020, we all shut down and wore masks for the greater good. To protect each other. Nobody questioned it. It all seems to utopian now. We sacrificed our lives, our jobs, our hobbies, our paycheques, to keep our loved ones safe. We died to our previous lives to keep each other safe, to preserve the world.

Fast-forward just over one year.

I have seen families literally torn apart because some have and some won't get the vaccine. A year ago, we protected strangers at all costs, and now we would rather cut contact with blood family and friends we've known for decades than get the one tiny shot that would actually protect them.

We died in March 2020 for a world that, it seems, will never, ever come back.

Sing to me about the end of the world

End of these hammers and needles for you

We'll cry tonight

But in the morning we are new

Stand in the sun

We'll dry your eyes...

Often it seems better and easier to hope for the end of the world than it is to hope for the restoration of this one. This one feels beyond repair, and there is nothing left but to wait for it to be over and remind each other that we have that hope, at least.

The song slows again -- Sturm crooning Sing... sing...

A breath.

And then the cry of courage -- arise!

The end is both sad and triumphant -- the world burns in the background, guitars thrashing along with the flames, and we have survived, yet we mourn what we have lost in the fire. The anthemic final chorus, repeating until that final a cappella, is a heart-wrenching cry.

Or maybe I like this song so much because I relate to it on a personal level -- the world always burning around me and the desperate fight to find hope and survive and rebuild myself, over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, mustering up strength from nothing within myself again and again because more often than not I've got no-one to draw from.

Title: Arise

Artist: Flyleaf

Album: Memento Mori

Year: 2009

iTunes here; YouTube here.

Hold on

To the world we all remember dying for

There's still hope left in it yet...

Day 21

I feel useless -- again.

I was laid off from my job (due to the virus) after working only three weeks. Three weeks of feeling like a human being with something to give to the world. Three weeks of being finally free from the vice-grip of 'how am I going to pay for this wedding?' Three weeks of sweet freedom from the despair that maybe I actually am unhireable for some unknown reason.

As an artist, I feel a certain responsibility to the public in general. Historically, in times like these -- when all the world seems upended and topsy-turvy -- it falls to the artists to make the Herculean effort to find and present hope to society. It's our job to bring encourage flagging morale and point to the hope of rescue, of a brighter day.

What then, of those artists like me who are drowning in it themselves and can't find it either?

Well... those ones are failures.

So I'm a failure. Again.

I hate it. It never gets easier to be the failure. I hate it so much.

Death

Written 27 January 2020, 10.22pm.

All trauma can be escaped, on some level.

All trauma except the trauma of death.

And that is the one that consistently dogs me.

With divorce or family splits, both parties are alive and there is always hope (however unlikely) that there might just be reconciliation one day. With abuse, one can escape the abuser. It's not easy, but it's doable. With health issues (including mental illness), you are again still alive and there is the hope that one day a treatment will be found that can help you. With unemployment, there is always a way to beg, borrow, or even steal what you need to live. Your moral code may protest it, but it's there. Plus there is always a thin hope of economic improvement.

There is always hope -- even the thinnest strand of it -- if you can just hold on to it. There is always the hope of escape, one day.

Except in death.

Death comes and cannot be escaped. When someone close to you dies, you can't undo it. You can't go back and say sorry and ask forgiveness. You can't re-see them one last time. You can't send them an email with all the words you wanted to say.

Death causes trauma. Traumatic situations can be escaped... except for death. Death is the one that we cannot choose and we cannot run away from. We can't control it. It comes for our loved us and we are powerless in the face of it. You can throw money or hugs or kind words at literally anything else and it helps, even the tiniest bit. It may not fix the problem, but it provides even the most fleeting of respites.

I have spent so many years trying to build up walls against things that will cause me harm. I don't get close enough to people for them to abuse me anymore. I live on $60 a week to offset my unemployment and I literally beg for that amount from those lucky enough to still have jobs. I sleep most days, waiting in a half-dreamt haze for the day when there is a treatment for my depression. I have distanced myself from my family to avoid the fallout when they -- inevitably, it seems -- split.

But I can't shelter myself from death. The old and sick live, the young and healthy die. It traumatises me every single time, and I can't cushion it and I can't get away from it and there is no hope. There is no hope that they will suddenly come around and start breathing again. There is no hope that suddenly their heart will start up again. Christians will insist that 'death is NOT the end!!!!!!!! *8 million sickeningly sugary happy emojis and heart-eyes*' but the fact is that once a person dies, all hope is gone. Even if they are in heaven -- the fact remains that there is no hope here. There is nothing to cushion the blow to my staggering heart. You never know who's next, and you never know when it will be. There is no preparation. There is no going back. There is no making the best of it. They are gone, and you are broken. You are at the mercy of God, or Death, or Fate, or whatever the hell you want to call it. And Death has no mercy. There are days when it seems God doesn't either. They call Him a merciful God, but then why doesn't He stop the never-ending parade of meaningless deaths when I plead and beg for Him to stop it and let my heart breathe for just one day?

We can't control God and we can't control Death. Both seem hell-bent on destroying me, burying me alive under the shards of my shattered heart. I breathe them in and they pierce my lungs.

Even on days when nobody close to you actually dies, the trauma is there now. It never goes away. Your heart rate jumps at the sound of every text alert, wondering who it was this time. You constantly run through every person you've ever met in your mind, freaking out most over those who seem fine and are happy and healthy because those are always the ones that go first and those are always the hardest ones to predict and 'recover' from. Every time someone posts something on Facebook or Instagram, you think 'is this their last post?' There is no hope that everyone will be safe and alive at the end of today. You can only hold onto what remains of your tattered heart with whitened knuckles and beg the sky for mercy today... and hope that God cares enough about you to give you one day off.

But even then, that's not a sure thing. You hope He gives you rest, like He promised, but rest is not a sure thing when death is involved. It's never a certainty. And somehow death still blindsides you every time. There's always one person you forgot to worry about, and it's always that person who dies unexpectedly.

There is no escape. There is no hope of escape. There is no choice. And it's so stupid and it's so unfair. Why do I have to endure seven deaths in four years and other people go to maybe three funerals in their entire lives? Why aren't the numbers more even? Why is it always the people that I know and love, seemingly at the exclusion of all others?

When I was a young teen, I used to think I was God's punching bag. That's literally how I referred to myself in my writings from that time. In my late teens and early twenties, I began to see that label as somewhat melodramatic. But now I'm starting to wonder if eleven-year-old Kate wasn't on to something after all. After all, if God is a God of mercy, and I beg for mercy, for respite from everyone around me dying, and the dying doesn't stop, does it mean God has been misrepresented and painted as merciful when He is not, or does it mean I am just the 'chosen one' -- the punching bag, the one who absorbs His anger at everyone else whether I like it or not so that He might show them His famous mercy?

This is enough. I am not only crying uncle, I am screaming uncle at the top of my shredded lungs. Mercy, mercy.

Please.

Watching The Walls Close In...

It started to hit home when the NHL shut down.

I watched as every theatre in the province closed ongoing shows and forthcoming ones.

And then, as I sat alone in an almost-abandoned Pizza Hut, staring at the view that defined my childhood, I received a phone call.

I didn't recognise the number, but I knew the area code. And I knew this was the call that I had been waiting for, that I hoped would not come. As a rule I don't answer numbers I don't know, but I answered this one.

"Is this Kate?"

"Yes."

"This is B., director of (my show that's scheduled for May). We have been advised by our board to cancel tonight's rehearsal. I'm really sorry for the late notice... they're meeting tonight to decide what's going to happen moving forward."

I thanked him, we chatted briefly, we hung up. I continued to stare out the window and think upon my breadsticks and pepperoni pie -- my meal now lengthened indefinitely. It had started a semi-quick meal on my way to rehearsal, but now with that commitment gone, I could sit here till closing if I liked.

But I got full. I packaged up the remainder, paid, and left. I bought what I'm sure was the last thermometer in the city and stared in disbelief at the price of fuel. 74 cents a litre. Just two days earlier it had been 84 cents -- and I had been overjoyed at the low price. To lose ten cents in two days -- over the weekend -- emphasized the economic freefall that had been predicted but I hoped wouldn't come. On one hand I rejoiced at the cheap gas (I'll take any financial break I can get), but on the other, I live in a province built on the energy sector. When gas prices drop, that's because we're collectively out of work.

I got home, checked my email. As I expected, given the public health update that had gone out while I was in Pizza Hut, my other show had emailed and cancelled rehearsals for two weeks. Our shows -- originally supposed to be the beginning of April -- were now tentatively moving till after Easter.

And I am the lucky one.

At least one of my shows will still go on, however late. So many of my friends had shows that were cancelled entirely, some after the final dress rehearsal but before the opening curtain. Mine will go on eventually -- theirs won't.

My parents play a game with my youngest brother while we listen to music and several of my sisters work on handcrafts. I solve several sudoku puzzles before tiring of them. My parents discuss the forthcoming 18-hour round trip out-of-province that they're going to have to undertake to collect my other brother from his suddenly nonfunctional college -- his first year of a new adventure truncated just before performance season (which of course is the best part).

Throughout the night, as I ponder the surrealness of it all, I wonder mostly what will happen to me should I fall ill. I fall into the category of 'those with pre-existing medical conditions,' so my age does not mean I'm safe. I'm not worried about my family except my youngest brother (also has a pre-existing condition). He's young enough, though, that he will be a priority. I am not. I'm nearly thirty. I'm also not a 'productive,' 'valuable' member of society. I work part-time at a small-town sandwich shop which may close any day now depending on the next public health statement and, till about a year ago, spent any spare moments I could find dancing or writing. None of those factors make me worth saving -- let alone the fact that now I spend any spare moments either playing Pac-Man on my phone or scrolling mindlessly through Facebook because I've lost the joy/desire/inspiration/confidence in both dance and writing. I don't have any children -- no-one would would actually need me should something happen to me. I may mean the world to my fiancé, my siblings, a handful of friends, perhaps my parents... but when the chips are down,  I won't mean enough to 'society at large' to choose saving me over saving literally anyone else.

For years I wanted to die. Sometimes I tried to take matters into my own hands. There were moments I almost literally stood on the edge of the cliff, and I had walked there myself. But now that it seems like a genuine possibility -- I don't want to. Not yet. I want to grow old with my dear fiancé first -- to have adventures and a life with him, to hold his hand and sleep in his arms while feeling him breathe. I want to see if I can find my old artistic passions again. I want to see what happens after this -- if society in general collapses; if Apple slows down their confounded forced-obsolescence trend because nobody will be able to afford a new iThing every three and a half months in the almost-certainly-forthcoming economic recession (this was an actual thought that I had while staring out of the window over my breadsticks).

Part of me wants to draw on my artistic skills to flagrantly show hope to people through their phone screens. The only thing stopping me is I lost my ability to see hope years ago, and it's well-nigh impossible to give to others something I can't even find.

The Bottom (?) (Part II)

29 August 2019, 9.52pm.

I think I've hit bottom. Or at least I hope I have.

On the surface it doesn't look like I have. I'm not wearing rags and sleeping under a bridge. I'm not in a padded room in a hospital eating with plastic forks for my own protection. I'm still living in a decently nice place in a mostly nice city and have food in my cupboard and nice clothes in my closet.

The best way to say it is I have been spiraling since I moved here. The behaviour I described in this post was not limited to that week or even that month. It has characterised my entire time here. If it wasn't for one person (a friend of mine from my most recent show), I would literally have starved to death in the lap of luxury -- starved by my own volition. I had no reason to live and as such I had no reason to eat, so I didn't. I lived literally on Mini-Wheats, and that only because this friend insisted I eat something and that was the only thing I had the energy to make.

My last year at college (this past year) was easy academically (I only had three or four classes over two semesters), but it almost (and may still) broke me mentally. The professors and directors started giving me the cold shoulder and a couple of them started outright telling me I wasn't trying hard enough and that I would never be good enough to be an artist. Even though the school focused primarily on vocal development and had basically zero dance program to speak of, the director (who spent a total of five years in dance and has never taught it) appeared to make it his personal mission to remind me that my body is just not built to be flexible and to tell me constantly that because of that one fact and that one fact alone that I would never, ever be a decent performing artist and nobody would want anything to do with me -- full stop.

You can only hear that for so long before you start to believe it. Especially when this person is a mentor to you, and especially when the second-in-command in the program wholeheartedly agrees with him, and especially when there are no other influences telling you otherwise because 'your director knows best.'

Eventually he stopped having to say it (though he didn't actually stop saying it) -- the voice recorder in my brain had his voice on permanent file, playing back and rewinding and repeating the recording 24/7. By the time I graduated in April, I was already well into the self-starvation pattern. If I couldn't be a performing artist -- and he told me, clearly and repeatedly, that I couldn't -- then I didn't want to live. I had three other shows lined up, so a quick, violent suicide was not an option, but a slow degenerative spiral would be perfect. I could fade out shortly after the last show. It would be a fitting, sad, poetic, ending to a sad, moderately poetic life.

It got to the point where I couldn't even practice dance -- even for fun, even for my own choreography that nobody would ever see -- without hearing his voice in my head, telling me I would never be good enough. It was deafening, and it was infinitely heavier than my increasingly-fragile body could bear. I could hardly stand up, let alone lift the weight of his words off my heart long enough to lace up my tap shoes. There was no way I could practice on my own, and there was no way I could afford classes to push me to actually try.

So I accepted my fate -- I stopped dancing. I started telling people I 'used to' dance. I stopped listening to music, stopped seeing the dances, stopped singing, stopped dreaming.

At the same time, it seemed that my dire financial situation was about to turn a corner. I actually managed to land a job -- delivering the morning paper six days a week. However, about a month into the job, I had already been sexually harassed by a superior, taken three sick days (unrelated to the harassment), called a mental health help line because I felt so trapped, had to start a stronger asthma medication because my asthma worsened so much with the disturbed sleep schedule, and figured out I was only making $10.50 a night for my trouble. Minimum wage in Alberta is $15 an hour, and I was only making $10.50 for three hours of work, plus I was putting in $20 of gas in my vehicle every night. I was paying more than I was making.

The idea had been to deliver papers until I got another job, and I had been looking, but the paper-delivery job had drained so much out of me that I was spending fourteen hours a day in bed and still literally falling asleep on the job every single night. I hadn't found a better job, but I put in my two weeks' notice. I was going to end up in the hospital if I didn't.

Snapshot of the Last Rays of Hope

26 October 2016, 1.52am.

The other day I was flipping through my notes from Songwriting class. I took this class in the final semester of my AA degree, as a modular (week-long intensive) course. This was, of course, the semester when my entire life went to h-e-double-hockey-sticks.

There were a lot of journaling exercises in that class, and it was strange reading some of what I had written in those exercises. At that point in the semester, Brittney had been dead for less than a month. Our family friend was in the final stages of an extremely aggressive cancer and would in fact die less than two weeks later. The two divorces that jaded my entire concept of familial love and care had already burst on the scene (though the extent of the fallout remained to be seen). Less than a month later, God would withdraw His presence and comfort from me and my cousin would die a horrible sudden death two months later. In short, this was in that very intense upheaval period between all those things, and my notes from that class are a unique snapshot of a very short time in my life where despite all the crap I still retained some true faith that it was for good (which left when my cousin died). This was a fleeting moment in my spiritual life, though one can very easily see the torment already in my head.

We had to write a total of six songs for the class. Because I was so completely overwhelmed, I turned out six of the worst songs I have ever written in my entire life, and because of the way everything panned out (in terms of stress, abandonment, and the subsequent loss of inspiration that still haunts me), they have, so far, turned out to be the last. I vaguely remember the concepts behind two or three of them, but the one that stands out to me is the one I wrote for Brittney.

It was composed in a rush before I had really had time to process her death so it was cheesy as heck and because my piano skills are crap the accompaniment was only a couple of token chords in the background just to say it was a song. But I still remember the metaphor I used and I remember the prof in his feedback asking if I wrote poetry because it sounded like I do. I remember feeling incredibly honoured that he would even ask me that -- this was also two years to the week since I had discovered the magic that is Daniel Amos and the songwriting of my artistic hero Terry Scott Taylor (who is nothing if not poetic).

Reading these notes, I was surprised how much hope in God I still retained at that time. Most of the terrible things had happened already by this point. If my cousin hadn't died and God hadn't withdrawn His presence from me, it would have been all uphill from there. Reading those notes made me feel, for the first time, very disconnected with who I used to be. This girl who wrote those notes was hurting but she hoped through the tears. For better or for worse, I am not like that anymore. Hope is a faded memory. I am very conscious of the fact that I have put up a wall to protect myself and nobody is tearing it down -- not even me. Maybe if the wall is strong enough God can't get through to hurt me anymore. It's destroying my fledgling performing arts career (because not only can nothing get in, nothing can get out), but what does that matter anyway? There's no hope for any of that.

Spots Of Light and the Deepest Dark

27 May 2016, 2.25am.

Is it better to be consistently depressed, with no bright spots at all, or is it worse to hope and hope and hope for something... only for it not to happen?

I have such a vivid imagination (or at least I did...) that I can imagine any number of ways God might answer a prayer. So I think on the myriad of creative ways He could help me... and He doesn't do any one of them. In fact, He doesn't even come up with an alternative that I hadn't thought of yet. He just doesn't do anything.

Which is worse, an imagination so beat down by society and circumstance that it no longer functions at all, or an imagination that supplies hope that will always be in vain?