The Liar Muse

I was trying to figure out what to write about all day. I woke up late in the afternoon and spent too long in the shower and reading a book. I took some coffee to my lovely friend, Chris, while he was painting a mural and sat on the wall reading more actively avoiding writing for no other reason than I had committed to writing something, even if it is short, every day and I love avoiding commitments. I came home and procrastinated and then decided to take a drive to clear my head.  On the way back from my hour long drive it hit me.  Relationships.  This metaphor may only make sense to people who are as scared of driving as I am.  Relationships to me are like driving a car. Hear me out.  Maintenance and committing are key. Long relationships are like long road trips with someone that has a good playlist and better taste in snacks. Sometimes it gets scary like driving next to 18 wheelers in Dallas or when someone swerves into your lane. You...

Four times a day, every four hours timed by an alarm on my phone, I swallow a little yellow capsule with the numbers “215” stamped on the larger side in blue. Without it my brain almost short circuits.  I’ve been putting off writing all day today because I was hoping I would find something else I would want to write about but at the end of the day, this is what is destroying the hamster wheel in my mind.  It took 8 years of trying new meds going off those new meds trying a new one or four or five at a time and never getting the chemicals right and lithium makes it so I can’t talk and I traded my Ativan for weed and adderall and sleeping too much and not ever sleeping and hallucinating and not being able to walk fast or think fast or thinking too fast or nausea or headaches and haloperidol and losing weeks of my life not being able to feed myself and going back off the pills and being impulsive and not being able to be a person just a different dangerous babbling version...

The bug is creeping back in. Seeping through the cracks of my mind like the openings in my childhood home, the ideas running and infesting like those tiny cockroaches that are impossible to get rid of. The last place I traveled to was Atlanta, Georgia in August 2018 with a man child who consistently told me that I was not high on his priority list. I thought I saw something in him, an author waiting to crawl to the surface and blossom but it turns out I was looking in a mirror. What I saw in him was the personality of an author and rampant alcoholism that matched my own but in the year and a half that I spent chasing him he only wrote one mediocre short film. I remember the female character as being a prop with no real personality traits which I later learned was how he looked at women. I was thinking about moving to Atlanta at one point because that’s where the film work is, but’s then I got there I couldn’t think of any reason I would move somewhere that was hotter than Austin. I...

I’m glad I don’t smoke weed anymore. On days like today, where my cramps have grown claws that scratch my ovaries and squeeze the muscles in my lower back to a meaty pulp that threatens to leak out of my body, where everything is frustrating and that voice in my head pushes me shoot flames from my mouth and burn my perceived enemies to ashes, when I cannot find a comfortable position to lay in no matter where I place the heating pad and my head is pounding like an annoyed, miniature person is slamming a ball against the walls in my skull I kind of miss getting a little stoned. I think that weed makes me comfortable with being lazy. Days like today I am glad that I’m not enjoying laying on the couch all day like I used to. I smoked like I drank, until I passed out. I smoked to cover my insecure feelings and discomfort. I smoked to be comfortable with a lowered ambition. If I was the kind of person to just smoke one joint when I had pain, like today, then I would be doing it right no...

The rules of dreams always fascinate me. Maybe not the rules themselves, but how easily in my sleeping state I accept them. Since I have been using nicotine patches to quit smoking I have had incredibly vivid dreams. The night before last I dreamt my mother died and woke up crying. In my dream I remember her request to be cremated and her ashes be placed in a rum bottle and set out to sea. I had haggled with the funeral director and told him that he couldn’t pull a fast one on me because I used to work in a funeral home and I knew that I didn’t need all the expensive bells and whistles to have her turned to ash. I requested a witness cremation without a container and when her ashes were presented to me, I didn’t want an urn, just the plastic bag with the little metal disk inscribed with her number inside of the black plastic box that cremated remains go into before being given to the family. I went to the liquor store to buy the bottle of silver rum that I remember her liking. Ev...

I have been breaking my arm patting myself on the back for doing what I’m supposed to be doing all day. I am a crazy person and I am painfully aware of it several times a day. Really, I have to work very hard to not act like it. Joseph didn’t come home last night. I know. I was up until 4:00 am partially concerned that he was covered in blood half hanging out of this chicks car that rolled into a ditch, on fire, with his outstretched hand searching for help with my name on his lips and his phone just out of reach. The rational part of my brain figured he probably just fell asleep.  I fished around 2:00am with a simple text that said “I left food on the stove for you” with no response. I found myself turning off the lights in my room and peeking through the windows periodically expecting to see him making out in a parked car. I had to turn out the lights so if he was down there he wouldn’t see me spying but I’m sure the lights flickering and blinds parting were more susp...

My mom reminded me the other day that I have always loved the shower and that I steal tweezers. I knew she knew about my crazy long and introspective showers because growing up the bathroom was the only room with a lock on it. With a dad like mine, you wanted to be in the room that locked. I didn’t know she knew about my tendency to steal tweezers. I thought I was the sneakiest kid. I have always pulled out my body hair with tweezers. I read somewhere that it is either a nervous, anxious thing or it has something to do with obsessive compulsive disorder. I’m too lazy to find out what it is called at 3:00 am when I’m trying to empty my mind and go to sleep. It makes sense. Growing up I had no control over anything and everything was always up in the air. What mood was dad going to be in? Are my parents drunk or high? Will I do or say something wrong? I would spend 10, 15, 20 minutes controlling this aspect of my body. So I focused my attention to my leg hair, knuckle hair,...

     I have been given a glimpse into my life if I were a full time author and I am lazier than I realized before the pandemic hit. If I don’t have somewhere to be I watch a lot of TV.      Last night was the first time I had done any writing in the past month. What I have spent all of my time doing is catching up on shows that I missed because other people loved them obsessively and always gave me that exacerbated, long sigh when I told them I haven’t seen it. Like when everyone built up Jurassic Park and I felt like it would partially never meet the high expectations I had built up in my mind and partially as a low key way for me to rebel against all the really good shit that other people liked. As if not liking something other people liked made me cool.      I finally cracked last year and watched Jurassic Park. It was fine. Sue me.      I decided to watch True Blood to make fun of a friend for liking it so much and th...