February 7

February 7, 2019

Writer’s Block And Social Impact

Writer’s block is another name for performance anxiety. Heard this little line today and it hit a chord. I think of writer’s block as being sourced in perfectionism, but I didn’t connect perfectionism to performance anxiety. I should have.

I like to tell myself I’m in this unique circumstance, right? Losing brain cells, dopamine receptors, etc, from low dopamine, and then getting the opportunity to grow them back. The giant amounts of inflammation creating pressure on my brain from mold toxicity and allergies suddenly alleviated. It’s a freaking rebirth in a lot of ways. But did I come out of all that struggle better? What about more secure? I mean, I can actually measure my ability as being improved, my understanding, my cognitive function and skills all improved, but am I acting like someone secure in that knowledge? No.

I’m afraid. It’s such a foreign fear compared to the physiological signs of anxiety I lived with for so long. Allergies, inflammation, even the Parkinson’s all gave my these chemical and physical feelings of anxiety. Lol, not to mention the PTSD (apparently even after 30 years of having it, once cured you can forget it even had a damn impact!) What I feel when it comes to perfectionism doesn’t feel like fear, but depression. Like a dark wall that makes me reluctant, that steals my energy and tries to distract me with anything but the truth of what I want to be focused on. My circumstances might be justified as unique–I can rationalize why I’m in this place–but the reality is far more mundane.

I don’t know who I’m supposed to be. I don’t know how my writing will reflect on me as a person: if I’m good at it does that give me value? I mean, seriously, it’s like being back in grade school. Earn a gold star and you’ll be worthy of love and praise, right? I don’t know if I’m good enough to convey what I want to convey as a writer. I don’t know if I’m wasting my life. I don’t know if I’m taking the right path. I don’t know–fuck, I don’t know a lot of shit.

Ultimately, none of these questions really matter. It’s just the brain seeking a point of reference and wanting to compare, to judge, to weigh for the sake of doing it. When you realize you’re on a planet in a universe that is likely infinite in scale and therefore you will never have an actual point of reference because there is no static place, you realize this is just something the brain does to help you feel secure. They’re just concepts in my head trying to define the thing I do every single day to be something else, something heavy and weighted with meaning that only exists in my brain. Insecurity defines life with pointless meaning to help us feel secure. It is shit when you’re unaware and that meaning becomes toxic, such as deciding if you don’t write 8,000 words a day, you’re a horrible writer who doesn’t deserve to succeed. This is the dark side of human evolution. What allows us to conceptualize things such as quantum mechanics and have deep psychological thoughts is also what traps us into pointless, neurotic exercises placed on daily activity. It leads to depression and dissatisfaction when surrounded in perfect beauty.

I think I understand why the people who appear to get past this problem are very focused on a social impact to what they do. When I first observed this, I assumed it was marketing, branding, etc, and it turned me off because of it. I saw creators pushing these ideas of social uplift but I didn’t believe it came from a place of genuineness but just a sale’s pitch. Now–at least, with certain individuals–I see how wrong that is. Social value helps to drown out the inner insecurities that can plague a mind.

When I talk about censorship, it’s not from a place of anger because my livelihood is threatened and it feels like the world is unfair (although those feelings are there and very real) but from this place of compassion for the world and people in it. I understand 100% how damaging shame is, how detrimental to emotional and mental well being, and I see how censorship and banning of erotica leads to shame, to self hate, to very normal, healthy individuals left to feel like outsiders and freaks because of something as basic as their fantasies not being accepted in the consumer market on major book platforms. When books are banned, it’s not just the authors of those books, but the readers being told ‘what you like is not acceptable. Go away. You don’t belong here.’

When I focus on the cruelty and pain such a message sends, do you think the petty, pointless insecurities in my head can stand a fucking chance? No. My waffling, gotta be good at what I do or I haven’t earned my gold star doesn’t fucking matter at all. Does it break through my fears that my readers won’t enjoy what I’m writing if I don’t take the most amount of time to make it as perfect as possible? Eh… I wish. I really do. I’m working on it.

It is a place of insecurity I have found myself in as my health returns, and I’m still running down all the damn paths as to why and how to break through. But I have faith I’m going to get there eventually because if there’s one thing I know about myself, I will face the darkest corners of my psyche until I get all the blocks out. I am committed to growth, to joy, to fun, and to creating as much as I can and helping people feel comfortable in their own brains and bodies no matter how fucking wrong, and cruel, and dickish society and the many systems in there can be. No one should want to kill themselves over a sex fantasy. No one should fear losing their jobs, their houses, their families, their lives over the things they fantasize about. No one should be exiled from the world be it the Internet or their personal little bubble over the shit in their heads.

So, yeah, I gotta get the fuck over my own mental stuff so I can help with that, ya know? Plenty of people think this stuff, they know it’s commonsense to not discriminate against sexual fantasies, etc, but few are in a place to make any kind of a difference. Instead we’re seeing people in places of power who are censoring away any mention of sexual fantasies they don’t feel should be allowed to exist. The wrong voices are being heard even if they’re not the most prevalent. I am an anomaly and for whatever reason, here I am at the age of 36 after years of health problems finding myself with a platform, a reader base, a brain that’s actually working properly, and the compassion and fearlessness to take this shit on. So yeah, I have goals. Goals bigger than me even if right now it feels like I’m battling myself more than anything else.

There’s no point wishing for the world to change. If you want a better world, you gotta put the work in and help to recreate it as an accepting, loving, compassionate place. You can’t change society if you’re not being a voice in society. Society is just every single one of us with only a few speaking their truth. And shit, yeah, I guess at this point in my life, this is the way I’m hoping to change the voice of society: with dirty, naughty, rough, dark and taboo sexual fantasies. I know there will be plenty of people who don’t understand it, who will only see what’s on the surface. But I’m here to save the world with sin. Sexy, freeing, SIN.

Rigid rules and shame have no place in the mind and body. Until we can free ourselves from the mental prisons society and we ourselves have put us in, humanity can’t move forward. There are too many giant problems we’re facing on a global scale to allow ourselves to be frozen any longer over such basic, primitive things such as how we perceive our sexual urges in our minds and bodies and if they’re ‘acceptable.’ It’s actually crazy to think we’re still fighting this when we as human beings have had these fantasies since the dawning of our species. What a waste when we could have been enjoying these aspects of our minds from the very beginning. What a waste to have the modern world embrace it only to have a few repressed, frightened, judgemental voices censoring the very Internet to try and ensure people stay broken and ashamed and unaccepting of their very bodies.

Someone has to say enough. Someone has to be willing to be loud and normalize what is already normal in every psyche out there. So, yeah. Goals, babes. Who I’m going to have to be to reach those goals isn’t fully formed yet, but I’m working on it. I’m pretty sure she’ll be kickass and loud once she gets her shit together. XD

February 5

February 5, 2019

Fear Of Loss. Fear Of Love.

I was watching a video—I want to say the speaker was a negotiator—and he said this in passing. When trying to understand what a person wants, some people are afraid of loss, and some people are afraid of love. It was this blip of a sentence he didn’t really go into, and yet so freaking profound. It’s also very interesting in the case of character development in stories.

In romance, there are a few types of stories out there, some that never really made sense to me personally even as I could readily accept they were well accepted within their community of like minded readers. I couldn’t understand the appeal. As a reader first, I never felt anything for these characters, which was partly why I turned to writing. I wanted to create characters who reflected an internal psyche I understood. I think at the core, all my characters fear love.

Fearing love requires a different character dynamic. Romance is not necessarily fun, a gift, soul mates meeting and everything sunshine and roses. It’s not even a focus on the quirk of falling in love with cutesy setups like buying a date for charity or a genie granting a love wish. These types of characters don’t want love. They’re not hanging out waiting for cupid to strike—if it’s a meat market, they are aware and miles away. Love and/or human connection is actually rather terrible, something to be avoided at all costs.

Dark romance is a safe genre to explore this kind of dynamic. There is less expectation of vulnerability. Opening this type of character’s heart is like opening a damn safe, and there will be blood, sweat, and tears to get there. It doesn’t fit well with normal romance where the characters are usually seeking love, desperate for it, so welcoming and open. For those who fear love it is the most sickly-sweet display and just doesn’t ‘feel’ right. These sweet characters fear losing love and are willing to cling so damn tight it’s just offensive to the sensibilities of someone who fears being clung too.

It’s intriguing the psyche reflected in the dynamic between characters. It varies author to author. I think for some authors to even know they’re seen in their characters could be reason enough for them to run and never share a story again. It’s why writing can be so difficult for some, especially erotica. It’s an exposure. Even if the readers don’t understand what they’re seeing, an author reveals a lot of self in the most mundane of words. Which is why as much as I don’t get characters who so readily, openly rush toward love, I also don’t understand the books where they are turned into objects incapable of love.

I see it a lot in very dark BDSM, where relationships become roles instead of connections. I look at these stories and see so much detachment from the body, from the soul, from the emotional center of self so greatly that the very characters created are intentionally flat and dead like furniture there to be abused and nothing more. Main characters turned into dehumanized holes and flesh. Their experiences aren’t even marked as emotional, just bland endurance as a human is broken down into basic hardware, software ignored. I never really understood it until that little line kept spinning in my mind.

Fear of love.

My characters fear love, but in the same breath crave it. They’re running from something they ultimately want, which creates the internal conflict, the push and pull. I think there are some psyches so afraid of love—I suspect after experience of severe trauma—they can’t even reach for it through their characters. They feel more comfortable recreating the dark places where they went numb, cold, dead inside because that’s how they know the inner world to be. A place to freeze and be smothered instead of finding self and transformation. It’s safe there. If they can normalize it enough in the mind, they might even stop feeling lost there. It might even stop being so terrifying to look out and consider leaving such an empty place.

This is of course a narrative on my part seeing as I have no idea as to what actually crafts characters like those, just that I find them as alien as the bright, open-hearted ones who feel so freely. But I know this dark place exists, a void that I have been grateful to slip free of every time it rears. It has only been a frozen second before the instinct to battle and survive burned through, where sensation and emotion saved. Pain is a savior against dehumanizing numbness, life among the psyche’s death. I’m not a cutter, but I understand it 100%. It probably doesn’t help that the few authors I’ve spoken to who write these objectified characters seem to reflect this detachment from inner self. I suppose that’s why I jump to trauma as the source; it’s prevalent. How people deal with trauma is different, the way the psyche recreates itself to either pocket around the incident or adapt into a reflection of it; but trauma is a norm in a population that thinks it’s rare.

What character would be created when knowing, truly knowing, he feared love? Do people who fear loss hate themselves as much? To fear losing something outside you, does that mean the world is never safe, that self is found in connections instead of within? I can’t even imagine being so secure as to readily create connections to be afraid to lose. It’s such a foreign, interesting concept.

January 23

January 23, 2019

Fever

I have a fever. It might explain a few things…

I was thinking about evolution and how humans just, well, don’t. We don’t evolve physically but instead adapt the world around us. We’re working with the same genetic hardware and mental software our ancestors have had for thousands of years. The only thing that has really changed is our systems. That’s what humans are all about. We create language and we store knowledge. With that knowledge we build systems, some as small as creating a recipe to make a meal, others as big as creating a global business or dividing our days into a calendar and the globe into time zones.

You could likely pluck a human being up from 5000 years ago and drop him in our world, and as long as he utilized our language and educational system, he would fit in and adapt. But, in the same sense, take those systems away from a developing child and you could watch a process so similar to de-evolution like in the case of Helen Keller. She had all the cognitive software available, but her hardware was broken and it prevented her from getting those language and educational inputs. Once she did get access to them, she became as ‘evolved’ as the next person.

It’s fascinating to me. I’ve been watching ‘Horrible Histories’ and I just keep thinking how those atrocious behaviors happened not long ago. Not long at all. Humanity has a consistent history of violence, slavery, war, and oppression mixed in with innovation. We are currently facing a giant environmental crisis because we had these amazing innovations of technology that created systems–because humans build systems–but these systems are destroying the environment. They destroy ecosystems for farming, oceans for fishing, forests for paper and houses, water sources and ground stability for fossil fuels. Sometimes it feels like we have all been plucked up from the past and placed into this world where we are surrounded by all these systems from government to manufacturing to basic society, and instead of questioning it all, asking what’s the point and trying to avoid the danger, we just go along with the flow learning it all. Because that’s something very human too.

These systems wouldn’t become so overarching and widespread so quickly if we as a species didn’t immediately accept them. We accept the newest phone the same way we accept using plastic bags that are clogging up the oceans. You would think it would make it easy to change a system, but innovation seems slow and rarely accepted while the familiar but slightly different is far more quickly accepted. The new phone with ‘better’ camera instead of trying to solve the packaging crisis that is filling our landfills. The society change of fashion instead of deciding imprisoning people over debt is inhumane and pointless. How many different types of tooth brushes were ‘innovated’ before someone came around with the idea of a waterpick? How many room sized computers before the idea of a microchip? It’s the difference of wandering around searching for food, getting better and more efficient at hunting, before one brilliant idea said to stop and farm some land.

Innovation is humanity’s evolution. It can strike, but before systems were created to speed the implementation of such innovation, there was rare ability to have that innovation spread. In the past, governments were an ideal way to spread innovation. It’s why monarchies were both so damaging when they were destructive, and uplifting when they brought positive change; they were a system in place that could change things quickly depending on the mind in charge. The same with religion–depending on what ideology was passed around, you could be praising some invisible deity one day and murdering ‘witches’ and going to war the next. Governments, when not broken, can bring change immediately, but many are full of people who are mentally living decades in the past.

It also makes me wonder: what would evolution really look like for humans if it occurred in our bodies or minds? Would it be something that gets us through this current crisis, such as bodies that can cleanse the chemicals and toxins now spread throughout every inch of soil from worldwide industry? Evolution is more a lottery than a design; some designs last better while others die out or manage to survive even with the flaws because of other factors. Our current design has gotten us to a point where we can create systems so large that they can destroy the very planet we live on, such as nuclear power or climate change. It also lets us cope with that knowledge by allowing us to block it out, to walk certain on solid ground when we know atoms have so much empty space. We create systems of entertainment to hide away from reality, systems of religion to tell ourselves that death isn’t real and this chaos of life has meaning. We can pick a topic, any topic, and argue for hours with total strangers on the Internet while there are people on this globe facing starvation, dehydration, genocide, oppression and pain.

We are so very smart, and yet, still so damn ignorant.

I realized when I was a teenager that I was joining a world that belonged to generations before me. A world with old ideas that didn’t come from me, didn’t come from my peers or my family, but from people long dead. Humanity is good like that, recycling old ideas again and again with concepts like tradition to reinforce. But they were bad ideas, like women were weak, that money was more important than life, that a job will provide if you are loyal when already jobs were proving the opposite, that an imaginary deity made it okay to be hateful to minorities. We’re living in a world built by the past, a corpse of buildings and dying ideas, trying to follow rules that don’t relate to current situations, and I’m not sure why no one else seems to notice.

Our houses cost too much while there are 6 times the amount of empty houses in America than there are homeless people. Our laws are mostly bigoted with the intent to imprison black people and make rich people safe from the poor. Religion has completely corrupted the American system of government on all levels and is pushing inequality among the genders in the hopes of oppressing women down to their uteruses while also pushing bigoted ideas against minorities. The high school educational system teaches nothing of value when it comes to living in a world where you must work to survive, while less than 70% of students go to college. And college has little to teach of actual work unless you have a career field selected, but still many students experience burn out and fatigue learning things that will have no actual value in their lives–seriously. Many courses are of information that isn’t needed but is required, which you must pay for, and the course load is damaging. Add in the fact that many students deal with paying off student loans for their useless education long into their adult lives while those who never went to college face being shamed in a society who demands degrees for minimum wage jobs.

It’s broken system after broken system and instead of fixing it, or some responsible mind just showing up and saying let’s fix this! people keep doing the same thing, feeding the broken system, showing up to deport citizens because it’s easier to blame a broken system while getting that paycheck instead of questioning and changing something that no one seems to know how to fix. Are the modes of change gone from these broken systems or is it really just no one will be responsible for them from the mob rule apathy once a group of people are involved?

That’s a thing, btw, very interesting to watch. You can observe it in yourself too. The moment an individual sees something that requires action–be it a dog runs into the street, or someone cries for help, or even a piece of trash on the ground–they will be apt to act. Impulse, instinct, morality, etc. But if that individual is in a group, or is joined by a group, suddenly they find themselves waiting for someone else to act, to take responsibility, to fix the problem or give them permission to not act. This is a genetic software thing. I don’t know if it’s a fear to stand out, or sudden apathy, or even politeness. It’s bizarre but it happens all the time. Humans in group settings can be less proactive because of the group, while alone they might sail forward without a doubt in the world. What a terrifying reality when you apply it to congress, huh?

Humans are dragging old genetic software with them into the modern world like tribalism, PTSD, compartmentalizing, and drone like behavior while facing a global environmental crisis of their own creation. And what do they do? Well, in America, they bitch about a wall while imprisoning children at the border and claim how safe they’re making their country.

I wonder if there will be a future where they can have a Horrible Histories of this time and just how will it compare to all those witch burnings, genocides, and slavery of the past? We as a species have pushed our evolution outside of our bodies and into something as intangible as knowledge and language to build the systems we live in all around us. It gives us great flexibility and removes so many limits. Will we be able to rise above our own genetic software, or will our current evolutionary design prove to be too flawed to improve upon?

A Mote In God’s Eye was a fucking amazing book, and this mindset totally reminds me of it.

I have rambled enough, I think, babes. Fevers tend to do it to me. Night. ^.^

?A New Year’s Opinion On Vaccines And Failure?

January 12, 2019

Hey babes,

No, I don’t have an opinion on vaccines. Well, that is, there is no way in fuck I would share my opinion with the drama queens who clicked on this newsletter just over that title. *wink* No, I saw this post on Facebook after my week long retreat away and I couldn’t stop laughing. The exact quote:

Opinions on Vaccines? For a new baby.

Glorious. I started laughing immediately when I read it in bold letters and a bright background where it was posted in a natural healing group. I knew. I fucking new. A baby combined with vaccines plus OPINIONS? Oh, the torches were already lit to save or sacrifice, and depending on which side, the end result is still you’re either saving or sacrificing that babe. 1.1K comments and it was only posted 2 days ago. Lost it when I clicked and saw the moderator had turned off any new comments because of the flaming. XD

OMF, the Internet is amazing! I appreciate it so much more when I take long breaks away. I’ve been doing this social media break where I stay away during the week and only visit during the weekend. Now that I’m past the ‘reach for the phone’ addiction, it’s so much fun.

Hold on, before I forget…

Did you snag your Demon Bonded calendar?

Orders are already piling up and this is a limited time thing. There is no way I want to screw around with all this shipping nonsense for long. (Labels. What the fuck is the point of making shipping labels so stupidly complicated? @_@) So if you’re interested in a calendar full of nostalgic Demon Bonded covers, now is the time.

Oh, and I added some of the inner images so you can see on the site. It really is just the old covers, plus an extra poster for the bonus month. 😉

Anyways…

I have way more focus during the week since turning off social media. I appreciate my work more, actually. I’m not looking for distraction. I have plenty of shit I can do to distract myself and be productive at the same time. But my weekends now feel a bit like Jerry Springer time cuz I stumble into Facebook and Twitter and YouTube, and I realize just how desensitized I have become to so much insanity. The drama! The click-bait. The fucking useless text wars over shit that will never impact the individuals posting. It is amazing.

I’m starting to think people don’t care about porn anymore. No, they come to the Internet to argue and feel shitty, or ‘right,’ or angry. What happened to healthy, happy orgasms? XD

It’s also an interesting perspective when I think of the hours to days wasted on shit that doesn’t matter but people have chosen to invest their emotional selves into it. Like, are people really paying attention to the path they’re taking?

A New Year’s Introspective

I was thinking about how I used to ride dirt bikes before I got sick. Nothing crazy. The biggest thing I rode was along the lines of a Honda CRF250. I can remember ending up at this motocross event in New York staring up at these people jumping off giant mounds of dirt (it felt like hundreds of feet in the air, although I have no clue how high it was really.) And they were doing crazy tricks while flying, like legs up, entire body lifting off the bike, etc, before having to land with that heavy bike safely on the dirt beneath and not break their faces. All I could think at the time was huh… no way in fuck.

I already knew how I learned to ride a dirt bike. I would go super fast once I figured out how to make sure the thing wouldn’t stall, and I’d keep going fast until I hit a rock, tree root, or a turn I couldn’t make, and I’d go flying to the ground. This was the way I learned things, by being thrown over the handle bars, repeatedly. And to be clear, it was fun as fuck! XD I loved riding dirt bikes.

Still, seeing those people make that giant jump was enough for me to go, nope, that is not a fall I want to make. It wasn’t this fear of possibly falling, so much as knowing that falling was a part of the sport. If you’re not willing to fall, you’re not being realistic. It doesn’t mean you have to fall, but yeah, I know from all the times I went flying, falling was going to happen. Respecting the sport and my limits of not wanting to break any bones, I was not interested in learning to do huge jumps.

But it’s what makes me interested in doing so many things that don’t involve me breaking my face at high speeds. Because I know that failure isn’t that bad and I plan for it. When you try something and fail, rarely are there consequences worth mentioning. Some money lost. Time wasted. Frustration and disappointment. Maybe bruised pride and embarrassment if you have people watching. Is it cancer bad? I took care of my mother through high school until she died; few things are cancer bad. Is it breaking your face bad? Probably not.

Perspective is a beautiful gift, even if how that perspective is gained can feel like hell. I’m thinking about this stuff a lot because it’s a new year—you know, that arbitrary point that we decide is the measuring of a cyclical calendar for linear time. I see people make resolutions, or talk about not making grandiose resolutions because they’re afraid to fail. They take it so seriously. They’re afraid with every failure they’re not going to try again. And all I think is, wow, people need some perspective on failing so they’ll be willing to go for something.

Fail To Win

What if you set the expectation that you’re going to fail at least 5 times, every single month, until you reach your new year’s resolution goal? Well, already you’re giving yourself a message; failing can happen repeatedly, and it doesn’t mean it has to keep you from your goals. People think of fucking up as a one time thing. Like when the ‘worst thing happens’ they’re automatically required to stop and give up.

Babes, let me explain how the ‘worst thing ever’ can change when you stop giving up. When I was fresh out of college, my worst thing ever was being noticed by other people. Yeah, this was after my mother was dead and I was helping my dad with dementia get through the days. My perspective was so broken from PTSD and anxiety, that my ‘worst thing ever’ was being noticed. It made singing a trial every time and compliments misery.

Today, after years of experience and finding way worse things to face, my worst thing ever is death. I know it’s the end, just as I know I won’t be around to actually experience it. But I didn’t get to this mentality because I gave up. I was able to get here because I learned to accept that fucking up is part of trying something new. The ‘worst thing ever’ is in some ways inevitable, and it’s not the end of the world. I will drop dead one day and I won’t be alive to regret it. I’m hoping the moment before it happens, I’ll be aware enough to have no regrets, though.

Plan for failure like it’s exactly what it is, part of the learning experience, and you won’t ever have to worry about giving up on what you want. You might decide you don’t want it, like I did when watching those people fly off that giant jump. You might decide what you want is a little to the right or left of your original idea, or not in the same category as all. I went from singing professionally to writing commercially. The worst thing that happened was I realized what I was doing wasn’t enough for who I am today, and I changed my goal. I didn’t fail at singing or at life, I just admitted I wanted something else.

Failure loses its meaning when you embrace it. It’s not an end; it’s not a defining factor in your plans; it’s not anything. It’s just a step in being alive, like everything is. When you strip the meaning away, you have so much freedom to love what you do.

I love to learn and grow; it feels like the epitome of life some days. I would rather trip up and learn something new, than stay grounded and never try. I don’t have to break myself to try, but I do have to try. If you find yourself blazing down to Earth in failure like a shooting star, remember someone is making a wish to be as high as you reached for. Nothing has to be the end unless you choose to give up.

I hope you all find something awesome to reach for this new year, or even something mundane, just as long as it makes you happy. That would be an amazing resolution:

I want to be happy for 2019!

The Wild Ones

Louis Blackwood has been hiding his true nature all his life, lying to everyone and never daring to trust even those closest to him. When Louis is forced to use the powers he has always kept a secret to save his life, he’s led to prison without any chance of ever seeing daylight again. Until SINS shows up—the Supernatural Institute of National Security.

Lucas Lopes is the most popular professor at New York Supernatural University. Charismatic and honest, he’s renowned for his impressive control of his tiger form and impeccable good looks. Lucas is completely aware of the way he affects people with his charms and beauty, but it isn’t until Louis comes along that his smug arrogance grows to be a problem…

One Last Heist

One last heist.

It should’ve been easy. Crack a safe, steal from a villain, and go on vacation. The last thing Mack and Toshiro expect is to descend into a nightmare of betrayal.

Mack Ueda-Easton loves three things: his husband, heists, and his odd family of friends. He lives life on the edge. The only cloud on his horizon is the degenerative disease stealing his sight.

Toshiro Ueda-Easton tries to juggle his husband, his autistic sister, his interfering mother, and all of their heists. He knows they’re spiraling out of control and the journey they’re travelling can’t last.

What neither of them expect is to get catapulted straight into a dangerous conspiracy. They’re now in a race to come out on top. If they fail, the consequences are unimaginable.

Don’t Call Me Kid

Falling in love with your brother’s boyfriend and pining over him for a decade? It can’t get any more complicated than that!

Van found the man of his dreams on his fifteenth birthday. And promptly lost him on the same day when he realized Parker was dating his older brother, Taylor.

Ten years later, Van still nurses his unrequited love, but Parker and Taylor are no longer together. Too bad Parker only sees Van as an inexperienced kid, or a friend at best.

If Van plays his cards right, he might get a chance to tell Parker how he feels. With their complicated histories and Taylor wanting his husband back, their situation is as difficult as they come. Will Van finally get his man, or will he have to give up his teenage fantasies once and for all?

Don’t Call Me Kid is the first novella in the Just Don’t contemporary gay romance serial. If you like your romances on the angsty side and with a touch of complicated family dynamics, then this first book will have you craving for more in no time.

Buy Don’t Call Me Kid today to see if Van’s love truly conquers all.

Remembering You

“Careful there, Robbie.”  My sweater obscured part of my sight, and my fogged-up glasses managed to take care of the rest of it, but I’d recognize that voice anywhere, even after eight long years. It was deeper now, a bit more gravelly, but it most definitely belonged to the guy I’d spent most of my early teenage years pining after. My first—and unrequited—love.

“Troy?” I exclaimed, blinking my confusion as he helped pull my sweater the rest of the way off.  Troy Jacobs’ gorgeous lips twitched in amusement. “You remember me. Didn’t know if you would.”

“Oh, I remember you,” I mumbled. Hard to forget your first kiss—or the first guy you ever loved.

A 9,600 word short story about first love, second chances, and family.

?A Demon Bonded Calendar??

January 8, 2019

Hey babes,

Hey, have you ordered your Demon Bonded Calendar yet? What, you didn’t know it existed?!??? No, you’re not out of the loop. I’m just the kind of asshole who decides in the middle of January to make a calendar. Sorry. =_= But if you want to snag one of these beauties, signed by me, you can.

If you’re one of my Patreon supporters, you can get the calendar discounted. Just include the coupon I sent out to your Patreon email accounts this week at checkout (as in, you have to add to cart, you can’t hit the paypal button cuz there is no place for the coupon by that point.)

I’m looking into starting some merchandise. Mostly limited edition things since I don’t have the funds to do giant orders or anything. I’m looking at t shirt designs next. *eyebrow waggle* Not sure if anyone will be interested in something like a Demon Arms t shirt…

Anywho

I want to give a shout out to Louise and her very first book, The Wild Ones! It’s MM with shifters, sorcery, and sexiness. If you pick up this brand new read, would you mind taking the time to review as well? Louise is totally new to all this. Reviews are so important, and she would really appreciate the help and feedback.

The Wild Ones

A New Year’s Revolution Announcement cough Of Sorts

In some ways nothing is changing, but in others, it’s going to be this huge freaking change. At the moment it’s only a goal, one that I am not rushing toward but instead staring at warily and planning how I’m going to reach it without ending up bruised, broken, and broke. XD But it’s a goal I want, big time. It’s one that aligns with who I’m becoming as a person as I heal and start seeing a future. This shit is going to happen, even if it’s not overnight.

So, what is it? I want to expand the website and hire content writers. It’ll still be my stories, but multiple ones written faster and updated consistently throughout the week. Basically, I want writing help to get my stories produced faster. Not for the end rush of publishing, but to reward readers immediately on the website. You know, like a business. @_@ One that sustains itself by telling sexy, entertaining MM stories to readers. Something that doesn’t have to fear the rampant censorship of the big platforms like Amazon and can have a safe place to exist and grow.

Yeah, huge, and yet the same

I was having a conversation with the love of my life a couple weeks back. He asked me since I was feeling better, when was I going to do something with my business idea for M/F erotica. And in that moment I realized, I’m not. I enjoyed coming up with the idea during a business course and it would certainly make money, but I’m just not passionate about it. And if I’m not passionate about something, I won’t see my way through all the damn work to get to the end. So his response was, naturally, why not do it with the Sadie Sins stuff, then? That’s something you’re passionate about.

Well… Why not?

There are actually a lot of reasons. >_> Let’s not pretend, here. But most of those reasons are insecure, dickish fears. I don’t have the money to hire people. I’m not an adult (right? I mean, when the fuck does that officially happen where you have your life together? Did anyone else get that adult certificate?) What if no one wants to read the results? Would I ever be able to find writers willing to write the weird shit I like? Can I even stop being a control freak long enough to let someone write my stories?

That last one is actually the kicker. It’s something that’s held me back from trying a lot of things because in the long run, it makes so much more work for me. It’s the battle against my own perfectionism. I can find blunt, ignore that bullshit answers to all those other obstacles, but me chilling the fuck out and accepting help? That’s the shit of fairy tales.

I want to live in a fairy tale! I’m tired of not doing the stuff I want because I keep holding myself back. I work so hard doing everything when I could be putting my efforts toward the right goal. What it really comes down to is…

Am I living the life I want, or the life I’m afraid to lose?

Perfectionism is a fear of letting go and fucking up. It’s a fear of not being ready to jump off the cliff or just open a new door. I can pretend all I like that it’s all about standards and quality, but under it all is this fear of moving forward and letting go.

The last time I talked to you guys, I went into the freaking journey this has been the last years while dealing with chronic illness. It seems insane that when I was at my weakest with no future ahead I chose to write an escape in these stories and tried to build an income off of it. But I wanted insanity. It was so much better than my reality at the time of having to accept that in my early 30s I was looking at the end of my life with no one able to explain why. Fuck that.

This last year after breaking free of PTSD and figuring out a lot of health answers, I kept finding myself wondering if I’m living now, or am I still trapped in old, negative habits that came with living with an illness for so long. It can become habit, those negative, bullshit lies we tell ourselves. It can be hard to change even when we’ve already changed.

For example, why did I really start writing? To escape death. Is that why I’m writing now? Of course not, so why should I be clinging to my writing the same way? Why did I start a subscription website? To escape poverty when Amazon KU failed. Should I really be doing the same exact thing when my motivations for the subscription site have completely changed? No.

I gotta get out of the habit of doing things for survival and start looking at how to live a life of thriving. What I really have to do is take ME out of the equation. That’s the problem when you do things for survival; you only see yourself and you only see the misery you’re running from. Well, I’m a fucking mess when I’m looking at me, but things are way clearer when I look in any other direction lately. XD There is nothing I’m running from anymore. What a beautiful view the world provides.

If I want a website that can flourish, I need to be looking at what readers want. Consistent, updated stories. Content that actually has a freaking ending. More new, sexy short stories to balance out all the long novels where the sexiness is spread thin. This is obvious stuff, but it’s a mountain of work when it’s all on my shoulders.

How do I get past perfectionism? With one giant question.

What if I’m holding my stories back?

I write every single day, but it was only recently I dared to ask myself this question. And what a huge, scary, dear fuck, could that be real kinda question. How revolutionary an idea. Am I holding my stories back? Me, the only one who can create them? Is that even possible? How can I hold back what wouldn’t exist without me?

Pretty freaking easily, apparently. I’m totally holding back my own stories. It’s not from some place of cruelty or anything, so much as, when I put all the work on me, I limit the ability for these stories to be created faster. And how commonsense that is. There’s only one of me, and I’m stretched too thin. Is my health consistently good? Nope. Can I write multiple stories at once at a quality I feel is acceptable at a speed where people can readily enjoy? Not even close. What happens when it’s time to do the final edit of Demon Arms and I spend hours upon hours listening to the computer read back the text aloud to make sure I didn’t miss any mistakes? Will the rest of Shiny Thief or Hellcat suddenly write itself and post on the website? Nope.

I thought I could time manage myself out of these problems. You know, do one thing one day, another thing another day. But there are too many things. It just brings me back to my nemesis, my habit of how I have survived for so very long through the most arduous of times. Me. I am my own worst enemy because I am the only one I feel safe depending on. No, I don’t let myself down, but I sure can’t do the things a group of people can do with ease. There’s only one of me. I need to change that.

So, how do I stop doing everything myself?

I’m not sure. For real, I have been this way for soooo fucking long.

It’s easy to justify it. Especially when you might be kinda good at something. And if you find with a little practice you can be good at lots of things? @_@ It’s misery. I can already write a song and sing it professionally, but I’m also the psycho who would take the time to learn how to record with materials I could afford, edit with the computer, and get that shit online to sell. I haven’t sang in years, but if I suddenly wanted that goal, fuck, I would do what it takes. I’m a jack of all trades, a problem solver. Everything is a problem to be solved, every moment a challenge worth exploring. That’s the way I see the world.

Unfortunately, that creative freedom isn’t always positive. Oh, it sounds it, especially when you’re working with little to nothing at startup for a project. Why pay for something when I can do it myself, usually at a quality others aren’t invested in reaching? I think quality is one of the most important aspects of creation. You don’t half ass something; you do it right and create something that can last. So, do I actually get a return for my quality obsession, aka perfectionism?

Eh.

It’s fucking horrible to say. It really is, (if my parents were alive they would freak to hear me admit this) but most people don’t give a fuck about quality. You know how many reviews I got bitching about certain stylizations of writing I did constantly when starting out? Like, most negative reviews, even the positive ones, had the caveat of the author uses boy or blond or brunette too much. Did they still buy and read the book and get to the end? The fact they reviewed suggests yes. My bank account totally confirmed a big yes there.

I had a lot of books done in a short amount of time back then. I didn’t care about presentation so much as just telling a story. And yeah, publishing quickly is how to win certain writing games, especially erotica. If you have 1-2 stories out every month of a quality where readers’ eyes don’t bleed, and your work is compelling, you can do well in erotica. I once wrote 5 10,000 word stories in a week while sick. It was a damn good week. Was the quality amazing? No, but people bought the books anyways. Their standards weren’t as lofty as mine.

It’s not like I’m dicking around with these rewrites, I want to be clear. I don’t think I’m wrong to want to create a better (the fucking best) version of these stories I can, but it is far more time consuming. Quality is a sacrifice of time. It could be considered a luxury when you have no money. Unless I have the cash and daring to seek out help, something is going to suffer. Right now, it’s me.

I’m looking at this looming prospect once Demon Arms is done and I need to do that final edit. It’s going to be so much longer to tackle, and once again the website will drag with no new content. What about when I want to make that interactive visual novel (a fucking prospect I again decided to do on my own because I’m insane.) What about website content then? I want a solution that doesn’t kill me by meaning I do more work. I want a solution that keeps readers happy and me sane.

Mostly. Kinda…. Fuck.

Okay, you just don’t understand how much of a control freak I am!

I don’t walk these rare, unique paths of life just because I enjoy being creative. No, I do it because it’s wonderfully empty of people trying to tell me what to do. I like to do things my way. I like to throw myself at a problem until I solve it, bloody bruises and a big smile, while other people just do their own thing and leave me to my insanity. Suddenly I want to ‘manage’ people? Converse and get them to follow my guidelines for writing?

I have no clue how to ask when it comes to things. I know how to tell, and I’m sure I sound like an asshole every time. I know what I want, then I go after it until I get it because that’s how I roll, and I don’t really care what people think about it. Excuses are another word for bullshit. I want what I want, and I want to achieve what I want, and it’s why I get shit done. I do the hard stuff and don’t accept bullshit, and if people get in the way, buh-bye.

So… I don’t imagine I work well with others. @_@ I will literally have to be a different person to get the results I want… or find a way around my own personality flaws. I’m willing to do that. I am always willing to change to live the life I want. It’s just difficult. I see these character traits as positive, until I’ve worked myself right into exhaustion, once again, without the results I want to show for it.

Right now, I’m thinking a way around my ‘issues’ is to create writing materials that can teach prospective writers how to tackle commercial writing. I mean, everything else is solved, you know? I can create a system of reference for characters, in depth outlines to follow, etc. I can solve that shit. But can I ensure a writer can follow along to my standards? I could give them info that took me years of experience to learn. Things like how to make an erotic scene sexy. How to draft write for speed and efficiency. How to self edit. How to craft different story formats to ensure tension is consistent no matter what you’re writing. How to write more engaging and immersive content.

Oh, yeah, and how to be a total control freak.

Every time I think of this shit, I don’t know if I’m offering guidance or trying to force someone to stay in my style of writing to prevent me from having a meltdown and rewriting everything. Not even joking. This is so difficult for me!

Someone save me from myself T_T

This is a battle I want to win. When I took that business course, this was my biggest weakness. My need to control everything on my own. The only way the website is going to be able to grow and be something more, is if I get the fuck out of the way and allow it to be. Seriously, what an epiphany to realize I am the only person in the way of getting my stories done faster, maybe even better.

I can figure this out. I have never shied away too long from the things that make me uncomfortable. I want to win this challenge. I want to make the website about consistent, sexy MM stories. A safe place where you can read taboo and not have to worry about it disappearing or being attacked by this ridiculous censorship movement happening on the Internet. I have so many ideas just waiting for my time. So I need to solve this problem of time and put my efforts where they’re best utilized.

I should probably be more worried about not having money to do this atm. That would be the logical thing. Weirdly enough, I assume I’m going to solve that problem much easier than the control freak stuff. I can stagger hiring writing based on funds verses, like, hiring an employee. There’s a lot more leeway. I truly believe I can solve a lack of funds faster than I can solve not obsessing like a psycho over full creative control. @_@ I don’t know if that makes me cocky or delusional, but I’m going with it. XD

So, yeah. A goal for 2019. One that will take the pace required to prevent me from having a nervous breakdown at the prospect of relinquishing control and coming up with the money to hire help. There is so much to learn and do. Like, this week alone, I’m looking at a new subscription software for the website to finally deal with all those annoying date issues, figuring out shipping costs and taxes—actually looking at Fulfillment By Amazon where I could offer free Prime shipping for physical goods. I don’t think it’s time effective considering the calendar is already late, but on stuff in the future, it might be a win. Oh, learning Google Adwords and Woocommerce. Made a gorgeous visual of where I am writing wise for the 4 main WIPs on the website (and then did all this other work instead of writing. @_@ Cuz time management is a fail when there is too much to do.)

Yeah, it’s time to learn how to get help for some of this stuff. I want to see this website be something more than just me. Eventually, I will reach that goal. It won’t be overnight. It won’t look the same as I’m envisioning it now. Still, it will be fucking awesome.

Oh, I’m feeling better! Lol, not sure if you can tell. XD

✨?Holy Sh*t, Good News!?✨

December 15, 2018

Hey babes ^^

Let me throw some mm goodies at you, and then dive right into some crazy life stuff that I’m going through atm. For those who just can’t handle reality and my long ass rambling—although it’s good news, promise—you don’t have to delve too deep. I know the world is tough and we can only handle what we can handle. It’s all good.

True Mates

There are things that we want, and things that we need. Sometimes they end up being one and the same.

PHILIP

All my life, I’ve known two truths: my best friend Jaeger is my true mate, and I’m destined to marry a princess I’ve never met for the sake of my kingdom.

Prophecy’s a bitter pill to swallow when you’ve tasted true love and are told it can never be. But I wouldn’t be worthy of my beautiful omega if I were willing to let selfishness be the ruin of my people.

Because as it turns out, prophecies are never quite what you think…

Alright, so some news. Some crazy, cool, kick ass news. I may have figured out why I’m sick and how to fix it, like, permanently!

Five years of hell…

So, if you’ve been following along for a while, I’ve been ill since, well, fuck, since I started as an author. Two years before that (so a little over 5 years ago) I was hit with this mysterious illness. Got a fever that wouldn’t stop and it knocked me from working a very active job where I ran wall to wall in this large retail store getting shit done, warehouse stuff—you know, being a basic, active human being—to being bed bound and wondering if I was dying. I got a Lyme positive on a test 2 months after, they started me on antibiotics, and two years later after doing everything I was supposed to do, broke buying meds I couldn’t afford without a job, uh, not much changed.

My health had deteriorated to the point I was being kept alive by cortisol and aldosterone supplementation. It wasn’t consistent, though. I would have these windows, weeks to months, or sometimes just days of being human. It was like there was a little switch inside where if it was flipped, I functioned. My muscles worked—they hadn’t atrophied or anything—and I could breathe, think, function. And when the switch was flipped the other way, I was a zombie version of myself.

There was no way to know when it would hit again, why it would hit, or what the hell was causing it. During one of those longer moments of ‘okay,’ I actually tried to go back to work, only to have it happen all over again. Running around doing normal stuff like a person, only to feel like I hit a wall and collapse a few months into the job. Except that time, no Lyme positive. They started questioning if the first positive was even legit—I guess false positives are a thing with Lyme.

I started writing around this time cuz there was nothing else I could do, and really, I needed a mental escape. Reading used to be that for me, but facing what I was certain was a slow, excruciatingly boring death, I needed to create my escape, places far more interesting and hot that could distract even me from my circumstances. Not many people hit their mid 30s expecting to die shortly after. I needed a fuck ton more than the sweet romance I kept stumbling across, especially when the docs started calling my condition ‘chronic fatigue’—a death sentence for getting help.

Seriously, I swear they might as well have said it was all in my head the moment they stuck that label on my file. It terrified me and pushed me to start looking for different answers instead of Lyme. What I had wasn’t responding like Lyme, and two years of antibiotics hadn’t done a thing.

The turning point was moving into my current apartment and seeing my health improve overnight. We figured out the old apartment was moldy. A water heater had burst on the ground floor, then there was water under the kitchen tiles… Oh, and (this sounds so fucking stupid looking back but I knew nothing about mold at the time) I had hung up and dried out these beautiful gourds one autumn in the kitchen, and then left them there until we moved, covered in dead mold. Because fucking brilliant, yeah?

So they started me up on allergy shots, where my immune system, which already targeted my thyroid with an autoimmune, had over-targeted so much, I was allergic to over 20 different things (many of those things related to mold and the cats and their prey they would drag into the house.) But hey, it was a plan, yeah? Allergy shots for the win. Except I kept hitting a plateau. I’d get better but I couldn’t get healthy. Still exhausted, still pushing myself at every turn just to do anything. Meals, clean house, errands? Don’t make me laugh.

Last year, around this time, things seemed to fall into place. My PTSD had a breakthrough—as in, gone, cured, just left with old patterns of survival software to clean up—and my health was looking better. The winter meant all the mold was dormant, and although this new apartment was much better than my old, the backyard is full of mold. Like, I can’t walk out there without having a reaction. But it was good that winter. I got Hellcat done, I was gaining ground, energy was happening. Then summer hit, I bought a bed frame infected with ‘something’ (we still have no clue what but we lost two rooms of the apartment to it,) and I was hit with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, aka, living out of my car, in a mask, unable to breathe the most basic of scents without my body flaming up so much, I would lose motor function and find myself in extreme pain.

It was shit, but at the same time, it was another piece to this puzzle. Around this time we figured out something else monumental: the dopamine connection. My dopamine levels were bottoming out whenever I had a reaction, aka, Parkinson’s. I started supplementing dopamine precursors, such as L-Tyrosine and Dopa Mucuna, as well as adding in neuron repairers and dopamine receptor growers, and I saw huge improvements. I regained mental functioning and motor skills within months. Naturally, I thought the moment winter hit, shit would be perfect with the mold going dormant in the area. But still, plateau. Again. Exhausted, couldn’t do simple shit like stand long enough to cook or clean or focus. I had all the supposed pieces but nothing was working.

Fucking plateaus. Infuriating bullshit, yeah? Well, I think the last two weeks have revealed the answer. Finally. (Dear fuck, I really hope so. @_@)

Neurotoxins

I came across a few different articles on Parkinson’s that led me to realize the low dopamine was at the bottom of the stream. What that means is, it was the symptom of something else, not the cause. I was treating the dopamine problem, but I hadn’t targeted and stopped why the dopamine was dropping. Then I read this and it all clicked.

There were two huge clues (and so many small ones) when looking back that spelled it all out in connection to the low dopamine. The allergies and multiple chemical sensitivity = olfactory response to neurotoxins. Every time I smelled mold, my dopamine flat lined. I could walk into a moldy building while being full of energy and excitement, and in minutes be so weak I couldn’t lift my arms or walk. But apparently, there are two ways to get this response. One is through those olfactory senses when inhaling, and the other is through the vagus nerve, a nerve that also controls the heart (mine kept racing,) lungs (shortness of breath,) and digestion (yeah, I didn’t. My stomach has been fucked up for years.)

What this means is if there are neurotoxins in the gut, the vagus nerve connects to the brain and will also flat line dopamine. AKA, even if I was breathing the cleanest air, in a mold free, allergen free environment, if there’s something giving off neurotoxins in my gut, I will still get sick.

Yeah, the fucking plateau is literally inside of me. @_@ No wonder I couldn’t escape!

I should have put it together earlier, because gut problems are absolutely linked with allergies. That over-targeting thing usually happens because the immune system is freaking out with a battle in the gut and once the immune system is on high alert, it starts targeting more and more. There were just too many symptoms, too many false answers, or half answers, and it wasn’t until I realized Parkinson’s could be a result of both these systems being hit with neurotoxins, that it made sense. None of it was unconnected (which is kinda crazy on its own.)

Saw my doctor, who was also super excited when we noticed how garlic (a known candida killer) was giving me some of my life back every time I made garlic soup. I had made the soup because my broken tooth kept getting infected, and right around Halloween, suddenly I gained ground again, health, and it slipped when I ran out of that damn soup. So she put me on a heavy duty candida killer this time around. Candida produces acetaldehyde and gliotoxin, both highly toxic that can lead to neuron degeneration. Gliotoxin is actually produced by the same mold I was constantly being hit by, so I’m likely extra sensitive to it.

To be clear, the treatment it is both helping and kicking my ass atm. I’m jumping from hours of exhaustion, brain fog and really shitty muscle pain as the die off overwhelms my system, to feeling energetic and myself again. I don’t know how long this is going to take. I only just started treatment and I’ll be upping the dosage Tuesday (kinda terrified the side effects will get worse then,) but this does seem to be the answer, finally. Already, I’m less sensitive to my environment—well, when the die off isn’t killing me. XD My allergy response is less. Mold = back pain instead of immediate zombifying. I haven’t needed adrenal support, and the low grade fevers I was getting and the unstable feeling like I was going to shake apart before I started this treatment has stopped.

I really—even with all my complaining—don’t care about the pain or shitty symptoms of the die off. This is all going to pass, babes. This is the answer. I’m going to finally crawl my way out of this damp, musty grave, and I’m getting my life back. This was the last piece of the puzzle and now I have a plan. Avoid neurotoxins, heal damaged gut, and retrain the vagus nerve (you can improve vagal tone with a modified TENs machine used as a cranial electrotherapy stimulator, which I’m ordering this weekend.) It’s all there now, and I’m not trying to clean the mess at the end but stop the leak in the first place. This is a fucking win!

If I’m lucky, if I fix everything ‘upstream,’ the Parkinson’s symptoms will stop completely. I have no guarantee of that—and I have very effective dopamine supplementation if that’s not the case—but if I’m not bombarded with neurotoxins, it stands to reason there would be no dopamine lowering response. I guess we’ll see. My biggest fear was spring hitting and all my symptoms coming back with the mold waking up. If I can get the Candida overgrowth dealt with, who knows? It might all be shiny. <3

Bullet Journal and removing stress

An amazing woman turned me on to the whole Bullet Journal thing, and it has been awesome to help me keep track of all this health stuff side by side with my creative stuff. I need an organizational method that works for me, and so far this has adapted to all my needs. I also need to get away from the time suck of the Internet. Talk about flashy, distracting black holes of creativity and happiness.

I’m trying really hard to stay on track while dealing with this next level of health stuff. With BuJo, creating the structure for each aspect seems to be the time consuming part, but once it’s in place, it’s like any proper system. It works as long as someone is there to fuel it.

I’m really looking forward to being more productive as a writer and getting these novels completed and out there. There has been so much I want to do since getting my brain back. I just need some damn energy to go with it. I actually started revamping the Demon Virus short as I plan out the visual novel I want to make once I get those PATB novels done—sorry if you’re missing it under the free downloads. I should have it back up there soon enough. I’m just a little distracted by my health.

Let’s face it, I’ve been distracted for a long time. My biggest goals the last few years have been to find ways to not obsess over getting better, to not stress, to learn how to cope with not being who I believe I am when it comes to my health. Chronic illness is life consuming, and it takes a lot of energy and intention to spin that around to something positive so that life can continue with happiness and hope. Finding gratitude and every silver lining, learning to let stress go and ignore the things you can’t control, and then let go of the guilt of ignoring the things you can’t control—this shit is hard… and so worth it!

It’s hard fighting my old PTSD wiring, and worse, it is impossible fighting every voice on the Internet who pops up to say for whatever reason, I’m not allowed to be free of stress and pain, that I’m supposed to cling to that shit. People do it all the time. They judge others who try to break free. They can’t help it. They see someone do something different and they need to reaffirm why they’re doing things their way to the point of beating down anyone who speaks up.

Every time I post something remotely enlightening about freedom from pain, it’s not agreement that comes along, but voices who want to argue about it. No joke, every fucking time. It’s actually amazing to watch people logic themselves into why they need to suffer merely because I announced they didn’t have to, but, you know, I was talking to myself because it’s Facebook and they were triggered because ego is triggered at the thought of freedom from pain. It’s seriously amazing.

Here’s a list of just a few things I’ve been doing to stop my stress and I’m sure someone will be pissed off with something. I stopped listening to the news and Internet news even though Trump is president and he’s in the middle of an ethnic cleansing at the southern border. I refuse to read most authors posts on Facebook because they keep causing drama over pointless shit. Unless it’s an email I care about, I don’t even bother opening, sorting, and deleting them, but let my mailbox automatically delete after a certain amount of time. I don’t answer my phone for anyone but 2 specific people. I stop following people who talk about depression or illness like it’s their identity, something that defines them instead of a chemical imbalance that is altering them, because I have no interest watching someone sink down a drain of despair without them fighting to be free.

I am done being sucked into the toxic world I can’t control, with my eyes wide open like if I somehow watch it all, I will be able to prevent any of it. Hello, PTSD, I am done. Time to be free. Saving people from there pain is just as quick a way to drown as drowning in pain, and no, I don’t feel guilty for not showing up anymore. Without pain, I didn’t learn to be free from it. It was what drove me to find my freedom, and let’s be real, it was a fuck ton of pain, the last 5 years plus 30 of PTSD. I’m good. I don’t want to sink back into that place just because other people enjoy the suffering.

Life is going to happen whether it’s perfect or not, and we don’t get a do over or reset. It doesn’t have to be the end of the world if you have a false start or fuck up or your body just isn’t up for the same challenges other people are. It doesn’t have to mean a damn thing. If you never compare yourself to another person, another dream life you had, you will never be dissatisfied with what you have. And no, I don’t need to cling to dissatisfaction like it’s supposed to drive me to be a better person—fuck that irrational logic of holding onto pain. I am done being unhappy wishing for something that may never be. It’s just so much easier to be happy with what I have. And when I’m content and happy with what I have, I absolutely attract more happiness, creativity, and love my way.

We don’t get to choose a lot in life, but we do get to choose how we feel about it all. It’s probably the only real choice we have, so might as well choose with intention. We can enjoy this moment now, and the next, and be satisfied and not have to feel guilty for being satisfied with less when others have more. It’s okay to be happy.

Peace starts within

I hope you’re all having a great December so far. Depending on what holidays you celebrate, or if you’re working in a tough environment, or traveling, etc., this time of year can be really stressful. It can remind us a lot of what we don’t have instead of what we do, and who we’re missing instead of who we have. If you find you’re alone this time of year, or even surrounded by a ton of people, I hope you remember the one person you’re going to be with from the day you were born until the day you die, and do something nice just for you. Someone has to remember you, and who better to do it than you? ^.^ (You’re like, right there. Come on!)

Legit, that’s my wish this season. I hope each and every one of you does something beautifully selfish and doesn’t feel any guilt over it. Hell, doing something you normally feel guilty over without the guilt would be awesome. People are too cruel to themselves. Get enough sleep for a change, or eat something fancy, alone, and enjoy every silent bite. XD Buy yourself the gift you want instead of waiting for someone else to guess. Get organized; that’s my selfish ass thing, boring as it might sound.

Taking time to get my life together, no matter how long it takes, is lovingly selfish. Everything I go through in this bullet journal is me deciding what is important in my life and what is just useless stress, and then choosing to do the important stuff. The damn thing is like a commitment to self care at every step, and I’m so grateful someone dared to share it with me!

I’m going to assume that the next month will be a lot of ups and downs for me with this Candida treatment. I’m still writing, still updating the website, but I’ll be taking a Newsletter break to keep one less stressors off my plate. Hopefully, the next time you all hear from me, it’ll be with more good news and after getting lots of writing done, but until then, take care, luvs and be kind to yourselves in new ways.

<3 Sadie Sins

?Catching Up With MM Freebies and Goodies?

November 18, 2018

Hey babes, it’s been a while.

Things are actually really good. About (3?) weeks ago, right around Halloween, something shifted in my life. Not sure if it was the mold going dormant from the winter weather, the new probiotics I started up—magic? There’s always hope for magic XD—but I found myself adapting up instead of down for a change. I have so much energy. I actually hadn’t realized how little energy I had until it all hit me. I suddenly had a clean house, was eating daily, cooking again, getting errands done. I was able to focus writing for hours on end and not feel like crawling up the walls. I caught a cold soon after, and yet I still had more energy with the cold than before. It’s been damn good.

So, for those who checked up to see how I’m doing, no worries. Besides a few annoying things (such as a broken tooth with an exposed nerve just in time for Thanksgiving,) I’m damn fabulous. A little nervous as I wonder what might happen when the heat returns and the mold sprouts. I may have to find a frozen wasteland to live in full time…

So, what fun stuff to share? I carved a pumpkin for the first time this year! Not like carved, er, sculpted? Is that what they call it? It’s a 3d thing. Let me hit you with some pics. It’s of Pan from Pan’s Labyrinth, one of my all time favorite movies to be honest. I ran out of time, but I think his face came out pretty cool, if not totally orange. <3

Writing has been amazing. It’s flowing, it feels good, and I’m really happy with the direction it’s all going. Delving back into Demon Arms has been awesome. I love having the viewpoint of Theodore and Michael, some older (although not always mature) voices to balance out Wylie and Dorian’s younger perspectives. Theodore is such a study in grumpy coolness. XD

A little unedited preview for those curious <3

He unclipped the strap from beneath his despoiler coat and pulled free the sheath and encased diamond sword. When Theodore could trust that his voice wouldn’t reveal too much of his evening, he finally spoke. “Worried I was dead?”

Michael grimaced at the accuracy of the statement and lowered his cup of tea. The intricate clock on the wall behind him displayed it was just after 3 A.M. “It’s the first time a dragon has been placed on the registry, ever. If I didn’t have the boys to protect…”

Theodore turned toward him. The white cloth folded in his hand carefully moved along the laser smooth surface of his sword stained red. “I would have called if I needed help.”

Michael’s eyes sharpened at the blatant lie, and Theodore looked away. He busied himself with cleaning the deadly blade. Michael’s gaze felt like a razor as he accessed every sign, every tell of when he’d been too slow that night, when his reflexes failed and his speed hadn’t been enough. It was as if he were flayed from his coat and clothes, and every injury, every bruise was revealed.

Michael’s unwavering stare landed on the blood dripping down Theodore’s fingertips. He sipped his tea. “So, how did it go?”

Theodore shrugged noncommittally. Pain lanced through his shoulder from the movement, and his jaw tightened. His eyes slid over his desk and to behind Michael where he kept a collection of rare, beautiful objects. Some were weapons as well, but most were art. Dragons of lore from different cultures representing sea monsters, fire breathers, and earth burrowers posed along the shelves. His gaze stopped on a coil of an Asian style dragon formed from gold, and then returned to the blade in his hands.

“The skinners found a dragon tonight, just not the one they were expecting.”

Michael exhaled slowly and placed his mug on the desk. Without looking, Theodore flicked his fingers, and a coaster appeared and went sailing across the room to land right next to the cup. Michael blinked at the sudden appearance and obligingly nudged the coaster beneath his tea.

“Dead?” Michael asked quietly.

Theodore licked his fangs as his inner dragon shuddered at the memory of hot blood. “Two. I lost the third in the ether before I could get a tracer on him.”

Michael jumped up from the chair. “You were hunting in the ether? Have you lost your mind completely?” He moved around the desk, and his green bunny slippers flopped with each step as he headed right for Theodore.

Theodore fought the impulse to throw his hands up, to strike out, to slash with the very convincing weapon in his hands that would prevent whatever physical contact was imminent. A shadow flickered in Michael’s stormy gaze, and he stopped short as he read the discomfort in Theodore’s stance. Michael’s fingers twitched at his side as he held back whatever compassionate impulse he had intended on indulging.

“It wasn’t planned,” Theodore said tersely. “I’m not reckless.”

Michael shook his head and reached up to rake at his golden hair. “No, it’s never planned. But if you were sensed in there…”

“Clearly, I wasn’t. I’m alive. I’m here.” Theodore’s pale, violet eyes flashed steel. He turned and carefully placed the clear sword into its display sheath. He stared at it once he was done, not really seeing anything but the swirl of black and scent of blood still around him. “I still have prey to find. I’m sure he’ll offer me a chance to take his life soon enough.”

Michael’s gaze slid down to the splatters of blood beneath Theodore’s feet. “You reek of blue ash. Can you even feel your arm?”

“It’s fine,” Theodore muttered. He gripped his upper arm delicately and gritted his teeth when pain lanced down his side. “You know how quickly I metabolize.”

“Maybe when you were twenty,” Michael shot back. “That shit is dangerous in high doses, even for shifters. I feel lightheaded just smelling it. The last thing I need is you falling into a coma.”

Theodore rolled his eyes as he turned from the wall. He resisted the urge to brace himself no matter how much the room insisted on wavering. Michael’s disapproving glare came into view, and he growled warningly. “I’ll stop in with Rob once I’m updated on the kid.”

Michael’s mouth remained tight with worry. “You can see Wylie for yourself in the hospital. He hit the nullifiers on the way out of the transport. He’s down for the night.”

“Fine,” Theodore grunted. He hitched the sleeve of his despoiler jacket up his bleeding arm and brushed past Michael. He paused at his desk and pulled the stack of wards from a pocket and threw them next to the cheerfully bright cup of tea. He scowled when scarlet splattered onto the top heptagon ward and blurred out the intricately drawn insignia. “Fuck.”

Michael’s eyes narrowed, and his suspicious glare followed to where Theodore was scowling at his desk. “It usually takes a lot more to knock a dragon out.”

Theodore sneered as he used the outside of his coat to clean the blood from the ward. “He didn’t hold up well to interrogation.” He pulled the chiggers and a poisoned dagger from his pockets and slammed them into the desk drawer. He immediately spelled it shut while ignoring Michael’s outraged shout.

“For fuck sake, Theo!”

“For fuck sake, Theo,” Theodore mimicked under his breath. He lifted his head when Michael stalked over, and his tone turned defensive. “The kid’s fine. There was no time, the little punk had a mouth on him, and, well,” Theodore grinned sharply, “He started listening to me once he realized I was the strongest thing he was ever going to meet.”

“No! You will not stand here and justify your sadistic, territorial bullshit.” Michael grabbed Theodore by his good arm, the tension in his fingers revealing he’d rather be shaking him. “These are patients, not enemies, not challengers. Patients!”

Theodore stiffened in the grip and his breath stilled in his chest. When he met Michael’s gaze, the violet color had drained from his eyes to reveal an otherworldly white.

“Whiteheart, my dragon has feasted on death tonight. The scent of blood is all around us. Kindly refrain from touching me unless you’re volunteering to be the next offering.”

Michael’s angry expression grew darker, but he pulled his hand away and took a step back. “Theo, he needs protecting.”

Theodore tilted his head, and color sparked back into his eyes as his dragon withdrew. After a beat, he waved his hand dismissively. “It won’t happen again. I was worked up.” His lips tugged down into a grim frown, and he turned away to dig through his pockets. A cell phone, five empty vials in need of refilling, and a compact mirror clattered onto his desk. “I was afraid for the ignorant punk. My fuck, what an idiot.”

“He’s not the only one,” Michael growled under his breath. “It better not happen again, or I’m going to be the one who links with Doe.”

“No.” Theodore whirled back, fire flaring in his eyes. He went to point at Michael, then thought better of it as his blood splattered in an arc on the floor. “Shit.” Theodore took a steadying breath and tried again, calmer. “I’m Doe’s guardian. No one else can protect him the same way. It has to be me.”

Michael’s chest heaved, and he exhaled heavily. “I know. We all know. I just need you to not hate him for it.”

I think way back in the day, Michael and Theodore probably fucked. I mean, you don’t end up being the few to survive while everyone you know ages and dies around you without hooking up once in a while out of basic companionship for sanity. They’re BFFs even if they totally can’t stand each other some days. They hated each other way more when they first met. XD I wonder if I’ll ever get an excuse to write the two of them when they were young and Theo’s family is killed off one by one… Hmm.

I’ve been writing their backstory, if you can’t tell. Just filling out some more extensive character sheets I plan on sharing eventually. Doing a terms sheet too, because I want the world building to be more extensive. Squee, I’m totally nerding out over it. <3 I’m sorry it’s taking so long but I’m glad I’m making the effort because it’s going to make all the books going forward way better. If you missed it, you can read the first five rewritten scenes on the site here.

This Week’s MM Goodies

$0.99 Nocturnal Beloved: MM Immortal Lovers Romance

Julian Castrow is a young man tending at the local bar, the Hopper, serving drinks during the night and going to college during the day. Life is going at a steady pace until a vampire walks in one night changing Julian’s life forever.

Graham Beliviston is a considerably young vampire whom finds his attraction to Julian, strange and alluring. Usually he feeds and moves on, but something about Julian makes him yearn for more understanding of the mortal. But love can be hard for an immortal when there are vampire hunters on the move, and they’ve got their eyes set on the young mortal lover.

What will happen when a bond between an immortal and a mortal is inexplicably created?

$0.99 Beneath the Autumn Sky

“I could look into your friend’s disappearance,” Daniel found himself blurting out. After a few minutes of awkwardness, he mentally kicked himself. The sheer look of shock was more than enough to make Daniel regret those words, but even more so when Alec’s grip tighten. “No, it’s fine.”

“Are you sure? I know a couple of guys at the police station. I could-”

“Please Daniel. Just…leave it be.”

Daniel stopped. He couldn’t help but turn away, looking at the small plate of vegetables. Before he knew it, he nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

He was about to take his hand back, but he couldn’t. It was warm, and it was the first thing he noticed. “Hey Daniel?”

“What’s up?”

“I love you. You know that right?”

In which love and death dance within the confines of Autumn. This collection includes The Devil’s Playground, Mayhem, Hero, and Promises.

$0.99 Game Time: Gay First Time Sports Romance

Things Can Get Hot Off The Ice

All Scott has wanted since a child was to represent his favorite hockey team, but after a couple of seasons toiling away as a second string he’s traded away unceremoniously. At first it hurts, but he vows to play well enough to make them regret ever letting him go.

He’s welcomed at his new team by Mark, the personal trainer, and the two of them form an instant bond. Scott is unable to deny the attraction he feels, even though exploring it could jeopardize his standing among his new team-mates. Mark is an anchor to Scott, until everything around him starts to sink.

Scott is forced to ask himself if his career is more important than his personal life. He’s already lost one dream, can he afford to lose another? And when it comes time to face his former club, will he prove them right or wrong?

Free! Surrender: An MM Erotica Short Story

Jonathan Estes could have just went home for Thanksgiving. Fortunately, he stayed behind to enjoy the solitude of campus. When his roommate and crush, Jake Kettleman, decides to stay, Jon begins to fantasize about what the holiday could bring.

Jon knows Jake could have any girl he wants. But on Thanksgiving Jake gets something more than a girl, he gets his kinky dorm buddy.

Self-revelations turn into sexual revelations in this short story about two men exploring their own bondage fantasy, and each other.

This is a story with BDSM

?Are You Freaking Kidding Me, America??

October 6, 2018

Hey babes,

I am so fucking angry. Beyond. I am hurt, disgusted, pained—this Kavanaugh confirmation is a pain in my soul and psyche that has no fucking limit. I wasn’t even going to do a newsletter this week, I’m so upset by this all, but Wendy has her newest book out, and it’s fabulous, and fuck, let there be some damn good in the world right now when there is so much injustice.

The Imposter King

Their love made them close. Their secret kept them closer.

Dare and Prince Malory are happily married and in love, but the secret of Dare’s true identity as a mere servant threatens their romantic bliss.

Messages to the king of Brookfall go unanswered, and rumors of war unsettle both kingdoms. Until one day heralds arrive with bags of gold to ransom Dare and demand his return to Brookfall.

King Millard, Prince Malory’s father, orders Dare to make the journey to see his father. But Dare is not the true heir, and if they meet, the secret he and Mal have been guarding will be revealed. Also, impersonating a royal means a death penalty offense. Worse, it could mean all-out war between their countries.

Panic. Despair. Lovers torn asunder. Personal sacrifice. More dark secrets revealed. An ending that will leave you breathless.

They chose one privileged man over all the women of this country. They chose one man and said he ‘deserved’ the highest seat we have to offer while he sniveled, blatantly lied, cried like a bitch, bullied, dodged, and refused to be honest. They claimed he would ‘bridge the partisan gap’ when his hearing created one of the biggest fucking divides in this country. They gave him a gift, a gift they had no right to give after holding that seat hostage for over a year, while saying fuck you to abuse victims everywhere.

Fuck this country. Fuck this administration. Fuck what the Republican party has turned into. If there is a true conservative left of sound mind and free of insane, religious and hateful ideology in America, I don’t fucking see them. Many of them don’t even understand their entire party has been taken over by white nationalists, and they still vote like they’re talking about economics instead of the rights of women, of refugee children kept in cages, of minorities being shot at and jailed, of our entire country being cut off from the global economy and world with a wall of lies and fear and tribalism.

America is racist. It is a country built on the genocide of the Native Americans and the labor of the enslaved Africans (and so many more, it never fucking ended,) and long after a war to end all fucking wars, half this country still refuses to admit that racism was even a problem, never mind it’s STILL a problem. America is racist and yet it manages to be even worse in how sexist it is.

America hates women. We treat them like objects, like pretty pets who can’t think for themselves, like weak, pathetic victims who aren’t allowed to be empowered against their attackers but must wait for their adults—their husbands, their fathers, their grandfathers, their uncles and brothers and priests and statesmen—to speak up for them. And when the time comes and those men fail because they’ve gotten too content with raping their domesticated, trained women who aren’t allowed to decide what consent means because they’re ‘all mixed up,’ America shrugs because women don’t matter here. America blames a woman for daring to speak up. America attacks women for daring to believe a woman instead of an accused assailant. America wants their fucking sandwich made and tells those chicks to go drink wine to unwind from the stresses of being oppressed and never getting an equal fucking paycheck no matter how hard they work.

It’s time for America as we know it to destruct. Let it fucking burn. There is nothing left worth saving when we can have credible testimony of a crime, documented repeated lying over 100 times of the candidate under oath of matters not even pertaining to the accusation, and those in our government still just shrug and go ‘business as usual, give that man a job!’ This is not a democracy, and what it takes to build America back into one involves tearing this rotting corpse down. These senior citizens who lived when women weren’t even allowed to have fucking credit cards need to get the fuck out of office.

We could have learned but the impulse was too great to oppress those uppity women once again. Have your own babies. Try and birth a male when all women close their legs and say we’ll only birth girls. Fucking see what gender inequality looks like then.

Fuck this day and fuck this country. Vote blue November, and make sure it’s progressive because those established democrats are just as bought.

⌛Musings of Mortality, Suffering, and Mercy⏳

September 26, 2018

Hey, babes

I find myself in mourning. Unexpectedly. The digital age has created this ability to connect with others from so far away. We can meet a person yet never meet them. Know a person and never share their day. Realize only a month after his 30th birthday, you’re never going to hear from him again.

I’m going to be talking about some heavy stuff today, and it’s totally up to you if you want to read it. Sorry I haven’t been posting free and cheap reads lately. The return of the mold has made simple shit feel difficult, and I’m trying to keep most of my focus on writing. I will get back into the swing of it all eventually, promise. I think the weather going cold again is helping. I’ve been updating The Paranormal Academy For Troubled Boys pretty consistently this month (outside of when the mold first jumped me,) and I’m happy it’s flowing so well.

So, yeah. No matter how heavy the stuff is below, it’s important to remember thoughts aren’t reality, and I am very happy living no matter the circumstances. I go into suffering, suicide, and transformation today. I find it to be cathartic at a time like this for me and want to share that, but it’s important to know others don’t find comfort but more pain when bringing up these subjects. I get it and it’s okay.

Mortality

There aren’t a lot of people who can hold a conversation with me. Even fewer who can look past my strong opinions, blunt nature, and very rough angles for long. Online, I talk about topics that offend most people, in a manner that also offends, and few dare to jump in to discuss. Wade Hartley was one of those rare gems who jumped in, and damn, how sad it is to lose him.

I think it was because of those touchy, combustible topics that I felt so close to him, because it required such raw honesty and a total lack of shields to get through. You can’t challenge the established disorder and have your sense of identity get in the way. It requires a stripping of all those trappings to really sink into a concept and try to suss it out. It’s easy to feel bruised in conversations like that, like you’re battling instead of exploring, being pushed down instead of someone just trying to understand a new concept. I don’t know if you realize it, but there are a lot of people arguing on the Internet while others assumed they were having conversations. Jumping into such a potentially volatile atmosphere while promising to not make it about the bruises you feel to your ego takes a bravery few have.

Most people passed us by with scornful anger and mumbles of rules and morality, terrified to even glance into that part of their mind. It required a fearlessness, as does facing death and shaking hands.

Talking with Wade was a freedom few people can offer, a lack of judgment and a way to learn to stop judging, stop expecting, and just accept. And that is the ultimate kindness Wade’s memory has given me. I can accept his choice even if I don’t agree with it, the same way we accepted each other’s strong opinions even though we didn’t always share them. I still battle what will be while he embraced it on his terms. And yes, even though I feel sorrow, I’m also joyful he found whatever level of acceptance he needed to release himself from the torture of existence.

We want life to be sacred, to mean something, to be valuable and counted even as it’s a mere blip in the eternal void of the universe. When we raise life up on some sacred altar, we lose sight of the actual living. Life is mundane, concrete, simple pleasures mixed with daily work and sometimes deep thoughts that feel bigger than reality. Our minds know no bounds even when our bodies find limitation after limitation. It takes a certain bravery to expand your mind so freely, to be giant inside a contained, fragile shell while the mere concept of mortality can push the strongest mind toward insanity. And in all minds there can be a depth of pain and suffering that feels limitless and without end.

While so many slipped away, unable to see the pain and agony of life as I experienced it battling mortality, PTSD, mold toxicity, and an existence where fairness is merely a concept, Wade didn’t look away. And that really should have been knowledge enough, because most shy from brutal reality while the ones who have suffered long enough see and accept and understand. They see the beautiful humanity within and reach, unafraid to fall into the darkness of despair. They have lived there too and offer comfort in companionship.

That is all we have for each other: each other. There are no answers, though always many questions. But when there is that darkness and despair, there is at least another—many others—out there who know, who feel, and somehow it is a little easier.

Mourning

As sentient, self aware beings who fear the inevitable end, we cling to the memory of how we perceive the people around us. This is the honoring we have for those brave souls we meet as we go forward another day. There is a hope to preserve that beautiful light snuffed out that makes us less alone in this arduous journey. We offer immortality of a person in our minds while our bodies continue to exist in this concrete world alone, aging, deteriorating, counting down to an end we must all face but few can dare to look at and see and embrace. We choose if we feel sorrow so deep to drown in, or love and compassion every time we touch upon the memory of a person. We choose to feel, to react, and be changed by those memories instead of still and unmoved by the intangible.

Many battle with reality, deny it because when you cannot change the concrete you feel empowered to at least deny what is. But there are the rare, the brave who will accept, and love with great gratitude what is, and release the suffering others cling to. When we can accept that suffering isn’t required to live, perhaps as a society we might learn to finally live without suffering instead of seeking to escape such pain at all costs. That is my hope for all and where my sorrow lies when I remember Wade.

I wish he could have lived without suffering, but at the same time, it was his suffering that allowed him to reach out and connect with others who were otherwise overlooked and discarded. I see those who suffer, and they desire to be seen, known, valued for who they are and not for the circumstances that distort them. Inside, we are all worthy, and what a cruelness of our insane minds to ever consider otherwise. Wade and I might have never recognized each other if not for a familiar pain, so even in suffering there is gratitude and acceptance and a little less loneliness.

We can choose to be unmoved or we can reach out and connect, seeking that lifespark and base understanding no matter how imperfect the playing field and events of life may be. We can have the bravery to be known and to find others who accept us even when some struggle to accept who they themselves are. It is a gift for the brave who endure the cruel, careless imperfections of life and dare to let their shields fall away anyways. We have learned nothing can ever hurt us more than how we hurt ourselves in our minds.

Suffering

There is a theme in my writing you may have noticed. Suffering leads to transformation. It is a belief I’ve held for a lifetime before I could even truly perceive or voice it.

I don’t talk about my past suffering much—you hear terms from me like mold toxicity or pain or disability or brain fog, but I don’t really call it suffering because on that level, it is not. Depression is such a meaningless word to me. As someone who had it for over 10 years straight, I never recognized depression on those television commercials selling antidepressants. Feeling ‘blue,’ or just tired, down, unsocial. I had depression during a time in my life when I didn’t even know the word depression, and it wasn’t blue; it was insanity. Agitated depression. Anxiety. PTSD. Symptoms confused for bipolar with ups and downs, but never really ups, just fresh energy and an amazing level of disassociation. Life was behind a veil, a veil that could never lift. A death shroud that colored everything, and although I could tell it was there, distorting life, no amount of fighting with it ever really set me free.

When I was living in my adoptive family’s house from the age of 13, to around the age of 26 when I finally left that place, I was in severe, debilitating mental anguish. It was something that grew worse and worse the more the years passed. It turned out to be sourced in the mold that had taken over the basement my bedroom was located in from water flooding in every season, and beneath that, untreated PTSD from a trauma that happened at the age of 3. How I knew reality wasn’t by mold or clinical terms, but by insanity, and despair, and a certainty that death surely would be a better way to exist than to continue as I was.

It was all I knew for years. No one could help me. My days were spent existing for others, watching the ones I loved the most dying while pretending I was human outside that house. During high school I cared for my mother, who eventually died of cancer soon after I graduated. Then there was college, which I left when my father got dementia and eventually died of kidney failure. After that I found the household I was in suddenly abusive, dangerous, filled with the trash of a hoarder and someone with a violent temper and I didn’t know how to escape. No one could understand what was happening in my head—I could barely express the torment, the decay of norms and joy and life I could only remember. I was too broken to help myself outside of coping every day by creating art and trying to bring some order to these very broken adults around me. It was my normal until some form of self preservation kicked in enough and I got the fuck out and started living life for myself.

When you hear about the last, what, seven? years of my life when I started writing in my previous apartment, where I was bed bound from the mold toxicity, not knowing the source, certain death was coming because of the inability to move, the Parkinson symptoms, the brain confusion and damage, the insomnia mixed with absolute exhaustion, those years were so different compared to my years suffering in my first house. The pain was less, the distress was less, the wish to die wasn’t there. It was like being a victim of torture only to find myself being slowly suffocated this time around. Even though it was a fresh hell, I was not alone. I understood the mental anguish, sank into the realization it wasn’t forever, and I was surrounded by loved ones who understood it too.

The main difference was, I wasn’t depressed. I don’t know if depression is ‘blue’ for other people. I don’t know if what I felt was unique. All I know is a doctor diagnosed what I was going through back then as chronic depression and agitated depression, and as I knew it to be, it was a festering torment on the mind that changed me into something less than until something even baser awoke in me to break me out.

I survived that first moldy house and the insanity it created in me that I perceived as real. I couldn’t discern being inflicted with a mental illness but that I was a mental illness and nothing more. I survived out of spite, out of instinct, out of a greater fear of death than of pain. I became a creature that had value in creating, and someone who sought value in others, in people and their intriguing psyches, and eventually, I became a human again when I saw that value in me. It was a transformation—one I never sought but had to experience—and it grew me into a being far more empowered and in love with the world and those around me than who I was when I started.

Now when I survive, it’s for that, for others, for understanding, for the belief that the futility of the inevitable should never stop this moment now from being the best it can be. And no, I hold no ill will, no anger, no disdain for anyone who decides to step forward on their own and plummet into the inevitable darkness of death. I understand it too well to ever condemn anyone for such a choice, even though I do feel sorrow to know the suffering they must feel to push them there. I want everyone to find the relief I eventually did find, all those glowing moments that made and continue to make my life worth hanging around for.

Mercy

Who are we to decide the form? I don’t know if there is a more beautiful concept than the ending of suffering: a mercy, a forgiveness, a release. But that mercy can’t happen without suffering to occur first. We cannot be saved without being lost. Sometimes the most wonderful kindnesses can only exist because of the worst of conflicts.

Ego death was my most recent mercy, and I truly believe I will never suffer the way I ever did in the past because of it. Even the extreme pain in my body and brain these last months fighting the sudden infestation of mold in the house we’re renting and living out of my car was not a suffering, but a clean pain of life without the emotional torment and torture and rot that can occur when I lose track of reality and get caged in my mind. The cage isn’t there anymore, just forgiveness and understanding, and a very bad habit of thought pattern to want that cage to hide in.

Learning to let go of suffering is the greatest gift you can give yourself. I don’t know if it’s something that can be taught, but fuck, I truly hope it is. In the end it’s a journey a person takes on their own, but guides are there to point the way. We remain. Not all of us, but we remain and are replaced because this is not unique. This is humanity the only way I have every known it to be. We suffer and transform and we live on the brink of inevitable.

It’s okay to be who you are, babes. It’s okay to hurt, and it’s okay to let the hurt go. It’s okay to not be alone anymore and to learn to love yourself. There is no wrong in how you choose to live, but there can be great rewards when you do seek to live your life in bravery and accept those bruises as they come. It’s worth it to meet someone new, or someone strangely familiar, to learn what can be learned, and find a little more truth inside.

It’s okay to despair and know you weren’t the first, and you won’t be the last, and nothing will ever be forever. The mortality of all living forms can be just as merciful as the eternity we can experience in our sweetest thoughts.

It’s okay to be okay. I promise. You still remain even when the suffering is gone.

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Hey babes,

Opinions on Vaccines? For a new baby.

Hold on, before I forget…

Did you snag your Demon Bonded calendar?

Anyways…

A New Year’s Introspective

Fail To Win

I want to be happy for 2019!

Hey babes,

Anywho

A New Year’s Revolution Announcement *cough* Of Sorts

Yeah, huge, and yet the same

Am I living the life I want, or the life I’m afraid to lose?

How do I get past perfectionism? With one giant question.

What if I’m holding my stories back?

So, how do I stop doing everything myself?

Okay, you just don’t understand how much of a control freak I am!

Someone save me from myself T_T

Oh, I’m feeling better! Lol, not sure if you can tell. XD

Hey babes ^^

Five years of hell…

Neurotoxins

Bullet Journal and removing stress

Peace starts within

Hey babes, it’s been a while.

A little unedited preview for those curious <3

This Week’s MM Goodies

Hey babes,

Hey, babes

Mortality

Mourning

Suffering

Mercy

A New Year’s Revolution Announcement cough Of Sorts