A Portrait of Domestic Abuse

I've never done this before, but I think the following content might need a trigger warning. It's a piece of fiction that clawed at my heart as I wrote it - nothing explicit in the writing, but its theme is domestic abuse.
      Well I think that was warning enough. On with the show..

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          Angry barks in lieu of greeting, and cold, frosty silences while I try to make light-hearted conversation like I always do.

            Then, I become aloof - his unreasonable anger has always served its cause of pushing me away, but in this case it shoves me so hard that I’m on the ground. I pick myself up, of course, dust off my 3-day-old clothes (which receive another angry breath), retort sharply, and walk off haughtily. I don’t look or feel hurt, but I am.

           I don’t like conflict. I don’t.

           I’ve run far away in my mind even though I can still hear his infuriated anger. At least, I think I’ve run away.

           I try not to pay attention -every word taunts me, bruises my ego, and challenges me to come running back and flash angrily- and intentionally smoothen the crease between my eyebrows; I look and feel better, but I’m not.

          I don’t fucking like conflict. I don’t.

          Music, books, politics, friends, and school - I have a whole world to distract me, and it does. Life, as they say, goes on.

From: tumblr.com

         But then it halts altogether when I find myself lying on the floor, blood from somewhere trickling down my fingers - I pause, admiring the deep red, and almost remark about its beauty, when I catch his look.
       He’s angry - of course he is, that’s all he ever is - and I see it shining brightly in his eyes. Anger -along with that beautiful, bubbling laughter of his- is what brings him to life.

           I’m angry too - my anger is not as becoming, and not nearly as deep as his, but it satisfies him. He likes to see me angry; he likes me in conflict, and I’ve finally obliged.

       But I still don’t like conflict. I don’t.

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Thanks for reading :)

TomAEto tomAHto - Semantics are cool

          Have you ever repeated a word, any mundane word -lamp, tire, mistletoe- over and over again until it eventually loses all meaning (and sounds like season’s greetings in some alien tongue)?
           If you have, then you have experienced what is known as Semantic Saturation. You’ll also understand why sometimes some popular words and phrases get distorted into only vaguely familiar versions of themselves as they are repeated excessively and passed from mouth to mouth. Words often get used in different contexts, and gradually, they come to mean different things. It is Semantic Saturation in a society.

          One word that has long been a victim of this Societal Semantic Saturation is the word, “given”. For something to be for given free -a helping hand lent, or veteran advice offered- it must be a non-refundable present, one in which the presenter expects no returns. To give for free is to give with no thoughts other than those related to the giving itself.

Today, the word “giving” is used in place of the word “exchanging.” To give for free today, is to do someone a favor in return for a favor they will do for you in the future. ‘Giving’ implies that your present will be returned in another form sometime in the future. Today giving is not a present, it is a mere loan.

From:imgarcade.com

“Nothing is for free,” my economics teacher stressed as he taught us the workings of trade, “the economic systems of the country pivots on this fact.” In the world around us, trade is glorified and exchanging favors is what is expected, it is the norm. People today give with intentions of gain because that is the mentality that the system has instilled in them. To stop this Semantic Saturation of the word giving, we must stop referring to such mere transactions of favors as presents of generosity
         
         While the economy runs on trade, society -human interactions alone- does not. Social relationships are not business partnerships; they are not founded on the terms of mutual materialistic benefit; giving, in a relationship is not in return for (or to intentionally elicit) the other’s generosity, it is simply for the pleasure of giving joy to the other. If social relationships themselves are becoming subtle forms of trade, then the word "given" has definitely been distorted.

She Was Alive and I Wasn't

       I surprised myself with another fictional piece. This one was supposed to be a blog post, but then it quickly took a turn on imagination lane, and, before I knew it, I was writing me another one of these vignette/short story things. 

    Without much (more) ado, here it is :

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From: http://liveandlearnwithlove.tumblr.com

        She was the kind of girl that they wrote poems about - sharp, passionate, witty, fiery. She was the kind of girl you’d never forget even if you just glimpsed her on the other end of a very crowded subway platform when you were on autopilot mode, drudging unwillingly to work on a monday morning.

         The flash of her eyes, and her quietly dignified manner drew a small group of sophisticated eyes wherever she went. She was a fire burning brightly, a glorious mess, that attracted half-sympathetic, half-admiring bystanders.

I was nothing like her of course. My happiness didn’t make me throw my head back in laughter, and my sadness was a dull ache that was about as deep as my joy. I was neither happy nor sad - living smack down in the middle as the prim and proper girl.

I’ve seen her on the street corners sometimes, a cigarette in the crook of two long, willowy fingers, and an unsettling sadness on her smooth face.
         Even our momentary eye contact made my heart thud loudly with life, and her presence made emotions - sadness, love, hate, happiness, and fear - soar through my veins like they’d never done before.

          I was nothing and she was everything. Well, that isn’t quite true. I was boring, steady, and well-planned. I had everything that society would ever want from a girl like me - an apartment, an education, a life’s goal, and even money.

       She was reckless, aimless, and an emotional rollercoaster. She trailed her fingers along a new chiseled jawline everyday. I don’t know if she ever slept, but she didn’t look like she ever did.

By all means, she was nothing, and I was everything.

But it was her laughs that rang most loudly at midnight on a random rooftop overlooking the big city. It was she who stood up for things that troubled her. It was her blood that thumped inside of her proclaiming the grandness of her existence. It was she who was alive. 

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Thanks for reading! :)

The Man who was Two

I'm filling my life with fiction right now, and for once, I'm writing it, instead of reading it. What brought this on, you ask? (and if you didn't..humor me - it goes without saying really) I think it's the fact that anything can happen in a piece of art - anything can be created, and anything could be understood. Writing could speak to anyone without actually speaking of anyone.
I want to create something real, that's innately fake.

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From: http://blog.crismanphoto.com/behind-the-scenes-with-david-karp/

          He leaned over the edge quickly, glanced down at the dizzying drop, and leaned further. The sharp wind was stinging his eyes, and frost was biting the hands that clung to the railings - still he leaned.
           In that very moment, from far below, he was looking up too. Craning his neck, he squinted against the cold, bright sun; his feet were frozen inside his fraying sneakers, and still he looked - rising ever so slightly on his icy toes.

They say that you cannot be in two places at once, but then again they also once said that the Earth was flat. They are clearly one of those perpetually wrong ones.

At first he could only shift consciousness from one presence to another, but soon he was both men - the one on the top of the tower, and the other on the bottom.

The man on the bottom stopped gaping emptily at the sky; he simply warmed his frozen feet by rushing as far away from that compelling tower as he could go.
          But the man at the top still looked, still leaned, and still hoped against hope that he would fall. He wished he could leave; he wished he could see the sights and smell the scents, but -of course- those were naught but wishful thoughts. There were no bars, no gates, and no barriers, but if he could really go himself, he would have gone all those years ago.

He was both men at once: the prisoner, the wishful thinker, who is trapped by his own ivory tower of perception, and the fugitive who left his soul, his essence, behind.

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Thanks for reading! :)

Derailed Days

It's been so long since I've written fiction, that I've almost forgotten how to write it. I dont know hat this is - I almost don't know where I'm coming from, and I don't know what I'm trying to say. I just...don't know.

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From: http://themagicroomproject.com

        Those long, quiet afternoons I spent reading, writing, and staring emptily out of my window - I’d hoped for philosophical wisdom to come storming into my mind, but the unending corridors inside were only filled by a loud, urgent, and rushing wind that filled my ears with an all-consuming nothing.

There was nothing wrong with me- not really, but I still wished there was. I wanted to sit on my unmade bed, in last week’s pajamas, and read until my eyes hurt. I wanted to look over the horizon thoughtfully, have a very dismal epiphany, and then smile at the tragedy of it all. I wanted to be sad, and introspective, because I thought life would be so much more interesting that way.

            It’s almost funny when I think about it now. A romantically melancholy disposition was what I had craved - a mysterious aura of quietly bearing distress. I’d wanted to be sad because I thought it was cool.

       I cringe today, but those were strange times for me. Derailed, lost - that's what I was. Gaining pleasure from pain, and pain from pleasure

      Those quiet afternoons I spent thinking of nothing, and crying tears that weren't mine, relishing a deep, heaving sadness that arose from the screaming emptiness in my mind.

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So...that happened. 

I should definitely write fiction more often- to avoid things like this.

Quote of the Day ~ Christ

I’ve just realized that there is hate everywhere [on the internet] - I know I'm a bit late, but at least I’m here right now - rather startled, but coherent and ready to write.

        So here’s what happened - Innocent lil’ me was just taking a walk down the mainstream internet, flowers in my hair, sing-song voice, floaty white dress and all, when I saw the words “They deserve to be dead,” branded boldly on someone’s wall; my interest was piqued (nevermind the flowers and the white dress), and I stepped closer to investigate.

Who deserves to die and why? What did they do, but did that really matter? Does anyone really deserve to die?

        On closer inspection, I found that it was the members of the Islamic State (you know, that raging terror organization that is burning in the levant as I type) who needed to die - not just die, but die like dogs (I found that downright offensive to all parties in question - dogs and humans).

Underneath was a softer inscription expressing, in a very different tone, sympathy and condolences to all those terrorized by the group. It was almost like the kindness in the latter half of the wall posting was going to offset the poisonous hate that the first half released into the world.

Reading about dying dogs and crying mothers, I suddenly realized (using my excellent peripheral vision) that many other walls were branded with similar messages of death, all written in the same self-righteous tone of the first.

By the time my walk was done, I was absolutely covered in hate. Even the birds of the mainstream tweeted death with a tinge of self-righteousness - absolutely disgusting.

That was when I decided that it was time to pull out the big guns - I grabbed my lovely little (rather unused, I shamefully admit) Bible, and found exactly what I was looking for: “How different are we from terrorists if we too preach the same hate as they do?”

What’s worse is that we pretend to be righteous and good and pure while we do it - preaching hate (which is essentially what the terrorists preach) and wearing halos at the same time.

          Fighting fire with fire will only bring the world down in flames - if we’re fighting the nihilism of the terrorists, we should be using a force quite opposite to it, not spreading the nihilism by using it against them.

I see the need to weep for the victims of that destructive force that is ISIS, but I see no reason to attack it with as much ideological and psychological venom as it has been trying to inject into us.

Again, if we think we are so much better than the terrorists shouldn’t we not be stooping to their levels and hating them as passionately as they hate us?
         What makes our minds differents from those of the members of the Islamic State if either side hates the other so much that it wishes death upon the other?

Make Love and Art, not War! (and any other anti-war/hate cliche you can think of)