Hush (a rewrite)

NaBloPoMo

Its anxiety, my old friendYou’ve come to sit with me againBecause a feeling softly does creepGrabbing hold while I cannot sleepAnd the belief that was programmed in my brainStill remainsWithin the hush of silence In childhood years I walked aloneSlipping into a silent homeWatching other families from afarMy door to comfort was ajarWhen my heart […]

Kick the Can: The Loneliness of Generation X Childhood

Generation X childhood

I enjoy the Generation X content across most platforms. It is funny, insightful, and nuanced. I was born in October 1970, so I am right in that solid Gen X era. The 70s were my childhood, the 80s my adolescence. Yes, I often drank water from a hose. Yes, my brother and I were left […]

Are my cat companions “nibblings”?

Tonight I realized I’ve stopped taking cat photos. If you follow me on any platform, you see pics of my food, my television shows, my home, and my cats. My whole life has been added to my permanent record thanks to memory features on FB, Google, OneDrive, etc. I open that link each day, pouring […]

The Summer I Hoped to Have Without Loneliness

lonely sunset in Pittsburgh

I’ve written about this many times, but June is a very difficult month for me. This year, a particular challenge has been my trauma processing work – digging in deep to some stuff that’s so hard to face, so painful, so so so much I can’t discuss with anyone except my therapist. And my therapist […]

Too Blue to Fly

People tell you a lot of things about grief – the phases, the stages, the array of emotions. They tell you about the heart-stopping-grasp that grief has in your chest, a constricting band that hurts your heart and tightens your breathing. They tell you that each experience of grief is unique, that the absence of […]

The loneliness of October

Trauma and Loneliness

Content Note: depression, trauma, sexual violence The last time I saw a friend in person by choice was September 22, 2019. That was three weeks ago, a probably unhealthy amount of time without socializing. And I have zero plans to change that pattern. This loneliness, this self-imposed isolation, is not new to me, but my […]

The extra bff

When I was a child, the other girls in my neighborhood were firmly cemented into best friend pairs – Amy & Julie, Laurie & Darlene, Sherry & Meg, etc. My role was to be a back-up friend. Sometimes, I was included in group activities. Sometimes, I was called upon if the BFF was unavailable. And […]