Laurustina

Over the last couple of years, I got into the habit of free-writing every morning, but during the last two months, while I was editing my most recent client's book, I stopped doing it. In fact, except for a Facebook status update here and there and answering the most pressing e-mails, I pretty much stopped writing anything at all. The project consumed all my writing/working time and I came to loathe sitting down in front of the computer. Among the things I learned during that process is that I never want to work like that again. And I sure as hell don't want to ever work like that again on someone else's project instead of my own. I don't mean that I don't want to do more editing. Only that I can't work like that to the exclusion of everything else.

Not only do I need some time to decompress and relax, but I need to find my own creative muse again. I am lucky enough to have a sister with a million and a half tricks in her tool-bag for accessing the muse, so I am not without resources, but figuring out how to slip back into my own skin, speak with my own voice and write about what I want when I want, I think that may take some time. I'll tell you what though, looking at this page and seeing my words, my thoughts, that feels pretty fucking good. It's a start anyway.

and soon. 

i promise. 

I wake up this morning coughing, wishing that I could simply sleep through this day. There is no money for gifts. There is a 22 lb. turkey that will demand my attention. There are well wishes and Christmas traditions that I must grit my teeth and grimly maintain.

I wake up this morning and all I can think about is the past-due rent, my stupidly high blood pressure and the fact that Ash is not here. Some days I can fool myself into thinking that things are getting better, but on mornings like this, it is painfully clear that we are still living on the edge.

I wake up this morning and realize that I haven't written a word of my own in nearly a month. It feels like a luxury I can't afford. Too much work to do and not enough time to do it in. I tell myself that I should be able to take ten minutes, a gift to myself, a secret stolen moment while everyone else is still asleep. But once those moments are spent and I've written three paragraphs, I realize that perhaps it is better to keep my own words tucked away until I have something useful or thoughtful or helpful to say.

If you haven't been over to Bullishink to check out the final entries in the Bad Santa Short Story Contest, get there posthaste. Bullish (aka my superior sister) has posted the top five submissions and readers get to choose the winner. The deadline for voting is midnight tonight. And yes, there are entries from some of my favorite people. Our people are writerly like that. 

An unexpected hospital stay over the weekend prevented me from fleshing out some thoughts which had been brewing, regarding Christmas and the whole holiday season, but you can get a taste of them in our latest post @ Shoestring With Style "Scroogenomics and Ungifting the Holidays". Later this week, I hope to be back in my groove and able to write more. 

… but you are. Over on Shoestring With Style today, we have tips and tricks for hosting a minimum-stress and maximum-cheer holiday party. You're welcome, and I await my invite to your personal Winterfest Cocktail Hour.

I am thankful today for my sister, my husband and my son, without whom I would not still be here. For Bliss and Pea and Dan and Susanne, for Brad and Jen Roach, and Michael and Matthew, for Mateo and Evelyn, for Mary and Felicia … for Mouse's besties and Mr. J's closest chicos … for my Jilly and her superb sis as well as the boys we gained through them … for the bloggy peeps of old and the thoughtful strangers who stepped up to the plate when least expected. Most days, I focus on the losses, but today I am making a concerted effort to focus on the people who (with or without their knowledge) have sustained me and helped me take those first steps into the world beyond grief. 

The Transgender Day of Remembrance began in 1998 in response to the murder of Rita Hester but for the last several years it has brought another woman to my mind.She is greatly missed and though I did not know her well, I knew enough to understand what manner of loss had befallen us all when she was taken. 

We are in the office kitchen. She has arrived in tall shoes, with pink ribbons twined in her hair. We are forever trading nods and pleasantries, this beautiful girl and I. Still, I'm not even sure that she knows my name. I know a few of hers. The one she uses on good days, the kind of days you wake and wind ribbons in your hair, and the one she uses on bad days, when the mean reds hit and it takes all the strength you have to clutch a pillow in one hand and a telephone in the other. "Tell him it's Pumpkin." she'd whisper into the receiver.

And I suppose she wouldn't mind me telling you this now. What she'd mind, I suspect, is that there were no fireworks when she went, no moments of silence, no flags at half mast. We were nothing to one another, Pumpkin and I. Little more than nods and smiles, phone calls transfered and a "hey you, how goes it?" in the stairwell. Still I couldn't help but see in her what I have so often seen in myself, that ability to dress up sorrow with bravery. Put together and put on. She did it better but I've done it longer. That's all. So if you see her, tell her that there were fireworks and more moments of silence than she could have expected. It's the god-awful truth.

When Ashlie died, one of the phone calls I made was to her teacher, a former Army drill sergeant who manages to teach the students that no other teacher in town can manage. When I told him that Ash was gone, his first thought was that there was violence involved. To say that she died “by her own hand” is little consolation we agreed, but in light of the statistical alternatives, it is somehow a blessing.

Brandon Teena, Gwen Araujo and Rita Hester are not anomalies. Nor are they the norm. But every year, on this day, Remembering Our Dead is one way to fight the bigotry and lack of understanding which results in the kinds of brutality that no one should ever face. On this day and every day, educating yourself and those around you, refusing to engage in the casual, "soft" bigotries of our current culture (Ann Coulter's adam's apple jokes, lazy sitcom man-in-a-dress plotlines, Chaz Bono gawking)   and instead establishing your position as an ally can go a long way to changing public perception and ultimately, saving lives. 

Big shock, it feels like working. The good news is that it feels like the RIGHT kind of working. The good kind of working. I now find myself juggling a variety of plates but even at its most hectic, I manage to remind myself that these are tastier plates than I have ever juggled before. (Ok, so there was that period of time when ONE of the plates I juggled had some super-yummy stuff on it, but it was seriously watered down by the bland paper-pushing bullshit that filled the accompanying plates.) Right now though, I'm chock-full of challenging, creative, sweat-of-the-brain-and-brow kind of work. I could not be more delighted.  

She says "How could you not know?"

Ashlie in 2008

G.T. in 2006

She says "Still, there were signs." And she's right. 

But only in retrospect, is everything illuminated.