The idea that good and great writing is somehow innate pushes those who had the potential but aren’t properly trained to the sidelines. Everyone has potential, nobody is ever just born being great at the arts.[…]

It could have been easy to forget that I got out of breath walking the few feet from my car to my job every day, or that I was already in the largest size clothing my local plus size store sold. Then I discovered J. Cole—”I hope one day you hear me…you ain’t never gon’ be happy til you love yourz.” I let his lyrics run on repeat in my mind instead of doing what I always do: quitting on myself.[…]

Ten writers on what they love about their bodies.[…]

At twenty, I should have been educated on how to avoid this road, but instead I dove into the forbidden territory, eyes as bright and wide as my eager grin, expecting my skull not to ricochet against the asphalt. When the rest of my graduating class was having the time of their lives, I was tangled so deep into this web that I became a cocoon of drugs, control, and misery. What kind of butterfly could possibly emerge out of that? […]

Silence was a luxury I couldn’t afford as a little girl. It’s a luxury that no little Black girl can afford, really. I learned quickly that I either fought with my words or fought with my hands. Sometimes, if called for, I fought with both. Being loud was an act of reclamation, saying, “You’re going to look and listen to me. You’re going to hear […]

My words held up a mirror and exhibited the same qualities she’d always instilled in me, one last time. Two weeks later, she let go. She found that bravery I’d asked her to, our bravery. Her last lesson to me was how to love myself again […]

I was 16. It was fall of my senior year, and I was applying to colleges. But I knew where I wanted to go. For most of my life, I’d lived down the street from my dream school, an ivy-covered university that loomed large in my consciousness. My father was affiliated with it, and it played a central role in my family’s life—we went there for plays, exhibits, sports events. I’d even dressed up on Halloween as the school’s star football player when I was a kid. I was sure this university was my destiny […]

When asked, I almost always give up and offer the term “a nonsexual orgy.” People enter a dance studio in a leafy Boston suburb and commence to touch, play, and move with each other’s bodies. What else should I call it? The people who come here often know it by its technical name: A Contact Improv Workshop. The people who […]

A recent DNA analysis told me I’m “less likely to freckle,” “more susceptible to male pattern baldness,” and have “a stronger tendency to be agreeable.” Coincidentally, I do have very few freckles, am shedding hair by the fistful, and when in the right mood, I can be as congenial as Sandra Bullock in a rom-com flick […]

Two years after being hospitalized, I’m still not 100% certain if I’m bipolar or not. I mean I’ve had two different psychologists tell me that they think so. That I “exhibit” the key characteristics. They’ve said so after sessions where I’ve talked too much, but felt like I was only starting to describe how I felt every day. How it started as depressive episodes in High School when sat on the corner of my bed without moving for hours. I used to blame it on the music I listened to. Elliott Smith…Daniel Johnson. I used to think I was just a moody teenager that needed Lexapro. I was labeled as manic depressive and hurried along my merry way. The first time I recognized my mood swings was through the daily fights I engaged in with my mom. We’d both circle each other like angry bulls until something caused us both to explode. I’d lock myself in my room and punch the walls. My little brother was the first to ask if I thought I was bipolar. I took it as an insult. How would he know that about me without me knowing it myself? He hasn’t said anything to me that honest since.  The chemistry in my head darkened as I transitioned into college. While all of my friends explored and found themselves, I could only see myself make choices and act from some distant prison inside my chest. I started hearing my mouth spewing words I didn’t recognize and didn’t mean. Even as I asked my body not to scream, not to feel so panicked I couldn’t breathe, not to hurt itself, my body did as it pleased. In a way, it was like walking away from a good friend after seeing burn your bridge on purpose. The more control I lost the more impulsive I got, too. While my mood shifts were brief, their consequences stretched on like scar that refuses to forget. At least I started to learn more about myself. Then came the insomnia. Around that time my eyes started to refuse any rest.

I’ve always been able to stay up until three or four at night and wake up the next day without an alarm before the sun comes back. The truth is both sides of me need each other. That is the half that is overwhelmed with love and warmth for the people and things I care about and the other half which tries to inflict as much pain as possible onto myself and all those around me. I’ve never gotten a formal diagnosis. I’ve tried. But not really. A work schedule that required my attention twelve hours a day didn’t help and I’ve always been bad at talking to anybody about these things. At complaining. Not knowing my diagnosis all the way is like walking through a pitch-dark room and then realizing you’re standing in a tunnel instead. The goal posts running away from you.  When I told my parents about the first time the psychologists said they thought I was bipolar, they said I was just stressed. Underneath the tug of war between my mind and my body lay my being, urgently needing to be liked and loved by everybody I came into contact with. It’s more than a little pathetic. At times I feel like my personality is just a combination of performances meant to seduce and entertain while I cringe inside. Sometimes when I can’t sleep I wonder if I am actually sick or if this is just actually doing all the heavy lifting for the rest of my personality? My game of avoidance came to an end one night after my band played a show in Somerville. That night throughout our set, I drank my favorite emotional trigger. Towards the end I stopped playing some songs halfway through and fell on top of the drumset. My bandmates’ fury outweighed their concern so I snuck away after the final song to another bar next door. I don’t really remember getting home, but I know that it took multiple people to restrain me from running into my bathroom or locking my door. They thought I was a danger to myself and called for an ambulance. Am I just a piece of shit looking for an excuse not to blame myself for all the things I’ve done? Are my feelings just another easy way out? I question this and then remember there’s nothing easy about this.

 

Esteban Cajigas is a writer, musician, and MFA candidate at Antioch University Los Angeles. His short stories and poems have been featured in publications such as Venture Magazine, Foliate Oak, and others. Esteban also previously wrote for The Boston Globe as a correspondent and The Suffolk Voice as Editor-in-Chief.

My father is a simple man in old age. He lives on the outskirts of Las Vegas now, in a rinky-dink apartment complex. The television blasts CNN at an alarming volume for such close quarters, but he’s outside, minding his business and squatting on the patio with a cigarette between his fingers. In between puffs, he pokes at his quaint, urban garden, a sign of his domesticated life as a retiree. He always wanted someplace warmer than the chilly, wet climate in Seattle, better for tired bones. In his heyday, he was a bell bottom-wearing playboy with dark features and a baritone voice. I always thought he looked like a Filipino Harrison Ford, but he is 73 years old now, his swagger tempered and grey.

My step-mother is inside, always the first to greet me whenever I visit with my children. She keeps a tidy home for my father in their tiny two-bedroom apartment. They returned to America from the Philippines with only a few belongings to send my little brother to college. Now, it’s neatly cluttered with nautical trinkets and various furnishings they’ve collected over the years. Amidst the sea blues, anchors and seashells is a massive subwoofer, now a makeshift side table. The coffee table is slightly askew from the living room futon to make room for my father’s prized possession, an 88-key Yamaha digital piano. He plays it on the futon whenever I visit, but not for entertainment. He plays it because it’s part of his routine, and the sound of him playing is so normal that I don’t recognize he’s playing unless I bring someone over that appreciates his talent.

Aside from his “real job” at Boeing, my first memories were running around bars or venues while he danced his fingers along the keyboard. My siblings and I grew up to synthesized disco beats and strobe lights. Our family lived and breathed music: Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, A Taste of Honey, Mouth to Mouth, and every cover song from the 60s and 70s.

As a teenager, I would find him downstairs in the dimly lit garage studio, sitting down next to a lamp, riffing off a song, enveloped in a cloud of nicotine. We didn’t talk to each other most of the time because I didn’t know what to say to my reserved father. Connecting with him was tough when my parents divorced, and I grew more distant during adolescent growing pains. The only time I had a conversation about his music was when I was sixteen after I handed him a sheet of music and asked him to play. He handed it right back to me.

“No,” he laughed, “I can’t read music.” So, he asked if he could listen to the song, some millennial pop ballad, and he played it, improvising with his signature keyboard sound along the way. Anyway, the studio wasn’t a place for bonding. The music slowed everything down. I drifted away in his melodies, further away from anyone, but close to his sound.

The smoky garage studio burnt down years ago in Seattle. (A case of a cigarette thrown in a receptacle. Go figure.) His studio has now been relegated to the center of the living room where he sits down to play a song. Except I don’t drift away this time. This time, I want to know why he plays every day and will for the rest of his life. I do because I’m in my MFA program, and I’m hungry for art and music. I wonder about my creative process, and if it was born out of my upbringing. Now I wonder if it was born out of his. Maybe his hunger is hereditary?

When I sit down to ask him questions, he lights up and tells me stories I’ve never heard and can’t quite picture. My father was the oldest brother of five siblings and cared for the family as the “man of the house” when their father, my grandfather, left our grandmother, the family matriarch. Maybe this is how he obtained his survivor sensibilities, qualities I mistook to be too blunt and hurtful. 

My grandmother gifted his first guitar at fifteen and he played every morning after studying others play at clubs. He chaperoned my then teenage aunt when she worked as a restaurant crooner, realizing music was a passion during this time. My father was so good, in fact, that one of the restaurant band members asked him to form a band and tour Japan. He believed he would only be away from his responsibilities at home for six months, but soon he was a college drop-out, leaving his studies in Business Accounting.

I balked at the earlier prospect—my father bookkeeping in a dimly lit garage. It didn’t equate. But he didn’t choose that path. He stayed in Japan for six years and learned how to play the piano in one month after breaking his finger in karate. My late grandmother proudly showed me a black-and-white photograph of my dad with his band, dressed like an Asian Beatle.

The Japan tour lasted through the 70s near the end of the disco era. My father would have traveled to Singapore had my grandmother not petitioned for him to immigrate to Seattle, Washington, where he met my mother. She reluctantly supported his musician lifestyle for the better part of their marriage, waiting up at night or on the sidelines while my father stayed out for gigs. I watched as his musical endeavors tore at his relationships or mended them, depending on which story I heard. Either way, my father’s keyboard was always the center of his universe and now it was literally center of his living room.

My step-mother tells me he plays the piano every morning, as soon as he wakes up. My father, the simple man, but gosh—did he have glorious adventures. Some might call it foolish or risky the number of times he put music first, but he played because he couldn’t keep his hands off of it. The hunger was always there as soon as he found music in his hands.

When I asked him if he ever sought a record deal, he replied, “No.” He had his heyday, and now he spends days drifting off in chords. “I play to get away from negative thoughts,” he says.

That’s when I realize our creative lives are similar. I didn’t quite inherit the music family trait. I can’t even sing karaoke. No, my fingers drift over a different type of keyboard, the kind that allows me to write about my father and reminisce about disco balls and bell bottoms. I found the hunger in different ways, but there’s the same impulse, the same desire to channel a baritone voice chalked up in smoke, a riff, a melody, then poetry. And maybe I won’t get to live the rock star life in Japan, but I have my center of the living room in me and at my fingertips. I return to it day after day and make it sing, baby.

 

Cristina Van Orden lives in South Los Angeles with her family and Chorkie. She is currently an MFA Candidate at Antioch University, Los Angeles and Poetry Editor for Lunch Ticket. Her work can be seen or is forthcoming in Chaleur Magazine, Gordon Square Review, HOOT Review, and Silverneedle Press.

I notice small details. Hairline cracks in a wall, misspellings and incorrect grammar, the moment a person lies. There’s no inquiry involved, no attempt to gather evidence. I’ve always been this way.

It still stings my mom. She wonders what I’m even talking about when I point out the fret on her nurse’s face. People bring their worries to work, I tell her. They can’t just shut it down. But Mom waves me off as she always did while Dad listened intently. He was the same way and valued my perception.

Where we come from it’s called touched and not something to boast about. Some consider it second sight—of the Devil. Others: a spiritual gift. Whatever its source, this inclination has barbs. People don’t take well feeling seen through.

I’ve learned to hold my tongue. Even lost friends. When you see a thing and know a thing can crush someone you love, you feel conscripted to warn against the thing. Age and sages have taught me: you have to let people fall. There exists one exception to this platitude: if a person asks me for advice, then let thee be warned: I go full hog.

A person introduces me to a new man she likes. Let’s call him Jack. We work through the small talk. I cover my reactions like a smiling ventriloquist. The visit finishes and later the woman contacts me with such hope.

So, what’d you think?

If Jack calls you or comes to see you: Kindly give your regrets.

How do I know this?

It’s in the eyebrows. Small face muscles. How Jack rubs the back of his neck. Honestly, it’s a feeling I get. Something otherworldly that just…tells.

When I was eight, my parents took me out to dinner. The server wore a pale pink cotton dress. My father remarked how pretty her hands were. She thanked him, took our order, and left.

Daddy. She’s in a fight with her boyfriend.

What on earth, child? My mother sucked in air and turned away.

Daddy nodded, yes. He believed me. Something was weighing our server down, a burden pushing on her chest. To me, it was as visible as the slender fingers that held her pen and notepad.

Those who notice small details, who closely observe others, notice fellow observers. We find each other usually in silent acknowledgement. These are my people. No secrets are hidden, no heavy blankets laid over top. I don’t have to hold back what I know. They don’t deny what they already accept.

My father was a watcher. But by the time I was nine, he missed warnings signs I’d begun flagging in front of him. What my father didn’t notice and my mother denied shaped my future. The turmoil this caused derailed how I self-expressed. A child in conflict is left with few options.

I became a liar.

I want to tell you lying started out little white-like. That I occasionally cried wolf or the fish got bigger in retold legends. But my lies were astounding fictions.

Lies built walls and closed me away, became my hiding place, and though child-lying is obvious, it emboldened me. With age, practice, and a shrewd ability to evaluate others, by high school, I was a damned good liar.

Keeping the details straight exhausted me. Compulsively shifting narratives, dodging peoples’ suspicions. To be caught in a lie struck a fear in me, yet not more frightening than having my truth exposed. I would do anything to protect it. Anything.

Off at art school, oil painting, and habitually denied sleep, the hairline cracks in my thinking began to dissemble it. Lies distracted my restless, hungry mind—the mind I thought I was starting to lose.

By the time I dropped out of my senior year in college, I had mastered lying. I lied so completely the words fooled everybody. Lies became my superego and spokeswoman. I lied when it wasn’t even needed. The compulsion was flexed and ready. If backed into a corner, a lie came out swinging.

* * *

Now a part-time department store and daycare worker, a nanny, and a full-time education student, I could sneak away one night a week for group therapy. I took the #5 bus to Salem Ave. United Way for low cost therapy. The very first bus ride— about midway—the driver stopped and picked up a mousey girl with a slight limp. Miles later, I pulled the cord, stood until the driver lurched to a stop, and I stepped forward. Down at the second bus door, I noted Mouse Girl doing the same. We exited the bus and walked wordlessly together.

* * *

The group scraped chairs into a circle. We sat in an awkward silence until a bubbly therapist burst in and introduced herself, then encouraged us to do the same. We named off counter clockwise, all fifteen of us, except for one. The therapist introduced this woman who sat, knitting, as “Ruby,” and moved on to the business of how we would honor confidentiality. For the next six months of Wednesdays, Ruby knitted without looking up, come whatever #MeToo share swirled around her.

During this momentous first group therapy, fifteen minutes into the session, a tiny knock interrupted one woman’s confession. The therapist looked rattled, and quickly met a colleague at the door. Whispers passed between the huddle. Someone had arrived late. When the therapist turned and offered the new member a seat, it was Mouse Girl standing there more bent and looking feeble with a pained face. The therapist patted and fawned the newcomer as they walked into our circle.

Ladies, this is Penny.

Hi Penny.

Penny missed her bus and had to walk over a half an hour just to get here!

The group sighed. Poor thing. How awful.

Penny limped large, arduous steps to an empty chair, ladies praising her efforts.

Her dress was maroon, closely formed to her shape. Skin, the color of limestone. Brown hair, frizzing in the August haze cupped her small shoulders. As she turned to ease down into the chair, she spotted me. Her eyes narrowed. Gold, like my brother’s and nervous. I stared at my caught mouse.

* * *

That’s the night I changed my life.

Riding home on the bus, without Penny accompanying me, I realized how much we were alike. She lied and made people sympathize with her. She needed their immediate affection just to be able to join in a circle, because being herself was too frightening. When I saw my reflection behaved back at me, I swore this oath:

I will never lie again.

I’ve stuck to it. Okay, okay. Saying Santa is real to a three-year-old, yes. I’m feeling great today when I’m not, those little fibs, they happen. But otherwise, I speak the truth.

When I committed to truth, I stuck to group therapy and waited for the day Penny would return or Ruby would dare speak. Ruby only shared once. She’d grown up in a farm house with all brothers. I kept my eyes focused on the nubby yarn, pulling through her fingers in even strokes. Knitting needles scraped with each word.

I’d been so kind, so entertaining to this group, smiling no matter how much emotional pain I incurred. Ruby’s share began to crack the casing that housed me. Tears lifted over and pooled into my smile, but I choked them back and kept smiling. Rage wouldn’t knock loose for many years.

Penny never came back.

* * *

Student teaching back at my prestigious high school, I was daunted to face all those teachers. They wanted me to call them by their first names! How would I escape the ridiculous, lying fool I was back then? I kept reminding myself that my teachers had been saviors during those terrible days. There were truths, there were facts. Learning was real. Even the tragic loss of my close friend was real. Truth showed up in other ways. My singing voice had filled the theatre. My art had decked the walls.

But one hard truth hounded me. Still does. In my two-mile town, schooled with the same people K-12, not one teacher, principal, guidance counselor, coach, not even one mother asked me the question I would have answered.

Is somebody hurting you?

When my teachers introduced me to Tom Auten one Friday lunch in mid-May, I was struck in love at first sight. I had a smudge of art charcoal on my nose. Our first date—after the movie—we drove down to the river, sat with the top down by the Carillon Bells, and talked. When bugs started biting, we retreated to his little house, sprawled out on his carpet, and told each other all our shit. We both had loads.

A few months after our confessional, Tom and I were engaged.

I’ve spent my life with the one person who knows all my truth and he loves every part of it. I want to tell you Tom’s love restores all ails. That faith heals. Time is a balm. But I don’t lie.

Restoration is tiring work, gathering the broken pieces and overcoming the damage I endured.

Some days, I wonder who I’d be if I hadn’t needed to protect myself, if I hadn’t been The Liar. What body of art I would’ve created, where my stage career would have taken me? These reflections aren’t grand schemes to diffuse the dull ache of a well-educated wannabe. I remember what it felt like before I lost me.

I take comfort in the small details: how I can stop a baby from crying with one smile, how I can finally hug, how dogs adore me. I’m great at jury selection, keenly aware of the out-of-tune, able to closely match colors. I can smoke out schemes, sleuth plots, solve them, feel when change is coming, sense evil.

When teaching, my classroom is a safe place. I’ll protect every child. Protection is of great importance to me. Mess with my sons, regardless of the consequences, I’ll take you down. And there’s more. I’m a forever friend. My ability to spot trouble helps me know who to keep at a distance. And, yes, pay attention to the men I keep close to me. They are quality.

Learning to trust women hasn’t come as easily.

* * *

Recently, I attended the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference in Portland. At the loving suggestion of a writing mentor, I attended a panel discussion titled: “Writing the Mother Wound.” Close friend and CNF writer, Mireya S. Vela and I entered the large presentation room already filled. Women spilled to the sides, lined the walls, and bunched in the corners.

Mothers are in trouble.

Mireya and I slid to the floor and listened. The presenters shared raw words, exposing their mother rage. These women voiced the forbidden, complex expressions never allowed. I stared at the rungs of a chair. My body, still, breath even. I closed my eyes and listened as poets and essayists spoke for me.

Why didn’t you help me?

Then I heard it. Weeping. Beside me, above, reverberating against the walls, with breath and heat: rows of women emoting and heaving. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. But these women moved me.

Somedays I wonder who I’d be had I not grown up with secrets and shame. Would I be a person who scoffs at the hyper-vigilant-touched, who turns her head away and waves people off?

* * *

I am the daughter of a man with deep sight. Combined with my own hyper-vigilance, not much slips past my view. But my wrecked childhood slipped past his. My father was devastated to learn he hadn’t protected me. The news diminished him.

I wanted to rewind, get back to the moment before he knew, when I didn’t feel dirty and used. This was the man who respected my opinions, valued my thinking, whose face lit up when I entered a room. I just wanted my Daddy back.

I wanted to lie.

 

Need help? R.A.I.N.N. says, “Visit online.rainn.org to chat one-on-one with a trained RAINN support specialist, any time 24/7.”

 

Andrea Auten is a writer and a visual | performing artist. A writing specialist for Antioch University Los Angeles, she is an Associate Managing Editor for Lunch Ticket Literary and Art Journal. She lives with her husband, sons, and beloved writing partner, Dusky, the family cat, where she is currently working on a collection of short stories. @AndreaAutenArts | andreaauten.com |

Sometime in the past week or so, I hit a funk. I decided to catch a few extra minutes of sleep in the morning and it quickly became a few extra hours. It can easily be dismissed as having a lazy day. Or a lazy week. Or a month. It doesn’t bother me that much, at first at least. It only bothers me when it gets out of hand.

The reasons behind the funks can vary, but the feeling is always the same: Exhausted. Overwhelmed. Tired. Frustrated. In summary, not giving a fuck. I stopped giving a fuck years ago, but the feeling is more aggressive nowadays. When you can go without taking a quick shower for three days, you know you’ve reached peak apathy. It’s also the time when you know that you need to take a goddamn bath.

It’s clear at this point that the funks need to be addressed, but they always take a backseat to everything else. It didn’t seem like too much of an issue. It can be worked around, or helped out with other things. It’s no big deal.

And then I couldn’t write a damn thing.

*  *  *

It’s hard enough to find the time to write. It’s even worse when you can’t find the motivation. The funk muddles the process, makes it excruciating to get through. It’s a miracle to concentrate on anything for more than a minute. I stare at the screen, willing the words to arrive before I give up and move on to something else. Anything else. Even then, the breaks turn into a distraction from getting anything done, then to an excuse to not do anything at all.

Part of it is the perfectionist in me. I get so caught up in the idea of what I want to write that I get nothing done. The other part is that I live in a house that is never quiet. Calm has no place in this house when family is in it. I’m used to chaos, but this chaos has no order. It shows no mercy and for what I know, there’s no end to it. After a while, despite my struggles, the chaos seeps into my calm and warps it into something disgusting. Something toxic. Writing becomes the last thing I want to do.

* * *

It doesn’t take long for the funk to manifest itself. My bedroom serves as an indicator of what I’m going through. When it gets bad—when I can’t walk the two feet from my bed to my door without tripping over whatever the hell my cat knocked over this time—that’s the sign that I’m in a bad place.

I was scrolling aimlessly through my Facebook feed two summers ago when I came to this realization. A friend who was probably going through her own funk mentioned how the state of your room usually represents the state of your mind. It spoke to me for obvious reasons; my bedroom was currently a biohazard and I was behind on my writing. Before I came across the post, I never fully considered that my lack of motivation could be something else.

It was in the comments of that post that I found the solution to that problem. A minor solution, at least.

*  *  *

Once you get past the title of the website, Unfuck Your Habitat is a helpful kick in the ass.  Browse long enough and you’ll come across a section titled “The Depression/Messy House Cycle”.  I don’t recall finding the page on my first visit; I remember looking it up on Tumblr and finding post after post of before and after photos of bedrooms, kitchens, closets. I came across a challenge that sounded like a good place to start: make your bed as soon as you wake up.

The morning after, I started making my bed. The first attempt was sloppy; the bedsheet was hanging off my mattress haphazardly, the pillows were lumpy and in need of pillowcases, and an eighth of it was taken up by books and clothes I haven’t bothered to put away yet. But it was still an attempt.

Over time, I started putting in more of an effort. I tucked in the sheets. I removed the large pile of books from the foot of my bed to its proper place on my desk. Eventually, I began making efforts to keep my desk organized, put my clothes away properly, vacuum the floor. The room was still messy, but I could at least see the bottom of my floor now.

* * *

On the worst day of my current funk, I spent the better part of my morning staring aimlessly into space under the guise of watching terrible movies. Maybe it was the movie itself or I got tired of doing nothing, but whatever the reason I reached for my phone, set the timer for twenty minutes, and began clearing the floor. I set the timer a few more times, cleaning up the room until I got tired of setting the timer.

Obviously, tidying up your space doesn’t solve everything. It helps me get out of my funk, but it doesn’t keep it from returning. I’m still in that funk from last week, and while I’m back to getting out of bed the moment I wake up, it’s still a struggle to focus on the important things. It’s still a process, but I’m okay with that.

 

 

Lily Caraballo is a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles and a figure model. She is a staff member of Lunch Ticket, a former contributor for Black Girl Nerds, and is featured in the anthology My Body, My Words: A Collection of Bodies. She lives in Los Angeles with her cat.

 

 

I was 14 when my mom told me she was pregnant. Right away, I knew it would be a little brother. On the bus one day, Mom called and broke the news: “I know you’ll be disappointed, but it’s a girl.” Bella is still figuring out which is more accurate and has decided to try out “they” pronouns (a gender-neutral alternative to “he” or “she”).

Bella is now the same age I was when they were born. At 14, they are several inches taller than me. These days, they wear their hair short, somewhere between the ears and chin. It’s usually messy, and sometimes dyed a weird color. They’re a fashionable kid, taking inspiration for their clothes and makeup from the world of K-Pop. They’re a deft hand with eyeliner—it’s always on point.

When they were a baby, I didn’t really want anything to do with them. I didn’t know what changes a baby would bring to our household, which was already tense with years of problems between my parents. I’d proven myself to be more of a troublemaker than my two older siblings, who had both recently left home. I earned myself a place in the police academy program at a nearby public high school because I “needed discipline.” Just a couple of days before the baby was born, I met my first long-term boyfriend, who would be part of my life, and the baby’s, for the next few years. He was three years older than me. My mom and I fought for days before she relented and allowed me to see him.

During her pregnancy and for a while after, my mom spent her life in fear. She was almost forty when she had the baby, and she had high blood pressure. Born six weeks early, Bella was tiny and had to spend two weeks in the NICU before being cleared by the doctors to come home. The first night in our apartment, Mom laid Bella in the bassinet that dominated the living room. They fussed so much that, before the sun rose, they were in bed with Mom. The two slept in the same bed until Bella was a teenager.

Welcoming a new baby brought relatives to our door. First, my mom’s favorite sister Suzi visited when Bella was about six months old. Later, Bella’s grandma and uncle on their dad’s side came. Pictures were taken, hugs exchanged, gifts received. I only have a few memories about this time. I was immersed in my own struggles, aching to spend every waking moment with my boyfriend. In a typical teenage fashion, I was completely egocentric and petulant, dealing with the depression that came with puberty while struggling to discover my own identity. Bella had sinus problems and was often sick. My mom and I still fought, but she focused her real energy on the baby, on the never-ending problems with my stepfather, on her own struggle with addiction.

Just before Bella turned one, I left the police academy, where I’d been miserable and short of breath all year. I went into independent study to finish high school, which was a much better fit for me. I spent several years in a nocturnal state, writing at night, sleeping in the mornings, and babysitting in the afternoons. During this time, I dabbled in prescription and over-the-counter pills, tried smoking a cigarette, and learned about sex. My boyfriend and I would babysit together, cuddling and kissing on the couch, Bella fixated on the TV. Whenever we went out, people assumed I was a teenage mother, which never really bothered me.

I remember Bella’s first big smile up at me as I sat in front of the computer, looking down at them in their little bouncy chair. I made squished eggs in the morning and plain pasta in the afternoons, annoyed at being the one to have to complete these chores. When my mom asked me to, I brushed Bella’s rat’s nest of hair, making sure their favorite show was turned on and they had a snack to get through it. I tried to be gentle. As a kid, I also had unga-bunga hair, so I understood the pain. Bella looked just like me when I was little.

Bella and I were together with our parents in a situation that was often stressful and sometimes violent. Our mom and Bella’s dad fought often and hard. When this happened, I became the caretaker. My teenage angst was sidelined by these crises. I would take Bella into the bedroom, into my lap, and we would watch the Powerpuff Girls, or play Legos, trying to ignore the shouting from the other room. I was beyond fear by this point, used to the screaming matches that had been going on as long as I could remember, but Bella would whimper and cry and ask questions. I tried not to be too harsh with my answers, tried to remember that they wouldn’t understand the complicated reasoning behind my almost grown-up emotions and opinions. When I would occasionally interfere in these domestic disturbances, I felt puffed up, empowered—but also helpless. I was still a kid, older boyfriend or not. I tried to shield Bella as best I could. I tried to shield myself.

*     *     *

Besides being sick all the time, Bella was always an accident-prone child. Once, they slipped while climbing on the back of the couch and smashed their chin into the windowsill, biting through their bottom lip. I was babysitting at the time, and I was wracked with guilt. For once, my mom didn’t react with anger, instead understanding that kids sometimes get hurt. I was relieved she wasn’t mad at me for my negligence. Another time, Bella reached up and touched the electric stove while it was on, receiving massive blistery burns on three fingers. Just before I went away to college, a kid pushed Bella off the playground slide. When they hit the ground, their glasses sliced open their eyebrow. My mom sped to the hospital, then turned the keys over to me for the first time so I could park as she rushed Bella inside. Bella will always have that scar above their left eye. They never try to cover it with makeup, embracing the uniqueness it brings to their face. Their right thigh is a mass of huge scars from the time our big sister’s cat decided they were a threat and tore into their exposed leg. Bella is no stranger to physical pain.

I knew some things about Bella years ago. I knew they would be a dancer. Through all of the illnesses and injuries, they always had a mastery over their own body that I couldn’t really relate to. I knew they would question everything, empowered to explore the opportunities life placed before them. I knew they would experience many of the same things I did as a kid, like mental illness. No one could have convinced me, though, that we would be so much alike.

*     *     *

Bella’s father left when they were barely five. At that time, I was a college student with my own life and concerns. Our mom moved into a new apartment across the street from the old one, where rent was a constant worry. When I came home from school to visit, Bella and I would spend hours coloring or playing in front of the TV. We sang our souls out to The Backyardigans, and I introduced them to Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It may have been inappropriate for a kid, but we had a blast singing along to each subversive song. Music was everything to us, necessary in our TV shows and games. Early one Sunday morning, Bella and I lounged in bed and sang “opera” until the neighbors started yelling at us to shut up. We laughed for hours.

When the power was shut off due to nonpayment, our big brother came over. As night fell, we armed ourselves with Nerf guns, jump ropes, and sticks. Then, we divided the apartment into kingdoms: The Kingdom of Kitchen, Bedroomlandia, The Plains of Livingroom, Bathroom Swamp. Finally, we declared war on each other. Peeking around doorways, hiding underneath tables, and charging each other head on, we play-fought for dominance of the darkened rooms. Bella and I were both thrilled and enthralled that our big brother had decided to join us in this flight of fancy—and I was grateful, because Bella’s laughter echoed through the apartment, their fear of the power outage lost in the great fun of the impromptu session of imagination. We never had occasion to play Apartment Kingdoms again, but Bella asked us to for ages afterward.

*     *     *

After college, I moved away for a couple of years. When I came back to Los Angeles, Bella was a preteen. They had grown even taller and looked much older. They were deep into their own life, just as I was at that age. It was different for Bella, though. I had been introverted and inactive, obsessed with my boyfriend to the exclusion of other friends, while Bella was dedicated to dance and seemed to have a new best friend every week. They were always going out to concerts or events, surrounded by a gaggle of dressed up teens.

Now that we live in the same part of town, we see each other more often. Bella is older, which makes our relationship different, more balanced. They’ve developed quite an irksome and entertaining personality. We’ve been able to spend time together one-on-one, reminiscent of the long days spent playing and singing when they were a toddler.

Last summer, Bella came over a couple of times a week so we could go swimming together. In my backyard surrounded by plants, statues, deck chairs, and the palpable presence of the sun, we would languish in the water. We cranked the radio, tuning in to our favorite alt rock stations, belting out the lyrics when Twenty-One Pilots came on. We played nonsense games reminiscent of Apartment Kingdoms, creating a plot worthy of publication. We sprayed each other with the hose as we took turns zooming down the big yellow slide into the deep end. When the time came to get out, we were equally reluctant, wishing we could stay in the cool safety of the water forever, living like mermaids. Even as I tried to act the grown-up and make Bella get out, all I could see in them was myself. Staying in the pool too long was my favorite act of defiance as a kid. I love the little things like this that tie us together, the little quirks that say we have a common history and family.

I remember the indifference and occasional resentment I felt toward Bella when I was a teenager, and I can’t connect to those feelings at all anymore. As different as we are, I can see those things in Bella now, the same emotions I battled as a kid. Depression and anxiety have set in, right on schedule. They’ve even enrolled in independent study, just like I did. My mom and I talk often about how frustrated and helpless we feel when we know Bella is in pain and there’s nothing we can do about it. I wish I could take away all the bad parts of their life, but I can barely keep swimming myself.

*     *     *

I guess if I want you to know one thing, it’s this: When life gets too hard to bear, when it seems like it’s all spiraling down to hell and there’s nothing you can do to stop it, I will be there, and I will rescue you. That’s a promise.

 

Adrien Kade Sdao writes young adult fiction and works in a children’s bookstore in Los Angeles. They are an MFA candidate at Antioch University, Los Angeles, and they are the lead editor for the Young Adult genre at Lunch Ticket. Their work has appeared in Lunch Ticket and Womanpause. They live in North Hollywood with their cat, Shelly.

My husband and I married in Madison, Wisconsin four years ago and moved to his rural childhood home to lead and grow his family’s farm. Before moving here, my husband and I made a list of pros and cons of leaving to live in a rural place, where the nearest town is politically scarlet. The pros won, and we left the state’s progressive capital city for a place where many vehicles have “We Still Stand with Scott Walker” bumper stickers.

For the first few years, living in our rural area in an isolated subdivision, I commuted fifty-five miles one way to work for a communications job in the nearest city. My peer coworkers were, predictably, all male and white. They enthused over online-based video games, their favorite shows on Netflix, and Fantasy Football. They asked what I did for fun, living way out there.

Hike, I told them.

Pro: The rolling hills of the Kettle Moraine State Forest – Northern Unit are a quick drive from my home, allowing access to the epic and well-maintained Ice Age Trail and scores of other beautiful hiking, swimming, and biking spots.

*     *     *

I also decorate our house, I told my bro-workers. We don’t have Internet, I said.

They stared at me as if I’d confessed I couldn’t read or write.

Con: My husband and I live in a rural and faraway enough part of our Wisconsin county that no fiber optic cable for high-speed broadband Internet has been dug. We’re not in view of the line-of-sight Internet tower. Painfully slow, uber-expensive satellite Internet is our only option, a contract we signed for two years and then quit, never to use again. Now, I am enrolled as a full-time graduate student, and any work that requires the Internet—email, weekly check-ins, literary journal blog and content management—I do via the hotspot I create with my iPhone, with an unlimited data plan that still seems too limited.

One of the “pros” on our original list—the list that justified us leaving Madison—was the possibility of a tighter-knit community in a rural area. As Lunch Ticket bloggers have stated in such eloquent terms this issue, community is essential to strong mental health and survival.

*     *     *

Pro: The lack of fast Internet encourages me to write more, enables me to be a graduate student in a low-residency MFA program, work on art and our house projects, run or bike outside for miles without seeing a single car, and get more work done for my job at the farm. There is solitude here—room to breathe.

Con: The best place to get high-speed Internet is the Starbucks nearest the well-stocked if sterile 24-hour grocery store. Most of my Internet-using time is spent in this same strip mall, a pandering line of shops with a hectic parking lot. I dislike the coffee; the dark-roasted grounds are burnt and over-extracted. I prefer the brighter, berry flavors of a single origin light roast. All those years we lived in pampered, foodie Madison made me soft and snobby, unable to withstand bad coffee. Anyway, I sit there, hour after hour, working on critical paper research using the university’s online libraries system, managing online submissions queues for the literary journal, blog posts, and weekly content. I need the Internet to be a writer—to submit to journals, apply for editorial positions, and share my work via social media. To work.

Nobody ever asks my name. Nobody memorizes my drink. I never see anyone I know at this coffee shop, which defies all previous coffee shop culture conventions—warm, conversational—I’ve ever known.

*     *     *

In November 2016, a little over a year after moving to our home, Trump became president of the United States. The urban-rural divide became national fodder, with some reductive voters blaming rural areas for the proliferation of “Make America Great Again” devotees. Community building here seemed bleaker by the day. 2017 and, in particular, 2018, proved atrocious for human rights. The nation stands by, mouths covered in horrified half-laughter, as this presidential administration train-wrecks itself, turns laws and morality upside-down, and persecutes immigrant families.

Pro: I can isolate myself with good reason—productivity—from booze-soaked happy hours while I work on my novel, personal essays, and short stories instead. While I’m inspired by the bustling of big cities, I need solitude to create, to find those seeds of concentration I never sowed during all those years of corporate jobs and happy hours in my late twenties.

Con: I feel like a bird on a wire, the gigabytes pulsing beneath my feet. A wide world to which I don’t have access.

Pro: Life in a lower-cost, low-density area means more money to travel, a recognized privilege I try not to take for granted.

Con: When I do have high-speed Internet—at hotels, at my Los Angeles AirBnBs when I stay during residency, in line at the ice cream stand drive-through—I glut on it. Watch five episodes in a row of “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” Look up ex-boyfriends’ new girlfriends’ new and different boyfriends on Facebook. Scroll, scroll, scroll, feed, feed, feed.

*     *     *

Pro: I get some “me” time—decompress, self-care, whatever.

Con: It’s all so lonely.

Pro: I never have to worry about parking or the neighbors’ sewage problems, or stolen Internet causing slow Hulu streaming.

Con: There is no Internet to steal.

When the management team named me blog editor and weekly content manager for Issue 15 of Lunch Ticket, I hesitated, knowing how much the position would rely on ample Internet access. The hesitation only lasted a second. I’m so honored to edit and publish personal essays about “What now?” questions, combating medical misconceptions, the ache of missing love, and the need for intersectional feminism. Social media—supplied by the omnipresent Internet—is just one way I share these works.

As much as I can, I take the opportunity to talk about these essays, in person, via text, or over the phone, to permeate a culture around me that may not be too knowledgeable of LGBTQ issues or aware of the plights of urban homelessness.

Pro: I built a community, though it’s far away.

Con: Fostering this community requires the Internet. In warm weather, when semester is in session and deadlines bear down, I have to move from room to room in my house with iPhone in tow, searching for a hotspot signal. Denser summer foliage means frequent data interruptions for those far from cellular data pinging towers.

*     *     *

Pro: After a string of corporate jobs in which I was told I had a strange personality to operate in a big company (Female? Youthful? Ambitious? Still not sure.), and during which I overheard catty remarks about my outfits over low cubicle walls, I vowed never to set foot in a corporate office again. I now do most of my work for the farm from home.

Con: My day job at the farm, as the compliance, communications, and HR director, is much harder than it should be. Handwritten tasks take longer and result in more human errors—I still remember the time I wrote a five instead of a four on a spreadsheet and couldn’t figure out why the books did not balance at the end of the month. Thirty-nine percent of people in rural areas still do not have access to high-speed Internet, which is considered a vital tool to run a business. Emailing invoices and vendor payments are no longer futuristic automations. They’re here to stay, and farms that cannot keep up will suffer the economic consequences.

Pro: Electric cooperatives may come to our area soon to bridge the urban-rural digital divide.

Con: It’s unlikely those cooperatives will be able to achieve the 25 megabytes per second requirement the Federal Communications Commission sets to define high-speed broadband access.

*     *     *

 

This is my last blog for Lunch Ticket, though I’ll edit and manage our team of bloggers through June. It’s bittersweet. I’ll miss my bloggers and connections to those in far-flung places—bigger cities and more rural places alike.

Point: Only four percent of people in urban areas don’t have access to high-speed Internet. We should all just move to big cities.

Counterpoint: Who will grow all of our food, organic, conventional, or otherwise? Crops and livestock require space and land, and farmers to grow, nurture, and oversee them. The demand for produce continues to increase, despite the proliferation of technologies and automation.

In the end, four years ago, the “pros” won. We know it will be a challenging road to run a farm, but the list doesn’t lie.

Pros: We are close to our family, our most supportive and important allies. I watch my nephews grow up. We have enough space to adopt a puppy. I see a supermoon illuminate our backyard woods. I witness 27 wild turkeys peck around in the field by our home. I try and fail to video herds of deer stampeding through our subdivision.

By helping to grow produce, we serve as an edifying counterpoint to the struggling farms that pump antibiotics into their Big Dairy cows or raise many, many cattle for beef, one of the main contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and thus climate change.

We can feed the world.

Con: Due to limited data, I can’t live stream the whole thing.

E.P. Floyd is blog editor and weekly content manager of Lunch Ticket, and an MFA candidate in fiction at Antioch University Los Angeles. Her work is published or forthcoming in The Rumpus, Lunch Ticket, Litbreak Magazine, and Reservoir. Find her online at epfloyd.com and on Twitter at @eprofloyd.