Breaking Up is Hard to Do

A short lyrical piece; as always, feedback, thoughts, encouragement, etc. are appreciated and can be sent to sojustmethen@gmail.com

It all started as a regret, or maybe a worry about a regret. Or maybe a worry about worrying about regrets. I can’t quite remember. All I know is that once it started, it grew like a weed in fertile soil. Suddenly the little nagging voices became a cacophony. They turned into raindrops that fell so hard and so fast that they left welts on my skin and blurred everything around me. I thrashed and I screamed in my mostly blind state. I felt my fists sink into flesh, but I didn’t stop, couldn’t stop. I was soaked and cold and lost and confused.

With time the deluge lessened to a shower, then a sprinkling, then a mist. And one day without me even noticing, when the end credits on that drama were done scrolling, the rain was gone. I blinked in the newfound clarity, and looked around. Everything was clear for the first time in a long time and all I saw was emptiness. I knew you had left but I couldn’t for the life of me remember when, or why.

I forced myself to stop looking for you and instead, looked at the mess I had become. With a sigh, I picked up the chunks that had fallen off and superglued, duck taped, stapled them back on as best I could. I saw that I had grown a whole foot in the rain and my heart had a distinct squeak. I had come through better. I reached up to the sky trying to grow even more when I felt a pang in my heart. Confused, I cracked open my chest to see what was wrong. I pulled out a microscope and saw nestled in my sparkling ventricle, a single grain of sand. It didn’t look like much, but I could feel it rubbing and scratching my tender new heart.

At first I was annoyed. I tried to get rid of it. I hawed and I clawed trying to rid myself of it. The more I fought the more I shrank until I was almost the same size as before.

I stopped.

I don’t know when I became such a super sleuth, but I realized that this grain of sand was what was left of the beautiful crystal heart you once shared with me. I realized, that my rain had devastated the landscape around me, and I could not even fathom what it had done to the fragile thing you gave me for safekeeping.

And that’s where I am now. Every time I move, every time I breathe there’s a little itch, a little irritation, but I stretch my hands up to the sky anyway. I will treasure that pinch as not only a memory of you, but as a reminder of what I am capable of. I can’t shrink anymore for fear of wasting away to nothing, so instead I grow.

Besides, I have heard it said that every pearl of wisdom begins as a grain of sand.

Body Language

These are the first two chapters of a YA novel I’ve been working on. It’s a work in progress so I always appreciate feedback.

Chapter 1A

I slide in and out of consciousness. I see family and friends staring at me with tears and frowns and worry etched on their faces. I see nurses plugging me with holes and letting strange liquids into my body. I see doctors reading charts and shaking their head. I see a tray with food on it and a skeletal arm push it away.

I hear nothing. Smell nothing. Feel nothing.

Taste

Nothing.

Suddenly I am dragged into wake-ness. The room is white, blinding.

I hear beeps and buzzes and the murmur of voices.

Antiseptic burns my nose.

The sheets are rough beneath me.

Iron and cotton fill my mouth.

I am in a hospital.

Chapter 1B

Jamie stares at me. “Have you lost weight?”

“Uh yeah, maybe a little I guess.”

She’s silent. “I mean it’s not on purpose! I’ve just been exercising a lot you know and I’m actually happy since prom is coming up and I want to fit in a cute dress and I guess ive been eating less but that’s only because I’m not as hungry because of the exercise…”

“Yeah that makes sense. I’m going on a cleanse before homecoming for sure. I saw this really cute dress…”

I tune the rest of what she says out. I can’t believe she thought I lost weight. I look at my reflection in the windows across from our lunch table and see my fat face. I look at my hands and see sausages growing out of mashed potato palms. But maybe I have lost a little. I feel a spark of joy. Maybe it’s finally working.

Jamie and I take our trays to the trash. She glances at my tray.

“Cafeteria food makes me nauseous,” I say to the unspoken question in her eyes.

“I wish I had that type of self-control…” she looks down at her clean plate.

Then we head off to our separate classes. In history I stare at Mrs. Smith’s potato head and think she should go on a diet. In art, Mr. Jankins and his doughnut belly need to get off the couch for sure. In gym I get a bit woozy and have to sit out, but I don’t really like gym anyway. At the end of the day my mom is waiting outside to drive me to dance class.

“How was school?”

“Fine.”

We drive the rest of the way in silence.

Lets Play a Game

Lets play hide and seek. See if you can find me.

Answer this riddle to see where I am:

All things I devour:
Bird, beast, tree, and flower.
Forward is the way I go,
And there is no way to make me slow.
Peasant nor king can escape my wrath
Mountains and oceans neither my path.

What am I?

Click here when you’ve got it!

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What Goes Up, Must Come Down

There she is, bro-

ken, lying at the bottom of the stairs.

What a mess. Crap…what the heck am I going to do?

Sighing, he walks down the stairs, carefully stepping to avoid the blood.

He stares at the mangled corpse running through his possible options, I could wait until

night and bury her maybe? Or throw her in the lake. I can’t throw the whole

body though…I need small manageable pieces. Where could I

cut her up? He decides that the kitchen would

be easiest, because there he

could clean up the

blood

easy-peasey. And that way he wouldn’t need to cross through any extra rooms. He drags her straight from the bottom of the stairs into the kitchen. He feels a surge of satisfaction messing it up. This had been her space, her pride and she kept it immaculate. He thought it fitting that he was ruining the spotless white floors with her blood. He grabs each of the many knives in their kitchen one by one, testing the weight. Thank god she was a professional chef. He settles for the butcher knife with its heftiness and perfectly sharp blade. Granted, all the knives were perfectly sharp.

“Thank you, darling. Your OCD has saved me quite a bit of time.”

The knife sparkles as he strikes her.

First the arms:

Wrist,

Elbow,

Shoulder,

Repeat.

Then the legs:

Ankle,

Just below the knee,

Right between the ball and socket of the hip,

Repeat.

Finally the head,

Right where the spine meets the base of the skull.

Perfect, she would have been proud.

He wraps up each piece in trash bags with one of the coffee mugs that she loved to weigh it down. They had tons of them and each one had a cute or funny little phrase or picture. He enjoys matching the pieces with the mugs. ‘Hang in there’ with the right arm; ‘fall seven times, stand up eight’ with the left leg; and so on. He puts her favorite god-awful flowery mug with her head. He then piles all the bags on her perfectly clean granite counter, and walks back to the base of the stairs.

There is a large red stain there, and a challenge. The blood has soaked into the carpet and it won’t come out completely no matter how many times it is washed, but then again someone would notice if it was gone. It was a point of pride for her that rug. Persian, cost a fortune and she pointed it out every time someone was over. What to do? If I bleach it, there’ll be a spot and that looks bad, but I can’t get rid of all the blood otherwise…hmm. He decides to clean the stairs while he’s thinking.

There isn’t

very much blood on the

stairs only on the one where she

gashed her head. Here there is a large,

red, glistening, puddle that has

started to drip down

to the stairs

below.

He goes over the area with a fine toothed comb. He makes sure there isn’t even the smallest speck of blood left. This monotonous task allows his brain to puzzle over the rug and figure out what to do.

A slow smile spreads across his face, he’s figured it out.

Clean the blood with bleach and then cover up the white spot by spilling the paint left over from the living room on it. He hated that shade of blue anyway, it was her pick, and it would clash wonderfully with the rug. He bleaches the rug and then take the leftover paint and gently tips it onto the spot. He tries to make it look like the paint was knocked over and then hastily tried to be cleaned up. When he is satisfied with his work he returns to the kitchen to finish the job.

He takes the packages on the counter and packs them into the trunk of his car. He drives to the lake slowly and without incident. Once there he makes sure no one is around and opens the trunk. He takes each bag and throws them as far as he can in the lake

one

by

one.

He hums the whole time.

Buy the mug int eh picture here!

Comic Book Idea Fleshed Out

The car crash that took my legs wasn’t really anyone’s fault. It was winter and the roads were slick. We hit a patch of black ice and swerved into the other lane. All I remember are bright lights and a screech.  Then I woke up in the hospital. I didn’t notice I couldn’t move my legs until the doctors asked me if I could. I was bruised and banged up but somehow it didn’t register that there was pain everywhere but my legs. Some people may have been in my position and been disheartened, and don’t get me wrong I totally was for a little bit, but I couldn’t mope. That just wasn’t me. When I realized that I hated the person I was turning into, I turned to the one thing that had always helped me get through hard times, engineering. I did research and tests and built computer models and physical models. And finally, I had a pair of hydraulic legs. I had to ask a friend of mine for help developing the neural interface, but the rest of the work was my own. And in the end, I could interact with the world in a way that someone with paralysis had never done before.

I knew I had to help others like me, so I started trying to find someone to produce my technology and share it with others who needed it. That’s when Ms. Forseon approached me. She was a striking lady, and I’d never met someone like her. She was smart, funny, charming, and just happened to run a multi-billion dollar tech company. She wanted to make my leg technology available to other paralysis victims, and maybe even develop other limbs and enhancement. She painted a beautiful picture of a world where no one had to feel left out or disheartened by paralysis. I was so naïve…

So, I handed over my designs. The first thing she did was patent all of them, and that’s when I started getting suspicious. Then, some villain who called herself Eon Force showed up wearing a modified version of my design! I went to the police, my parents, my teachers, but nobody believed me! They all said that I was too young to concern myself with such things, and that I should go play with my dolls or something. As more and more villains showed up wearing bits and pieces of my technology, I finally had to take matters into my own hands. I engineered a full suit based on my original legs, and set out to stop evil on my own.

Some concept art:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you want to make your own super hero, here are the creators I used: Eon Force/ Ms.Forseon and Cybergirl

Brainstorming Kid’s Book Ideas

Idea 1:

A young girl creates worlds with her mind, but eventually she gets picked on so much she grows out of it. She goes through life trying to fit in until she meets an extraordinary child who shows her the magic inside her again.

Idea 2:

A children’s story told by parents in the Warhammer 40K universe about the Emperor of Man.  The story is meant to teach kids about their ruler and indoctrinate them into the religion. The book tells of the savior of mankind and his wonderful deeds while glossing over the bad parts.

Idea 3:

The story of two changeling children in the Dresden Files universe. They realize together that they are different and special and become fast friends. However, as they grow they discover that one is Summer Fae and one is Winter Fae. They struggle against their ‘destinies’ and in the end discover that friendship can overcome many odds.

Idea 4:

I comic book about a young girl who loses the use of her legs as a child but learns about technology and engineering to create a new set of legs. She is pressured by a big corporation to sell her designs to them, but finds out that they are trying to create super soldiers with her proposed technology. She ends up having to don a mask in order to take down the corporation and save the world from their evil plan.

If any of you out there are artists and feel inspired contact me please. Or if you want to steal my ideas I guess that’s okay too. I don’t really care who writes them but I think we definitely need more nerdy children’s books.

Grow Up!

Growing up is hard. Everyone knows that. What everyone doesn’t know is about my growing up process. Well, I’m going to change that. I grew up normally as a youngest child. This means that I have been and still am to some extent a brat. However, I have gone through some things that made me grow up real fast, real quick. Luckily, every negative experience I had made me better, stronger, and happier in the long run; so, no need to bore you with them. Instead I’m going to show you how I’ve changed

Things I Don’t Like Then vs. Now:

Spiders are always the enemy.

First Facebook Profile Picture vs. Current:

Notice the progression from cheesy quotes to cheesy pictures of questionable makeup decisions to cheesy pictures of a professional adult with her nephew.

How I Spend my Money:

To be fair, most of my food/drink cost is still candy.

So there you have it, definitive proof that I’ve grown up. I mean, just look at all those adult things I buy and dislike.

If I Were in Charge of All the Advertising Directed at Children…

If somebody said to me, “Hey, Julija, how would you like to be in charge of all of the advertising directed at children?” I would be ecstatic. There is a lot of good advertising out there, but there’s also a lot of bad stuff, too. The biggest problem that I see, and that honestly makes no sense to me, is an extreme gendering of toy advertising directed at children. When I was a kid there was gendering, of course, but there was also a lot of middle ground. There were toys that were for both boys and girls and I liked that. I have thought a lot about this phenomenon and the only thing I can think of as the cause is this:  as the internet pushes more and more targeted marketing the toy/cereal/childhood industries are trying to do so as well. But, here’s the deal, kids are much more impressionable than adults. They don’t know what they like or dislike. So, targeted marketing for children has this strange side effect of actually creating the targeting it targets.

“Why is that such a big deal?” You’re probably asking. Well, think about the ads that have come out recently that your kid is probably watching, specifically toy ads. Do you really want you little girl to think that all she can play with are dolls and fairy princesses? Do you want your little boy to think that trucks and tools are the only things he should like? There have been quite a few backlashes to the female side of this, see goldieblox and this interview with Rachel Giordano. However, I have seen a startling lack of backlash in the boys department. Yes, products for girls tend to be sexist in an overt way, but products for boys are too. They may have much more variety in the types of toys, but they still send a message that is not entirely positive. I’m not saying that the focus should move towards backlash for young boys; I’m saying that the backlash should be for children in general.

So, I have been given control of all the advertising and what do I do? First, I don’t allow stores to separate toys by gender. Put all the Disney toys together, I say! Second, I would start a new trend in commercials where no matter if the toy is a ‘boy toy’ or a ‘girl toy’, it shows both boys and girls playing with it and enjoying it. Girls can enjoy laser shooting, color changing, bad guy fighting toys as much as boys; and boys can like sparkly, outfit changing, soft and cuddly toys as much as girls. Lastly, I would encourage toy companies to educate parents and their children about advertising. “Raise your kids as cynics,” says this New York Times article. Parents are starting to respond to transparency in companies, and if we can change the way parents think about their kids/gender maybe we can raise an awesome new generation!

The Day My Whole Life Changed Part 5

Part 1, 2, 3, 4

Chapter 2

‘The detainee has escaped’

‘Which one?’ I glance at my desk and see the file pop up. This insurgent is one of our more mysterious ones.

‘Crap.’

I quickly glance at the Sigma. I know the AIG doesn’t approve of such foul language, but sometimes it’s necessary. And I have to hand it to the instigators; they have a knack for coming up with curse words.

‘Is this photo from the most recent incarceration?’

‘Affirmative.’

That made 7 photos in all. 7 different faces all associated with this one name, George. Was this most recent photo the true face? There is no way to be sure. A true face might not even exist. I can feel the nearly daily headache starting. I swipe through the file to see what information we have, mostly just victims, like all the others.

I turn to the Sigma, ‘how?’

Instantly the video feed flashes on my desk. I see the instigator creep out of the cell, and somehow all the way to the exit shaft that was used last time. Then the view switches to an aerial view of the syntho-grid. The movement in the tall grasses shows someone running north away from the facility.

‘And you swept the area and found nothing?’

‘Affirmative’

I clear the image from my desk and sigh. I glance at the Sigma.

‘Report.’

‘The instigator identified as GEORGE was captured and detained at our facility in poor condition. The server deduced that the probability of GEORGE dying was dangerously high. So, GEORGE was mildly healed until the probability of death fell to a normal level. Then we transferred GEORGE to another room that was illusioned to look identical to the first. This room had fewer security measures, and thus less interference in the Sigma’s reading. The Sigma went in, and stayed there for an hour. It is in that time that the instigator escaped.’

‘How?’

‘It would seem that there was a glitch in the server. It received an all is as it should be pingback for the full hour. By the time the system rebooted and noticed the error the instigator was gone.’

‘What is the probability of such an error occurring?’

‘1 in 13,422.’

‘So not impossible. This George obviously has tactical skills. What happened next?’

“The instigator GEORGE made it to the outside access shaft and climbed through. Then upon reaching the syntho-grid, there was another glitch that allowed a clear path to freedom and GEORGE took it.’

‘And what is the probability of both of those glitches happening to aid in George’s escape?’

The sigma takes a second to calculate. It must be a very small probability.

‘1 in 1,000,772,585,200,006.’

‘So either our instigator is supremely lucky, or….’

I trail off. What else could it possibly be? To my knowledge there is no technology that could allow a human to pull of these types of feats. I head throbs as I pull up a blank document on my desk and start writing down my thoughts.

‘Thank you, Sigma. That will be all for today. Please go and report to your next designated authority.’

How are they doing this? This isn’t the first insurgent we’ve had with this kind of ‘luck’, but I have never seen anything on this scale. What is going on?!