Happy Christmas!

Here's wishing all of you a very happy Christmas, whether you celebrate or not! May your day be full of joy and cheer as we celebrate the gift of love!

In other news, I will be posting on here irregularly for the next month in the interest of vacation time before my very busy January begins. Regular daily (weekdays) posts will resume Monday, 24 January, at which time I will likely be hurriedly trying to finish my novel for January Novel Writing Month. By February, you should hopefully have a sane Elizabeth back though.

Happy holidays! :)

Christmas Letter 2010: Anxiety, Prayer, and Faith

Each year, a friend of mine writes a Christmas letter reflecting on the past and what's to come. I liked the idea, so here's my first annual Christmas letter:

The Anxiety of Christmas Past


A year ago, where was I? I feel this has been a recurring theme in my life for many months, always comparing and contrasting where I was and who I was a year prior.

A lot has stayed the same. I live in the same comfortable house in Southern California that I've lived in since I was five with my massive bear of a dog and crazy nut-job of a family. I still write and direct plays at the local high school. I still put my shoes on the wrong feet sometimes. I still wind dry my hair, though now I do it by rolling down the windows of my car instead of just biking fast. I still chew on my lips when I'm anxious. In fact, I'm biting them right now just as my anxieties still bite at me.

I've learned a lot in the past year though. Leading students is an incredible challenge, but it is also incredibly rewarding. The director I was a year ago is not the director I am today, and the director I am today is not the director I will be tomorrow. My students force me to continue to learn and grow every single day.

A Prayer for Christmas Present


At this very moment in my life, I am very much in the in between. I have been unsure of what on earth I'm going to do with my life for a very long time. I've been leaping from idea to idea, finding all sorts of things I enjoy but never quite finding the one thing which excites every inch of me. I'd nearly resigned to the nonexistence of that "one thing," until very recently when the idea of working in the church crept into my mind. I don't know right now if this is the "one thing"— it feels like is just might be— but I think I'm okay with not knowing just yet. Living in the present has been a challenge for me because I always seem to be either stuck dwelling on the past or lost in dreams of the future, so I'm making an effort to just let whatever is meant to happen happen. The church feels more right every day, but if the church has taught me anything these past few months, it is to have faith and let go of anxiety, whether over the past or the future.

"What has been done has been done; what has not been done has not been done. Let it be." — an excerpt from an evening prayer in the New Zealand Book of Prayer.

Faith in Christmas Future


As I reflect on the past, I must also look to the future: where I want to be and who I want to be. It seems I have had trouble figuring this out for a long time, though I have always put on a sure face. A sure face so convincing (to myself at least), that I forgot that I had no idea where I was going or who I wanted to be. This year, I don't want to live in fear of the unknown. This year, I'd like to put on an unsure face for a change and smile. I have questions, countless questions!, but the anxiety and the restlessness and the fear are unnecessary. I want to have faith this year.

Who am I?
Why am I?
Am I living the life I'm meant to lead?
Should I go?
Should I stay?
Which way do I turn?
Who do I trust?
Should I leap?
Should I wait?
If I take risks, will I be rewarded?
Or will I end up hurt?
If I jump, will I fly?
Or will I fall?

How am I supposed to answer all of these questions?

This year, I plan to have faith.

P. S. My EP (The Winter EP by Elizabeth Thraen) was just released yesterday. Let me know if you'd like one! They're 100% free!

Liar, Liar

I am a liar. Lies, lies, lies. Is that all I am capable of? Is that all I'll ever be? Just a liar?

I was raised to please and serve others. My interests were always secondary to all others'. I was also raised with integrity: I had to be honest. That's not to say I was selfless, honest, and totally perfect. Not in the least.

I began repressing my spirituality in middle school for various reasons. Being spiritual is definitely not "cool" in middle school. It's almost like believing in Santa, really. And religion is even more uncool amongst the LGBT community, young and old. Worse though was the Christian community I saw which was so deeply hateful with their "God hates _____" signs and warnings of eternal damnation. Should I deny my gender and sexuality in order to fit in with intolerant pricks (as I would have described them then), or come to grips with reality and let go of my childish belief in some mythical "God" to be with the smarter, more welcoming, better people of the LGBT community? It was an obvious choice.

I don't know when I decided I wasn't a "huggy person." It's a ridiculous thing to repress, really. But I was alone. I was incredibly lonely as a child. My best friend was a yellow Labrador retriever. I'm positive that much of my loneliness growing up was due to never feeling as if I had a coherent family unit. I know my parents all did the best they could to give me a good childhood, but I was alone. I hid under tables often. My "hug repression" started incredibly early in my life to the point that I cannot remember ever "being a huggy person." The only way I could cope with being alone was to convince myself that is what I wanted anyway.

Being aware of these repressions does not magically fix the problem. I've come a long way in recent months as far as accepting myself as a religious and spiritual person, but I can see that I still have far to go. I feel very afraid to admit to my "intellectual" friends that I have faith, and I am also quite afraid to admit to other Christians that I'm "Christian." Even more so though, I am incredibly afraid to admit to anyone that I'm even considering becoming a priest. I don't feel "Christian enough," and I'm also afraid of losing the respect of my non-Christian friends.

As far as hugs go, hugs are only the start. It's scary to me still to hug. Not terrifying, but when I think about the fact that I'd like to hug someone or be hugged, I get panicky. Hugs aren't allowed in my screwed up head. Hugs will lead to pain, loneliness, and awkwardness. I give awkward hugs. I know that's not true and any awkwardness in my hugs is a result of my self-fulfilling prophecy, but the little voice in the back of my head is still there. I'm getting over it. There are people I do feel perfectly comfortable hugging. More and more, in fact. 

But then comes the horror of dating. This has very recently started to become a question again. I feel damaged. Broken. The idea of subjecting anyone I care about to my damage makes me feel sick. Why should any one want to date me? Me who is nervous about hugs, let alone any kind of physical affection beyond that. Kissing? Shoot me now. I'm not sure whether I really believe it's disgusting or if I've so deeply repressed any desire to kiss that I believe the lie. I'm starting to think it's more repression, but that doesn't fix the problem. I was once a seven-year-old threatening a classmate with trying to make out; I have got to be repressing.

I don't really have a conclusion for this. I'm not at the end yet. I'm only on my way. One day, I'll laugh at how uncomfortable and nervous and awkward I was as a teenager, even in my 20s (which suddenly don't seem very far at all!), and know that I've come a long way. That's my goal; that's my conclusion.

My Soul Is Singing

It's weird coming back to blogging after a week off. It was a weird week, really. There's no way I could have blogged. In fact, I am quite glad I didn't, even if it now feels incredibly weird to be blogging now. I had an utterly transforming week to week-and-a-half. Rather than write something new for this post, I decided I'd share something I wrote in church on Sunday (what a day!). It's stream of consciousness, and some of it is in reference to other entries in my journal or things I've said/written in the past, but here it is:

Sunday. It is Sunday. Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. I cried. Cried like I've never cried before. [...] My soul rejoiced. My soul sang. My soul is singing. I cried and cried and cried. The world was beautiful, is beautiful. I feel so inspired. Jury duty? Why should I be upset? I am overjoyed. Why should I run from hope any longer? For this is my fear. I fear that there is much to hope for, much to be done. But why fear? There is hope. Oh, God, there is hope. My soul sings. Tears cascade down my face like hope bursting from me. I feel I may explode with joy. Can my body contain all of this goodness? Can this be true? My fears are calmed. My restless soul given peace. There is love. Oh, God, there is love. It bursts from my every pore. My head is aching from the pressure of all the good inside me, all the light, all the God. I cannot hold it all in. I can save the world. I can heal the world. I can. I can. I am capable of good; I am capable of great. This consumes me. The walls of fear and doubt and fallen. They have been torn down with mighty earthquakes and floods. Here is God's wrath upon the darkness and sin of the world. Fear is sin, the darkness within us. This is my Revelations, and now here is heaven on earth. My soul is freed. My soul soars; my soul sings. It is Sunday. Sunday. Oh, how it is Sunday. I am healed. Light and love and joy and peace and hope and truth have been restored. How can I express this? I must express this. I must share this. I must heal the world. I can heal the world. This is what I have been so hungry for; this is faith. I have faith. How is this miracle real? I do dare defy the universe. It begs to be left to die, to suffer, but I will heal it.

And to finish us off, here's another question from that 5000 question survey I mentioned earlier:

Where do you want to be in 5 years? A foreign country.

Finals

I forgot to mention yesterday that I'm not going to be posting anything up here until I'm done with all the work I have to get done this week for school. School > Blog. See you Friday or Monday!

A Place of Peace

T-minus only a few more hours until my first final. Guess what I did ALL weekend? Yeah, that's right, I studied. It was weird. I've never studied in my life, really. I just don't know how to study. But this weekend was different.

I wasn't home this weekend. I was house (and cat) sitting, so I more or less had the house entirely to myself. (There were electricians installing lights part of the time, but we stayed out of each other's way.) It was weird. Having my own house to myself is nice, but not the same. There was something about it being someone else's home, or, more importantly, not my parents' home, that made it feel . . . free-er? I'm not really sure what word I'm looking for. It was a peaceful freedom, and I started to think about what it'd be like to one day have my own home.

My house is going to have amazing lighting, a beautiful garden, and a kitchen in which you can really get dirty. Open rooms with fewer doors. Big windows. A study full of books and all kinds of arts materials. Maybe I'll get a "sound proof" room to use as a studio. The house won't be huge, but it will be nice.

Dreaming was my only real distraction there. It was quiet (minus electricians) and peaceful, and so I got huge amounts of studying done. I can't help but wonder what my life would be like if I'd ever had a place before this weekend where studying came so easy. Would I have been a straight-A student? Would I have gone to a private high school, gotten into a 4-year with a scholarship, and be well on my way to living the life originally expected of me? Is my definition of myself as someone who cannot function well in our society's education system based on the results of my environment rather than my inherent nature?

That is a scary thought. I'm not sure what to do with it. I never had a place where I felt comfortable enough to study and focus as a child, and by the time I was ten, I was already clearly not fitting in well with the education system. I've always considered this part of my inherent nature, part of how my mind functions, but if it's not, my whole idea of who I am is just blown. I don't know if it's who I am anymore. I don't know who I am.

But it's not a particularly distressing thought. In fact, I'm excited by the idea. It opens up new possibilities. Perhaps all I need to do to get through college, which had seemed so impossible just days ago, is find a peaceful place where I can study and focus. Maybe that's all I've ever needed for years. It's a liberating thought to see that college is still a possibility in my life. Every career which asks for a diploma isn't close for me. Doors have been opened.

Filler Post

I'm not sure what the lesson this week was; I'm taking the weekend to think more about it. And study for my Spanish final, yikes! (I am so not prepared. I'm going to learn Spanish over the weekend. A whole semester's worth because I forgot it all!) 

Hasta el lunes! (See you Monday!)

For Impossible's Sake

Question number five of the survey mentioned in Tuesday's post is, "What is your biggest goal for this year?" This one I'm going to have to answer in two parts: what my biggest goals for 2010 were, and what my biggest goals for 2011 are. Let's get started:

1 January 2010. A stressed-out high school senior anxiously awaits winter break to end in only a matter of days. Why? Because the biggest moment of her life is fast approaching: the opening of her very first play, written by, directed by, produced by, and starring. No one knows their lines. No one knows their blocking. No one knows a thing about acting or theatre in the least. The cast knows the play is going to suck. Cast members voice their dismal predictions daily, in fact.

6 January 2010. The final rehearsal. A run-through, and it is clear that there is no play. Morale is farther down than rock bottom. Their director cracks. No one is allowed to leave the theatre until they get their act together and have a decent run-through. Even if they're there all night. No one leaves. Another run-through. Under pressure, the cast finally comes together after months of disunity. There might be a play.

9 January 2010. The play closes. It was a success. No one can fathom how on earth everything worked out. But it did.

That was how 2010 began for me. All I wanted was to magically make it past the 9th. And when I did, I had no idea what to do next. I had done more than I could possibly dream of, and I went through many months just wishing I could find something bigger, something better to do. I did the impossible, and so the possible seemed boring. My biggest goal for 2010 was just to find something to dream of.

So as we go into 2011, I think I've found some new impossible things to do. My biggest goal for this year though is to stop trying so hard to do the impossible, just for the sake of proving I did something impossible. I'd like a chance to actually enjoy what I'm doing, and not just race wildly to find the next thing to do. I want to learn how to live in today, not just tomorrow.

Strip Me

I just fell in love with Natasha Bedingfield. There I was, wandering the great expanse of YouTube, when what should I find but a message from Natasha Bedingfield about her new album! I was sold the moment she started talking about stripping down and sharing and all those sorts of wonderful things. Well, almost. I liked her music before, but it had gotten annoying and over-played. I was sold on the hope that she would sound new with this album. I clicked the first track I didn't recognise as an old song:



And I was sold. As I write this post, I'm listening to the rest of the album and hoping someone will ask me what I want for Christmas so I can tell them something other than socks for once. ("Hey, Elizabeth, what do you want for Christmas?" "Socks." "No, seriously." "I seriously want socks." Christmas comes. No socks. Fail.) The album, which is on its penultimate track right now, is incredible. I forgot that Natasha Bedingfield had so much piano in her music, actually. (I have a not-so-secret attraction to music with piano.) I used to play "Wild Horses" all the time, and I completely forgot that it was her.

I suppose I didn't fall in love with Natasha Bedingfield today. I just remembered why I had been so totally in love with her before. It's different now though. Long ago, I wasn't a musician. Inside me, I was, but I had long before shut that off. But today, I can listen to her music and realise that, hey, I want to write such beautiful, impassioned music. I want to be like her.

I wish I could write an amazing review of Strip Me, analysing every track in eloquent detail, but the truth is that I'm no music critic. This album is clearly an exposure of the soul, a sort of stripping of the facades that fill plenty of mainstream music, and it is a personal experience. That's what music is, what real music is: a personal journey the artist shares with listeners. What makes an album good, in my opinion, is honesty and sincerity, and this album lacks none. I love this album because it speaks to me. Maybe it'll speak to you too.

5000 Questions

My desk is "under construction." The computer is unplugged and not in use, and I have been moved to an old laptop. I decided to hunt around the computer a bit to see what sort of stuff was on here. There were all sorts of cool things, including my 2008 NaNo Novel ("Why had tonight seemed like it had come straight out of a NaNo dare?") and a few scripts ("You better watch it, or I'll misinterpret your implications."). I also glanced through my old bookmarks and found something called The 5,000 Question Survey. Apparently, I had planned to complete the survey, but never got around to it. So I have decided that I'm going to slowly answer all of the questions.

The first question is "Who are you?" Isn't this just the vaguest question you've ever heard? Any question on a personal survey is asking you who you are. There's so much that could be said here, but most people either just put their name or something incredibly simplistic. I could give you my name, age, and gender, and you wouldn't actually have learned anything about who I am. On the other hand, I could write an entire novel (literally!) in response to this question, and you still might not know me. The thing is, our identities are so incredibly multi-dimensional, and each of us is so incredibly different (though also all incredibly alike), that no amount of writing is going to answer this question. So rather than be simplistic and rather than write a novel's worth of meaningless words, I'll leave this one unanswered. If you want to know who I am, pay attention.

Next, it asks, "What are the 3 most important things everyone should know about you?" Another tough question. I could be simplistic and suggest one-dimensional personality traits, such as stubbornness, or I could get complicated and explain three crucial aspects of who I am. But how can I choose what about me defines me most? Perhaps what most defines me is my unwillingness to be defined. Perhaps the first thing anyone should know about me is my strong belief in multi-dimensionalism and the world's inability to be defined. This very belief is what underlies most, if not all, of my other beliefs.

The second most important thing everyone should perhaps know about me is that I love cold weather. It's annoying her in Southern California where we don't have insulation and have no idea how to turn on our heaters, but there's just something about bundling up in all those layers and drinking hot tea, cider, or cocoa just to stay warm that feels a bit magical. And as much as I dislike how lazy the cold makes us all, it's nice to let the weather be an excuse to stop for a minute. But I still love our California sun.

The third thing, and perhaps this should have been first, is just one word: love. I'm not going to explain this one. All I can say is that: love.

"When you aren't filling out 5,000 question surveys like this one what are you doing?" Finally, a question that is at least vaguely less vague. Then again, it basically just asked what I do with my time. All the time. Simply put though, I spend my time living, thinking, and creating.

And the last question for today is: "List your classes in school from the ones you like the most to the ones you like the least (or if you are out of school, think of the classes you did like and didn't like at the time)." Hey, I bet you can't guess what my favourite core subject ins school was! Want to give it a shot? I know you do. C'mon, just guess! I think my favourite class ever though was my entire fifth grade year. Seriously an awesome year.

Delayed Friday

This is the post that would have been up last Friday, but got delayed by my EP/music video announcement:

Yet another week over. Yet another week closer to Christmas. Three weeks left! Three weeks of waiting in anticipation. Three weeks of trying to keep my big mouth shut. Three weeks still that I might spoil the surprise. But enough about Christmas— today is Friday!

Earlier this week, I spent my night discussing the "Clobber Passages," verses in Scripture that are used to "prove" that homosexuality is a sin. In all honesty, I had no interest in going to the discussion. I've had my fair share of debates about whether God thinks homosexuality is okay, and I'm over it. I'm over debates. You have to choose your battles, and I'm just not into battling Christians over a couple lines in the Bible. So much so that I was actually pretty annoyed that we were going to spend an entire evening trying to "arm" ourselves to "fight bigotry." To me, it felt a bit like heterophobia.

Maybe it's just me, but I've never felt particularly comfortable in homogeneous groups. It freaks me out. Whether I "fit in" with the group or not, it bugs me. When everyone is of the same race or sex or religious belief or profession or anything else you could think of, I start feeling like anyone who doesn't have that common factor wouldn't be accepted. When I found out that someone who identified as straight wouldn't be allowed in the group about affirming and integrating spirituality and sexuality, my red alert went off. The reasoning is that we wouldn't want someone who was just an observer, due to how personal a lot of the things people have shared are, and I totally get that, but it bugs me.

We didn't discuss the Clobber Passages to fight anyone though, it turned out. Despite my anxiety, the discussion made me realise that I had turned myself from caring about the Bible at all after hearing over and over about how the Bible condemned homosexuality. The God I knew would never do that, so the Bible wasn't the "Word of God" in my mind. It was just a bunch of stories, maybe influenced by God, but screwed up by humans. After discussing how each of the Clobber Passages had been twisted to fit a homophobic belief system and how, taken in context and translated better, they were condemnations of things like rape, promiscuity, and inhospitality, not homosexuality, I felt liberated.

The point of the group is to make peace with our sexuality and our spirituality, and that happened for me suddenly. I hadn't even realised how much in turmoil I was over a couple sentences in that massive book, and I definitely had no idea how badly I wanted to believe in the Bible like I had as a kid, but our discussion finally freed me of that conundrum which had been plaguing me for so many years without my even knowing it. So it turned out that it wasn't heterophobia in the least. It was about solving that inner turmoil which I'm sure most, if not all, members of the group faced on some level. It was about showing that you can take the Bible and God seriously and still be an open, tolerant human being.

It still bugs me that someone identifying as straight wouldn't be allowed in the group though. It feels so black and white. Who are we to say whether straight people struggle with making peace between their spiritual beliefs and their beliefs about sexuality? The debate about homosexuality is all around us and in everyone's lives nowadays. It seems almost idiotic that we wouldn't allow straight people into a group which is about, in a lot of ways, accepting homosexuality as okay and natural and totally fine in the eyes of God. We all could benefit from some open discussion.

EP and Music Video Announcement

Did I mention that I just recorded an EP? Yeah, I did. Four winter-y songs are headed your way quite soon! We just finished mastering the tracks, and, as I write this, I am listening to my own voice come out of my big, noise-cancelling headphones. It's a really weird feeling. But there's still something really big that needs to be finished before the official release: the music video. And that is where YOU come in. I'm going to need all the holiday spirit I can get to fill the video, so:

First off, I'm inviting everyone I know (or don't know) to send in their own video clips of holiday (Not just Christmas!) cheer, especially fun in the snow like snow angels, snowmen, snowballs and snowfights, sledding, and whatever else you can think of. Throw in your pets. All sorts of festive holiday decorations are super cool, especially lights, so send in footage of that too! Get creative! If you give me your email address (you can email me at ethraen@gmail.com), I'll even send you a copy of the song so you can film to the song if you want to dance, lipsync, or act like you're playing one of the instruments in the song.

And to my Los Angeles readers, you can film WITH me. Super exciting, right? If any of you happen to have a video camera of good quality, that would be especially helpful. For obvious safety reasons, I'm not going to post where or when the filming is going to take place on here, so you need to get on my mailing list (just email me) to get the info. And you, of course, are more than welcome to film on your own too! I'm going to need a lot of footage, and the more people in the video the better.

I'm really excited about this music video. It's a chance to bring everyone together in the holiday spirit, and I really hope it happens. At the very least, I have an EP I am definitely proud of that I will soon get to share with all of you!

(Friday's post has been moved to Monday!)

A Dream within a Dream

Edgar Allan Poe is, without a doubt, my favourite poet. The poor man suffered so very much in his life and never lived to see his beautiful words appreciated, but he is one of the most well-known and well-respected poets today. It's a pity he had to spend his life in pain in order to create all of the beauty that he did.

Obviously, I was thinking about Poe before writing this. Actually, I was thinking about songwriting and poetry and all sorts of things which led me to trying to find a good reading of a few of Poe's poems. There are a lot of beautiful poems to choose from, but the video below was incredible. I've watched it over and over and over again.



The music and reading were already haunting enough, but the video is just completely captures the irony and juxtaposition of the calm tone of the poem with the blatant insanity of the loss of a sense of reality. It's dizzying and sickening; I want to throw up.

There's something incredible and beautiful about how horrific and depressing Poe's poetry and stories are. This video just cut straight through me and opened me up. From the words "end of poem" (which I originally hated and now am not so sure about) on, it's just a spiral of ever-increasing insanity. I'm not sure I can actually bear watching it. It's like Requiem for a Dream or even Lost & Delirious, both tied for the title of Most Depressing Movie Ever. If you haven't seen them, I won't advise you to watch them. They're beautiful, but both always put me into a depressed stupor for days.

I think I'm going to be in a bit of a depressed stupor now after watching that video over and over. It's addictive.

TGIO: Thank "Gosh" It's Over

I did it. I completed National Novel Writing Month. Today is the first day of December, and I am so done. Although not really. December is the month of revision and also the month of preparation for JanNoWriMo! It's my favourite way to kick off the new calendar year because I refuse to write anything serious during the month of January. It's a ridiculous journey of sarcasm, oddity, and sheer insanity, and I always have way too much fun doing it.

But before I can get to the hilarity of January, I have a book to revise! It's incredibly exciting. Last year's novel was so atrocious that I only finished because I already knew it was so terrible that more words couldn't possibly harm it; it was easier to write knowing that no one would ever see the terrible thing but me. And so, when 1 December came, I closed the document and filed it away, never to be read again. Until this past month.

It just so turns out that the book isn't quite as terrible as I thought. I mean, it's horrid, but it's not unsalvageable. I don't really have a whole lot of interest in salvaging it, but if I wanted to, I could. The story just isn't "my thing" anymore. It was a horror/drama/romance/thriller/comedy/absolutely uncomfortable sort of story. It feels gross. There are little shining moments of good, but it's just horribly dark, really. Violence, hate, crime, etc. There's a psychopathic abusive boyfriend who turns out to be even more horrid than the "good guys" thought. And the "good guys" aren't exactly the most wonderful people either. It's just all around a rather unsettling book. 

But I'm not ashamed to have written an unsettling book. Writing is therapy. I was unsettled a year ago, and writing that book helped me come to terms with and understand my emotions at the time, just as Call Me Lux has definitely been a part of my journey of understanding myself and my own views this past month. It's a happier story, but it's not all rainbows and butterflies. And that's okay too. 

I'm getting a little tired of introspection though. By the time the first of January rolls around, I will be so completely done with introspection from revision, that I'll just have to spend the month of January writing goofy fun. It's my reward for working hard at my craft (of writing). 

Is it January yet?

In the Dimensions of Masculinity and Femininity

I alluded to this in my Thanksgiving post, but I think it's time I talked about what's so apparently different in my way of viewing the world and more specifically myself that makes me perhaps almost unhealthily comfortable in my "queer" identity.

We're all queer. Maybe you disagree, but I'm okay with that. I get it. You've always identified with your own gender entirely and not the opposite, and you're definitely straight. Never any question in your mind about your own gender or sexuality because you followed the rules. Except I still say you're queer. I won't say you're in denial, confused, or lying to yourself, but I will say you're queer. It's just what I believe.

Somehow, in the midst of a rather chaotic childhood full of divorce, never-ending fights, and an endless onslaught of conflicting opinions, my young mind had an idea so powerful that it completely silenced the drama of the outside world. I remember being consumed at various points of my life by the idea. It wasn't always clear at the time what was going on, but looking back, I can see all the various times in my life when the idea drove me to insanity. I didn't know what it was then, but I do now.

As a child, I was partial to legos and cars instead of barbies and whatever else little girls are supposed to play with. A normal child would have been told no and likely forced to act more girly. But, spoiled though I was, my femininity was the least of anyone's worries. I liked my legos and cars, and neither of my parents could see the harm these obviously male toys would have on my development; keeping me happy and content was much more important.

No one ever told me I shouldn't like cars and legos. No one ever told me what to like at all, really. I picked out purple for a favourite colour, liked my hair in pigtails, and loved dressing up, like any good little girl would, all on my own, and I just as happily built, destroyed, and re-built whatever I pleased with the wonders of legos, like any normal little boy might. (I was never one for those silly sets though; I liked to make up my own stuff much more.)

So when I was told I was a girl and no one told me I was "doing it wrong," I was completely satisfied with that. Little confusion came when I was told that roughly half of the people I knew were also girls, despite some of them being nothing like me, and the other half were not girls but boys, despite some of them being very much like me. Male and female were simply a definition of the physical form of a person, and had nothing to do with who someone was. That idea was clear in my young mind right from the start. I had no reservations about mixing femininity and masculinity. To me, it was normal.

Not everyone around me thought this way, and I did definitely get some ideas of gender inequality and gender gap and all sorts of gender differences put in my brain, but those ideas never stuck the way the idea of "fluid gender" stuck right from the very start. By the time those ideas starting getting thrown at me, it was already too late, and I, being the independent thinker that I was, never accepted them at all. I was "too smart" for that.

My depression started when I was eleven. I can't say what exactly started the depression; it was just the sum of everything around me. But I knew by the time I was eleven-years-old that I didn't think the way everyone else did. I was weird. And I desperately longed for a world in which I belonged, a world in which everyone saw gender and sexuality the way I did. I knew then, though I'd yet to even know that homosexuality even existed, that I was queer. I knew that my ideas of spending the rest of my life with someone else weren't always clearly a man. I didn't care about the gender of the person with whom I was going to spend my life. It didn't make any sense to me that who someone was physically should have any bearing on whether I'd spend my life with them or not. I wanted to marry someone for their soul, not their body. Isn't that what a soulmate is anyway?

I came out as gay when I was thirteen, the moment I knew what the word for me was. It turned out to be the wrong word though, because gay meant I suddenly couldn't like the opposite sex. In my small Christian school environment, all it did was prove I was weird.

I'll spare you the downward spiral. It happened. There was a rock bottom. I hit it. Hard. I wallowed in misery for awhile. I spent a long time wishing desperately for that perfect world. I wondered why I was so different, so abnormal, so broken. These are the stories you hear so often. I could have been another dead teen on the news. But through it all, there was always that idea. It was more than an idea, really. It was truth. A truth which I believed so firmly in that I was ready to die, miserable, to stand behind, rather than try to be "straight." I never tried to deny that I identified with boys, that some days I wanted to be a boy (but never forever; I only greedily wanted to get to switch between male and female as I pleased), that I was so much a boy that sometimes I even had crushes on girls, all while simultaneously identifying with girls and enjoying being a girl and doing the oh-so-girly thing of liking boys sometimes too. I knew, for me, it wasn't an either/or option.

But light came at last when I realised that it wasn't an either/or option for anyone. Slowly, I came to know other people who, like me, didn't always fit the expectations of their gender, a beautiful mix of masculinity and femininity, and they were perfectly normal. Other people were pretty much okay with them, they were okay with them, I was okay with them! And that idea that has been stuck in me my whole life became clear again. Like I had just forgotten about it.

Somewhere between rock bottom and today, I found the word "queer." The moment I found "queer," everything made sense again. I made sense again. What I had known as a child, that my spirit and therefore my gender and sexuality were independent of my physical body and that was totally normal, came back stronger than ever, and the meaning of the words "totally normal" finally sunk back in: everyone is queer.

I know not everyone will agree with me, and that's really okay. But I know, deep in my heart, that what I perceive gender and sexuality to be is something multi dimensional and fluid, never either/or. It'll never be explained in human words. "Queer" is my way of saying I have no words to describe where I (or anyone else, for that matter) may fall in the dimensions of masculinity and femininity as they apply to my identity and my sexuality. It's beyond us to explain.

Destination: Peace

Advent has begun. (Don't worry; I have no idea what Advent really is about either, other than chocolate shaped like Santa, wreathes, and reindeer.) Yesterday marked the first day of the new year in the church, and as the first candle of Advent was lit, my family (although a bit coincidentally) unpacked the first of our Christmas decorations to begin our own new year. Out came the garlands and the wreathes, the stockings and the nativity figurines. The lights are my favourite.

It's a new year in the church now. We take out all the decorations we put up last year and start plugging in strands of lights to see if they still work. We find broken strands, one bad bulb making the entire string of lights useless, and we toss it into the donation pile. A plastic garland, just long enough to hang across the double doors to the dining room, has a broken ring, and it too is tossed to the pile of old decorations we'll no longer use.

This is my first real Advent. I can't tell you about the traditions of Advent or the church; it's a whole new year for me now too. But I think this is what Advent, at least for me this year, is about. Taking out the old and finding out what still works and what doesn't. Plugging last year's stuff in and seeing if it still works. It's a process of learning what's helping you out and what's not. What needs to go and what needs to stay.

I'm really excited about Advent and about this new year. I feel a little bit like I've just started a completely new life, like I'm in control. It's exhilarating.

But it's also a bit frightening. Like my priest advised in yesterday morning's sermon, I need to keep my metaphorical GPS charged and programmed (today's version of keeping your lamp trimmed and burning!), so when I make a wrong turn or don't turn when I should have turned, it can calmly say, "Recalculating," and show me the route to my destination of peace.

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Even if you didn't celebrate it. I'm excited to spend my coming weekend recording music! I'll tell you all about it Monday or Tuesday! Until then, please enjoy your weekend, whether it's a holiday for you or not.

A Queer Thanksgiving

I am thankful for my freedom. While I enjoy very many freedoms, there is one particular freedom that I have which I did not even know I had up until this week. It is a freedom I cannot define in one word, but it is a very simple freedom. It is a freedom that many others lack, and a freedom so ingrained within me that I was not even aware that it was a freedom until, at last, I realised that I lack certain chains which hold so many other down.

The thing about freedom is that it's not something you can put in box, wrap it up, and give it to someone else. And it's not contagious either. If I sneeze on you, you won't catch my freedom. You cannot pass on freedom. Having been raised "American", I have grown up with never-ending tales of people who died for my freedom. It's a powerful idea, really, that someone could sacrifice themselves for strangers who had not yet even been born. It's beautiful. But tragic. While I am thankful for my unique freedom, I am also burdened by the reality that sharing this freedom will prove to be difficult, and I can only hope that future generations will at last experience it someday.

The other day, someone recounted for me their own story of struggles with gender identity, and the more I thought about their struggles, the more I could see that those struggles should have been my own struggles as well. But they're not.

I won't pretend to know the pain of feeling trapped within one's own body, as if your soul and your body were not meant to be together. Like God gave you the wrong body. Body image is huge in the lives of many, if not all, people, and everyone has some kind of struggle with making who they are physically and who they are mentally, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually match up with that. But gender identity issues are not something with which I can truly emphasize; I can only try to sympathize.

Reflection on my life and my own "gender identity", however, has led me to realise that I only lucked out, that I should know exactly what it feels like to be transgendered. In fact, by definition, I am transgendered. I never knew what the word actually even meant until I looked it up while writing this. I mean, sure, I got the whole "man in a woman's body" or "woman in a man's body" thing, but I've never considered myself to be utterly unfemale and utterly male, so it never applied.

I should be able to emphasize though. It has just hit me with stunning clarity that I, by luck or miracle, escaped ever believing that my gender identity was "unnatural". I've been pretty happy with how I was made, relatively speaking. I've had plenty of dislike for my weight, my skin, my hair, my eyes, my everything throughout the years, but never have I felt like my discomfort was unusual or different from those around me. I feel quite comfortable, having never been taught to feel very uncomfortable about it in my youth, in identifying myself as "queer." (I gave up on words like, "gay", "lesbian", "bi", "pansexual", "asexual", "tomboy", "butch", "dyke", etc. long ago, upon realising that I couldn't and wouldn't define myself with only one word.)

I find it just as hard to define my "racial" identity or religious identity as it is to define my gender identity or sexual identity, and explaining any of those is endlessly easier than trying to put to words my artistic pursuits which stem from my deepest understandings of self. I'm much more afraid that I'll receive judgement for wanting to be a writer or musician or actor or dancer or artist of any kind than I am for not conforming to society's ideas of whether I should like the colour pink or not or who I should be able to fall in love with. In fact, I'm more afraid to admit that I consider myself politically conservative than I am to admit that, hey, I don't always follow the "How to Be Female" handbook.

And for that, I am endlessly thankful. I have been blessed with the freedom from the need to conform to strict societal molds. Many people before me have given their lives so that I could have that freedom, a freedom which is so hard to put to words and define because the very definition of the freedom is the freedom from being defined.

I use the word "queer" because no one even knows what it means: it has no definition but to be undefinitive itself. I'm okay with that. In fact, I kind of like queer. The future is queer, and that suits me just fine. You don't always need a mathematical law.

I cannot comprehend my life. I give up. It is beyond my simple mind to ever understand what on Earth (or elsewhere) could possibly make all that happens happen. I certainly am not the one making everything happen; I'm simply not that powerful.

I don't feel like bragging about my life though. To be honest, I'm a little scared. Paranoid. Everything has been working out too well. Like someone is writing a kid's book. Sure, I run into problems, but then everything is magically overcome when I say "please" and "thank you" and remember to wash my hands. It is way too easy.

I haven't felt like writing about my life, my ideas, my thoughts, or anything that has to do with me at all for awhile. It's just growing on my subconscious more and more. As if talking about me will make someone realise that whoever is in charge made a mistake and forgot to give me the hellish life everyone else seems to experience, and they'll give me what I deserve.

I'm excited, happy, appreciative, thankful, and, as I've recently realised, not just nervous, but scared out of my mind. And I'm not sure I'd have it any other way.

I'll post something for Thanksgiving (in America) tomorrow, but I'll be spending my weekend recording music, so I won't post again after tomorrow until Monday or Tuesday.

Too Tired

It is half past three in the morning. Harry Potter movie was adjective. I need time to process it. I wasn't blown away though. The whole two parts thing makes it weird. I'll write more when I'm not so sleepy and tear-induced-headache-y. (No bawling in this one. Just a long stream of watering eyes.)

Today's lesson? Midnight showings make you sleepy.

It's Almost That Time Again

Christmas! Or maybe Chanukah or Kwanzaa ("Wtf is Kwanzaa anyway??"), depending on what you celebrate, or if you even celebrate at all. Regardless, for all of my American readers, Thanksgiving is one week from today, which means we are now only one week away from when it is socially acceptable to start pulling out your Christmas decorations and singing your joyful Christmas carols.

I love Christmas. The closer we get to Christmas, the more excited I get. Because I absolutely love seeing the big smiles on everyone's faces, especially the kids when they open up their presents to see awesome toys. And I love seeing how the world starts to transform as Christmas approaches. There's something in the air that's completely indescribable, but everyone's feeling it. There's excitement and joy in everything as we race straight into the "happiest time of the year".

Christmas is stressful, and hectic, and all sorts of things go wrong all the time. Not everyone likes Christmas even. There's plenty to be negative about. People are starving, dying. There are kids waking up to nothing on Christmas. But people change around the holidays. Even the grumpiest of people are touched by the spirit of giving that overwhelms people during this magical season. That's what's in the air: the spirit of giving.

I give music. I'm excited about it too. Last Christmas, I played a little bit of piano for our Christmas celebrations, but this year, I also know guitar. And I have a month to learn still. It was fun when I was a kid and I could lead everyone in singing, sometimes trying the day before Christmas to learn how to play piano just for the occasion, and even if I wasn't very good, everyone was happy, but now it's even better. Now I know I can make music (especially simple Christmas carols which have like 3 chords only sometimes), and I can learn to play things much better, so it's not just a cute kid who's happy, but it's a cute kid who's happy and not too shabby either.

I can't wait for Thanksgiving, so I can start wearing my Christmas spirit everywhere I go.

The Writer-Musician

You know what's been bugging me lately? Plenty of musicians become actors and plenty of actors become musicians. Writers and directors end up on stage/in front of the camera, and actors end up behind the scenes too. Or you'll find musicians who are talented visual artists and do their own cover art. All kinds of crossovers within the arts. (No need to even mention dancer/singer/actor crossover types) They're everywhere. But you know what you don't see? Musician-author crossovers. Actually, you don't really see author-anything crossovers unless it's a book about the business/art. In other words, no one writes fiction and makes "pop" music.

This bugs me. I don't necessarily want to make pop music, but I'm not talking about scores or Broadway numbers or anything either. I'm talking about radio music. Stuff you'd go to a music fesitval or concert or gig to see. I want to make some of that music, have relative "success", and then still have relative "success" in the apparently completely unrelated field of fiction writing.

I don't have a role model for that. I have musicians I love and admire, and I have writers I love and admire, but I can't seem to find a musician-writer to love and admire. It's like they don't exist. No one seems to make good music and good fiction, and it just doesn't make sense to me.

At this point, I just realised that one musician I love is also a passionate writer: Alison Sudol. But of course, she hasn't published anything yet, so I can't go, "Look! Alison Sudol has some awesome music, and look! this book is cool, unrelated to her music, and enjoyable! Proof that someone else can do it, and thus I can do it too!" just yet. Maybe soon, but I doubt it. I'll probably be shoving Stella Novela (That's my band's name, by the way. We have a Facebook, a MySpace and even a website, but there's nothing up yet, really. We just finally found a drummer on Monday. His name isn't even on there yet.) CDs into people's hands at the same time I'm chucking Call Me Lux (in case you missed it, that's the book I'm revising right now) at them.

But you know what? It bugs me, but it's also incredibly exciting. Imagine being one of the first people (I know I'm not the first, but it's not common at all) to do something. It's scary, but thrilling! When I do manage to live out my dreams of being a total artist extraordinaire, crossing over arts that have never been crossed quite the way I cross them, I'll only be that much prouder of myself.

And, honestly, I don't see why the crossover between music and fiction writing doesn't happen more. To me, music is just one way of telling a story, one medium. I'm not so much a musician or writer as I am a storyteller. I live to tell stories, and that's exactly what I want to do with my life.

Mondays used to be my "update day", but I've since stopped having specific writing on specific days, save for Fridays "Things I've Learned" which is sometimes pretty similar to non-Friday stuff. Today, I'm going to do a sort of update though, as to where in the world I am right now, and who I am right now. A re-introduction. More than just a "weekly update" or anything.

So let's start. My name is Elizabeth Thraen. I'm on the last days of age 18 now (Amazing how time flies!), and starting to get nervous about my 20s no longer seeming so incredibly distant. Then again, we're so obsessed with age, and yet it means so very little. We have arbitrary attachments to our arbitrary numbering, but we're all different, and 18-going-on-19 means something totally different for me than it does for you or anyone else.

I am an artist. Whether it's graphic design or painting, music or theatre, I just love the arts. I love the expression of ideas, which is really what I think art is. It's a means of communication which does not necessarily rely on words or concepts specific to any one culture because it is about speaking to the heart, which has only one universal language. Sorry to get sappy, but that's love. I'm sappy at times.

I hate politics. Maybe hate isn't the right word, but I'm frustrated with how changes are made or not made and how the bureaucratic system works here in the United States. I have strong disagreements with both major political parties and thus vote independent in most elections. I know the independents have little chance of winning, but I strongly disagree with the idea of voting for the "lesser of two evils" when there are other perfectly good candidates running. It's that whole idea of the lesser of two evils which prevents independents from winning elections; people are so afraid of the other "major candidate" that they take their vote from the independent and waste it on someone they don't always like very much. It's a fear driven system, and I hate it.

I consider myself Christian, despite the Christians who have made a bad name for the rest of us with their hateful signs and their Crusades in God's name. I feel for the Muslims who are experiencing that same judgement (intensified greatly) right now because of the minority who have used their religion to excuse hate. Christian, to me, is about that exactly: feeling for those who are suffering. And not just feeling, but doing something about it. I consider myself Christian because the group of people with whom I commune spiritually consider themselves Christian, and I'm a part of that "Christian community" we have. It's not about who said "Love your neighbour" so much as it is that you do love your neighbour. And it's the most inclusive, loving, welcoming, etc. church I've ever stepped foot in.

But who am I today? I'm revising a book I accidentally wrote in a week, so I guess I'm a writer. I'm hurriedly trying to up my guitar and percussion abilities, so I guess I'm a musician. I'm taking classes at a college, so I guess I'm a college student. I'm writing this post, so I guess I'm a blogger. I'm wishing I had time to work on my webcomic, so I guess I'm not much of a webcomic artist/writer right now. I'm teach and direct theatre arts at a local high school, so I guess I'm that too. I'm a sister, daughter, friend, student, teacher, artist, cousin, niece, dog-owner, musician, tiredperson.

I'm going at the speed of light to new places all the time, so who knows where I'll be tomorrow.

Family Camp Weekend

Ever been camping? Way fun, right? (It's okay; you can disagree.) I love camping.

This weekend, I went on a wonderful "camping trip" with my church which involved plenty of people going home Friday night to sleep in their own beds. Wimps. I, however, slept on the rock-solid concrete in my sleeping bag, along with a good number of other families from my church. (Okay, so I'm a wimp too; I was in a perfectly safe building at the edge of Angeles National Forest.)

It was an incredibly fun experience, as well as an odd one. The trip is meant for families, but everyone is invited; I went alone. I do have a family, sure, but they're members of a different church, so everything I feel a little bit like an orphan when it comes to church. I only ended up going on the trip, really, because I had told so many people that I was going to go; I didn't want to hear, "How was camping?" and then have to explain why I was too lazy to go.

Prior to the trip, I only knew one person who was going, and he wasn't there when I got there. Everyone else there was a complete stranger to me, just as I was a complete stranger to them. Besides the check-in table at the front of our little campsite, my entrance was pretty much unnoticed. Parents were busy setting things up for the activities that were going to start, and kids were off running around. I'm, sadly, not the most outgoing person on the planet either, so I quietly asked a mom if there was anything I could do to help set up, but everything was pretty much under control. Basically, that just meant I stood around awkwardly, trying my best not to look awkward.

It only took a few minutes though, really, before I was talking to people. It wasn't like anyone was going to let me just stand around looking nervous. By the end of the first night, I'd made friends with some of the people there, and was definitely glad I'd made the decision to come. Even just those first few hours there reaffirmed my feelings that I really like this church; I've yet to meet someone there I don't like, and that's not even an exaggeration. Everyone is incredibly nice.

Saturday was even better. By Saturday morning, having slept on the same concrete floor as many of the other participants, I was definitely considered a part of the camp. After breakfast (and plenty of down time), we had a "scavenger hunt" which didn't actually involve much scavenging at all, other than scavenging for the numbered tables with activities to introduce everyone to a different church ministry. It was much more fun than I just made it sound with that description. It may just be out of my own love for kids, but I actually had loads of fun guiding and leading the kids in my team through all the activities.

I made friends with almost everyone there. Those I didn't befriend, I only missed befriending because there were just so many people for me to befriend, adults and kids alike. We wrote a song, had a talent show, saw a play, played games, talked, ate, relaxed, and enjoyed our time together up until it was at last time for everyone to go, we cleaned up, and that was that. (Yes, my car was the last to leave. Surprised?) It's over now, but I feel so much more like a part of the community at my church now that going alone seems so much less intimidating now. It was nice to connect.

Also: I met a 10-year-old and had a discussion on linguistics and the evolution of communication. Dead serious. Crazy, right?

KT Tunstall Tiger Suit Tour, Hollywood, CA

Time for a real review. Or, uh, play-by-play.

Thursday morning, I awoke early (for a day off at least), took a quick shower, inhaled my breakfast in seconds, and ran out the door. And then I sat through the joys of L. A.'s only half-decent public transportation system (to its credit, it's definitely been improving recently) while I journeyed off to Hollywood and Vine, home of The Music Box, where KT Tunstall was to perform that night. I was there by nine o'clock in the morning for a woman who wouldn't even be playing until thirteen hours later. No, there wasn't any kind of line at nine o'clock, and the tour bus didn't get to the venue until two in the afternoon. Yes, you could say it was ridiculous to be there that early; it was.

When the tour bus arrived, my friend and I (yeah, I wasn't going to hang out at the venue that long alone), ran all around the venue, trying to see KT and her band. We ended up seeing everyone except KT herself before the show, and couldn't possibly figure out how KT managed to sneak in without us seeing her. Oh well. The line started to form around five thirty, and so we hung out there for the rest of the day. Obviously, we were the first in line.

At last, the doors opened at eight, we grabbed our spot right in the very front, as close as you could get to the stage without being on the stage. We took turns going got the merch table, and I ended up getting a physical copy of the CD and a Tiger Suit hoodie.

And then we waited. And waited. Time drags on so slowly while you're waiting for a show to start. Especially when you know you still have to wait another hour once the curtain opens.

Hurricane Bells were the opening act, and they got the crowd decently pumped, though I think everyone was already super pumped for KT Tunstall anyway. Their music and performance was good, except I think they overdid the whammy-bar-guitar-solo bit to an extent, and I couldn't figure out why there was a girl just standing off to the side doing back-up vocals. It seemed like she wasn't quite part of the act, except when she'd walk over to the guitarist and sing with him. She needed an instrument or maybe more lines to sing or to at least stand closer to the band and look like she was performing. It was weird and distracting, really. I talked to the three guys (didn't see the girl) after the show though, and they all seemed like decent people, which I always considered a big plus for artists. I hate finding out the people who wrote the music you love are total douches.

But at last the twenty-minute countdown began. Nine forty, the curtain fell again, and we anxiously checked our phones over and over again in anticipation of the show really beginning. Ten o'clock came at last, and the curtain finally rose only a few minutes late, surprisingly.

The show was incredible. I can't remember what happened first, next, after, or last; it's a complete blur. I'm still not sure that Thursday night even happened. Every song was phenomenal. I'm without words, to be honest. The performance was moving and inspiring. KT someone combines the classic rocker personage with classy, intelligent woman, with childish innocence, with being real. It blows me away how down-to-earth she is, considering her chart-topping, 5x Platinum music and overall success. The day before the show, she was on Ellen and whatever George Lopez's show is called (it's chosen ignorance, or I'd just look it up). KT Tunstall is living the life of the rich and famous, and yet, from the moment the curtain rose, it was clear that she was just an ordinary human being, still a weirdo like the rest of us.

There has been some talk of her not staying true to her fans or herself with this latest album, since, on the surface, it is a far cry from something like Tracks in July and her old girl-with-a-guitar image. But Tiger Suit is still KT, through and through. There is a certain rawness, honesty, truth about all of KT's music, which is what makes it worth listening to and makes her shows more than worth attending. She was happy to talk with the crowd all night, telling us stories and responding to the things audience members would call out in the few quite moments between when the audience would quiet for the next song and the next song would begin. It was as if she felt that the whole audience was a good friend, and she was sharing part of herself with us.

Add in that, after the show, we not only met her and got a quick autograph, but she remembered my friend from a show two years ago (his name even!), and was talking and laughing with all of the people who waited out for her. KT definitely appreciates her fans and has somehow managed to stay incredibly grounded, which earns her more respect from me than any musical ability could.

Next time I see KT, I plan to be a much better musician and person.

KT Tunstall?

I am not sure how I'm even awake. Or if I'm even awake. I got home after 3AM last night after seeing KT Tunstall. Who was incredible. And cool. And endlessly sweet and down-to-earth. I'm in awe. I can't decided if I'm really awake still. I have her pick. She threw it out into the crowd, and I got it. And then she signed it. 

But I'm utterly exhausted. I was at the venue by 9AM and stuck around until I think almost 2AM. And then went to Denny's to eat (I hadn't eaten in like 14 hours; bad idea), but I was just dead. My lips are horribly chapped because it was windy as all hell in Hollywood yesterday. I have a cold. My body is wiped out. And I have no idea how I'm even awake, let alone coherent.

So this is today's post. Sorry. And I'll be camping this weekend, so there might not be anything until Monday or Tuesday.

An Eleven-Year-Old

A few years ago, I did a writing exercise in which I wrote a letter to my eleven-year-old self. I'm not going to post up what I wrote because the exact words are irrelevant, but I clearly had a lot of animosity toward my eleven-year-old self back then, and I had to wonder why I had been so mad at my younger self. If I wrote a letter to my eleven-year-old  self today, there's no way I could be anything but loving.

Eleven, for me, was a major turning point in my life. Fifth grade (the year I turned eleven) was definitely the climax of all my creativity as a child; I had comic books, plays, movies, TV shows, etc, etc. I was doing everything. It was great! I loved fifth grade.

But, being the climax, everything took a nose dive as fifth grade ended. Eleven was when I started spiraling deeper and deeper into the depression that overtook my life for many years of my life. If you've never experienced depression, rejoice. If you have, then you know what I'm talking about when I say I lost interest in literally everything as time went on. When I wrote the letter to my eleven-year-old self right, I was at the upside-down climax of my depression: the lowest point of all lowest points, but also the beginning of a new direction.

It's been a few years since then. While I don't claim to be 24/7 happy, I am not depression's slave any more and never will be again. Now, when I look back at my eleven-year-old self, I see a little girl, perhaps one of my brother's classmates even, who is about to start the hardest years of her life. How could I write an angry letter to her? How could I blame her for making me who I am? How could I judge her for letting depression sneak up on her and begin the downward spiral? How could I be anything but loving and supportive to a small girl who's life is about to come crumbling down on her?

I don't regret struggling with depression. I don't wish it didn't happen. Sure, there are so many years of my life I wish I could have back, years that could have been so much better if I hadn't had to wrestle with something endlessly stronger than me at all times, but who would I be without that struggle? Where would I be? Would I have learned to stand as I stand today without walking through that hell?

I've spent the past few years struggling to find the strength to at last overcome depression, and what has given me hope is the strength and bravery of an eleven-year-old girl. If I wrote a letter to my eleven-year-old self today, I would only thank her for reminding me that I have strength I know not.

Reckless Abandon

I had an incredible weekend. But it didn't start out that way.

Friday, as I joined in with some of my NaNo'ing friends to talk about our progress, I realised I was terribly behind, having not really written all week. And they were ahead, on track, or going to be on track very soon. They were moving, and I wasn't. And I thought to myself, "Figures. I'm just going to end up failing NaNo again because I can't commit to anything. This story is stupid anyway." Maybe I'd just lie and tell everyone I finished. Not like anyone would really know anyway.

So I started thinking about my new, NaNo-free life. It was going to be nice, wasn't it? I could focus on what was really important to me. Like my trip up to San Francisco coming up! First weekend of December, and I'm off to see my best friend! It's going to be awesome.

And then it hit me: first weekend of December. That's when all the NaNo'ers were going to be celebrating finishing NaNo. And wishing it were 1 November again so they could start again. Did I really deserve an exciting trip to see my best friend after failing to commit? Did I really deserve a vacation after taking the month off? It started to bother me that I was going to be celebrating my incompetence. I didn't want to have to tell anyone I'd failed. And lying wasn't really an option; I'd never feel good about it.

Grudgingly, I decided I wouldn't be allowed to go on my trip if I didn't finish. Telling my best friend I couldn't go visit her because I didn't bother to write a stupid story would suck, and what kind of friend would I be? I knew it would be enough motivation to get me through a miserable November. And so I sat down, looked at what little I had so far written, and started forcing out words.

And then something amazing happened: my narrator developed a personality, the story got interesting, and I was suddenly scrambling just to keep up with my out-of-control story. I caught up to the day's quota. And then I got to Saturday's quota: 10K. 20% done! I decided I wanted to hit 15K. And then I did. 20K? Too crazy. I hit it. Going out on a limb, I suggested 25K, and that would be my stopping point. 25K came and went, and I passed 30K Sunday afternoon.

What. A. Weekend. After only a few thousand words, my plot changed and started going in its own direction. Before I knew it, I was sitting at 25K at what should have been the climatic ending. Nearly 30K, and my narrator died. I knew by then I'd lost it, but I kept writing and let things play out.

And boy have things played out. I already know that what my novel has turned into is endlessly better than what it once was. Something about reckless abandon—a senseless disregard for quality and full embracement of spur of the moment ideas—led to what I consider my best work ever. Better than any other story I've written. I love what this story has become, and I cannot wait to see where the rest of it will go.

And then comes the revision.

Luce's Dream

Hey! Guess what? Another excerpt for Call Me Lux is available for your viewing, free of charge! Yeah, I'm that nice. Of course, since this is in the middle of everything I've been writing (still in the early parts of the book though!), you won't know who all the characters mentioned are, but that's not terribly important right now. Just enjoy the excerpt!:

I don’t remember falling asleep— I must have fallen asleep immediately—, but I remember dreaming about the posters. They were demanding that I hand Whatsername over, but, for some reason, I was refusing. I didn’t know why they wanted her or, more importantly, why I seemed to have her held hostage from them, but it made perfect sense to dream me. My subconscious.

The posters began to turn violent after I continued to refuse to let them have her. They called in reinforcements. Grace and Hayley (though I’d never met Hayley) both came to get Whatsername, and Eamon was there too, though I wasn’t really sure whose side he was on. I think he was on mine because he was telling the posters just to let Whatsername and I be, but he also seemed to want to take me away from Whatsername.

It didn’t make much sense, like any normal dream, but the weirdest part was the lightning. It was everywhere. Everything I touched erupted with electricity. But the posters didn’t care about being electrocuted. I could zap Grace and Hayley, even Eamon and Whatsername if I wanted, but the posters were immune.

And then, suddenly, the electricity turned in on me, and I felt my whole body being electrocuted. I woke up screaming. The light was on again, and bright enough to blind anyone. Whatsername groaned, and then jerked awake suddenly. Within a second, she was at my side, sputtering nonsense. The electrocuted feeling subsided, and I stopped screaming.

“Luce! Luce! Are you okay?”

I groaned. “Yeah. Just had a bad dream, I guess.” Silence. “Was the light always that bright?” Whatsername looked up at the light, furrowing her brow.

“I thought I turned it off.” The light flickered. “I’m going to tell my dad to check the wiring. Maybe it’s the circuit breaker.” She stared at the light as the flickering slowed. This time, it stayed off. “God, that’s so weird. Ever seen a light do that before?”

“No.”

“So weird.”

Silence. I looked at the clock. It was flashing 12:03. The power must have just gone out.
“Three am, Luce.” She must have seen me look at the clock. Or just realised I’d probably want to know the time. “I’m going to go back to sleep if you’re okay.”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

Silence.

Buried Treasure

Okay, I'll admit it: I miss blogging daily. I should focus on NaNo, but I need to blog. It makes me think and reflect even when I don't want to. Blogging, as annoying as it gets sometimes, is fun. It's freeing, liberating—it understands me. You understand me. Even if you don't.

When I blog, I explore a little corner of my mind, find some buried treasures, and re-organise everything so I can find those treasures more easily next time. Blogging, for me, is a never-ending process of cleaning and discovering and re-organising what's in my head. And translating. Somehow, the clutter must be turned into coherent words for others to understand, and the process of doing so helps me to appreciate my own self more.

I cannot stay mad when I blog. If I'm angry or upset or unhappy in anyway, blogging helps me see what's bothering me, and then, more importantly, find a way out. Blogging gives me solutions to the problems lost within my cluttered head, even if it never spells anything out for me.

Without blogging, I don't think I would have made it to today, to the point I am at right now. I wouldn't be able to hold the weight of all the things I hold if I did not take time every day to make sense of everything. Because what I do is not just narrate, but analyse. I have to analyse. I'm incredibly analytical, even if, for those who know me beyond this blog, I'm also incredibly emotional.

Blogging has helped me come to realise who I am, in a way. I've learned to throw out the either or definitions and embrace my own definitions of fluidity. Because nothing is black and white. I'm not only analytical or only emotional; I'm not only feminine or only masculine; I'm not only extroverted or introverted—I am all that and more.

I like those silly "How male/female are you?" checkbox tests, actually. I mean, the criteria for being male and the criteria for being female are both incredibly stupid, but a high "male" score doesn't mean a low "female" score, nor does a low male score mean a high female score. You could be anywhere from 0% male and 0% female to 100% male and 100% female. Masculinity does not mean the absence of femininity just as femininity does not mean the absence of masculinity. Nor does introspection mean a lack of extroversion or emotion a lack of logic.

I know this instinctively. It's in my nature to recognise this. Blogging has helped me dig this inborn instinct out from underneath all the learned ideas about society and human nature from my environment and culture. With every moment I spend blogging, I am digging up more and more buried treasures, all the things I knew before society burdened me with conflicting knowledge.

I'm back to blogging every day already.

Thursday

I am in love with this cover of "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Karen O doesn't realise this, but "Maps" is actually about the unconditional love of a parent (biological or otherwise) for their child.


I don't really have much to say. This week has been dragging on, and I'm a little behind with my NaNo'ing right now, but we're ahead of schedule with rehearsals for Where the Wild Berries Grow, so I have a little time to catch up now before Monday. Nevermind the 20-something-page paper I'm writing this weekend.

But it's an autobiography; I could write about myself for 200 pages and still have more to write about.

I know this is short, but I'm fighting a cold, so I'm going to get some sleep. See you Tuesday!

Call Me NaNo-ing

It is November. I am exhausted. (When am I not?) National Novel Writing Month has begun.

I realise I haven't posted in a few days, and I apologise. Don't worry; it's not permanent. But we're down to a T/Th blog (with more posts when I can) for right now, okay? I'll post up excerpts from my NaNo throughout the month so you can see what I'm working on. Like the except we have below. These are the first words, completely unrevised, of my novel, Call Me Lux:

Call me Lux. I used to be known as Luce, Lucine Merrick, but almost no one knows me as Luce these days. That's what happens when you're famous. Oh well.

I always figured I was pretty ordinary. I wasn't particularly happy about it, but I accepted it. It was out of my control, so I knew better than to dwell on it. My hair was brown, plain, flat. It didn't do much but sort of hang there. It never held curl very well, it wasn't shiny, and it wasn't even a particularly nice shade of brown. It was just brown. Like fresh dirt. Like my eyes. My eyes were brown and dull and plain too. Some people had interesting eyes if you looked closely, like some bright colours mixed into their plainer eyes, but not me. My eyes were just brown. Plain. My skin was even plain. I had a few freckles, a little acne in my youth, but I never had that beautifully perfect skin. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. It was just there, like everything else about me. Like me.

In school, I was never an outcast, but I was never popular either. Grace, my best friend since pre-school, was just popular enough to make sure I was never unpopular. She was prettier than me. Her dark blonde hair was shiny and naturally waved in some apparently attractive way. Her eyes were green, and everyone seemed to like green eyes. Her skin wasn't perfect either though. Like I said, she was "just popular enough", not super popular. We weren't queen bee material. If you've ever seen the movie Mean Girls, we were definitely not like those girls. Our high school didn't quite have those girls though either. There were definitely girls who thought they were the queens of the school, but there were too many people who didn't care.

My brother was the hot bad boy to everyone but me. He was Danny from Grease, but not as in love. He acted tough a lot, and I think he convinced himself that's who he really was, but before he got to high school, he had been a loving brother to me, three years my senior. Jules was his name. I loved him as a kid, and I still did after he changed in high school, but things just weren't the same. He seemed angry. He made my head hurt. I couldn't figure out what happened to him, and I slowly gave up on trying to understand him. Of course, this whole "bad boy" act made him hot stuff to all the girls. I think I had friends who were just my friends because they had a crush on my brother. I didn't really care though. I was okay with being used because I knew everyone used everyone. It was just how things worked.

TGIF

It's Friday. Thank GOD. It has been an incredibly long week. From actors dropping out of the play to tedious class periods spent sanding the floor, from frantically trying to get scripts printed to a body which felt like it had been hit by a large semi about 37 times before being put through all sorts of other pain, from the sudden onslaught of previously nonexistent "love life" to frantic pre-NaNo planning. Boy, has it been a long week.

I learn more every day than I could ever put into a weekly blog post. And hell, why should I put everything into a blog post? I can't learn lessons for you. I learn things I already know all the time. Being told things doesn't make it intuition, doesn't make it instinct. To think that I could somehow put the knowledge life experience has taught me into your brain is ridiculous; it won't happen.

Not that you can't learn from reading. Maybe this is just me, but one of the things I love about books is being able to learn from the character's mistakes. Hell, acting does this too. It's weird. You put yourself so deeply into the life of someone else, live out their life somehow, and then you step away and still have the lessons you learned as that character.

But stepping into the shoes of another will not teach you everything. Reading, as incredible as it can be, is not the same as doing. The best writers can take you very, very, very close to experiencing and learning with the characters, but it still can't beat reality.

So instead of trying to tell you what I've learned this week, I'm just going to tell you to go live life a little, make some mistakes, and learn from them. Nothing you read can come close to teaching you what living can.

My Favourite Teachers

So one of my student's mom's posted this blog post yesterday about her favourite teachers, and I decided that, instead of just leaving a comment about who my favourite teachers were, I'd write an entire post about them. It turned out to be a very long post:

If you ask me who my favourite teacher was, my immediate response, for the past 8 years, has always been Mrs. Webster, my fifth grade teacher. I always loved Mrs. Webster. It's weird though that she should be my favourite. Not for who she was, but because the words "Mrs. Webster" invoke memories of fifth grade as the happiest year of my life while I can just as easily invoke memories of fifth grade as the unhappiest year of my life, just by using different words. It was a bittersweet year.

It was a horrible year because it is the first time I consciously decided I wanted to end my life, that there was nothing on Earth worth living for. Mind you, I could not grasp the concept of "death" and it's finality the way someone older or someone who had actually experienced the death of someone close to them might, so, though it sounds horrible, it was more an ignorant decision than a self-loathing one. In my fifth grade mind, hanging out with my then-recently-deceased dog and God in heaven would be much better than going to a sixth grade where my two best friends for all of my remembered life would not be. Ignorant or not, fifth grade was the beginning of a very depressive spiral I went through for many years, as I entered adolescence right after suddenly finding myself without many of the beings I had previously entrusted with everything.

But when I think of Mrs. Webster, I remember gems, and I remember The Adventures of Coach and Peshie, a comic about my pets who became the superstars of my fifth grade class for awhile. I recall my earliest memories of writing scripts, of creating stories that became more than just fantasies in my head by my own will. I remember a year of creativity and, more importantly, being liked and respected for my creativity which, in case you haven't guessed, has always been one of the biggest things in my own self definition. Mrs. Webster makes me think of being accepted, of being loved, of being praised for being exactly who I was and not expected to be anything else.

Mrs. Ekstrand doesn't usually come to mind right away, but after considering my tumultuous middle school years, I realised that it was tumultuous for my teachers too. I was tumultuous. My very conservative, right wing, uptight Christian school was not prepared for an openly gay 13-year-old. Remembering middle school and my rather dramatic (more so the reactions than me casually telling my friends) coming out experience, I realised that I did not feel safe at school. The administration was looking for any reason they could find to expel me, and parents, teachers, and students alike all seemed to be in agreement that I was a sinner and shouldn't be allowed near the rest of the school.

I hold no anger toward my old school anymore, and I have since forgiven the wrongs I faced in middle school; something people often seem to forget when coming out to others is that they've already had time, often years, to accept and comes to terms with their sexuality, so to expect that those they're coming out to should be 100% accepting immediately is too much. It shouldn't be a big deal, but it is right now. Our society is still learning.

I didn't feel safe in any classroom. I didn't feel safe at school. I knew (though occasionally doubted) that no one would physically harm me, but every room I walked into judged me. Harshly. I was the elephant in the room. I could feel "She's a sinner" and "She's going to hell" in the air everywhere. And it came from my classmates, my teachers, my friends, and my friends parents. From people I loved, people I respected, people who I had grown up with my whole life, all suddenly staring at me with so much negative emotion and energy.

Mrs. Ekstrand's room is the one place I don't remember feeling any of the fear and discomfort I remember feeling in every other place on campus. Somehow, it seems that Mrs. Ekstrand was able to accept me just fine right from the start. Either that, or she never knew. Or maybe she hid her discomfort incredibly well. But regardless, Mrs. Ekstrand was the one teacher who somehow kept me safe from all of the hell-ish hate and judgement I faced everywhere else I went in middle school. And she taught science, which has always been one of my favourite subjects, and creative writing, which most definitely influenced my ever-growing interest in writing and helped build my writing skills while I was in middle school.

The last teacher who comes to mind is a woman who I didn't like for most of the year: Ms. Newton, my eleventh grade English teacher. We clashed. It was an AP class, and I had little interest in doing homework. It was a long year. She was gone for a good portion of the year, due to illness, and I mentally called bullshit. Just because I didn't do my homework didn't mean I didn't want to learn. I didn't think she liked me most of the year. I was a stubborn, lazy, arrogant prick, and I was well aware. I had no qualms missing her class to go work on our school play. School plays were by far more important than her class to me. Plus, I always did more school work when I was missing class to work on the play, oddly enough.

In high school, I had a lot of health problems. A whole lot. Eating made me sick almost all of the time, so I often skipped meals. But this led to fatigue, dizziness, and all sorts of problems. I was sick if I ate, and I was sick if I didn't. And I didn't drink water at school because the bathrooms disgusted me so much that I would do whatever I could to avoid needing to use them, including dehydrating myself.

So when I came into class one day, on the brink of collapsing, to take an in-class essay, and managed to write only about one sentence, Ms. Newton utterly surprised me: she went to her back room, found me some food and some water, and just told me to do the best I could on the essay. My world was turned upside down; I had expected her to revel in my failure, to rejoice in the proof that stubborn, lazy, arrogant pricks like me don't succeed in life, but she didn't. Despite the constant attitude I gave her, she still had enough compassion to care for me just as much as she would any brown-nosing student of hers.

I didn't magically change after that. I was, and still am to this day, a stubborn, arrogant prick. I'm flippant to my teachers, and I rarely do my homework. But Ms. Newton didn't judge me or treat me unfairly for being so blatantly stupid, and in that simple act, she taught me more compassion than any one else had ever taught me. I liked Ms. Newton much more after that, though I can't say I was much nicer to her. It's weird, but it seems you can't return kindness to the giver really; you have to pass it on to someone else. And that's what I've done. She gave me kindness, compassion, and understanding, which I will never be able to give back to her, but those things she gave me that day, I now can freely give to others.

Searing Rain

Prompt: "Help I'm Alive" and "Sick Muse" by Metric
Time: 9 minutes
Result: 387 words

The rain was falling. Hard. More like hail. Except it burned. Hot, scalding rain. She looked up, and the searing rain fell into her eyes. She would have screamed, had she any voice left. So she ducked her head back down, pulled her hood over her head, and ran down the street to the park at the end. The gate was locked, but she climbed the chain-link fence. She lept down, and groaned as she heard her jeans rip. The fence had grabbed her pants and ripped a giant hole in one leg. Her left leg burned as the rain hit her now bare flesh. She swore under her breath, knotted the ripped fabric together to block some of the rain, and continued on. Past the swing sets, past the baseball field, past the once green grass. This was dystopia; no such things had any use now. No one swung. No one played. No one lay in the grass underneath the sun. What sun? All there was was an endless torrent of searing rain. She refused to accept it though. She remembered life before dystopia. Life had been better once, and she knew. There had been light, had been sun. This she knew, no matter how much she had been fed the lies that it was only a dream. It wasn't a dream. She didn't only dream of blue skies, sunburns, children laughing, couples in love; she remembered them. Maybe others only dreamt, as if such things had never existed and never could exist, but she knew better. She knew it had to be more than a dream.

But what if she was wrong? She was fighting for a memory which might have been only a dream. But she was so sure. They had to be lying. They had to have done it. But she couldn't see why. Not even the filthy government workers, the spineless gits who ran everything, liked this. Everyone dreamed of the same sky, the sam parks, the same light. It had to be real. And so she wouldn't stop running in the searing rain. She couldn't. She had to find out what had gone wrong, what had happened to destroy the light, to eliminate things like swing sets and baseball fields and green grass, to find a way to bring it back.

Seventeen Hours

It has occurred to me that, in the midst of my seventeen hour day yesterday, I never managed to get a blog post up. Never fear, I did write. 1668 words, to be exact. I have been practicing getting my daily word count total on 750words.com, which a pretty nifty site for writers and non-writers alike. It's wonderful. You just let yourself go, stop worrying about WHAT to write, and just write the first though that comes to mind. Stream of consciousness. I love it. My writing in there, of course, needs a whole lot of proof reading because I also refuse to hit backspace and fix my errors (though if I skip a word, I'll throw it in parentheses so I can figure out where it goes later) while I'm typing away madly. But it accomplishes something wonderfully useful for NaNo and for life: freedom from fear. I am able to let go of my inhibitions and no longer worry about whether I'm "good enough" while I'm writing on 750words.com, and then, as I get used to it on the site, it flows over into other aspects of my life. It frees me to be more me, to let my creative instincts have free reign over me, and the results are amazing.

Check out 750words.com; it's inspired by the "morning pages" from the book The Artists Way, so you might want to check that book out too.

And so I now hurry off for another long day, only 16 hours of running around today!