Finally feeling. The collation/creation tales

 

House crunch, in the electric V. No leads, and only 400 quid left.

 His hands

She was at the sea again, the indiffereing waves, against the edge, sweeping with an ever press of wandering worry; even as the shore was closed. She was in the base stumps, old hurts with the dead lines that void around existence. For some months now, she had sat solid lapsing into low begotten spaces, stopped solid as a stone; as still as a statue, thwarted at all ends, as palms turned upwards, ever reaching for an absent light. Into this ever narrowing ravine, the hurts of the hunted had gathered.; retracing the land gaps through which she had fallen. There he had sat, a little too detained behind the lines; loose and dark, an upright shadow with hollowing eyes. Like a wraith he had seeped, and suckered, till she had lost something. What it was , she couldn't exactly say; other than some how in the process, the very real mechanics of her life had altered . She didnt know how she had got there, or even if the removal had happened the same day, but some how, he had drawn her tight, till all quiver of her life had gone away. Craven and misaligning, Such was his healing. A mortician in the cemetery had passed her way. MB

Yesterday's write. Today back to shungite.

 The Grasp ends..

My neck's stove in, broke upon it's own joint; line-deformed, in a world of macro falling order. Wrapped around it's own voice, no longer guttural and primal. Instead, it seeps along a hidden seam; as one falls in and folds under . Oh these veins that bled from life. Guards and sentries!. Beckons and mentions! Those holy orders that fight and light the way towards the secret shore of an eternal sea; and the the right to find movement within the dark again. MB

The masseuse

“How dare you touch me” She had not said this to the coal black face; Straight like an ailment; globes heavy with absent stagnation that stared and bulged within it's own strangeness..A patriarch of a closed order- he  righteously stiffened in pious self belief. A sneer of a body, in the blue and the black; but still far removed from things. At first she had tried to remain closed, to avoid his accents; rhythmic and regular for the counting; but the hands had come in a slow conduct, that had finally struck; tall and thrifty, and mean with the giving. And so she had sat, overspent and long  along the body, straining under skin; fleeing the touching and the feeling. But in the end, it was of no use-  he had pressed all things in-  in a self- obliterating, queer-adulterating payload; unique to his own particular, discombobulating self blend. He had not earned what he could not deliver. And so she was stuck with the Blasphemy of the thing.  MB

Hagan-Hammond's house of horror.

 

The fall

A narrow range, this intimate drift. Welts and angles, and off kilter scarring . His marks, that scream disaster - impact. The offending touch. Narrowed and quartered, to small pieces that stagger to regather. in my name.  MB

Inflation of the things you need, and deflation of the thngs you have/Gold to the lawyer./Barco bar blues day 3

 

Low down dirty sweets and weight gain. Im feeling metabolic.

 

Fuck around and find out Plus liquorice moods in the morning.

 “It falls sir” , she says this more than once, eyes leading, as her breath is almost gone. There are blue lips ringed, that spread to a mottled hand, held out and pleading. There were four of them before, three now long departed- mustered hearts that fought great and brave wars. “ we were close sir” she says it, as if to acknowledge them, as her lips slip words towards some other time- away from the poor gates of this bleak dark house and all it's under crowded things. She will rattle loose, with these final clotted breaths; a dreary aspect, drudging up some old, long forgotten hill. These are the last rites, which like a ghost, move through papery walls in fast and fading light.“Oh sir”, she says, lips half moving, as for one last time she searches his tall kind face. For he is a gentleman physician, used to such things, and she - only one of the lowly and dim witted;  who foolishly give their hearts and souls away/ in play. MB

The slap/Je regrette/ghost speech

 Loose portal valour, sprung from my tongue, snatching the throat out, ripping the young,. 

Deep injured impact, a kick of the brave, struck like a mac truck, all locks engaged . 

Brawling all over me, blitheringly wtrong- bruised up and welting, wicked and strong. 

Where do words come from, waiting in time? like a bad spoken bullet, a witness to crime.

 I sincerely regret it, honestly I do. Bled  flesh now wilting- smacked down anew. MB

When you've been the victim of a narcissist/ when you are feeling unappreciated it just means it's you who is breaking your own boundary.

 Laurie Cure, CEO of Denver-based consulting firm Innovative Connections and author of Leading Without Fear (Tate Publishing, 2012), offers a comprehensive list of red flags signaling narcissistic workplace behavior:

*Unwillingness to be challenged or questioned.
*Requiring excessive levels of loyalty, praise and adoration.
*Struggling to accept and incorporate feedback.
*Not considering other people's opinions or not engaging them in conversations about problem-solving or changes.
*Caring very little for the needs of others in the organization or on the team. (For example, saying, "It doesn't matter if you miss your child's game; work is more important.")
*Often making decisions unilaterally and without involving other stakeholders.
*Exhibiting signs of narcissistic behaviors, such as a grandiose sense of self-importance, fantasized talent or expertise, or arrogance.
*Focusing on self-image and ensuring that others perform in a way that elevates one's own public image or reputation.
*Demanding and seeking high degrees of personal and positional power to ensure control.
*Spending a great deal of time and effort ensuring the ability to be with power players and high-status individuals in the organization.
*Using fear, guilt, shame, punishment and manipulation to gain compliance and control.
*Exhibiting extremely competitive behavior.
*Taking personal credit for the work of individuals or the team.

Establish strong and healthy boundaries. To prevent narcissistic behavior, managers need to define firm borders. "If you're clear on expectations, then the next step is to stand firm in those boundaries," Cure said. "That's especially important in not tolerating certain behaviors. Name-calling, angry outbursts, manipulation, dominating the conversation should never be encouraged or allowed."

" According to Sam Vaknin in his video “Narcissistic boss or Employer: Coping and Survival Tactics” employees become the property of the Narc and walk on thin ice around him due to his very fragile yet bloated ego. The only way to survive under his management is to constantly flatter him and obey his every command. Dare to have your own opinion or disagree with him, and you risk his violent wrath."

"They are also quite prone to name-dropping and buying their friends (they appear very generous and are keen to pay for people’s drinks when out socially as a way to impress and gain trust)"

" Now is the time to be vigilant because you can be 100% sure you are being discredited behind your back with vicious lies and rumours. The Narc wants to look good and to do that he has to make you look bad. Never, ever confront the Narc for you will be completely destroyed. "

" Do not expect a personal or business recommendation from the Narc if you worked for him. The only things you will get are vicious lies designed to discredit and destroy you. They use and viciously abuse people and you will always find a battlefield of victims in their wake if you look closely."

"The narcissistic leader will also be prone to psychosis - imagining things that are unreal despite evidence to the contrary (Vaknin, 2017), to establish unreliability and unethical practices on your part to destroy and tarnish your career"

" Recognize it is not personal: The narcissistic leader usually zeros in on people who are performing and or are better, or more intelligent than them within the workforce environment. Hence, you may have the misfortune of being their main target. The narcissistic leader hates anyone that is perceived as "better" than them." https://www.noveltyjournals.com/upload/paper/The%20Wrath%20of%20the%20Narcissistic%20Leader-1336.pdf 

" Why did the Narc target me? If you are a warm, sensitive and empathic person who cares about others, and you're highly agreeable and conscientious, chances are you have been targeted by Narcs. Narcs will also specifically target people in vulnerable positions (single women with children, someone new in town who hasn’t yet made friends, someone recovering from a recent trauma like a death in the family, a personal accident, or someone suffering from depression, etc.)"

" These people are not operating in integrity or truth. There can be no joy gained from working with these types. Working with them while being targeted as their punchbag will not only harm your career in the long run, it will also harm your health."

"Because this is unfortunately, ‘standard’ behaviour of Narcissists. They are both malicious and vindictive. I’ve seen it and experienced it. It’s just ‘what they do’.

For any perceived slight, argument, disagreement or failing to give them their ‘narcissist supply’ you can quickly find yourself the victim of a ‘smear’ campaign.

And they will LIE. Even if it means turning the entire proceedings/story on its head. You will be the fall guy. The bad person. They will have been terribly done by.

You can’t appeal to them. Won’t work. They would just delight and get off on that.

All you can do is confront anyone who’s been a recipient of their malicious rumouring and tell them, if they’ll listen, your side of it. If they won’t then ditch them.

It may be that in time their lies will be exposed. I certainly had that. Some folk began to apologise and say they had actually seen what the person was really like. I still ditched them. Tough but they had actually revealed their real feelings toward me, earlier!

Difficult if at work or with family. Tough call. Keep your head up and press on. You know the truth. And as hard as it is I don’t think there’s anything else to be done, or gained.

There are some nasty bastards walking our planet. We pass them in the street, we rub shoulders with them at work and play. They exist. It’s very unfair.

But that’s the way it is.

Good luck…"

" They are immature and seems to be highly envious of you? Hence they need you to look bad. So they can look good it's a classic move"

" You inadvertantly provoke a narcissist in public by saying something that is likely to trigger narcissistic rage, such as questioning their talent or skills or openly criticizing them."

" The smear campaign is one of the most damaging and isolating experiences one can face. Don't respond. Stand in your truth, know your value and move forward in silence! Success is the sweetest revenge! "

" The narcissist will never accept their loss or feel remorse or apologize.It is pointless to argue or attempt to get them to come around and see your point of view. That will never happen. Your best bet is to skillfully avoid and / or navigate around them.Your best bet is to recognize the narcissism at play, and plan your boundary-setting. Control your own ego and your need to win. You can use these moments for personal growth by letting go of the need to be right or prove a point."

" your'e being accused of all the things the narcissist has done and has projected on to you.. they want to bury you, they want to destroy you, because they want to kill these parts off in themselves"

" It is so incredibly hard to accept, but the devaluing the narcissist is demonstrating is truly not personal - even though it feels COMPLETELY personal! The narcissist doesn’t care about you in that way. They care about themselves. Hurting you is just a byproduct of their actions. They MUST devalue you in order to deflect from their own shortcomings and faults. However, because of this, a narcissist on the warpath is EXTREMELY dangerous! I say that because they do NOT care about you, so they will do some of the worst things imaginable to destroy your reputation without a care or thought as to how it may affect you later on down the line! "

1. You give more in your relationships

You have a hard time saying no, often stifle your thoughts or opinions for fear of disturbing the peace, and your thoughts and actions are often with others in mind (not your own wants and needs.)

2. You are a People Pleaser

You feel compelled to take care of others. You have poor boundaries and often feel taken for granted. You may feel hurt or resentful if you are not appreciated for all that you are doing for others (especially if you feel you are making many sacrifices for others).

3. You find yourself needing to be needed

Your partner/close friend/family member is struggling in one way or another (addiction, illness, constant drama, etc.) Their need for you makes you feel valued, wanted and important.

4. You are emotionally reactive

Your emotions come to the surface quicker than you have time to think at times. This leaves you feeling out of control when your emotions have hijacked you.

5. You need to feel in control

This could be over-controlling emotions, deciding how you feel rather than tuning into the emotions that are coming up for you (often referred to as “Toxic Positivity”). This could also mean trying to control the actions, opinions, or emotions of someone else.

6. You avoid conflict

You don’t express your own thoughts or needs because you are afraid that if you do it will upset other people. You put your own values aside to make other people happy. And you set your own problems aside to focus on the problems of others.

7. Low Self Esteem or Low Sense of Self

When your purpose comes solely from pleasing others, it is easy to lose sight of yourself or feel lost. When you put others first you are sending a message to yourself that you are not important or worthy. This can make you dive deeper into the above behaviours.

Earlier I mentioned Empaths. The term is very “New Age” and many Codependents can be considered Empaths and actually share many of the same traits. According to an article in PsychAlive “Psychologists may use the term empath to describe a person that experiences a great deal of empathy, often to the point of taking on the pain of others at their own expense.” The article goes on to describe the pros and cons of being an Empath in more detail.

“There are many benefits of being an empath. On the bright side, empaths tend to be excellent friends. They are superb listeners. They consistently show up for friends in times of need. They are big-hearted and generous. Empaths also tend to be highly intuitive and emotionally intelligent.

However, some of the very qualities that make empaths such fantastic friends can be hard on the empaths themselves. Because empaths quite literally feel what their friends are going through, they can become overwhelmed by painful emotions, such as anxiety or anger. Empaths have a tendency to take on the problems of others as their own. It is often difficult for them to set boundaries for themselves and say no, even when too much is being asked of them.”

Sounds exactly like a Codependent to me! 

If you do happen to embrace the label of being an Empath, just be aware that, like with Codependency, I believe it’s a mental health issue that requires intervention and constant self-reflection and self-work to manage.

In my 20’s and married to an alcoholic who was in and out of rehab, I was recommended to join AlAnon, an organization that has a recovery program for Codependents who basically practice the same 12 step recovery program that alcoholics do at AA (Alcoholics Anonymous). I literally had no idea I was a Codependent at the time. Once I understood this I began to understand why I kept attracting abusive people into my life. 

My recovery journey has literally been a lifelong one. Today, decades later, I still struggle with setting healthy boundaries and I still get manipulated into compromising my boundaries at times.

It took many run-ins with vicious Narcs for me to finally wake up and realize that it was my Codependency that was inviting the constant abuse. If I wanted to stop being abused by Narcs, I would have to work even harder on healing myself. Very recently I plucked up the courage to distance myself from certain family members who refused to stop bullying me, despite several requests for them to treat me with more respect.

I honestly believe that we teach people how to treat us. If we accept even just a little bit of disrespect, that disrespect can easily grow into abuse.

One of my greatest challenges in life, besides learning to maintain healthy boundaries, has been to practice assertiveness. I’ve had to learn how to communicate to people what my boundaries are and when they are crossed. And I often have to do that a few times with the same people until they get it. I learned that it was ok to let people know what behavior I was not willing to accept and I learned that communicating my boundaries would make some people very angry. I also learned that I didn’t need to manage anyone's feelings about my personal boundaries.  If you feel taken advantage of and abused a lot, perhaps it’s time to look in the mirror and own your “stuff” and recognize the reasons why you are a soft target for abusers. These days I have fewer run-ins with Narcs because I can see them coming from 100 miles away.

I hope this article helped you recognize how you might be unconsciously inviting abuse into your life. You are not alone. There is help out there and you can become stronger and more assertive with therapy and counseling to the point where you begin to have fewer run-ins with Narcs.

copyright MB

MB

Heart sore, portal hurtings.

 The take down was smooth, like a missed and easy line; or embers that burn and drift in a slippage of soul. The dark coverngs of face and shine; where each foot shuffles and feeds it's own with long regret. Places, where she dreamed and left, hostages of crime. Un-soothing sores that fight their own and then leave the heart to die MB

22.02.22 Marin, dog walk fuckup.

 The Oracle’s message: The appearance of this card is a reminder that although it may appear that you’ve gone backward, the truth is that you are standing at a higher level, looking down into your circumstances. You will learn something, do something better, and break a cycle set up in the past. You actually have a bird’s-eye view of your initial footprints and can access the wisdom and lessons learned.

Relationship message: Are you wondering, How did I get here again? Does something feel familiar right now in your dynamics with others? Maybe a little too familiar? Don’t be surprised that you’ve found yourself repeating an old story with the same sort of person, who may not look similar but who attracted you because of your easy acquaintance with his or her qualities. Your relationship is a mix of what is good and what is potentially challenging. You have been drawn to this person through the perfection of Spirit’s plan for your evolution. You may have circled back to an accustomed spot—a familiar place— but that’s fine, as you get to do things again, only differently this time, for you learned something of great value since the last time around. How will you choose to behave now that you’re aware? Remain curious and stay out of the blame game.

I choose the resurrection and the life

[1] “The first draft of anything is shit.”  — Ernest Hemingway

 

[2] “Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.” — William Faulkner

 

[3] “I would advise any beginning writer to write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them—without a thought about publication -and only in the last draft to consider how the work will look from the outside.” — Anne Tyler

 

[4] “Sometimes in a nervous frenzy I just fling words as if I were flinging mud at a wall. Blurt out, heave out, babble out something — anything — as a first draft…Until it exists, writing has not really begun.” — John McPhee

 

[5] “I probably end up tossing out a quarter of what I write in the first draft of a book chapter. Even though I try to be pretty thoughtful about figuring out what I want to say before I write, you still have to see how concepts play on page to decide if they deserve to stay.”  — Cal Newport

 

[6] “Most times, I’ll just sit there, suffer, write shitty sentences, and hope I can make the next draft less putrid.” — Daniel Pink

 

[7] “Get it all down. Let it pour out of you and onto the page. Write an incredibly shitty, self-indulgent, whiny, mewling first draft. Then take out as many of the excesses as you can.” — Anne Lamott

 

[8] “I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box, so that later, I can build castles.”  — Shannon Hale

 

[9] “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”  ―Terry Pratchett

 

[10] “To become a proper writer, you have to forgive yourself the catastrophe of the first draft.” —Alain de Botton

 

[11] “The first draft reveals the art; revision reveals the artist.” — Michael Lee

 

[12] “For me, it’s always been a process of trying to convince myself that what I’m doing in a first draft isn’t important. One way you get through the wall is by convincing yourself that it doesn’t matter. No one is ever going to see your first draft. Nobody cares about your first draft. And that’s the thing that you may be agonizing over, but honestly, whatever you’re doing can be fixed…For now, just get the words out. Get the story down however you can get it down, then fix it.” — Neil Gaiman

 

[13] “In the first draft, I write for myself, and always with the door closed. No one ever sees those words.” — Mary Jaksch

 

[14] “I think the trouble starts when you sit down to write and imagine that you will achieve something magical and magnificent — and when you don’t, panic sets in. The solution is never to sit down and imagine that you will achieve something magical and magnificent.” — Malcolm Gladwell

 

[15] “If you are willing to do something that might not work, you’re closer to being an artist.” — Seth Godin

 

[16] “Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.” — Barbara Kingsolver

 

[17] “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” — Kurt Vonnegut

 

[18] “It doesn’t matter if it’s good right now, it just needs to exist.” — Austin Kleon

 

[19] “Writing—I can really only speak to writing here—always, always only starts out as shit: an infant of monstrous aspect; bawling, ugly, terrible, and it stays terrible for a long, long time (sometimes forever). Unlike cooking, for example, where largely edible, if raw, ingredients are assembled, cut, heated, and otherwise manipulated into something both digestible and palatable, writing is closer to having to reverse-engineer a meal out of rotten food.” —  David Rakoff

 

[20] “Good stories are not written. They are rewritten.” — Phyllis Whitney

 

[21] “The first draft is a skeleton….just bare bones. The rest of the story comes later with revising.” — Judy Blume

 

[22] “I just give myself permission to suck. I delete about 90 percent of my first drafts… so it doesn’t really matter much if on a particular day I write beautiful and brilliant prose that will stick in the minds of my readers forever, because there’s a 90 percent chance I’m just gonna delete whatever I write anyway. I find this hugely liberating.” — John Green

 

[23] “I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months… Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel.” — Stephen King

 

[24] “The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling and tiger-trapping.” — Ray Bradbury

 

[25] “Every first draft is perfect because all the first draft has to do is exist. It’s perfect in its existence. The only way it could be imperfect would be to NOT exist.” ― Jane Smiley

 

[26] “Writing the last page of the first draft is the most enjoyable moment in writing. It’s one of the most enjoyable moments in life, period.” — Nicholas Sparks