mental illness
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Last month, I taught my very first writing workshop. I’ve publicly spoken as an author before, talked at high schools about craft and publication, been featured on panels at conventions. Yet Novis Mortem Collective offered me my first opportunity to actually teach writing.
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If I were to manufacture a hell for someone with body dysmorphia and/or an eating disorder, it would be this.
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My appearance has always been a source of fixation and distortion, creating a rift between my sense of self and physical vessel. It never looked how I wanted (not that it could with my cracked lens), so I hated it. Now, as my body has literally turned on me and itself, it feels like it…
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I have no solid sense of my physical form. My consciousness feels too expansive, too malleable to align with the flesh.
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Welcome to a darkly satirical little journey through suicide, suicidal ideation, self-harm, depression. Apply a heavy sardonic tone while reading.
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I don’t know why depression and writing walk hand in hand for me. Mania and writing surely do not, though I would love to fuel my craft with that energy. There is just a certain point in the descent, a certain shade in the darkness where my mind unfurls and all the words pour down…
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Yesterday, I got my semicolon tattoo in a now cliche display of suicide and self-harm survival. It was a last minute addition when I was sitting to get flowers added to my seasonal sleeve. The tattoo may be fully mainstream now, hiding on the wrists of strangers all around me, but the metaphor still speaks…
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Releasing my novella Savages as an audiobook was a new and bizarre experience as an author. As many nights as I spent writing the book and as many times as I’ve read it over, it was something completely different to hear my entire story aloud in another voice. I loved it, so I decided I…
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When I started “modeling,” I think I was chasing a way to feel positively about my appearance. In the wake of my most self-destructive phase, I needed to manufacture some semblance of confidence from the shattered pieces of my sense of self. I knew I could never be classified as conventionally pretty or skinny, but…
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If you are familiar with my reviewing practices, I like to give my bottom line up front (BLUF) then dissect it in detail. My BLUF for 13 Reasons Why (both the Netflix series and book) is that I loved them and hated them, simultaneously. In either case, I recommend reading/watching to explore your own opinions. You…
Fiery Pen 