Hi. My name is Briar Ripley Page. I'm an author and I write mostly fabulist and horror/horror-adjacent quasi-literary fiction for adults. I also sometimes write poetry, essays, SFF, and fiction aimed at more of a teen audience, but none of that is my primary passion or my bread and butter.
If you have a question for me (general, related to writing, about my writing-- really, about anything except my personal life or yours), please don't hesitate to ask!
I have a website at briarripleypage.xyz. Although it's a little chaotic to look at, it does provide a comprehensive and up-to-date list of both my published work and the various places I am active online. Check it out if you're interested!
I also have a Patreon. For $1.50 a month, you get a new, never before published short story every month, plus artwork/illustrations and reprinted stories!
Please be aware that I do not usually use content warning tags on blog posts, and although I intend to keep posts on this tumblr more or less PG-13 rated, a lot of my writing contains graphic and potentially disturbing content. If you want to read one of my books or stories but are concerned about triggers and/or age appropriateness, feel free to message me-- I can point you to the tamer stuff, or the stuff that doesn't touch on a particular triggering subject.
I do not care very much what pronouns people use to talk about me, but in general my preference goes (from most to least preferred): they/them or he/him -> neopronouns or it/its -> she/her.
as a child i assumed that martha’s vineyard was a fancy private vineyard owned by martha stewart and the reason rich people vacationed there was because they were friends with martha
sometimes you see Takes™ that make you go "mmmhmmm okay yeah i see we both interpreted that differently based on what the show gave us, but i see how you arrived at your ideas even if they're different from mine," and then sometimes you see Takes™ that make you go "brother what show did you even fucking watch"
i am curious about something. why not: form of a poll!
abuse here includes purely emotional abuse. abuse at school doesn’t have to have been consistent across every grade, it could just be “in eighth grade” or “in kindergarten, second grade, and tenth grade,” etc.
however, exclusive peer abuse at school is in a separate category called “bullying.”
when I was a child:
I was abused at home, but not at school
I was abused at school, but not at home
I was abused at home and at school
I wasn’t abused at either place, but was abused at a third major location
I wasn’t abused at all
I was bullied by peers at school but not abused by adults
i initially read this to mean “i don’t understand the standards the majority of people use to judge good behavior vs bad behavior” & was like “same,” but then i realized you meant acting like in TV, movies, and plays. and I’m also like “same.”
people at large go apeshit gaga over some performances i thought were just okay or pretty good; more often, they seem to really dislike performances i thought were fantastic! (usually the criticism is either that they think the acting is stiff/cold/not emotive enough/“you can’t tell what the character is thinking,” or that they think the acting is over the top in a way they find “unrealistic” and obnoxious.)
I've been meaning to make a post talking about my stroke because y'all got bits and pieces of the recovery but I never actually told the story of HOW it went down and the thing is the type of stroke I had is usually the type young people have and since having mine i've now heard multiple stories of people under 40 having very similar strokes and the scary thing is, is that they didn't get help right away. Because you're young and healthy and sure you feel weird but it'll pass right? but it doesn't, and it gets worse, and by the time you get to the hospital (some people literally take days to go) the deficits are worse and recovery is harder.
so here's a super long post about strokes in general, and mine in particular/what I went through.
So for strokes the signs are abbreviated BE FAST. Balance loss, Eyesight changes, Face drooping, Arm weakness, Speech difficulty, -> Time to call 911.
Had I known those MAYBE I would have figured it out but my symptoms were a little mixed. I was reading (fanfic!) in bed because it was a sunday morning and i had nothing pressing to do and suddenly got dizzy. I put my laptop aside because my eyes were blurring (Eyesight changes - symptom #1), and laid down, thinking it would pass, it didn't, it's a little vague how it progressed because I'd been having headaches and neckpain for about 3 weeks leading up to it so I was like 'idk is this a migraine?' (headaches can be a stroke symptom so symptom #2) but i got nauseous and eventually got up and to my utmost surprise I immediately fell over as if I was the drunkest of frat bros. The room literally spun before my eyes as I fell to the floor (Balance loss - symptom #3). I have had some Nights and I had never been that unsteady before. I crawled my way to the bathroom, threw up (nausea - not a common stroke symptom) , took 800mg of ibuprofen, and crawled back to bed.
if you know anything about ibuprofen you might know it's a mild blood thinner and that's a high dose. I may have inadvertently helped myself with that one. I was just feeling like shit and thinking 'idk this might help'
At this point I still thought we were still in Normal Land. Sure, it was a weird morning, but Surely There Was A Reason. (Yes There Was) Anyway, as I'm lying there willing my body to stop suffering I realize my arm is going numb (stroke symptom #4) and I switch positions, because weird, but it doesn't go away, and I gave it a good little while. I'm on a medication that can make my limbs tingle but it usually just does it to my fingers and it dissipates quickly but this wasn't dissipating, and then I realized one of my legs was also going numb. Then one side of my face is going numb.
(at the time I did not look in the mirror but I had a drooping eyelid - symptom #5)
Those all seem bad. I grab my computer and google 'when to go to the hospital for dizzyness' as that felt like the worst of my problems. and indeed the list I found highlighted that if you are also experiencing loss of balance, blurred vision, nausea, and limb numbness, you should see a doctor. That seems like far too many symptoms to be having all to be listed. I grab my phone (thankfully plugged in and by my bed), and start layering on more clothing because it's about 10 degrees out and i'm in a pajama dress. The very nice man at 911 talks with me and sends an ambulance, I tell him I don't think I can get out the front door of my building on my own and he asks if I can get to MY apartment door to which I say yes and he assures me that's fine they will have keys to my building.
(I have been since informed they love to chop down doors but no, I could get that far)
I wait by my door laying down on the ground and they arrive pretty quickly. They see to me in the hallway, which is more of a lobby in my building and the only place with room for me to lie down (I cannot stand unassisted at this point) they ask me a bunch of questions, take vitals, and ask me where I would like to be taken. Me, having never had to go to the fucking hospital in an emergency before, simply go 'wherever is close' because I again, I am having a stroke and do not have the wherewithal to think through these things.
A big firefighter helps me down the stairs (it's only a half flight and I still almost did not make it) and we get underway.
At the hospital they wheel me into triage and I mostly lie there gratefully and answer some questions and respond to some tests (grip strength, following a pen with my eyes, that sort of thing) and then I hear what is great when you've been at urgent care for two hours but what is Very Bad when you just arrived in an ambulance and that's 'She's next'. I jumped the line for a CT scan and an MRI. I was there less than ten minutes before I was actively being scanned. honestly closer to five.
my active symptoms seem to have been worse than some of the stories I've heard, not being able to walk AT ALL in particular, although some other are pretty equal (Footless Jo on youtube had a stroke around the same time I did of the same type and has discussed hers, she delayed going in despite the severity for a variety of reasons and it sounds like her recovery has been difficult) My recovery was pretty easy because i was actively being cared for and on blood thinners right away. My stroke was caused by an vertebral arterial tear, aka the inner part of an artery tore which can cause a clot. This tends to be the type of stroke young people have although I'm sure it's possible to have a different type.
I was pretty out of it in the beginning, but I was only in the hospital for 6 days and then in a rehab for another 4 to relearn how to walk and balance, then i was released unto the world and just spent time going to physical therapy and recovering for awhile. I was out of work for about 8 weeks total. I basically had the best outcome for a stroke. I recovered almost fully back to 100% (I'm about 2% less sure footed than I used to be, but it's rarely noticeable), my face still feels a little weird but has markedly improved so I live in hope it will eventually get back to normal. It massively sucked. But strokes can fuck you up for life and I came out a weird medical story to tell and have to take some extra medication now/precautions to take (i cannot do certain types of yoga, no weightlifting, no push ups, no going on rollercoasters.... things that could strain my neck essentially) but overall I escaped very lucky.
the bad news is i have basically no hope for anything very important in the world at large getting better, or even simply not getting worse, in my lifetime. it’s bumming me out, it’s stressing me out, it’s almost certainly making my physical symptoms worse than they would be otherwise.
the good news is, my own life is going well enough that I’m not suicidal or having a complete breakdown about it. am I happy all the time? no. do I still have personal fears and/or problems? yes. but oh my god, when i compare how i’m handling the aforementioned feeling now to how i was handling much *less* extreme versions of that same feeling 10 or 20 years ago.
no suicidality, not starving myself, not killing a six pack of strong beer in a single evening (mind, I’m 5’4 and thin). not smoking cigarettes, or putting them out on myself. not lying down in the middle of the street at night. not having unsafe sex with strangers. no borderline psychotic delusions that im literally the worst person in the world and that everything bad “started happening” at my birth, or when i became an adolescent, or when i turned 18, because i was never supposed to exist and I’m warping reality towards evil by existing. (I understand this is historically naive and incoherent, but keep in mind it was both a delusional belief and something i initially came up with when i was 9 or 10.)
i think my instinctual reaction to this feeling of hopelessness is that, since i can’t seem to change anything else & don’t have enough hope to be scared of negative consequences for myself, i should pursue various acts or projects of extreme self determination/self control/bodily autonomy. (i think this is why i finally started transitioning medically when i did!) since i now like myself, have people who depend on me for things *and* care about me, and have access to more money & privacy than i did at 17 or 27, I’m both less inclined to choose extremely self-destructive or dangerous ways of doing this, and more able to do things i want to do in a relatively safe way.
but this also makes me feel terrible for others; if you’re poor (or just don’t have any control over/ability to access the money that pays for your expenses), and if you’re in a situation where you do not have any close, positive, mutual relationships with people you see on a regular basis in real life, then you’re surely not going to be doing well under these world conditions even if you don’t have any major problems with self-loathing, aren’t generally prone to depression or anxiety or apocalyptic thinking. & the circumstances themselves are making people more and more alienated/suspicious/harsh or unsympathetic, & making it harder and harder for most people to, say, move, or quit their current job and get a different job. i think a lot more people now have a general feeling of “I’m useless and nothing i do matters to anyone or could help to change anything,” too. that feeling is a pretty big driver of self destructive decisions, angry outbursts, and what Gen Z likes to call “bedrotting”— at least in my experience.
i have been noticing recently that people younger than me are too sensitive, while people older than me are not sensitive enough. which, if i'm correct, should be taken as a sign that the total reality penetration vortex is operating as intended -- within as few as five or six generations we may very well be producing babies who can directly perceive the wound at the heart of the world
