Malapropisms and Non Sequiturs

26 / “writer” / MDNI Emotionally exhausted, morally bankrupt

[postergirlfornothing]

YOU DONT UNDERSTAND THEY BUILT A HOME AND A BEAUTIFUL LIFE IN A TRAGIC DYSTOPIAN WORLD. THEY HAD 16 YEARS TOGETHER AND THEY DIED IN EACH OTHER'S ARMS. THEY GREW STRAWBERRIES AND WATERED THEIR PLANTS AND PAINTED AND COOKED AND THEY LOVED EACH OTHER 😭😭😭😭😭 THEY WERE EACH OTHER'S PURPOSE 😭😭😭😭

[malapropisms-and-nonsequiturs]

Whatever, whatever, whatever. Doesn’t affect me at all, oh no, oh boy, no I did not cry when they giggled eating strawberries, no i didn’t sob at their kiss, what do you mean? I am cold, I am cold, this does not bother me…

..like it didn’t bother Joel, like when he didn’t get choked up. Yeah, no, just like that, I felt nothing, I felt nothing like Joel felt nothing when he walked out of the house after Ellie read the letter.

God damn it.

This stupid scenario about two lost souls finding each other post-apocalypse. And they rebuild slowly, they reinvent, they find something to live for in each other. And they leave on their own terms. It definitely doesn’t make me think about how superficial things are now or how blind, angry, and stupid we are.

God damn it.

I feel everything.

[katt1281]

i must not lie down on my bed with my phone. lying down with my phone is the time-killer. lying down with my phone is the little mistake that brings total academic obliteration. i will face my phone. i will permit it to show me my updated tumblr feed. and when i have scrolled past a few posts i will turn over my phone and place it down. where the procrastination has gone there will be nothing. only i will remain

[joyland2022]

rdr2 arthur morgan's journal is my favourite storytelling device ever, video game or otherwise. he's a boulder of a man: broad shouldered and scowl faced most of the time. he reserves something of himself because he leads a life that needs a bit of reserve—arthur raids houses, and collects debts, and robs at gun point. he lets his physicality do the talking.

the only place arthur freely expresses himself is his journal, which you have access to, and as his story unfolds, he adds more and more to it. he draws beautiful illustrations of last night's campfire, with impressions of his friends. he sketches rabbits you saw in passing. he adds small symbols and reminders for himself. he writes, wondering how he can live with himself, wondering if tomorrow he'll be dead, and just grieving, grieving, grieving.

arthur morgan's journal is an object of function and beauty: functional because it's a player action log and beautiful because it expresses arthur's rich interior life.

[malapropisms-and-nonsequiturs]

Beer

I don't know, I guess it hurts to send out a message into the void. So, you know there's a few seconds of contemplation after you do, filled with hope, only for the realization to slowly creep in that you shouldn't be expecting anything, any time soon.

And you stare into space then at your own hands and mumble “What have I done?” because you know that it is your fault. You can't even feel lonely, because feeling lonely implies a certain amount of self pity which you cannot allow yourself, you are responsible for this.

Still, your eyes start stinging and your throat tightens up, and there's a few quiet, tearless sobs that you shake away too fast. Your eyes stay dry, your throat loosens up but the weight remains and you'll be carrying it tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and the day after that.

You become this heavy mass, rolling down through life, picking up all the garbage in the way. You become heavier and heavier until you come undone. Then emptiness.

My heart aches, to tell you the truth. And my eyes keep watering, my voice quivers with sobs that itch to come out.

I keep them all in.

Because it is my fault.

It really is.

[malapropisms-and-nonsequiturs]

311392023

Here I am at a crossroad

Two cats fighting

Someone is awake, lights on and window open

What should I do?

It seems so obvious

It’s so palpable

It’s bitter like the tobacco on my tongue

I need to get over my desperation

My body and mind can no longer ignore it

There is no generational curse

But my own brand of sabotage.

[inadvertently-writing]

Mindfull less-ness

my dearest self and ego,

i miss you both today

i miss our thoughts 

about self worth, centered indulgence, etc.

i hope to pick through my mind's wreckage and

once again pleasure myself with my pretentious and egotistical

fantasies that fester day after day…

my dearest self and ego,

please help find me again…

By@inadvertently-writing ©

[malapropisms-and-nonsequiturs]

Farolito

Walking down the street

Listening to “Farolito”

The smell of cake in the air

Quickly changes to sewage

And in another heartbeat

To the perfume of lilac.

…

Such is life.

[inadvertently-writing]

express, inspire, redeem and repeat...

we are all champions

expressing our inner selves

seething with a passion

wickedly posting in a fashion

instinctively for all

we are all champions;

a unified front with no holds barred

following, wallowing and free

to expel in words every thought,

aspiration, feeling and passion

straight from cerebral cortex to social media…

I raise my glass and say...

to all to each a fair congrats!

By@inadvertently-writing©

[malapropisms-and-nonsequiturs]

“The result is rather typical of modern technology, an overall dullness of appearance so depressing that it must be overlaid with a veneer of "style" to make it acceptable. And that, to anyone who is sensitive to romantic Quality, just makes it all the worse. Now it's not just depressingly dull, it's also phony. Put the two together and you get a pretty accurate basic description of modern American technology: stylized cars and stylized outboard motors and stylized typewriters and stylized clothes. Stylized refrigerators filled with stylized food in stylized kitchens in stylized homes. Plastic stylized toys for stylized children, who at Christmas and birthdays are in style with their stylish parents. You have to be awfully stylish yourself not to get sick of it once in a while. It's the style that gets you; technological ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness in an effort to produce beauty and profit by people who, though stylish, don't know where to start because no one has ever told them there's such a thing as Quality in this world and it's real, not style. Quality isn't something you lay on top of subjects and objects like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Real Quality must be the source of the subjects and objects, the cone from which the tree must start.”

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig

[digibubble]

[malapropisms-and-nonsequiturs]

I want to eat this so bad

[malapropisms-and-nonsequiturs]

Another list

It’s not a feeling of going insane, really..

It’s more like having every memory, experience, and ability fade away.

I am a newborn in the body and mind of an adult. I only have weak instinct and a strong sense of having been here before.

[c-is-for-circinate]

There are a lot of abuse and recovery stories out there in fandom.  A lot of them are written by people who’ve never been in an abusive relationship.  That’s fine, that certainly doesn’t mean you can't write it, especially when it’s present in canon.  Unfortunately, it does mean that a lot of people get it wrong.

The usual abuse narrative you see in fandom is a story about absence.  The lack of safety.  The lack of freedom.  The lack of love, or of hope, or of trust.  They try to characterize the life of an abused kid, or an abused partner, based on what’s missing.  They characterize recovery based on getting things back: finding safety, discovering freedom, and slowly regaining the ability to trust–other people, the security of the world, themselves.

That doesn’t work.  That is not how it works.

Lives cannot be characterized by negative space.  This is a statement about writing.  It’s also a statement about life.

You can’t write about somebody by describing what isn’t there.  Or you can, but you’ll get a strange, inverted, abstracted picture of a life, with none of the right detail.  A silhouette.  The gaps are real but they're not the point.

If you’re writing a story, you need to make it about the things that are there.  Don’t try to tell me about the absence of safety.  Safety is relative.  There are moments of more or less safety all throughout your character’s day.  Absolute safety doesn’t exist in anyone’s life, abusive situation or not.

If you are trying to tell me a story about not feeling safe, then the question you need to be thinking about is, when safety is gone, what grows in the space it left behind?

Don’t try to tell me a story about a life characterized by the lack of safety.  Tell me a story about a life defined by the presence of fear.

What's there in somebody’s life when their safety, their freedom, their hope and trust are all gone?  It’s not just gaps waiting to be filled when everything comes out right in the end.  It’s not just a void.

The absence of safety is the presence of fear.  The absence of freedom is the presence of rules, the constant litany of must do this and don’t do that and a very very complicated kind of math beneath every single decision.  The lack of love feels like self-loathing.  The lack of trust translates as learning skills and strategies and skepticism, how to get what you need because you can’t be sure it’ll be there otherwise.

You don’t draw the lack of hope by telling me how your character rarely dares to dream about having better.  You draw it by telling me all the ways your character is up to their neck in what it takes to survive this life, this now, by telling me all the plans they do have and never once in any of them mentioning the idea of getting out.

This is of major importance when it comes to aftermath stories, too.  Your character isn’t a hollow shell to be filled with trust and affection and security.  Your character is full.  They are brimming over with coping mechanisms and certainties about the world.  They are packed with strategies and quickfire risk-reward assessments, and depending on the person it may look more calculated or more instinctual, but it’s there.  It’s always there.  You’re not filling holes or teaching your teenage/adult character basic facts of life like they’re a child.  You’re taking a human being out of one culture and trying to immerse them in another. People who are abused make choices.  In a world where the ‘wrong’ choice means pain and injury, they make a damn career out of figuring out and trying to make the right choice, again and again and again.  People who are abused have a framework for the world, they are not utterly baffled by everyone else, they make assumptions and fit observations together in a way that corresponds with the world they know.

They’re not little lost children.  They’re not empty.  They’re human beings trying to live in a way that’s as natural for them as life is for anybody, and if you’re going to write abuse/recovery, you need to know that in your bones.

Don’t tell me about gaps.  Tell me about what’s there instead.

[fairycosmos]

mistakes are so normal and human and inevitable and necessary and real. if i make one however please put me to death

[malapropisms-and-nonsequiturs]

EXIT (No. 1)

DISCLAIMER:

This is my first attempt at freewriting after many years of inactivity. A friend provided me with a prompt, and I just let it develop. I edited so it is easy to read, but it's mostly whatever unfiltered crap came out of my head in the moment. So feedback and criticism is more than welcome. Please tear me a new one.

PROMPT: Crimson sky, gun, person sitting by a brown leaved tree.

WARNINGS: Mental health/mentions of suicide/ interaction with psychiatrist/hospitalization/guns/anxiety/medication

Word count: 3.5k

Rating: 18+

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

End of day, finally. The wind blows and it’s drying my lips. I chew them relentlessly like my thoughts chew away at my mind. I come to a stop, finally. Something inside allows me to rest. 

“You walked enough,” echoes in my head, “you’ve managed enough.”, “Enough.”, “Enough.” 

I groan out loud in an effort to shut the loop up before it induces another attack. I sometimes get stuck in these thought loops, they’re like TV commercials, loud and on repeat, and they never sell me what I need.  

I stop by a tree, and I am so stuck in my head that I don’t even realize the color of the leaves. I slide down the trunk, onto my bottom, collecting a considerable number of bugs on my back in the process. The ground is soft, and I don’t feel the cold or damp yet. 

The loop stops as I start looking around, finally. Trees, ground, mushrooms, moss, one, two, three, trees. Good.  

As I’m calming down, I rummage through my backpack and find I brought food. I take a sandwich out of my bag and take my time unpacking it. My teeth sink slowly in the bread. “I make good sandwiches.” I think. I chew less than I should, faster than I should, all patience out the window, and I start feeling it in my chest when I swallow a few superficially masticated mouthfuls. I try to eat slower. 

My head leans back on the trunk. I glance up and I notice with a smile that the leaves of the tree are brown. “Odd.” I look around but everything else is green. I look around, then back up. Brown. The sky creeps between thick, full branches, specks of crimson, alive and playful, seem to be dancing among the leaves. 

My eyes shift perspective and now only the branches and leaves are moving, the sky becoming a static, yet colorful background “I liked it better before.” 

I try to recreate the moment and I succeed briefly before my mind fixates back on my sandwich. “It’s an OK sandwich. Actually, ‘could have been better.” 

I don’t notice right away how pathetic my train of thoughts becomes. I should have continued to stare at the tree and so my food would have continued to taste delicious. Alas, I finish. I am pleased but tormented, nonetheless. Why must I suffer? 

The crimson of the sky darkens, I start to feel ants on my neck. Tiny feet marching on my sweaty scruff. It’s my cue to start walking again. I shake off the bugs, pat at the dampness on my butt and leave. My steps are heavier, but I keep a steady pace. At this point you may wonder who I am and where I am going. “It’s getting late”. I shouldn’t be out, right? 

Right.  

While on my way, I pick some mushrooms and stash them in my backpack.  

The way ahead is darker but quiet still. I slip back into my head where I find you. You’re still there hanging around, curious. The rhythm of my steps, the constant shuffle of the leaves, provides a good immersive environment. Not that I need it anymore, my daydreaming is pathological at this point. “Maladaptive, maladaptive, maladaptive., mala-…" 

We engage in conversation; you take the form of whatever human figure I need in that moment. You’re a friend, or a familiar presence, or so I think.  

I trip and stumble on a patch of raised ground. It’s pitch black, hours must have passed. What did we talk about again? 

I have a flashlight and so I use it. I can finally see where I am going. I become wary and my focus shifts to my surroundings. I tread carefully to not wake whatever’s hiding in the darkness. Like a fox or a bear, I don’t believe in monsters. 

It’s getting colder but I must go on. I must keep moving for now, as dark as it may get. Nothing can make me stop now. I move my flashlight around to peer at what's in my path. Trees, but these are slightly bent at the trunk, they lean into one another, they’re hunched back, like old people.  

My boots keep me warm into the night, my feet thankful in them, snuggled up in two pairs of socks, and covered in Band-Aids. There is no end in sight, no indication of change ahead, and if I met a brown-leaved tree before, now all of them are black, beside the line of sight lit by my flashlight that serves as a ray of emerald hope. 

- 

“So, tell me about yourself.”  

It starts to rain, heavy drops hit my shoulders and the top of my head. I pretend not to notice yet as if that makes me waterproof. 

“I’m not an interesting person.” I respond to the curious character in my head: you. 

“I'm just walking around, looking for the exit.” I tell you nonchalantly, you pretend to care or... I make you seem like you pretend to care.  

“Exit?” you ask bemusedly, as if you did not know already, but you do. How could you not? 

“Well, yes, I’ve been stuck here for a while, and I would like to go back.” 

You pause.  

- 

Have I finally had enough? I realize I am soaked, and the rain is still falling. I swipe a warm hand on my face, brushing off the wetness. Maybe a little bit more. 

Although it’s much colder in the woods at night, it’s still summer, therefore I can endure this slight discomfort for a little bit longer. Moments like these make me wonder if I am relentless at the wrong time.  

“What’s back?” You ask suddenly. “Where is back?” 

I shift in front of you, as if hesitant to answer. Even in my head I have trouble formulating a sincere answer.  

“Well, back. Back is before...” I start but falter and fail to continue, to finish. 

Is the rain dying down? 

“So, back is still here only back in time?” You’re a prick.  

“No, no, I meant, back is where I was before.” 

I swear I hear you scoff at me. It makes me snarl and I become self-conscious. 

The air smells deliciously of wet moss, dirt, and mountain flowers. I inhale deeply and feel fixed for a moment. Not enough. But it does smell pretty in comparison to me. I reek of wet dog, which is ODD because I am human? 

“Before what?” I start to dislike you, but I cannot bring myself to tell you. Maybe I really am ridiculous.  

“Before...” I begin with confidence, but my thoughts freeze in my synapses. “I am not sure.”  

The rain stopped. 

I entertain this entire dialogue as if it’s not completely insane and continue walking through the pitch-black forest that could kill me very easily, yet here I am not acknowledging the possibility.   

“Before I started feeling like this, I guess. Before you.” A confession. I sigh out loud and stop again. I stop because my anxiety tells me to stop, because it makes me physically react. I cup my face in my own hands and groan, the pads of my fingers dip into my skin, my jaw is clenched. I stop for good by a tall tree.  

I am done. I decide to wait out the night. I sit down, knees to my chest, arms around them. My forehead rests against my legs and I try to wait it out. 

I try to wait it out, because, unlike the rain, anxiety feels like death, like walking around with rot in your chest and brain. The rain weighs down its wetness on you like a blanket, but the fear, the dread, seeps into your blood and circulates inside you round and round and round and ...round and round. 

I don’t sleep when your voice finds me again, pinned to the tree. I’ve lit a small fire and I’m toasting my fingers and feet over the flames.  

“You stopped.” 

“I did.” 

“Why?” 

“I got scared.” I feel shame pool in my stomach. It’s a different kind of rot, shame. 

“Of animals?” You so innocently ask, making me chuckle. I think about the nature of my fear, and it is indeed irrational.  

“No, I don’t know why. I just feel scared.” My fingers reach closer to the fire, welcoming a pleasant burn. 

“Are you lost?” 

“I most certainly am. Forwards and backwards don’t mean anything anymore.” 

“I know where the exit is.”  

My forehead leans against my knees again. I pretend not to hear what you just said because I cannot entertain this madness further without spraining my brain.  

- 

Hours pass probably, morning breaks over the endless rows of trees. Birds, insects, rustling, hums, sploshes, the fire dying at my feet.  

Deep into the woods the sun doesn’t reach so easily in the morning. It feels colder than last night. 

I raise my head, feeling nauseous. I glance up and my heart stops, then I hear you looping in the background of my mind. 

“I know where the exit is.” 

Above me, brown. At my feet heavy, black, a gun. Did I even move? Did I ever start walking? 

“Please tell me where I am” I plead gutturally. I stoop so low into my own melon and start negotiating with my imagination. My thoughts convey a rapid response. 

“At your feet, at your feet, pick it up and pack it in.” 

I gawk at the gun. Filthy, phallic object. I often dreamed of it, kissed it, warm mouth on cold steel one and then fireworks, celebration, followed by pitch black sky. I feel sick to my stomach. I refuse. I will not reduce myself to spilled guts.  

“I will not.” I protest. 

“It’s not for you. Christ, you’re pathetic. I did not just bend the very fabric of your mind to materialize a gun at your feet so you can off yourself.” 

And for the first time, you don’t sound like me anymore. Your voice is no longer my imagination, imitating the feel of sound, your voice is sound, genuine vibration, prickling the hairs in my ears and traveling up my spine into my head. And it’s the most you’ve said since we’ve started talking.  

I think I can see you even, you look farther away than you sound. But no, it's not you, no. I swallow the dryness in my throat. I am losing it.  

The gun sits by my ankle, real as me and the trees around. I know you said not to, but what if? What if I would? And this feeling, I learn now, is not new. This feeling does not surprise me, the more I let it play in my mind. It’s familiar, like I’ve thought it a million times before. 

Oh. 

“Stop, just pick up the gun and do what I say.” 

“Is it true?” 

“Do what I say.” 

“But is it?” 

Radio silence. I feel bad, it seems like you know more than me. What happened? I pick the gun up to weigh it in my palm. I abandon any attempt at communicating with you, as it seems you only like to give orders. I’m mad at you. I’m mad. 

Sudden jolt of pain in my temple, sudden ringing in my ears, sudden metal taste on my tongue. I stand up and start running, still holding the gun. I run in frequent strides.  

I stop, the ringing is still there but distant. I look at the hand holding the gun, my finger pressed on the trigger. I gag. My retching echoes through the woods. I start yelling. 

“Where are you?” I search around. 

“Just say something, please. Say anything.” 

I look up, I curse myself for the nth time. Crimson sky again. I toss the gun away. It’s impossible, it was morning just a moment ago.  

There is deep hunger in my gut, sharp pain in my legs, I look unkept, like I’ve been in the woods for days. My palm cramps when I try to straighten my hand, like I’ve clutched the gun for hours. 

The sky bleeds over me, bringing forth cold air and uneasiness. I am yet to find out what happened, who died if not me? I haven’t found a corpse yet. I’ve swept the area several times. I even looked for freshly dug dirt in case I buried whatever poor creature I ended. Maybe I did not shoot anyone, maybe the gun just went off by itself and startled me into a state of confusion. Am I even capable of such an act? I don’t remember many things about myself. Or rather, I don’t know if I don’t remember or there is nothing to remember. Maybe there is no edge to my existence that’s worth forming memories of.  

Maybe I’ve been surviving, entered auto pilot and remained stuck in it until right now when the system failed or realized I am not supposed to be here and kicked me out like a virus.  

Am I out? 

There were no feelings before, but now I ache in and out. Is this what it means to be present? I don’t even know if I’m supposed to be here, it’s been 5 minutes and I’ve already shot someone. 

I remember you asking about me and I gave you a flavorless response, and then you tried to be polite and entertain the nonsense. Then... 

I must be mad because I start looking for a faceless, voiceless bundle of electrical and chemical signals that once passed through my piss poor excuse of a brain. You could be anything from the worm in the dirt, to the leaf on the tree, to the crimson of the sky, and I wouldn’t know because there is no way I can recognize you, there is no familiarity to you. 

I frown when I look for the gun and fail to locate it. I dropped it behind me and now it’s air. 

That damned gun, something ripped when it appeared, when you... 

“…bend the fabric... to materialize”, “I know the exit.”, “...the exit.” 

Exit. 

Something ripped open. The pain, the ringing in my ears. I pat at my ache but find nothing. 

I see the brown leaved tree again and I go sit under it. This I remember, I assume the same position as last night, however now my body feels no tension, and there are no bugs on my back. There probably weren’t any insects to begin with.  

I still don’t remember anything else, but as I stare ahead, I feel my gut warm up in anticipation of remembering every single detail from this point on.  

Stupid. It feels stupid and cheesy.  

What if I fall into the other extreme? I don’t want to remember everything.  

I shut my eyes; I try to forget that I ever wished for something like this. I chase back the darkness, the absence, but I am present, forced to change, too settled in this newfound reality, something is different. 

My fingers comb through the dirt under me, my hand gets covered in mud and worms. It’s cold but comforting, soft almost. I play with it but suddenly it’s thick, hard, no longer malleable and friendly. My fingers meet resistance. My back sinks into softness, the trunk of the tree morphing into plush.  

“So, tell me about yourself.” 

I look down and find my fingers dug into leather cushion armrests. I stare ahead and I am met by a scrutinizing stare. I shift in and out of focus, re-entering the space at different times during the conversation. Some words stick to me like smoke. 

“Catatonia”, “psychosis”, “epilepsy”.  

“Who are you?” I interrupt.  

“Your doctor.” A crooked finger points towards a pretentious name tag. Right. But then I see, on the white lab coat, under the tag, a silhouette embroidered in shiny brown thread: a tree. On the wall, behind the doctor, painted on texturized surface, a brown tree. On the file, sat on the desk, printed brown on white, a tree. 

Found you. 

“You’ve got epilepsy. But you’ll live.” 

“I remember you.” 

“I highly doubt it.” Yeah, it’s you. Prick.  

“You were mute, nonresponsive, stuck. Until we medicated you.” 

“You kept telling me about the exit.” Your ears perk up, eyes slightly widen. 

A beat. 

You smile genuinely. “Guess you found it, then, huh?” 

“What was it?” 

You chuckle. “Intravenous antipsychotics and electroconvulsive therapy.” 

“Explains the gun and the rain.” I note. You note...in writing.  

“So, tell me about that.” 

...