Sammy Nickles

A place where I put raw, barely edited ideas down. My life, my job, my brain, my friends and the characters they inspire all roam here as they please. so enjoy, and don't step on the moan-rats.

[sammy-nickles]

The Hotel in my Head and the             People who Live There

Creativity is a jerk. He comes and goes as he pleases like he has no place to be and he doesn't particularily care if he shows up on time. I want to murder him at this very moment and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Why you may ask? Because we scheduled this together. This writing thing. Not like the specific time or anything but rather we were going to do something together everyday for the next month. I never thought it would be easy, but I did at least think that he would show up for the first week. Yet here we are. Day three. Creativity is late. Scratch that. Creativity didn't even show up. He didn't even leave a note saying "Hey took the day off." I even talked with Procrastination about delaying until Mr C showed up but Guilt yelled at her and now she is crying somewhere in my head. She isn't used to losing and she's a bit of a baby. 

Guilt is a big tough guy that bullies everyone around him and he almost never shuts up! It wouldn't be so bad, I suppose, if he had a pleasant voice but he doesn't. His voice is like nails on a chalkboard, or the constant click of the ceiling fan that keeps you up all night. The only way to shut him up is to do whatever you can to fix the problem he's complaining about, but even that is short lived. Compared to Guilt Creativity is a saint! (Never tell him that I said that. Heaven knows he's got the arrogance of a cat already.) But I’m still very angry. Sometimes with all these voices in my head I feel kinda cluttered. Like I'm at a party where I know everyone pretty well but they are all fighting and all I can do is sit and watch. It wouldn't be to bad if I only lived with Guilt, Creativity, and Procrastination...but there are so many others that I can't even keep track of them! It's like I'm running a hotel up there for whoever has a voice and likes to use it! My mom has said more than a few times that leaving food out is like inviting the bugs to come right in. Well if that's true the hotel in my head's got free food out all day everyday 24/7 because everyone is invited. “Please come right in!” the sign must say “Stay however long you want! Our treat!” I hope someday I can learn how to speak up for myself and tell all of them to shut up. But until then, wish me luck. Worry just came in the door and she looks about ready for a midnight party.

[sammy-nickles]

The place that I call my store in detail that took way to much time to reproduce. Bookseller’s for the win!

[sammy-nickles]

Pain & Poor Descriptions of it

You would think an 18 year old girl would know nothing of pain. After all what could she really know besides nails, cell phones, and highschool courses. Maybe I'm being exagerative (if that's a word), but that's how it feels living in the world side by side with adults who can only see me as a shallow teenager. I feel misunderstood...not misunderstood like the teenager who wants to get a strange peircing and whose parents are less than willing to accept it. Misunderstood in the way that is like, people expect me to be imature and airy just because I'm stuck in an age group of morons (at least a lot of morons). 

Anyway, back on subject.

I know what pain is. Pain is what makes you want fentanyl...because everything is better with fentanyl and that is precisely the reason they should not give you fentanyl at hospitals. It was a lot better than morphine though.....Don't go on drugs kids. But the fact that I even know about fentanyl means I know pain. The two are twins. The comic book type of twins, one evil and cruel and the other all nice and flowery until he gets beat up by the bigger badder of the two. Cain and Abel like twins. I know pain. My only problem is I don't know how to describe pain. The doctors have a long list of terms that are acceptable pain describers. None of them describe my pain. That confuses them. Being the people pleaser that I am I think long and hard about how to describe my pain and when I stumble on the perfect solution it usually goes something like this; "It feels like my washing machine." the doctor of course is more confused by that than pretty much anything else I could have said. So I continue, hoping to make him understand. "More like the sound the washer makes when it first starts up. It starts out really slow like it's trying so dang hard and then it quits for a second, like to catch a breath. Like an oval wheel that rolls so tediusly sluggish and than all at once." The doctor can’t even at this point. I think I broke him. I try a different tactic, "Or maybe it's like an old-time train when it first starts to move. huuuuuuu-ch huuuuuu-ch huuuu-ch. Then it gets faster, but the pain in my stomach doesn't get faster. It just keeps going I-think-I-can, I-think-I-can, but it never does." Yep. Doctor Broken. Were the sound effects to much? Maybe that's why I'm such a medical mystery. I don't fit in their abc system. I call their syptomology the abc system because it fits. A lot like a washer describes my pain, the abc system describes their brain (YAY RHYMING!). In my book store (the one I work at) often times I forget for a moment that R comes before S or Q is toward the very end of the alphabet, so while I'm guiding a customer to find their book you can sometimes hear me singing my abc's very softly to myself. I'll look at the shelf and see scrambled letters, buuuuuuuuut follow along with the abc's  and suddenly "h-I-j-k-l-m-n-O aha! JRR Tolkien! Right after Mr Timmons." Doctors ask you to describe your pain and while you do it they sing their alphabet to themselves. Aching, Burning, Crippling, Dull etc. When you use modifier's with certain terms in the abcs BINGO! They know what's wrong with you. For example slow and burning together are magic. My doctor was quite happy when he got that one out of me. Then sad, of course, because it never means anything good but at least the system worked. Unfortunately that was the only time the abc's worked for me. So I conclude that I must be the worst describer of pain in existence.

[sammy-nickles]

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles,