#catkin rambles

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

i saw a photo of mum and dad when they were a little younger than me, and was struck by it. they looked loose and ill-formed; mother was tense, and shy around the camera. dad's grin looked strange on his face, because it held a mischief that's long since been carved away by chronic exhaustion and overwork. they were standing close together; it was, i think, not long after they started going out together, but they knew each other long before then.

and i saw a photo of mother when she was fourteen, round-faced and very young, focused on singing and not on the camera this time. i showed it to her now, sixty-something and with more grey than blonde, and she scoffed at her hairstyle. but she liked dad's at that age. and then i said something about how the fact that no other boy had really pursued her was sheer blindness, because look at how pretty she was, and mother scoffed again and said she'd never heard of anyone calling her pretty, including herself, and father looked over and grinned and i knew he agreed with me.

i have never seen a similarity, not really, between my parents and me. enough generally to be sure that yes, they are my parents; but nothing really specific. i don't have dad's nose, or mum's mouth. but in one of those photos, seeing dad, fifteen, on the floor leaning on his hand and being the most unaffectedly cool i've ever seen any of my family, i saw myself. i have dad's bone structure, and his high cheekbones. but i also have mother's expression, shy because of fear, and the awkwardness at being in a room, taking space.

i have always thought of them as competent, because by my age mother was pregnant with my eldest sister (or if not, she was at least married). there's a photo of them at their combined twenty-first party, because their ages aren't so different and it was a way of tumbling in an engagement party, too, with a minimum of fuss. they look grown and elegant and young in a fresh, hearty sort of way, like there's still a spark in their eyes, but competent and together and like the world was somehow easier. i, meanwhile, am lonely fragments of a person.

but the photo of them from only a couple of years earlier reveals a different story. they were so young, and they had to figure it out just like me. our life stages are different, but that is no evil. i am very like them; i have grandpa's smile and dad's reasoning and mum's obsessive anxiety--and her maternal characteristics, too. not as instinctively as her; i had to learn things she knew at eight, while in uni. but they are coming to me.

we are not so different, after all.

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

it is hard, sometimes--to see lives shaped like yours but different. you and I have souls that echo one another. we were both little girls, once, and we both feared growing into women. we were not ready, those little girls, but the tide of time swept us on towards womanhood. nobody told us that it was normal to feel scared, to hate the way little-girlhood would twist into something different. did you think you were unusual, too? I did. around me girls were beaming inexpertly into smeary high school mirrors and squinting to fix their makeup. one day someone begged me to let her put makeup on me. it looks so good on you, she said as I blinked through darkened lashes and tried to ignore the foreign feeling. you should do it more often! I haven't worn makeup since then. there was a school photos day where they convinced me to let my hair out. it's so gorgeous. that year is my least favourite of all the hated school photos. I wasn't like the rest--were you, either? and I saw hatred of not like other girls girls. I tried to pretend I didn't care--and didn't, not to the extent a normal girl might have. extended-release rather than immediate-release--the grief has poisoned my life ever since. you and I are so alike. but we are different; I don't want your path and you couldn't bear mine. but sometimes I look in the mirror and see your face staring back at me and I am so, so afraid. I am trying to carve out a shape of happiness and I fear it will always elude me. are you like that, too? on your different, mirrored path?

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

desisted. it was less an active choice to avoid pursuing permanent changes than an unwillingness to change the status quo. to pursue those changes that seemed so attractive at one time was just more bother than it seemed worth. better to wallow in misery than make the move to crawl out, especially when you're not sure which way you should crawl anyway.

detrans. it feels so final, so oddly much like closing a book, or turning a page and finding the chapter ended without you quite noticing. there is no sudden realisation, no thunderclap or spark from heaven, just a slow, slow cessation of something you never were quite willing to acknowledge while it was there.

woman. it will be a social expectation that you layer artificial products on your face in order to provide a more palatable you. you will ignore that as you have ignored it for twenty-two years and counting. perhaps once in a while you will indulge, for the sake of colour and not for palatability. as an expression of self rather than conformity. you will learn to dress more in a way that makes you comfortable, and fitting into a box is coincidental. you will continue to keep certain things to yourself. you will place yourself within one box and assign to it no more importance than it ought to have, in an ideal world. at times, this will not be easy. but the peace of mind will, hopefully, be worth it.

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

2023, it cannot be overstated, was a terrible year for me. We started out strong with an episode of True Love that turned out in fact to be entirely false and not reciprocated. (I've got over that, finally, but it was awkward... I posted about it a bit at the time, along with a lot of what I'm about to tell you.) Anyway, I also basically didn't eat for two weeks in January: only partially related to that. February was even more terrible, but with one bright spot: the terribleness pushed me to finally seek professional help for my longstanding anorexia. I was finally going to choose to recover and it would never bother me again.

Haha anyway I was also severely depressed and anxious so that happened. I had a good solid try at recovery and it seemed like it was going pretty well for a while, yay. Went back to uni after a year out, in the middle of the year. Ended up living with my brother 'just for the semester and after that you've got to find your own accommodation' (I'm still at his place). Anyway things got real bad and I honestly can't remember most of that patch, but I can still see the scars.

Anyway. You're probably wondering why I'm saying this stuff. In November, December, I can't remember precisely when, the Inklings Christmas challenge got posted.

Severely depressed, barely doing anything, only surviving and waiting for things to get better while doctors assessed me to figure out what was going on behind the major depressive disorder (spoiler: undiagnosed ASD), I said, well, why not. I still had remnants of my previous overachieving nature, so why not write something for all twelve days of Christmas, not just a single short story or scene? And I dug back in my memory for the fragments of a plot I worked out when I was twelve years old, remembered the characters, remembered that the main character was one I'd internally laughed about accidentally making autistic in the past.

So I went, what if I just pretend that the story I'd imagined was five years earlier, pretend that the novel I had never written was actually written, and write a slice-of-life sequel to it, featuring the same characters? I remember going to a session with my psych at the time and telling her about this story, but vaguely and quickly, because we were going to run out of time. I talked like I intended to and expected to finish it, but internally, I was going: I will not finish it. I've already proven that I cannot stick to things. (I have a lot of fragments of writing from that year which I will likely never finish, and which had no deeper structure than whatever occurred to my medication addled brain.)

And I went, what should I name this story? It's got to have the word Patience in there, because her name is Patience and it amuses me and amusement is running real freaking thin at the moment. I tried out several titles, none of which I can remember, and none of them suited. At last, because the word hope had been rotating within my brain for so long, I picked The Patience of Hope, and I drew graphics and titled all the chapters and did research to title them and I can't remember any of it anymore so I don't know why I gave them the titles I did.

I think I scheduled about chapter three before chapter one dropped on Christmas Day. I remember there being author's notes that at least hinted that I'd entirely pre-written it, because I'd intended to do so, when I wrote the author's note for the very first chapter. But most of them I wrote on the day they were supposed to drop.

I don't think anyone read it at the time; I certainly don't remember such a thing happening, though after it was completed people did read it, and do still. (It's still on my website, and also on my ao3 under the title mentioned above.) But I wrote it, this silly little thing that spawned a whole character and series of novellas I haven't finished yet. More than one character, actually; one of the main characters is Nathan, who didn't exist in my original concept at all. And another character mentioned is Hannah, her aunt, whose storyline is deeply personal to me.

I can't remember how long it is. The writing is at times very bad and the storyline vague and choppy. I had no true plans when I started writing that story: not even to finish it. It does qualify as a novella for length, but I forget where in that wide range it comes in. But I finished it.

That... meant the world to me, actually, in the state I was in. I finished it in January, and two weeks later I was being very seriously told by my doctor that if anything got any worse, in any way, I was to immediately present to emergency and request/demand admission. They didn't; I was prescribed medication that, this time, actually helped to manage the whole crisis thing going on, and I haven't been that close to an admission since (nor needed to be, not really).

So The Patience of Hope is very special to me, as you can see, because I completed it at a time I felt so strongly that I couldn't complete anything except - well, I don't suppose I have to elaborate. It's a fun, fluffy little story with underlying angst and stress and grief but above it all, it's cheerful. A romance begins, which surprised me, because I was literally just writing whatever came into my head, and apparently what came into my head was a character who hadn't been previously mentioned or thought of, asking Patience out on a date.

And the way Nathan accepts and understands and loves Patience for herself and not for what he hopes that she will be (if my phrasing seems odd, it's a Carpenters reference - "Love Me For What I Am") was healing to write. The entire story was written between when I started being assessed for ASD and when I was officially diagnosed, and I can really really see in Patience's words what I felt and still do sometimes feel - the hesitation and uncertainty and distrust of oneself. She was the first character I ever wrote who was stated to be autistic, though I'd written ones before deliberately making them autistic in my head, but they never said they were autistic on the page.

I don't remember the timeframe of the next bit, but there was a writing challenge to write a novel from start to finish in - six months, I think? It was a while. - and I saw it and went, oh, I could go back and write the novel about Patience that I first conceptualised.

Which I did, over the next few months. From start to finish, that draft is eighty-four thousand words in its current, unedited form, and I expect it to end up somewhere between eighty and ninety thousand - I always edit down on a sentence level, and up on a scene and chapter level, so it tends to balance out somewhat. Especially the earlier sections, it's pretty sparse before I hit my stride, and I also struggled to finish it in a way that felt satisfying to me, and I need to build up the community aspect more - and introduce her aunt Hannah more throughout.

What's the novel about, you may ask? And don't ask for the title, because I made a working title, and I haven't figured out a proper replacement yet. The novel is about Patience at a younger age, I forget what; early teens, I think, self-isolating and shy and scared and very very rigid. (It's a lot of fun comparing the Patience of this novel to the much more relaxed, but still characteristic Patience of The Patience of Hope five or seven years later. She's the same person, only grown up rather, and in a very positive way.)

In a mechanism I haven't yet worked out properly and will definitely be rewriting, she unexpectedly gains an adoptive sister, Rhona - named after a tea cosy in a pattern book I used when I was eleven or twelve to knit an atrocious and very wonky stuffed dog. Anyway, Rhona is a bit younger, a bit more extroverted, a bit prettier and a bit more new and exciting. And a bit disruptive to Patience's neatly ordered life.

Cue emotional explosions I'd compare to Holly and Lucy in Lockwood and Co., and say it was based on that, if I'd read that before I planned this book out. Rhona is doing her best to fit in to the family, but she's also showing up Patience's inability to fit in, so there's insecurity tying in to it.

Patience spends most of the book hating her with a passion of greater or lesser intensity despite everything Rhona tries to do to bridge the gap. And then, in a move unrepentantly stolen from Jean Webster's Dear Enemy, the house burns down. Oh, the horror! Oh, the shock! Oh, the fact that Patience was the only one within range of Rhona and had to drag her out! Oh, the hospital whump afterwards! *coughs* Forget I said that last one. Anyway Rhona gets off pretty lightly, while Patience... does not get off so lightly. She spends a while in hospital, but luckily, the combination of everything brings her and Rhona together finally, and they all live happily ever after.

Well, that's what the original plan said, anyway. Back when I was twelve and didn't know interpersonal dynamics.

While it's true that the house burning down and everything associated with that does help Patience and Rhona to get along better, that's not the end of the book. The house burns down at the turn between parts two and three, fifty-three thousand words in. Any mathematicians reading this will observe there are still thirty thousand words to go. There are nine chapters in each part.

The last three chapters total fifteen thousand words between them. My original plan calls for three thousand word chapters. Again, the mathematicians are going to observe that this doesn't add up. These chapters average out five thousand words each.

That's because I really wanted to mention one specific character earlier in the novel, who gets a passing and no longer timeline compliant mention in The Patience of Hope. Patience's aunt Hannah, who, yes, I named after myself, and who also struggles with anorexia nervosa.

Chapter twenty-five is titled, "A Will to Live". Originally intended to be about Patience's depression following her discharge from hospital after the house burned down, and then regaining her mental equilibrium, it became a bitter sarcasm that hurt every time I re-read the title while I was drafting it.

(I did cry quite a bit about this, including while actively writing. Sobbing and still writing the next sentence. I hope it comes across in the final work.)

Because Hannah does not win her battle. She is not a success story, or a happy ending, or a triumph. She dies alone in an apartment that hasn't been cleaned for weeks, fridge almost empty: two days before she's agreed to go into treatment. There are three big killers in anorexia: suicide, heart failure and malnutrition. And Hannah Shepherd dies of heart failure, leaving, as I heard in a video I strongly do not recommend, recently, "a bleeding, girl-shaped hole in her family".

It's traumatic and horrible and full of grief, but they manage somehow to go on. Patience is kept in the dark as to what's going on, at Hannah's request; she just knows that she died of some sickness. After all, she's at THE prime age to develop an eating disorder of her own, and even though you'd think someone dying would make you reconsider, unfortunately, eating disorders are mental illnesses and don't discriminate. (Besides, I wrote this story, and Karen Carpenter is a special interest of mine. Doesn't stop me relapsing.)

And then three chapters later (though, realistically, I'm going to rearrange the chapter balance to add at least one more here, since I struggled to fill a few of the chapters in terms of word count), the story's over, and everything is okay - just okay, not good, but with hope that it will be.

The first draft has been finished for - I don't know how long. Looking back to former posts makes it seem like I finished it on the last day of April last year, which would make it eight months and 21 days since I completed the draft. I think that's long enough to go back and redraft, don't you? I was working on continuing to draft Vaniah's story, but given that it's not singing to me right now, maybe I should jump in to editing this and see where I get to - I can always go back to Vaniah and Anneka instead, even though I've left them at a profoundly difficult spot. (While we're on the topic of dying from anorexia? Yeah. Except that is a story of recovery and hope.)

All that to say, you might hear more about Patience, and Rhona, and Jude, and Marcia, and Hannah, and Nathan, and everyone else that makes that story what it is, soon. I've been thinking a lot about it lately, and I really do think Patience's story needs to be refined, so that eventually I can show the world. If anyone wants, I can pull out excerpts too, if I'm brave enough. Please tell me your favourite aspect of this story, whether the novel or The Patience of Hope or whatever it may be. Ask me questions. I can ramble. Please.

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

In my 'healing girl era'. That means relapses, that means recovery, that means small victories and bitter struggles; small joys and smaller motivation. Days when everything seems a breeze and the past only a fading memory. Days when the healing itself seems like a memory. Healing isn't linear. Recovery isn't linear. Enormous leaps forward come with enormous falls back, and tears, and trials. That's part of healing and of recovery. Being in a healing girl era means the mindset and the intention, even if outwardly it all looks the same. It's not an aesthetic and it's not pretty. It means lying on the bathroom floor sobbing. Sometimes it means giving in again and again and again, and vowing never to do so again, and doing it the very next day. But then what it really means is picking yourself up off the floor, drying your eyes and keeping going, keeping trying, keeping on keeping on.

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

#everything just feels so incomplete and imperfect and unfinished#and small#and you know WHAT that’s because it is tags from @itspileofgoodthings (wanted to respond but wasn't sure if you wanted post reblogged, so I made my own)

it's said, be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. that's a verse I've always struggled with, because how to be perfect, and what is perfection? people are different. what I think is, well, obviously the right thing to do next, is diametrically opposed to what somebody else thinks. I suppose there is a standard in there somewhere, a truth-line where everything else is a little bit wrong, for some things. but for others? opinions differ, and I don't suppose God would condemn some actions, if they are done in faith and a reach for holiness.

even if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I am nothing. it's the love, and faith, and hope (and these three abide, but the greatest is love) that really counts, I think. it's not the actions themselves so much as the intent behind them.

everything a human being does, save only the Christ, is an attempt at good or evil. we can metaphorically descend to hell, but we cannot ascend fully to heaven, not yet; we can only try and shape this broken world into it, which cannot be really done until God cleanses it when his Son returns.

I've wandered far from the point. I think in these times (and by these times I mean all of our lives), nothing will be perfect except God. somebody wrote once, and I forget who, everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. and that's a line I've always treasured, because even if it's not true it's an attempt at truth despite the shifting sands of life.

there are weeds both physically and metaphorically. nothing can be perfect without God, and even with God, unless they are God, they're only a little less imperfect. it makes me think of writing as sub-creation, that theme I discoursed about to my therapist two days ago. (she was terribly excited about it too.) each of us is writing about our experiences, or what our experiences have shaped us to see.

all we can do is write fragments, like shattered glass. now we see in a mirror dimly.

but then face to face.

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

ways to build confidence/appreciate your appearance

I had someone ask me how I try and build self confidence and appreciate my own appearance, and while I'm a massive hypocrite, I figured that what I wrote in response to her was a good public post. Here's my suggestions. None of them are unique, just what occurred to me:

This is obviously fraught with difficulties depending on your circumstances, but one thing that's helped me is sharing pics of my face with one of my friends who loves how I look. The way she'll boost my confidence is excellent. Obviously you probably shouldn't do that with people you barely know, or online (though this friend is online, I only showed her my face after we'd had several voice calls and stuff so I knew she's not a dodgy person) (yes it's a mutual) (I love you mutual).

Also! Wearing clothing that makes you feel attractive in whatever way. Like if there's a colour that makes your heart sing for joy over it, find that and wear that. Anything you look at and go Yes This Is Right, wear it. I have a few tshirts that I particularly like; for me, those are Strange Planet tshirts, but it'll be different for everybody. Find your own 'style', if you can - that doesn't need to be like 'replace your whole wardrobe', I'm talking 'find things you really like, and get them if you can, and wear them'. Make them, if that's something you want to do and have the opportunity to do. My wardrobe is largely op shop things, with a few that I've specifically bought, or materials I've grabbed and got my mum to make into dresses or skirts, while they're on clearance. It just takes time, sometimes.

Body neutrality is also another concept that I've seen around. I find it... not great, personally, though it helps sometimes. Your body is just that: a body. It means you can do the things you want to do. It carries a brain that you use to think. It's a body. Don't overthink it. (I do overthink it, of course, but like. we're supposed to work on not doing so lol.)

Another important one for Christians is the thing I too often forget, which is that we're loved by God. God designed us the way he designed us and he did it for a *reason*. We may not know that reason, but it was a reason. I was once told by a Christian doctor that I needed to not get in the way of God's plan for my life. I don't necessarily know God's plan for my life, but God does.

And if we're talking things like having an ED, SH or any of those nasty little rabbit holes (I say that as someone who has both), they're highly maladaptive coping mechanisms. I'm not going to say they're good ones, but they can be replaced with better coping mechanisms - that's one thing that therapy's good for, but also you can look up CBT/DBT handbooks if you want to learn some of that stuff. I know I've looked up the handbook I was given by my psych before, and found I could download it freely on the internet.

Ultimately, I think, try and find things you like about yourself - physical or not. For instance, I like my stubbornness and how competitive I can be. Those have downsides, of course, but I like them for the most part. Physically, I like the fact that I'm a ginger. I'd advise you to try and make a list of things you like about yourself, to remind you of what you do like, not just what you don't. When we're not feeling great, our brains can bombard us with all the things we do badly or perceive ourselves as doing badly. Having a concrete list can help to remind you like 'oh actually I like this thing about myself'. Remembering, too, that there are people who love us just the way we are (and God loves us too) can help. I don't know why the people who care about me do care about me, but they do and I gotta remember that.

I cannot overstate the clothing one enough, honestly. Wearing things you feel nice in is important, regardless of whether they make you look conventionally attractive (and wearing things you're comfy in will make you attractive to someone, and even wearing a potato sack, if you enjoyed it, you'd find someone who liked you wearing a potato sack).

Anyway there's the end of my list. I might add on to it later.

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

thinking about the emblems, the Eucharist - I've forgotten the name y'all use for it this instant but I was just reading a Catholic thing so there's the Catholic name for it as well as Christadelphian -

It's based around food and drink, around nourishment. The emblems themselves aren't supposed to be nourishing (see the verse in... I want to say one of Paul's... maybe Corinthians, in which he berates them for some being drunk and some having nothing), but they're a symbol. I heard a talk once about the moral imperative of keeping yourself healthy, which was fascinating - upsetting because he referred dismissively to anorexia and self harm as things people in the world do, with no apparent understanding of the numbers of Christians in his audience who had a history of such things themselves - but useful. There's the verse about "the truth will set you free", the number of times sin is compared to slavery and righteousness is compared to freedom, too. Freedom from arbitrary rules, like the rules in an eating disorder.

The truth will set us free, truths like "you don't need to starve yourself", "you don't need to cut yourself". Easier said than done, but in an ideal world-

We're not in an ideal world of course but Still.

It's interesting to me that since I started self harming, the cup itself has become more important and thought-provoking to me. The phrase "his blood was shed that ours shall not be" is very important to me - I can't recall who came up with it but I don't think it's a New Testament verse or anything. Anyway, the idea that he took our sins on him and died for us is also very important - obviously, it's the core of the gospel.

Anyhow I don't really have a good way of ending this I was just rambling.