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  • The Dangers of Being

    Once in a while I sit and reflect.  Just be.  In the silence, alone, waiting, and living inside my own head. It is a different feeling, this reflection, because usually I am always thinking, in the most deliberate of ways, but without conscious effort.  My mind just doesn’t stop.  I’m constantly assessing—for threats, I assume,

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  • Pills

    This morning I asked the dog, “Wouldn’t my mother be proud of me, swallowing up to 11 pills at once?” Shockingly, he responded by turning his head to one side and looking at me with cuteness and confusion, wondering if I were asking him something he wanted to hear … he hasn’t mastered English language

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  • Yesterday

    Yesterday I did a thing that hasn’t been done in years:  I forgot to put my medication in my bag when I left the house. Those who are close to me know that I take a ton of pills and I am taking them what seems like all the time.  I have five alarms set

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  • When I was younger I used to write late at night often.  I was a single mother, trying to raise a child and finish college and figure out life all at once.  The late nights and the early mornings were the times I could write without taking time away from my little girl.  Early mornings

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  • Excellence

    Sometimes it feels like a challenge to hold on to the good qualities I have, and not get stuck in an endless cycle of negativity.  The whole growing up in a Dutch Reformed area where you are constantly told how depraved you are thing probably didn’t help matters.  Having a mother who followed compliments with

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  • Some things never change

    I’m sort of a change addict.  I rearrange things all the time.  From the files in my office to the paints in my studio to the furniture in the rooms to the items on my bedside table, I am always looking for another way to place things.  And I often like to pretend that it

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  • Can’t

    I can’t write this week.  I’ve tried several times.  Two or three paragraphs in, it falls apart and the message I meant to speak becomes a ball of words with no real significance.  I’m too tangled up inside, I think, to be able to present something linear and coherent on the outside.  I’m a mess. 

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  • Don’t Struggle, Just Stab

    There are several ways of being in the world, I suppose.  We all choose in every moment how we will interact with the world around us. This morning, I emptied a container of one of the two chemical-laden delicacies I allow myself–flavored non-dairy creamer (the other is processed cheese…because it melts so beautifully and reminds

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  • Costume

    I remember loving dressing up.  I remember loving Halloween. My parents were strictly religious, for most of my childhood, but they still, for one reason or another, fully accepted Halloween and the annual costuming and treading through the cold for candy when I was quite young.  There is a photograph somewhere of me and my

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  • Impression

      I was talking with a friend a while back—one who became a friend after a couple of dates and still occasionally gets a “benefit” or two when I’m in the mood, but who doesn’t want to date me any longer. (Which is fine, because I don’t want to date him now either.)   But I

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