love is enough

Wow… first written blog in a while. Got all fabulous on the VLOGs and forgot I was supposed to be an actual writer. Hah.

I read a comic today. I have Mark Brassington to thank for the recommendation. He is truly an inspiration – on writing, life – the list is endless. But I think the trait I can commend him on today is friendship. He recommended that I read Polarity, thinking I would “like it”, and as it would end up that is a serious understatement. I loved it, I devoured it, I resonated with it. I didn’t realize the effect its few pages could have on me – of course you don’t expect that with any great piece, no matter how many books you have read – and I just, I’m so glad that I have friends who truly know me and understand me enough to share something so beautiful such as things like this that have the ability to touch our very souls.

“It seems that after my bout with dementia and paranoia, I have an annoying ability to see through my peers. Past the vintage dresses and ironic ’90s era attire and into the epicenters of their desperate souls, as they cry out with a grating, banshee-like plea for validation.”

… I feel like this. ALL THE TIME.

In my case, I don’t feel it an annoying personality setback or regret it in any way. It is part of me, to walk in a room and just… see. I truly believe in owning who you are and if something makes you unhappy, change it. I am not unhappy nor do I have any regrets. There are learning lessons, yes, but that is all part of life isn’t it?

I have an appointment with my tattoo artist this evening. (I hope my dad isn’t reading this. He does frequent this blog often and doesn’t approve of the existing or any future tattoos I may have. Love you pops.) I’m having “love is enough” tattooed on my arm. When a very close friend got wind of my plans, he asked me why I would get that, of all things, tattooed on my arm for everyone to see. Not because he doesn’t understand why I want to do it or because he doesn’t understand me. It’s because he wanted to hear my explanation of why. Because he enjoys getting inside my head and knows his ability to get a rise out of me. These are the kinds of friends I keep – the one’s that can actually see you for who you are, without ever having to ask. I don’t have a lot of them – friends that would do anything for me at any time – but the size of your clique is just a number. The depth of your connection with someone – be it a friend, family member, or your cat – is something else entirely.

He said to me, “Lu (nickname), why would you get ‘love is enough’ tattooed on your fucking arm? You are newly divorced, with a mother who has never given a shit about you, and your grandfather is fucking dying. Love is not enough. Your entire existence is proof that love is never enough.”

Love is not marriage. Marriage is a fucking piece of paper. Love is not sacrificing oneself and one’s beliefs and morals to make someone else happy. Love is not personal negativity because the first ten years of your life were not as supportive, loving, and beautiful as the cute little boy’s next door. Love is understanding the requirement to love one self before you can love someone else. Love is about human connection. Human connection with a real person. You don’t have to spend the rest of your life with this person – you don’t have to hold their hand, kiss them, marry them – any of that. The connection, whatever it may be, is what’s important. You should be able to be yourself with this person – not the preconceived notion of who ‘yourself’ is, either. Not the ‘yourself’ society wants you to be. The ‘yourself’ you want to be. And that person, or people – your friends, your loved ones – will respect you because it’s who you truly are. And if they don’t, you’re hanging out with the wrong fucking people. You should be able to call one of your closest friends at 4:00 in the morning because you need a ride two hours from their house, and know, that they will be there, or they will send someone trustworthy that can be there. I’ve talked to certain people who think this is too much to ask and that’s because they haven’t experienced that deep human connection. It is not too much to ask. I would do it. My five best friends would do it. I have done it, they have. It’s exactly how it should be.

All of my friends are unique and different and each of them wants to be more like the other, because they are themselves, and have the ability to recognize personal growth and inner beauty and kindness and a positive attitude towards every aspect of life. This is love. Connection. Love is the passion Macklemore has towards the gay community, not because he is gay himself, but because he is strong and independent enough in his own skin to open himself up to another way of life and connect with people. Love is stopping to observe. Love is telling someone, I think you’re an amazing person, and I think you’re unhappy. I don’t think you know how amazing and beautiful you really are, and I’m here for you. I swear to God I’m here for you. I love you, and I will fight for you. I will fight for your survival as a human being. Love is consciously erasing the fear of judgement to open up your soul and expressing how you really feel towards a single person, idea, or the entire world.

My friend shook his head at me in disbelief. “You really don’t think like everyone else, do you? You’ve got so much going on up there-” he tapped my forehead- “I don’t think you realize how special you are.”

I can’t afford to think like everyone else. Where would I be if I did? I don’t even know. Not sitting in front of a computer, bleeding, not successful, not the happiest person I have ever been in my entire life. Fuck that.

Love is enough. Love yourself. Love everyone else. And if you don’t, if you can’t – change. It’s not hard and it’s not fucking scary. It’s enlightening. It’s beautiful. You are beautiful. When you realize that, the most amazing souls on this earth will notice and jump off a fucking cliff just to be near you. I’m serious. Life is beautiful. Do not fucking waste it.

 

 

New Beginnings

That is so cliche. 

My GOD, has it really been that long since I blogged?!?!

I’ve apologized before for disappearing off the face of the earth and letting you all down (assuming that any of you read this still) but I am not really going to do that today. The thing is, life happened. And then life happened again. And this time, it REALLY happened. And if I learned anything through my experience, it’s:

1. We don’t give ourselves enough credit. (At least, I don’t.)
2. We only have one shot at this life thing.
and:
3. Happiness depends on ourselves. 

So that’s why I made the decision I did. I chose happiness and I chose life and I chose myself. I have never done that before. Ever. I have always been SO worried about everyone else that I have never stopped to realize that yes, I matter. What I want matters. And so I jumped in head first with a blind fold on without ever knowing how to swim and you know what? I survived anyway. 

I’m not going to say I’m “back” because I’ve said that before and was not really and so you probably won’t believe me anyway! But. Well I don’t know. I’m back. Haha.

This has never been a “writing” blog obviously, but I am a writer so that will probably sneak its way in somehow. But mostly, I’m just looking forward to sharing life with you. So look out for that. 

Love you all so much. Thank you for your support and your love through this… learning experience… in my life (and that other time). It means the world. 

Peace. #andlove
~Allie

 

I Will Bleed.

I wrote this blog to, in a lot of words, explain where I’ve been. Where I’ve gone.

There was a time, not too long ago, when I dedicated two hours of my day to social media. When I blogged three times a week. Wrote 5,000 words a night. Obviously that time is not now.

I haven’t blogged much because I’m afraid I have nothing to say. That’s not even it. Everyone has something to say. I have plenty to say. But how do I say it? What will everyone think? Will anyone listen? Or has it been too long? Have I spent too many days, weeks, months hiding in the shadows? Does anyone even care what I have to say anymore?

It took me nearly a year to write my third novel, Amber Passion. That was after it was nearly 75% done. I wrote Violet Midnight and Emerald Destiny in less than half the time.

In 2011, something happened to me that devastated my life as I knew it. Not even something happened to me. I happened to me.
Those who know me well can probably guess what it is. I’m not going to advertise my condition of life, but let’s just say for the past year I’ve been learning, struggling, to live with myself.

(This will be my one and only pity party. For when I am done writing it all down, I can move forward.)

Life is hard. (I don’t know that I’m saying anything here that everyone else doesn’t know, but I’m going to say it anyway.) The simplest tasks like getting out of bed in the morning or cooking dinner seem like climbing Mt. Everest. Just the teeniest bit of stress makes the pressure in my head build until I want to explode. All I want to do is to do something I love to do, like writing, and then when it is time, when I can finally put things behind me that I HATE doing, there’s not enough left of me to do anything but lie there and beat myself up about something insignificant that happened to me during the day, something I have no control over. So yeah, life is fucking hard. Maybe really hard for people like me, with… problems, but maybe not. Everyone has problems and everyone makes these mistakes that seem like the end of the world.

But I want to move forward with my life. I want to write again, to express myself and connect with friends that I have lost in my solitude, in my effort to “feel better”. I want to experience something and be able to go to the computer and write about it to all my wonderful friends following my blog, without thinking twice about it.

I don’t want to quit. I can’t. And I’m not going to.

I’ve never been fond of making this a writing blog, so let’s just think of it as an Allie blog. I’m going to find the courage inside myself to get back to the days when I could just rant freely about whatever makes me tick. Tweet relentlessly, and stay up at all hours of the night writing – I mean bleeding. I will bleed.

Thank you to my wonderful fans for sticking with me, and keeping the beautiful messages flowing. I hope I haven’t let you down.

xoxo
Allie 

That Guy

I don’t want to be that guy (I never say ‘that girl’. It just doesn’t have the same effect.) who says I should blog more. Doesn’t that defeat the purpose? Blogging for the purpose of pleasing others? I mean, sure, when you write a book review it might please others – readers, the author, etc. – but why did you write the book review in the first place? Was it because the author wanted you to? Not really, no. You love reading! And your blog is a stage from which you can express yourself.

blog

Noun: A Web site on which an individual or group of users record opinions, information, etc. on a regular basis.

There’s a lot of people that I don’t want to be. That girl (there!) who says, “I never write stuff like this on my blog but it just needs to be said” before expressing my opinion. I don’t want to share a link on Facebook to my latest blog post with an attached apology for ranting. I don’t want to feel guilty about my decision to say Fuck instead of Golly Gosh.

I just, I don’t want to make up some lame excuse about how – about why – I feel the way I feel, and the way in which I choose to express myself.

Most writers blog about writing. Which is fine. It is never my goal to tell one what to do with their time or their life. But I want to blab about shit that’s on my mind. I mean, I know I boast about being a writer. I’ll admit it. I do. I love being a writer. But is that all I am? No, you’re a weirdo, too, Allie… kidding. But, seriously. I love. I’m passionate. I think and I dream and I cry, sometimes, because it’s all just too beautiful to bear in that single moment in time.

A great friend (also a writer) once told me she was ridiculed for “writing stories”, because in the dull eyes of another, that was all she did. It’s definitely a possibility that this is the reason why I want to be more than a writer.

“You’re a writer? You write shit down? Yeah, me too. I wrote a text message this morning.”

Heh. People are so fucking closed-minded. I have no tolerance for ignorance.

People like me, us – thinkers – we are rarely understood. I think that’s why we strive to label ourselves with that writer, artist, with that latest word to help the people around us – the people we love – understand. But they don’t. And it just frustrates us further, to the point where we have to write a blog that says, “I want to be more than a writer”. Because what does ‘writer’ mean? Like I told you. I write shit down.

(That was a joke.)

And still, I’m not explaining myself. Because I want you to understand. I want to say “pink” and I want you to clap your hands together and yell “revolution!” Like a fucking Rise Against song, ya hear?

But, seriously. I love. I’m passionate. I think and I dream and I cry, sometimes, because it’s all just too beautiful to bear in that single moment in time.

That is writing. That is the point. Writing is love and passion and dreams and tears, bloody, bloody tears (as in bodily fluids not the bad word in some other English language) and I want you, the guy, reading this, to say, you know, I can see it from her perspective because reading a book (a good book) is not at all like watching a movie.

I don’t post lyrics from songs or quotes from books with the intention of reeling in comments like “I love that band!” or “that book sucked”. I want you to think. I want you to open your mind to the millions of possibilities that lay (that’s probably the wrong usage of “lay”, God knows I can never get that shit right) before you, smiling at you, and hoping, hoping that you will smile back. And I want you to stop posting shit like “I didn’t take my meds today woooooo” without thinking about the person on your friend list suffering from Bipolar Disorder or “damn druggies, we should take them all in the back and shoot them” without first reading Memoirs Aren’t Fairytales by Marni Mann.

Also, I kind of want to delete Sleepless Dreams. Posting the same blog to two sites is lame.

Embrace, Love, and for the sake of everything good in this world, Do It.

Do. Embrace. Love.

I had a nice conversation with a colleague at my day job the other day. It basically consisted of the following:

“So… what kind of books do you write?”

“Paranormal Romance. And other stuff.”

“You’re on Amazon. Impressive.”

(I think I giggled a little bit.) “Thank you.”

“I was asking because… I used to write. Not a novel or anything like that, but short stories.”

This man went on to tell me about his stories and how he lost the will, and the passion, to continue writing. And then he explained his passion… with a passion so deep, I could only compare it to my own passion for writing.

That’s when I told him he should try again. And if he needed some encouragement, I would love to read anything he had to write.

And that’s what I want to tell you. The reader of my blog that gets this post in your e-mail, or the occasional tweeter that comes across a link. Try.

I’m not gonna sit here and give you 1,000-things-in-writing-you’re-doing-wrong or some shit like that, or even tell you to write. Writing is how I relate to passion. To love. If you write, great. If you think you might want to, even better. I’m just saying, if you write or you make jewelry or you pick your fucking nose, do it with love and with passion and if you lose it, find something else. Get it back or find something else because life is so short. I don’t want to be that guy either, but… seriously. Write that novel and jump out of that freaking plane because you can. Because you can, and you deserve to say to your grandkids or yourself or your dog, “I did that. And I’d do it again, if I could get my old ass out of this goddamned chair.”

I am inspired, daily, by books and my husband and my cat and my best friend in the whole world who makes it his personal duty to be sure that I smile every single day. If I can be that one, to make you smile, and think, “this is my time”, then, I’m gonna do it.

So, do it. Embrace it. Love it.

Yeah. It’s like that.