Catch a Falling Star

Yes, I am leading with a digital cartoon of my imaginary granddaughter. And I know it’s probably concerning that I have an imaginary granddaughter. She’s not a ghost. The child that didn’t carry to term was never really alive. That is the reason she didn’t happen. She’s not a ghost, rather, a pretend friend. And I only write about her now as an exercise in fiction. She’s no more real than any other character I have ever written. No more real than Valerie Clarke, or Devon Martinez, or Oliver Twist, or Atticus Finch…. I know, I know… I didn’t write those last two characters. But I am mostly ignored as an author, and I had a point to make in there somewhere.

This is her. She looks like Bollywood child star Sidra Khan because that’s whose Instagram photo I used as a model. So, what do I name this imaginary little girl? Samantha? Serendipity? Sara? But why do they have to start with S? I tend to use the first letters of real names of people I based a fictional character on, but my granddaughter never had a name. Or even a sex. Sam? Sandy? Norman Nobody?

But why am I obsessing about somebody who never came to be? Am I lonely? Am I unfulfilled? I am talking to nobody, aren’t I? Nobody reads what I write. At least, nobody I will ever know about.

Somebody is reading three of my books on Kindle Unlimited this month. Superchicken, The Baby Werewolf, and Recipes for Gingerbread Children. That somebody is reading in Canada. I know how many total pages. But I have no idea who this person is, or, since there will be no review, what they think about the stories.

Rianna didn’t ignore me. In the 1980s she was in my English class for two years. No, she didn’t fail. She was in my class as a seventh grader, and again as an eighth grader. And she loved me when she was a seventh grader. And the next year she hated me. And as soon as she left my class and moved on to high school, I was her favorite teacher again. She didn’t ignore me, anyway.

The world doesn’t ignore me if I owe taxes. It doesn’t ignore me when the pool cracks and can’t hold water anymore, and the city forces me in court to have the pool removed, and I ended up in the hospital with heart issues, and I went bankrupt. Medical bills and Bank of America certainly didn’t ignore me. Lawsuits over money are not about ignoring somebody.

But I am the author of 21 books with 3 more that may get finished before I croak. I mean, curl up my toes and go permanently bye-bye, not that I am turning into a bullfrog (though I do suspect a curse on me somewhere in the mix.)

There are numerous best-seller lists that I am not on for any of my books, even the best ones. And book promoters have increasingly been calling me. Of course, they want me to spend money on their marketing and publishing services. They are not promising to help me sell anything. They haven’t read any of my books. They are only promising to take my money. But the joke’s on them. I don’t have any money.

But let them ignore me. I wrote those books and this post. So what if everybody ignores all of it? They exist. I am a writer. And you can’t disprove it.

But no man is an island. One needs a community to survive.

Still, it never hurts to know how to take care of yourself.

Mickey was a child who suffered a secret trauma that he wouldn’t even let himself know about and remember. It was a strongly repressed memory. And it made Mickey hurt himself constantly… on purpose. He burned himself on his lower back and the back of his legs purposely to tamp down thoughts about sex and sexual urges. He refused to be seen naked by non-family members. Except that, starting in fifth grade, he had to take showers with other boys after PE classes. And he was even afraid to go into a school bathroom during class because he might be caught in there alone by a bigger and older boy… while alone and defenseless.

The coach noticed athletic skills in Mickey during PE class and talked him into going out for football in the ninth grade. This Mickey did. He learned how to hit and be hit and survive with minimal injuries. He learned how to tackle, to take and give blows. He developed some power and skill at physical confrontation. He only ever got into two fights. The one where Danny knocked him off his bike from behind, he lost, because that was before the trauma and before football. But when stupid, angry Dickie attacked him after freshman year, he won that fight, throwing Dickie to the ground without hurting him about three times. Dickie gave up from embarrassment more than injury.

So, how does a Mickey heal himself when he won’t even admit to himself what the matter really was?

Well, being physically fit doesn’t hurt. But you can’t solve every problem by throwing it to the ground. And hating yourself and hurting yourself does not go away by throwing yourself on the ground. Mickey knows this because he tried.

You have to learn to talk to real people. And it didn’t hurt that Mickey practiced a lot by talking to imaginary people. There was a faun. There was an imaginary girlfriend from Canada who communicated in dreams and by psychic messages delivered through telepathy.

But there came an incident in PE class that might’ve resulted in a Mickey meltdown. The boys were supposed to be watching a wrestling demonstration, gathered around the champion lightweight wrestler and a hapless sacrificial opponent in the center of the circle on the wrestling mat. The girls were sitting in the bleachers listening to the girls coach talk about girls’ stuff.

You know what happened. A bully, one of many in the boys’ class, sneaked up behind Mickey, grabbed the legs of Mickey’s gym shorts, and pulled them down. It revealed all. And girls were watching. Mickey should’ve died right there and then. But he didn’t. He smiled at the girls who were giggling, gave them a little wave, and only then did he pull the shorts back on.

The coach caught the perp. And the bully was far more embarrassed than his victim.

That is when Mickey learned that humor is good medicine.

And facts are also good for healing terrible ills. Truly, the sex education Mickey got from the Methodist minister helped save his life. And later in college he learned more about sex and battling depression and overcoming trauma that helped him solve the problems of self hatred, self harm, and guilt. And what his friend told him over the phone that Saturday when he was actually contemplating suicide, that his friend thought Mickey was a good person, not bad… That was a fact that allowed Mickey to be here now writing these words.

So, the truth is, there are things you can do to help yourself even if your illness is depression, self hatred, suicidal ideation, or PTSD.

Humor helps.

Talking about it with someone who cares helps more.

Eat something chocolate.

Eating healthy for an extended period of time helps even more.

Get a good night’s sleep without sleeping too much.

Remember that LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL and you deserve to live it. Nobody has the right to take that away from you.

If Mickey can do it… anybody can.

Today I had to return to the dermatologist to see if the skin cancer she treated three weeks ago would have to be biopsied for malignancy. It turns out that the treatment, freezing the cancerous cells, worked perfectly. The threat was completely gone.

But going to the doctor for cancer treatment got a scammer off my back. They do all sorts of things to rob you by phone, or by deceptive emails representing what seem to be real companies I deal with daily. Telling a scammer I have to go and get cancer treatment tends to shut them up quicker. And I wasn’t even lying.

I continue taking and trying to adjust to four new meds. Two for diabetes. One for cholesterol. And one for blood pressure control.

The chance for future improved health is looking good.

I have been enjoying my time playing with digital art tools. I bought a stylus to use on my Chromebook computer with the touch screen. My daughter downloaded a Krita digital art program. And my Chromebook summarily broke down. So, everything I am doing now has to be done on my HP laptop with no touch screen. The stylus works on the mouse pad, but not well. And I found another program that will take a drawing that I have done and photographed or scanned and turn that into digital art, refining the lines, color blending, and detail work. I like it, but it is like rolling the dice to get the percentages right for the danged AI painter in the program to accurately recognize anything in my picture.

But the computer art thing is a good thing. There are more than enough bad things this week to fill my baggage. I am alone with the dog at home while the rest of the family is in San Antonio. Grandma (my mother-in-law) was very ill, almost went into hospice care, and then recovered well enough to return home, out of the hospital. They are all visiting her. But I’m not in good enough health to make that trip.

Arthritis, diabetes, and my doctor’s appointment tomorrow for potential skin cancer made it impossible for me to ride in a car in which five people were already travelling. And no room for the dog who loves grandma too, but is not welcome in a car travelling that far.

I have had time to write too, which has been difficult to do with hot weather and arthritis pain in the way. But that hasn’t helped my readership. Viewing of WordPress posts is way down this summer. I have had an uptick in selling e-books, but I am still earning less than ten dollars a month in royalties.

And I have been sleeping poorly at night due to pain and heat. Imaginary granddaughters playing guitar music is not enough to help since it is entirely imaginary.

Does this one look like Shirley Temple? I tried. But not quite.