D. Hart St. Martin

I make female heroes badass AND believable

Personal stuff

Confession

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Photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash

Since I was in my early 30s, I’ve known I had a story to tell, a memoir to write, but I’ve avoided it because fear and self-loathing have shackled me. This story I have to tell takes place in my ninth grade year in school. I was 14 going on 15. It was the year JFK was assassinated. It was the year of the Beatles. And it was the year all my ambitions dissolved into nothing, in part because of something an old man in my church—an old man with authority—said to me. This year was the effing end of my story!

But I needed to get this story out of my gut, spew it out, so to speak. Unfortunately, the process of memoir—writing a piece at a time and figuring out when you’ve got enough pieces what the theme actually is and then organizing those pieces based on that—runs counter to my very literal, very linear personal process. I fought the fight, but I lost. And continued to work on my Lisen of Solsta series, now done.

Then, about a year-and-a-half ago, I came up with a brilliant idea. What if I placed a character based entirely on me into a setting I know well—a YA fantasy? Was it possible? Could I do it? I began building my world and my protagonist—Mari, a 15-year-old fat girl with low self-esteem and a narcissistic mother, who finds an escape into an alternate reality of sorts and gains there what she lacks on earth. Where Lisen was the me I wished I’d been in my teens, Mari is me at 15.

Mari and I became friends. We talk nearly every night. We talk about the current movement of the story and where to take it next. When I’m stuck with a plot hole I can’t seem to climb out of, I turn to her. She is, essentially, my inner child, but in separating her from me ever so slightly, I have made it possible for me to talk to that child, respect that child, encourage that child. Now this is all psychological stuff which my therapist is applauding in me, but bit by bit a story has formed. And the one thing I have demanded of the story is to give Mari the redemption, the resolution, I never got. Because I’ve promised her this, and this is a promise I don’t want to break.

It hasn’t been the easiest of journeys. I’ve had to dig deep and give Mari all my flaws. But while doing so I’ve also discovered some wonderful things about her (me), and I like her. A lot. As I approached the end of the draft where I’d be sending it out to beta readers, my anxiety disorder ticked up to a constant attack. I’m dizzy and having palpitations with a queasy stomach. Now this anxiety disorder is the direct result of a life, especially as a very young child, spent with that narcissistic mother who knew how to care for me but had no interest in my personhood and was incapable of love. (It’s all in the book, or if not there, it will eventually show up in the series.)

The book is now out to my betas. This is always a difficult time for any writer. In this case for me, however, I have eviscerated myself on the page. It’s never been this personal before. And I held back telling my betas what this book was really about. Until now.

I lost it last night. I had to make the anxiety stop so I messaged each of them and told them to stop reading. They refused and asked to know why. I told them. Or am telling them now. It’s my story, all right. Mari Spencer is me. Chloe Spencer is my mother. All that stuff she does when Mari’s at home—that all happened to me.

So there you are, my confession. I have to do this, write my story down. I had to get all that vile, ugly stuff out of me before I die. And at my age, that ain’t so far away now. Blessed be, friends. It ain’t a sprint, it’s a marathon.

Why it Takes so Damn Long

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Inspired by a year’s end blog post from author E.J. Dawson, I found myself pondering the relative slowness with which I produce scenes, chapters, books. I am forever berating myself for my laziness, the fact that I sit around a good portion of my day staring at the television and not writing. Hart, I say to myself, look at how much everyone else is able to write in a day, a week, a year. Why are you so slow?

As I read E.J.’s post, “Write the Darkness Within,” I felt envy for her prolific pen—6 books in a year!—and recognized in her struggles with her demons something similar to my situation. I write to ease anxiety. I write to save my soul. I’ve known this for years. I know I feel better on the days I’ve sat down and punched out a page or two. What I did not recognize until now, however, was how very hard each of those pages was to produce.

My mother didn’t love me. Oh, I know, you’ve heard that sad cliché far more times than you can count. But it was more than that. By taking away anything I started before I could finish it—all in the name of protecting me from disappointment—she taught me that I couldn’t finish anything.

And to this day I can’t. I set out to clean the house. I do the floors and vacuum half the carpeting, promising myself I’ll finish up tomorrow or the next day; I don’t. I begin neatening up my patio, and I stop with leaves remaining to be raked and only the open areas swept. I’m even having trouble finishing writing this.

But here’s one thing I can do. I can write a book. I have, in fact, published 7 of them over the last 6 years, with an 8th written and traversing the dangerous territory of rewrite at the moment. The one and only thing I consistently finish is the creation of a story and the fulfillment of the fullness of its truth in tens of thousands of words—sometimes even over 100,000 of them.

How is that? I don’t know. Save for that save-my-soul thing which I’ve always discounted. Until today when I read the aforementioned post.

Most writers must practice the most meticulous discipline, often to the point of ritual, in keeping to their goals. It’s hard to sit down in that chair and open up to the muse day after day. Much like the mind in meditation, we writers are constantly bombarded by thoughts and distractions that would steal us from our work. I’m not alone in that.

But here’s the thing. It turns out, because of my mother’s intrusions in any process I began and my lack of trust in my abilities to finish anything, writing slow is the only way I can write at all. I plod along, and that plodding gets it done. Eventually. And the fact that I’ve finished 8 books serves as testimony to my perseverance. The one thing I can do, the one thing I can finish to its end, is the creation of a story.

I am prolific. I’m just prolific at a slower pace.

The “Holls”*

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(Your humble narrator sighs, then carries on.)

As a kid in the 50s, I, like pretty much every kid in America who wasn’t Jewish, couldn’t wait for Christmas morning. My sister and I would get to open two presents on Christmas Eve—one of our choosing and the other one holding the new long flannel nightgowns our mother had sewn for us at times when we weren’t around to see. Our nightgowns themselves were no surprise—the color/pattern of the flannel was, though it was always holiday related.

Not me

Christmas Eve night was a sleepless affair. I’d lie in bed staring at the clock all night, wishing to sleep, wishing it was 6 a.m., the time of rising on Christmas day declared by my mother. It never was. It never, ever was. My sister slept the night through (lucky kid), and I’d have to wake her when it was time. I didn’t always get what I wanted, and that was disappointing. But after all, the anticipation of a moment is almost always better than the moment itself. And that was the Christmas of my childhood.

Not my tree

I continued to decorate as an adult, collecting ornaments and eventually a 4’ fake tree, until the year my dad died in 2008. I just couldn’t. And I didn’t for six years. Then, in 2014, I pulled the tree out and set it up again, early in December. I loved the lights, how prettily they twinkled, especially at night. But when Christmas Eve hit, I realized that tree hurt. My soul screamed in pain at the sight of it. I don’t know exactly why.

I’m not a child anymore. I have a tiny family, the members of which either celebrate Hanukkah or work many extra shifts the month of December, and are, therefore, not available. (Yeah, bring on the whine and don’t forget the gouda.) I’m alone, and it’s depressing. Why salt the wound with the presence of the tree?

I took the tree down, stored all the decorations dutifully and tossed the tree itself in the trash. It had seen better days, as had I, and it was time to let go of something that no longer worked in my life. I haven’t put up any decorations since.

Not a photo. (I mean, look at the shadows.)

That is not to say I don’t observe the winter Solstice—that moment when the sun appears to turn and head back to the northern hemisphere. That holiday has substance, requiring no faith whatsoever. It’s a scientific fact—the face Gaia presents to the sun will shift as she makes her way around her star.

That is also not to say that I disrespect those who celebrate any of the myriad of holidays which “coincidentally” land at this time of year. To all of you celebrating out there, enjoying your families (I hope) and expressing your faith, I wish you all the best for now and the new year. (And don’t forget my special holiday gift to everyone—Fractured and Tainted free through Christmas Eve!)

*From my Aussie friend who wrote of doing something “over the holls.”

Bang the Drums

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Listening to the bagpipes played at the various events celebrating John McCain’s life this week left me in need of a bagpipe fix, so I downloaded an album from iTunes. There’s nothing like the sweet tune played on the pipes’ chanter accompanied by the rousing blare of the drones. If you’ve never heard them in person, you have missed an encounter that cannot be equaled. They kick the heart and churn the soul until you simply cannot help but stand up and declare yourself free of all earthly bounds.

My father played the drums in a bagpipe band when I was a teenager. As I began listening to this album I’d chosen at random, the first song, “Scotland the Brave,” moved from single bagpipe to a chorus of pipers to the inclusion of the drums, and I remembered with poignancy, awe and not a few tears my father’s struggles to master the damn technique of those Scottish drums. I don’t understand the intricacies of the differences between any other percussion style and those of the Scots, but I do know he did a fair amount of swearing as he practiced for hours on his little homemade drum pad. But master them he did.

Every Wednesday night, our family—Dad, Mom, little sister and I—would head to the military industrial complex where my father worked. While my sister and I took Scottish dancing lessons in one of the out buildings, outside the pipers and drummers would practice both the mastery of their instruments and marching, both fast and slow. And every Christmas, band and dancers together would march in the local holiday parade. We’d wear our little dancing slippers which really weren’t meant for marching, but the magic and joy of following the band led by its drum major lives on in my memory forever.

I miss my daddy. I listen to the drums on this bagpipe album, and there’s a part of me that wants to squeal with a child’s delight. If you ever hear a bagpipe band, whether recorded or live, pay attention to the drums. They’re the best bit of percussive work you’ll ever experience.

My Daddy in all his glory

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Dear JoAnn,

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Today is the first anniversary of your passing, though you’d passed away from me a while before that. We got all caught up in the political, and I didn’t understand until you were gone where you were coming from. Not that that would have made a difference. So I’ve spent the last year thinking about how I didn’t miss you because I’d already begun grieving the loss of you months before.

But today, as I set out for my walk, I plugged my earbuds into my phone and pulled up Sticky Fingers, and when the first licks of “Brown Sugar” hit my ears, I recognized reason for celebration. Those two concerts in one day at the Forum where we jumped up and down and danced like maniacs.

Those nights spent exploring our insides with Anita.

That early morning when you and I rode up to the top of Lookout Mountain and orchestrated the sunrise. Anita had fallen asleep on us . You, as you always could, had taken a two-hour nap earlier under the influence of something that should have kept you from doing so. We did a damn good sunrise that day, and we spent the entire day proud of our work.

Canasta. Oh, my god, we played canasta every chance we got. And we were brutal—all of us—you, me, Neal, and the others in your crowd.

The house in Pasadena. Your brilliant idea to strip all the kitchen cabinets of paint in the middle of summer before you moved in. Nearly killed us with the fumes. And gloves don’t work if your hands are sweaty because the sweat mingles with the fumes slipping and your hands burn anyway. Then later, you completely remodeled the kitchen, replacing the cabinets anyway. You told me you’d owe me forever, and I held you up to that, didn’t I.

The good times. Time to remember the good times. We laughed and had fun all over Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley. And I will remember forever. Thank you for all of that. It never would have been the same without you.

Love,

Hart (whom you refused to call Hart because you couldn’t get used to calling me anything but Debi—are you up there still calling me Debi? Stop it. Right now.)

2016 Sucked in More Ways than you Think

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For most of my friends, 2016 will be remembered for the shock they felt when the candidate for president of the United States whom a good many of us felt was thoroughly qualified failed to get enough electoral votes to take office in January 2017. And, to be honest, that shocked me, too. For me, however, 2016 sucked for other reasons.

In September of 2015, my best friend was diagnosed with stage IV parotid gland cancer. Neck and mouth cancers are among the most difficult to treat because they are rarely discovered before they have metastasized (hence, the stage IV) and oncologists and other medical professionals tend to throw everything at the cancer (and the patient) because they apparently have no idea how to stop it.

My friend’s prognosis was six months from diagnosis. She began chemotherapy late in November and within a couple of days had what at first appeared to be a horrible reaction to the poison they’d pumped into her system. On a Sunday morning she called me, painfully distraught. “I feel so sick,” she said. “I can’t take care of the cats. You have to come and take them to the shelter.” And then she named a nearby shelter that she believed was open on Sundays. I asked her if she’d called her doctor. Being the stoic, controlled Midwesterner that she was, of course, she hadn’t. I told her to call the doctor and I’d figure something out with the cats.

When I hung up the phone, I came apart. She was so sick that she was ready to dump her beloved cats? How could she do that? And I was not going to take them to a shelter. I couldn’t. They’d be euthanized.  Given the fact that one was eight and the other thirteen or fourteen, they’d never get adopted. Hyperventilating and crying, I called my neighbor and asked her to go with me to my friend’s house. Then I called and begged my sister (who lived nearby) to take the cats on a temporary basis. I brought my cage to keep them in, and my sister, after conferring with her daughter, agreed.

We couldn’t catch the cats that morning. My friend had already headed to the ER at the on-call doctor’s insistence, and my neighbor and I retreated back to my house to regroup. In the early evening, my friend’s neighbor called me. She’d been to the hospital and seen my friend, and my friend had told her to tell me in no uncertain terms that when she got home there’d better not be any cats in the house. Frightened, feeling threatened by the effects of a disease that wasn’t even my disease, I headed back to her house, picking up my sister on the way. Two of my friend’s neighbors showed up, and they succeeded in corralling the cats, and my sister and I transported them (and the litter box—apparently part of the offending problem connected with the cats—along with their food) to my sister’s house.

It took two months to find a home for the cats together. My sister never once complained about caring for them or the intrusion they were on her life. But that’s my sister. In those two months, my friend came home after three days in the hospital where they discovered three masses in her brain—likely the guilty party in her aversion to the cats. Her second chemo treatment was delayed with the plan being to see how she did, and if she felt well enough after, the younger of her two cats would come home. (I didn’t understand that either. Why not both? Only a little extra work. But there was a lot I never understood.  It wasn’t my journey, and I could only watch.)

She had her second chemo treatment between Christmas and New Years. Unbeknownst to me and those treating her, she’d developed a severe case of diarrhea on Christmas Eve. She hid it from me to protect my anxious psyche; she hid it from her medical team because, I believe, she didn’t want to delay the chemo any longer. She was strong, determined, ready to take the cancer on again. After the second round of chemo (a cocktail, I might add, that consisted of three most potentially powerful anticancer drugs available), the diarrhea became so bad she ended up in the hospital and stayed for a week-and-a-half. She never went home again. From the hospital she went into “rehab,” and she stayed in that nursing home until her death eight months later. She survived just over a year after her diagnosis.

I had two directives.  The first was my own.  “Keep her safe.” That meant nursing home care. The second directive came from her early on in her stay in the nursing home. Recognizing that she’d likely never leave, she expressed to me her fear that she’d run out of money if she stayed after her Medicare ran out. So, to keep her there, to keep her safe and to keep her from using up her savings, I contacted a company that manages getting the aging on Medi-Cal (California’s Medicaid) to ensure long-term care. There were three of us “watching over” my friend, but none of us could take on the 24-hour-a-day attention we knew she’d require. I took care of protecting her assets. Another one of us saw to selling her mobile home and its contents because all of her income would become “share of cost” with nothing left for the rent on her space or any other expenses. I will always owe this woman a debt that cannot be repaid.

For several months, March through July, I wondered why we even kept her in the nursing home. I mean, I knew I couldn’t have her stay with me; my anxiety disorder wouldn’t let me sleep if she were there. She understood that. But still, she was stuck in a place where most everyone is suffering from some form of dementia, and she wasn’t. There was always someone yelling all night long, and that made it hard for her to sleep. I should have just bit the bullet and brought her home with me, but as it was, I was getting sick (fever, chills, lack of appetite, sleeping all the time) about once a month for 5 or 6 days. I couldn’t take care of her with that going on. (Whether these bouts with illness were merely a product of stress or related to an actual physical cause will soon be determined as I go through testing and referral to a specialist.)

She died on a Monday afternoon late in September of this year (this awful year of 2016) around 4 p.m. It was peaceful and quiet, and I felt privileged to be present. And then came the business matters. She’d organized everything well, so it was fairly simple to close out various accounts and disappear her from the system. The year is nearly done, and all that’s left are her taxes, which can’t be done until next year anyway.

Oh, and my cat died two weeks ago. 2016 sucked.