Arn't I A Woman?

I really wanted to end the year on a great note. I wanted to tie up all these neat lessons I learned in a fancy, sparkly bow and gift it to myself to illustrate all my growth and success. A tangible, measurable growth that I would put up on my shelf with forgotten teddy bears and hoarded gold medals to gather dust in eternity, readily available for me to take down and proudly show off at any moment.  I wanted to dust the leftover fragments of inadequacy under the rug and produce a bright shiny new version of myself. Not a new me just a better one, I wanted to turn myself inside out and give the world the best of me. But how often we get trapped in the cobwebs of our minds.  It's as if someone stuck a bunch of magnets to the backs of tiny particles of stress and they are forcibly attracted to a strip inside my brain. They are all stuck there. The truth is I am going back down, down the rabbit hole....I won't know what's on the other side til I get there. ...

A Winter of the Mind “It's a season governed by the recluse, the hermit. Activity gives way to dormancy. Life is still, indwelling and silent. This is a time of introversion, contemplation and going within. Symbolic winter invites us to quiet the mind, still the soul, and crystallize our inner workings. This is a time to ice skate through winter whites as a means of gaining purity and clarification.” A depressive landscape emerges: it is marred with oblique jagged rocks shooting out of deep crimson sand, stabbing at lonely, barren air suffocated by a putrid smell of rotting flesh. I live here, for now. A winter of the mind has settled inside me; it is dark and all consuming and unquenchingly eats away at my hope and joy. A vanquishing, cancerous Pac-Man. As much as I tried to fight it; as many positive affirmations I muttered under my breath, glasses of water I drank, and moments of mediation...

aka “The Philip Seymour Hoffman Effect” Dear Jessie, Today is October 29, 2013. Last night was fun, wasn’t it? Was it? Why did you smoke those two cigarettes? I know why you did. Psychic release. I know why you do the things you do before you do them. Nestled snuggly underneath the squiggly electronic jagged lines that send currents through that big lumpy cranium of yours lays core beliefs you have about yourself, the world, and other people. They are hidden so sometimes you don’t even know they are there, but they are. Some mutate and evolve over time and some have remained untouched for decades. There are very few unchangeable facts about people. We tightly grasp ideas like “blonde hair” “extrovert” “intelligent” “depressed” “unlovable” to form our identity. Without them we feel empty. But truthfully, these signifiers are as permanent as Miley Cyrus’ innocence. Though these ideas give us temporary existential relief, they ultimately are incredibly limiting...

I'm a free bitch baby  When I lit this love candle my fr iend gave me , my intentions were certainly not to bring about a blast from my romantic past. Because fuck my romantic past! I’m not tryin to hear any of that noise anymore. The truth is I have been pretty insecure in all my relationships so none of them led to me being very happy. I am attracted to narcissists. According to psychological studies, “highly sensitive people” (HSP) as we are known tend to be that way: “HSPs can feel such intense love and compassion for people that we can believe our love can heal others. And often other people are so amazed and relieved by receiving this much love and understanding, they respond with enormous amounts of gratitude and often flattery. Sensitive people respond to this praise by feeling good about ourselves and feeling needed and so we give more. But as this pattern continues, we end up giving until we’ve got nothing left and getting nothing in return, under...

As the smoldering heat wave of Georgia’s summer subsides, breaking into the first crisp whisper of stark autumn winds, I am changing. While sunshine remains synonymous with happiness, brightness, and well being, as with anything in life too much exposure can lead to burned wings. I have been sent spiraling, crashing down to the harsh shiny surface of reality. I wake up to a pounding head; ominous clouds abound me. My hands are bloodied with bits of gravel and dirt stuck in tiny pockets of my skin where I braced my fall. Destruction lies around me glittering like forgotten pieces of Mylar, scattered on a sticky dance floor that once held celebration of a solstice. The corpses of my mistakes have taken form and I am forced here to face them as I slowly begin to stand.   I ask myself: why do I do things that hurt me? What leads to self-destructive behavior? If we break it down to the behavioral level, and suppose the hypothesis “destruction is a form of ...

"All my life, I've lived and worked in the big city, which now that I think of it, is kind of a problem since I always feel uncomfortable around crowds. I mean it, I-I have this fear of enclosed spaces. I-I-I, everything makes me feel trapped all the time. You know, I always tell myself, there's gotta be something better out there, but maybe I think too much. And I've always had these, these abandonment issues, which plagued me. And my job, don't get me started on, 'cause it really annoys me. I was not cut out to be a worker, I'll tell you right now. I-I-I feel physically inadequate.  It's this whole gung-ho super-organism thing that, that, that I - you know, I can't get, I try but I can't get it. What about me? I mean, I gotta believe there's someplace out there that's better than this! Otherwise, I will just curl up in a larval position and weep! The whole system makes me feel - insignificant!" I get frustrated because I f...

Z ines are a great way to allow anyone who feels d isenfranch ised to ta k e back the ir r ightful p iece of the publ ic sphere. I  found a bunch of  d ig ital fem in ist  z ines onl ine and rel ied heav ily on those to help gu ide me through  my f irst  exper ience  i n  zine making. Because th is access was really  important for me  I  wanted to make sure to put a d ig ital copy  up. Th is vers ion  is sl ightly var ied from the phys ical copy. Y ou can e-ma il me at jlordatl@gma il.com for one.  Thanks aga in  to everyone that helped-  it ain't easy!! ::\\:: Dark Corners Volume 1: Murky Waters ::\\::