Author: bella

trading with a friend

Posted on by bella

It was just another slow Sunday today but laced in a cool breeze, giving us a much needed break from the humidity. Thank goodness. I don’t have a lot i want to write about, but i felt like writing a short post about a regular day for me — because i don’t usually do that. So — here’s to trying something new ! Currently i’m doing a knitting trade with a good friend of mine. I’m knitting her a sweater with cotton yarn and in exchange i get one or two of her beautiful scarves. I’ve never done anything like this before so i’m pretty excited about the process. (I also get to write a letter and send it snail mail style — which is something i really love to do) Old style mail is like poetry these days. I don’t often use patterns, if at all. I make it all up as i go and see how it turns out. I never make the same thing twice — even if i’m trying to knit a pair of socks, fucking bastard socks. I get heated just thinking about having to knit two of something it SUCKS.

My day pretty much consisted of your regular dreading of Monday morning, eating bacon, jerky and hyping myself up for a new big challenge. As most of you can probably tell i suffer from a pretty crippling mindset of self hatred and body dysmorphia —  lace all that bullhickey in with deadening depression and you have the wonderfully witty  genius you see before you.  The funniest kid any side of the Mississipi. Artists and comedians suffer greatly for their craft; and fuck i’ve suffered like a son of a bitch. That’s right folks, not even i am at all perfect as social media might portray. I am in fact flawed like an old piss sodden boot with a hole in the toe, and i wouldn’t change much about it. Perfection is terribly over rated.
Anyway, my point is that i’m working on changing my cognitive thinking. Don’t get me wrong, i love a bit of depression here and there because its how i write the way i do.
I can write some beautifully haunting scenarios like no other, terrible stories and cruel characters, that though they may not be entirely good — they’ll be remembered; but its time  for me to change a little too. I’m smart enough to realise that. Because if you’re not working on yourself, where are you going and how can you grow? Also, i can’t expect my characters to change — if i don’t.


I’ve been working out on a consistent basis for over a year now and attempting (and failing), to change my eating habits. DING DING. But thats the next goal. To stop eating what i know fuels my depression like fuel on a fire pit. And its only a habit that needs breaking, because i don’t enjoy when i eat those foods — but i do it out of the comforting habit drowning in sugar like babies suckling tit milk.
Today isn’t really the first day of me working on this, by no means but today is yet another day where i’ll start the intermittent fasting and try a new method of thinking of food by not canceling out everything i love, but changing how much and when i have it. Good luck to me, after all… if you don’t like something change it.

Fear not! My blog is not becoming a fitness blog full of air filled muscles, booty photos and starved selfies. No ma’am. But fitness has become a bigger part of my life this year and i’m loving it because i can physically and mentally feel the changes. If i’m sad about something, i’ll take a run, a walk or get under the weights. Recently i’ve been pretty low because i’ve been homesick after watching particular television shows, another terrible trigger that can send me in to a cave macabre thoughts for weeks. Homesickness is a cruelty i would only wish on about 30 people that i believe deserve to feel something other than falsely placed superiority.


And thats all my Sunday consisted of. Settling things in my mind and figuring out the next step. Here’s to new horizons, opportunities and futures looming. Tell me about your Sunday and something you’d like to change.

Happy Sunday Night and have a grand following week.

Also — if you’re interested in the knitting my friend does here is a link to her facebook page here.

 

those 10 things i miss about merry old england

Posted on by bella
  1. Im not a very social person, and i dont make friends — and thats out of choice. (I’m pretty much the wittier version of Doc Martin) But in England lives my best friend whom i would often sit with in a little cafe by the seaside or somewhere in the rocky mess of Cheddar gorge, where we would eat ourselves full of cake till our belts needed new holes punched in. We would talk boats, erotic literature that was actually worth reading,  sailing, different types of cakes, fish and chips and plan new trips to new places that would never become; but it was fun just the same to pretend we’d make it.
  2. Now, i am known to struggle from a common problem for expats — that feeling of loss of identity due to having lived everywhere and nowhere for so long. But if theres one memory that can make my heart warm and sad at the same time it’s seeing the first summer sun over the hills of Somerset.
  3. This one is hard to explain, but i miss a feeling of familiarity. I’ve been wandering so long now that i’ve completely forgotten what it feels like to stay put, create a plan and live what i call a “stock” life. Here in America, i’m the richest i’ve ever been in many-a-way and i’ve lived a million times over, something i would have completely missed out on — if i had stayed where i was. Having said that it doesn’t mean i don’t find myself missing parts of the past.
  4. I really miss jammie dodgers, jaffer cakes and pink lemonade lucozade… and in general being able to go into a shop and buy exactly what i’m craving like hobnobs and real chocolate digestives that aren’t out of date. I miss monster munch and niknak crisps too… milk ways. Oh how the list can go on and on and on.
  5.  When i used to commute to Bristol for my boating jobs i remember cycling through sleepy Sand bay and Kewstoke as everyone slept.
    Those muddy winter mornings with the mist clearing as the village wakes up were some of the most beautiful days i’ve seen in England, and there was magic between the trees.
  6. Bee’s buzzing in the garden and my cats trying to beat the ever living shit out of them. My big beautiful house full of ghosts and having my parents downstairs.  All the cobs, ponies and horses caked in dirt on every corner and foxes screeching outside my window.
  7. Those late night walks on the beach where i ran bare foot through the rising tide as the stars above swung and shone. My hair like a lions mane in a wind tunnel. That beach was mine and we belonged to each other.
  8. The random crap on British TV and the British history.
  9. The early shift on the ferry boats in Bristol harbour when we would have to fuel up and the town wasn’t awake. The water traffic was just beginning to buzz, the water was smooth and the weather; airish.
  10. And, of course, sailing around the Bristol Channel with Pat showing me the ropes. I will probably never have those days again, and its only now — 6 years or so later that its starting to hit me. We’d sit and eat biscuits and again…talk about going to Papa’s for fish and chips. The best fish and chip place on the planet.

♡

born of stones

Posted on by bella

Born of stones, and by that I mean I’m a tough kid, tougher than most I’ll wager. The days are trailing on and the heart of the west is beating at a pace I can’t catch up with. Like a door that moves further away the harder you try to grasp it. The sweet west where the wind is bitter, the sun is a son of a bitch and every day is a gift. Today is the second of July. My birthday has gone and passed as it does every year and I’m another wrinkle richer; another year bolder. The sun has slept and the moon risen — as they do every day. The eaves weeping. I’m supposed to be working but instead I’m bleeding at my keyboard counting the hours till I can go home. Lately I’ve been entirely engrossed in my writing. When I’m not writing — I’m thinking about writing or dreaming up something macabre from a memory, lacing characters with a realistic mean streak and a fat lip. My mind is so full of ideas and dreams and an honest wonder at how to achieve them all when time runs so damn fast. But its running in the right direction. With me loping behind grabbing whatever the stagecoach of time leaves behind.

So far summer in the granite state has proven fruitful with warm afternoons and lapping lakes, bee’s bugging the shit out of everybody and groundhogs dead as dickens doornails by the side of the road. Instead of blogging and losing hours a day to Instagram – I’ve been meddling in photography, cinema trips and enjoying the last of what the northern states can offer us as we ready ourselves for new adventures and new horizons wherever they may lay. And as I said previously, writing and writing and writing. I’m becoming more aware of how ready I am to let me people read the work that I’ve kept so close to my chest all these long years. My secrets. The dark. And the characters peppered like stars cut out from an old curtain finally seeing the light of day.
And as my darling mother tells me; let them read it.
The day will come, to be sure, that I’ll let you read the chapters I’ve ached and wept over for the past few years, the many characters that came from the cruelty and the broken hearts born from death.
You’ll know them all when the time has come.

Soon there will be some changes to my blog, just like my Instagram of abandon and I can safely say that I appreciate those of you who are still reading and following; even after my constant disappearances and ramblings. But here’s to the future — to you, to me and to us who have struggled.

♡

the peter pan

Posted on by bella

It’s Thursday night and theres a mist slowly creeping. The air is a little thicker than normal as the humidity rises and i’m thankful i can let my hair down, take my bra off  and wash my hands of the bullshit at the end of the day. I’ve been diving into my creative pit and living in it. I have knitted pieces to post on my etsy ( finally ) and i’ve been playing around with filming as much as i could; not to mention writing every single day, even if its just a page. Hustling.