Will-o-the-Walmart

(I wrote this blog post months ago and totally forgot to publish it. Good job, past Jen.)

Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you got till it's gone?

Yes, I'm quoting Big Yellow Taxi for a reason. It's because my story Will-o-the-Walmart has been published in Triangulation: Extinction.

My story takes place in a world without nature, although it isn't about that. And it features a sad little nature spirit alone in the world, although… it isn’t really about that, either.

It's about two queer girls trying desperately to fall back in love.

It's a metaphor. And like any good metaphor*, the narrator explicitly points out to you it is a metaphor.

*At least if you're me.

Fun facts about this story!

* it refers to Thomas Edison as He Who Must Not Be Named, and I totally forgot to edit that out when I submitted it but they liked it anyway

* because it is based on Big Yellow Taxi, I listened to that song for like three days in a row. And then my friend, who I joke about having a psychic connection with, told me he had had the song stuck in his head for days

* This is my second story in a Triangulation anthology. Seven Sisters is available in Dark Skies.

So come on. Follow that little light into the darkness, let it lead you on an adventure between the pages of Extinction.

There's No Special Ed At Hogwarts

Oh yes, I write essays sometimes.

Sometimes, they're even good.

There's No Special Ed At Hogwarts, available free online at Breath & Shadow, is a very personal nonfiction piece about confronting systemic and internalized ableism.

It's also, indirectly and unconsciously, about recognizing and dealing with the realization that the things you love do not always love you back.

I love Harry Potter. I was obsessed with it during a very hard part of my life and it still gives me warm nostalgia feelings of comfort when I think about that world.

But that world is not accessible to disabled people, and young me didn't realize that wasn't okay. The world wasn't accessible, but that was just the way it was. It was my fault for needing it to be different. So why should fiction be any different?

Because it can. Because it should. Because it needs to.

If our fiction, if our worlds full of dragons and magic, can't be open to people regardless of who or what they are, what the hell kind of chance does our real world have?

I wrote this a couple years ago. I knew the author was problematic, but I wasn't really… part of the discourse so I wasn't aware of the extent.

If I was writing this now, I’d add something about trans people not being welcome at Hogwarts either, since JK Rowling has continuously revealed that she is anti-trans and I am…

Well, to be honest. I don't super really know what I am. I’m not cisgender, which is the word for people who are comfortable in the gender they were assigned at birth. I'm definitely not a man. But not totally a woman either.

I've been using the word non-binary. I don't know if it's accurate, I don't really care what you call it. But I like the flag.

I just know that J. K. Rowling has another reason to hate me, but that doesn't mean I have another reason to hate myself.

The Unwelcome Destiny Of Virginia Monahan

I have TWO publications out today, both free to read at Breath And Shadow, an online magazine dedicated to the writings of disabled people. So I'm going to do two posts, one for my story and one for my essay.

First, my story, The Unwelcome Destiny Of Virginia Monahan, available here: https://www.abilitymaine.org/bs2020fall/%22the-unwelcome-destiny-of-virginia-monahan%22

(If you want to read my essay, as well, There's No Special Ed At Hogwarts, here is the link: https://www.abilitymaine.org/bs2020fall/%22there%E2%80%99s-no-special-ed-at-hogwarts%22)

"Gin had always seen the ripples."

That is the first line of The Unwelcome Destiny Of Virginia Monahan, and it is also the first line I wrote after escaping my abusive home.

I was in a nursing home, where I spent a month waiting to go to a group home. Typing was difficult, I was miserable, and there was just so much going on that I could barely think let alone write.

I got my first ever cell phone, and dictating made writing possible. Still not easy–it would be a while before I could effortlessly translate my thoughts into spoken word–but possible. And having a phone also made it possible for me to discover my own taste in music.

I've always listened to what my mom listens to. Mostly 80s and oldies. And I do love that music, but I was rebelling. I moved out on my own, started my life over. I was gonna listen to what I wanted to listen to.

… and it turns out my taste in music largely resembles that of my mom. But at least I tried to rebel, right?

My mom generally does not like music made past the 80s, but there is one modern band that we both love. Train. You know, the Drops of Jupiter people. I actually think that song was the first song I added to my Spotify playlist.

When I wasn't hanging out with my group of friends at the nursing home, I wandered the halls and played music. My mother’s music. My music. Because, no matter how much I tried to pretend otherwise, I am my mother's daughter.

But I could still rebel. I could sing.

My mother never told me I couldn't, but I never felt comfortable trying it until then. So I would go down the hallway, sunlight from the snowy courtyard streaming in through the giant windows, and I would sing Meet Virginia. And it felt good, it felt right. It felt like I was telling destiny that I might be my mother's daughter, but only I get to decide what that means.

The Unwelcome Destiny of Virginia Monahan is based on Meet Virginia, about a girl with magic intuition and tragic confidence. A girl who sees the future and doesn't like what she sees. A girl who drinks coffee at midnight while pulling her hair back as she screams because she doesn't want to be queen of the fairies.

"Gin had always seen the ripples" was written right before I went to sleep one night at the nursing home. I didn't know what the story would be about any more than I knew how my life would turn out, because unlike Virginia Monahan I can't see the future. But I did know one thing: I'm the only one in charge of my destiny.

Read The Unwelcome Destiny Of Virginia Monahan for free here..