Fight or flight.

I once had a panic attack because my little brother face planted on some ice when he was little and put a tooth through his lower lip. It wasn't because I was scared for him or because his lower face was covered in blood, it was because I was afraid I was about to have the crap kicked out of me.

Irrational? Crazy? Makes no sense?

Supposedly random subject change.

My novels are psychologically heavy. My editor is warning me that they might be a bit too heavy for younger readers (target is young adults, so I'm not worried) It addresses the worse aspects of human nature. This has been a pretty successful path for me, and some people have said it worries them/they're worried about my psychological well-being. Which I guess makes sense; the author's work reflects on the author. Ever seen an interview with Stephen King? He's a weirdo.

Authors write about stuff that's pretty close to home. And with me flailing around in Depression Lake, it makes sense that the novels have turned out dark and critical. I'm a little merciless with my MC. It's like an outlet for my confusion towards people and frustration with the apparent idiocy of the general North American public. Not that that's what my novel's about, because it's very, very, very not.

Okay. So the big thing I've learned about people is that their reactions to certain things (mostly arguments and unexpected situations or confrontations) come down to fight or flight. Which is usual for animals, but finally understanding it helped my characters suddenly snap into a good 3-dimensional reality. And as soon as that happened, I got partial funding from a company.

I figured out that most people default to fight. It makes sense; we've always been predators. We have to fight for everything we have, even if the fight is grudging your way to a minimum wage job. If we're confronted or insulted, our first instinct is to lash out to defend ourselves. If someone hits us, we want to hit them back. If we're hurt, we want the offending party brought to justice. We don't book it with what we've got.

Warning: It gets depressing really fast here, so if you hate that stop reading.

Which was a good realization for my writing development, but it caused a whole day of me lying on my back, staring at a ceiling, kinda brought out of sorts because I don't seem to have a proper fight instinct. I used to! It used to be overly active, but I just don't seem to have it anymore. People can insult me, and I would much rather go crawl in a hole and hope they never find me than get angry and stick up for myself. When I was in my early early teens (12 and 13) I would have laid the offender out. Come 14, that was becoming something that only happened when I was cornered.

Have you ever seen a dog that's come from an abusive home? A lot of them cower every time you move and then are prone to biting if you get too close. If you pick up a broom, most of them quake uncontrollably.

I had to figure out that that's what had happened to me. I was stuck in this big expectational cycle of waiting to be obliterated. I was convinced everything was my fault, because with my mom it was. She burned dinner? My fault. She forgot her keys? My fault. My sister tripped down the stairs? My fault. My brother got made fun of at school? You get the idea.

Once, she even made me sit outside all day watching my two siblings on her side (I have two on hers, one on my father's) because there was a kid on our block making fun of them. I wasn't allowed any distractions while they rode their bikes and played around on the driveway. I was told that if the bully came up, I was supposed to threaten him and if he got too close to chase him away. I sat outside, terrified of him coming by because I didn't want to, as a 13yo, bully an 8yo. But I was MORE scared of not doing what she said and having to face her wrath.

It got to the point that when I saw her walk into the room, I would already be fighting back tears before she said anything, because the only reason she ever forced herself to be in the same room as me was to scream at me and use me as a punching bag. If I cried before she said anything, she said it was because I knew I had done something wrong.

My younger siblings were spoiled so she could show me just how much I was being punished, so I would reflect on what I'd done wrong. My brother picked up that he could make my abuse work in his favor (to be fair, he was 4 when I was 13 and has since grown up into a good guy) and would jump at the advantage he had. He would throw himself loudly into a wall and start wailing that I had pushed him, and despite my tearful denials my mother would come to give me a clout and ground me. She eventually said she'd run out of ways to punish me, so other things happened. She would forbid me from eating dinner with the family, and she didn't let me leave the house. Once for two weeks, she drove me to school so she could walk me, hand on my arm, into the school and then at the end of school would wait in the lobby to walk be back to the vehicle.

I was too scared to tell anyone what was going on, because the one time I tried to tell my dad things were not going okay over the phone, she had been listening in and magically materialized in my bedroom's doorway (she'd removed the door because of a punishment so I couldn't lock her out) and motioned that I was dead when I was done on the phone.

So by the time I was finally able to tell my dad what happened and get rescued from that life, I was more or less damaged.

Cut to a year after I was rescued, when I was 15. The one sibling on his side was 5 at the time. One day I was helping my dad and my uncle build a garage after his had been burnt down and my dad told me to take a break and keep an eye on my little brother. It was winter time, and the driveway was icy. He'd been digging in the snow bank on the side of the driveway, trying to make a fort, and decided it was time to go ask our father for a shovel to help him. As we made our way up the driveway, he slipped on ice and hit his face despite my efforts to grab him. He didn't cry, but stood up looking upset. A tooth had driven itself straight through his lip and the lip was pouring blood. I panicked and took him to my dad. By the time we entered the garage, I was shaking uncontrollably, and wasn't quite sure why. When my father asked me what happened, I broke down crying and managed to tell the story between desperate apologies. In the back of my mind, I remember briefly wondering why I was so upset, but figured it out when my dad walked up to me and I accidentally yelped in fear. All he wanted to do was tell me it was okay. I nodded when he said that, but my subconscious mind knew that my mother had told me it was okay sometimes and changed her mind later the same day.

So I dissolved into an irrational panic attack. My brother needed stitches, I needed an oxygen mask. The doctors couldn't figure out what my panic attack was about and were seconds from calling social services before I calmed down enough to explain the reason I had rationalized for the meltdown.

Stuff like that kept happening for a couple years after I'd left my mother's house, but slowly petered out as I became a functional member of society. However, there are certain triggers that I haven't worked past yet. It's difficult because I'm not sure what all of them are.

Today, I found another one, which is why I'm writing this... because this is my personal blog... and I write what I want in it! Ahem. The trigger was that friend that f*cked me over yelling "Jesus Christ! This is ridiculous! I'm not going to deal with this Bullshit!" Which is, word for word, a line my mother used multiple times, almost daily. As soon as it was out of his mouth I started crying and hyperventilating uncontrollably and he hung up on me. Which is when I posted my last blog entry talking about what he'd done.

So long story short, crap like this is why I can write psychological thrillers so well, and it's not a huge thing I'm proud of. When people say they're concerned because of my "talent" in that area, I kinda just shrug it off and half-jokingly say "tortured childhood." Inside I'm serious, outwardly people laugh and accept it as a casual truth. It's not hurtful that they don't take it seriously, because I purposefully downplay it so I won't have to make them uncomfortable. I don't want people I have to see every day knowing about this shit, and I realized that a couple of years ago. But recently I've learned that I want SOMEONE to know, so I guess my blog works. So there. Now you know.

Tada!