(n) Shamelessness

And the sentence!

The Vampire’s impudicity was at once appealing and repulsive to his potential prey.

Her back was curved against the dark, with her spinal column in sharp relief against her back, the contrast made sharper by the play of shadows. She was gaunt, frail, as though the watery moonlight was too heavy for her to bear, as though she was dying in this dark room that was at once too small and too big, too empty. She was too pale, bleached by too long without sunshine, by too long in darkness. She had an air of faded beauty about her, as though the vibrancy sunk into the cold concrete floor, as though the world has bowed her back and left her weak, dying.

That’s all people saw. They didn’t look past her frailty. They didn’t stop to learn her name. They thought they knew her, that she could never be anything more than she was. They didn’t try to hear her because they didn’t know how to listen. They heard her as muffled and discordant, broken. They didn’t want to hear anything else, really. They didn’t want to listen when they could just talk. They thought she didn’t matter.

They were wrong.

Under skin drawn tight from hunger and cold, behind eyes glassy with the reflections of apathy, she had a mind. It moved slowly, almost peacefully, forced into pained serenity, having so long waded through the stickiness of others’ self-centeredness that it had been crippled. But she had a mind.

She was stirring.

She was alive.

She had a name, but she couldn’t speak it.

She had a voice, but no one heard it.

She was alive.

She just needed to be free.

It started small. Warmth pressed against her temples, and fluttered in her fingertips. It spread and grew until it almost hurt, until it bubbled inside of her and pressed her back out of its curve. It filled out her gaunt frame, and burned inside her.

She stood, and no longer looked at the stained concrete, nor did she even see the water-stained ceiling. She threw her shoulders back and spread her palms, and she was no longer a crushed snowdrop in filthy snow. She was no longer ash to be swept away by ice-laced wind. She was not the frozen ground, dead, but waiting.

Not anymore.

She was a rose, with petals weeping with dew, rising from warm, loamy soil, bare, and pink, and sun-kissed. She was a phoenix with the fire of her soul burning a path down her feathers.

She was alive, so very alive, with the air snapping with her energy, with her mind shooting sparks.

She had a voice, such a voice, that it no longer mattered if people paused to listen. She was content, no, ecstatic, because she would sing, and her words would fly and dip in this charged air, and she would be the judge of whether they were worth listening to. She threw her head back and her voice was clear and pure, a sunrise, a morning glory. She could not be crushed because she was no longer crushing herself.

The ceiling crumbled, the mildewed, industrial steel sighing in release as it bowed to the power of her voice. She was illuminated by the sunlight that fell like a robe about her, folding around the lushness of her figure, casting warmth across her cheekbones, illuminating the play of dust fairies about her. In the sunlight, her hair was a fiery red, like the first rays of dawn, like a solitary fire beating back the darkness of a cloaked desert.

She was beautiful.

She had a voice. And no one would ever ignore it again.

She was really,

truly,

alive.

And, as people turned towards her, the same people who rendered her nameless, wordless before, the same people who boxed and packaged her, a smile, the first true smile in forever, the first smile to break the ice of her soul’s tundra, played across her lips.

She would never be trapped, never again.

The phoenix of her voice took flight. And, looking up into the vast, blue sky, clothed in sunshine, she shed her final shackle.

She told the world her name.

One was to be named “After”.

It was going to be about our second performance, which was lovely. And it was going to be about the acting still involved afterwards. I was going to talk about how when Dad, or Mother, or our director greeted one of the audience, it was like they shrugged on a coat, like a smile for their adoring fans would settle upon their faces like a lazy butterfly on a summer day. Easy. But still acting. It was going to be a post about the beauty of being someone, about being beautiful, about being an actor. Because sometimes, when you’re on stage, when no one can make presumptions about you, when you’re never what you seem, that’s the only time when you stop acting, and start living. I was going to write about how it’s only once you step off that stage that you have to don that smile and do that perfectly rehearsed song and dance. I was going to write about acting, and how it was something that speaks to the soul, that is perfect and pure and empowering if people would stop thinking so darn hard about it.

But.

I was also going to write a post called “Mediocre”.

It was going to be about pain. And feelings of inadequacy. It was going to be about how when people say nasty things, they stick like honey, while compliments roll off like so much water. See, because my amazing, sweet cast told me today that they thought yesterday’s post was really nice. And I was happy because they were. But one person, just one, told me it was a mediocre post. And suddenly, I couldn’t think of it as good anymore.

And I hated myself for that.

I hated myself for letting one person’s opinion break something like that, break my words. Am I so fragile, a being of glass threads, brittle and braced for one raindrop to shatter me. It’s not fair, and it’s not right. But it’s true. I was going to write about weakness, and power, and I was going to try and scrape some sort of epiphany about the nature of myself or humanity out of it, like scraping old, gray gum off the sidewalk, and chewing it to make it seem fresh again.

Pointless.

I was going to write lies, and truth. In both posts. I was going to omit, and be too honest.

And it got me thinking about choices, about this blog, about life. I need to make a choice, because I can’t just present joy and fluidity, nor can I just present the sticky, hard cragginess of feeling inept, of being broken. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what to say.

I’m trying.

I think I’ll just say both and do my best to speak the truth and from the heart. Because I’m sure

I am sure

that if I do that, if I really do, anyone can call me mediocre and it won’t stick.

I am sure.

Anyway, we,

my ensemble and myself,

ROCKED IT.

If I do say so myself.

And the beautiful thing was, you could tell these were theater people, an ensemble, really and truly. Because an audience changed us. I was backstage when we got our first laugh, and everyone backstage with me exchanged looks and gave this perfect surprised smile. When our lead, Dad, was offstage, he, in complete opposition to his relative stressiness during out train-wreck dress rehearsal, danced and helped people up, high-fived and smiled. He was alive. He was alive with the applause and the ensemble and being seen and being awesome. It was amazing.

It was theater. It was letting energy feed us, being pleased by pleasing, an exchange of…something. It was just right, just how it was meant to be.

And our ensemble was so supportive! I finally got right a line I had struggled with and I swear, even better than flowers or congratulations from my friends, even better than any of that was the look on Dad’s face, like the rising sun at the beginning of the Lion King, like he was saying, without ever breaking character, “Thanks for not screwing up my play!”, and my ensemble, how they all gave me thumbs up and whispered congratulations backstage, just for one line, when they had all just done perfectly on all of theirs.

What I mean to say is, it was perfect.

We were great.

I can’t wait to do it again tomorrow.

Love y’all.

I’m RJ. Some people call me Rebecca, some people call me Sunshine. I started this blog three years ago because I wanted a voice, but I didn’t know that yet. Back then, I just did it for my awesome master bloggers in the house.  This blog started out as reviews, and vocab, and the joy of 7th grade enthusiasm. Now, I suppose a lot of people would call it a life blog. I call it a nothing blog, and here’s why:

I promised change. To try and find the joy again, to write quality and quantity and to be proud again, proud as I was at my first BlogHer conference when I got to hand out my glossy business cards and I cried from pride over my mother’s keynote. I promised to blog to the fullest of my ability, and I haven’t. Not really. And if I have, I should just quit now.

This is a nothing blog. It’s not life, or reviews, or “un-life”, even. It’s not me, but it is. It’s a lot of unfinished ideas, a few gems, and, through it all, me screaming, “where is my voice? I need a voice.” This is a nothing blog where everything suspends in limbo, than dashes forwards at times. This is a blog in fits and starts, in moments of clarity, and moments of confusion, in tears, and, sometimes, in that terrifying numb space where nothing seems really real, where life has pushed you too far. It’s that sort of blog.

I’m a nothing blogger.

That sounds negative, and I suppose it could be, but it is what it is. It is what Vampire Vocab is.

It’s just, I’m tired of boxes. I’m tired of pushing on walls, screaming myself hoarse to try and make people see, then, even if I push and shove and shoulder out of one box, one category someone has put me in, I just find myself in another.

My name is RJ. Some people call me Rebecca or Sunshine. I’m a nothing blogger. I’m looking for a voice.

My name is RJ.

But who am I?

And that’s a good feeling. So I’m going to keep this alive and try to write to the truth, and, maybe, I’ll do the idea justice.

I cried for my mommy and I wrote all through math about NO for my daddy.

I could write here for hours, let words fall into poetry, or stuff them into labored sentences to try and describe how I feel: recovering from a cold, with tears leaking from my eyes in joy. I could try to describe how I feel, how loved I feel. Because love is here, in this family, right now. It’s in Joe letting me sit up front in the car ride, no arguments. It’s in a friendly morning with Lizzy. It’s in “Happy Birthday, kid.” on my FB wall from Denise. It’s in triple-ginger cake for breakfast and lunch. Love is remembering New Orleans air, spiced and bitter like chicory coffee, thick with music and my father’s and my joy. Love is reflected off the surface of the opal mommy compared me to. But mommy, it’s you. It’s all of you. It’s my family that gives me color, that fills me with sparkle.

I love you, all of you. I can’t say enough, not if I read the dictionary and used every word, not if I wrote a poem every day, not if I could write a blog post to span the world. I can’t tell you how much I love you.

And mommy? Anything, Anywhere.

Thank you for 16 years. Thank you for the rest I know are to come.

Abulia

(n) Loss of decision making ability

And the sentence:

The vampire, struck with abulia, couldn’t decide whether to bite the human or not.

Glossolalia

(n) Incomprehensible speech uttered from a state of religious fervor or trance.

And a sentence:

The priest, scarred by the vampire attack, muttered glossolalia with wild eyes.

Hircine

(adj) Resembling or smelling like a goat. Also: Lustful. Let’s assume, in the context of modern vampires, the latter will be the use.

And the sentence!

The hircine vampire, hungering for blood, approached his prey with measured steps and a wicked smile.