#nirvhannah shepherd chronicles

[josiebelladonna]

“Your own personal Jesus, someone to hear your prayers, someone who cares. Your own personal Jesus, someone to hear your prayers, someone who's there.” -”Personal Jesus”, Johnny Cash (originally done by Depeche Mode; other covers include Marilyn Manson, Mindless Self Indulgence, and Def Leppard)

About six years ago, I got into the habit of playing that cover (and the cover of Rusty Cage) like clockwork on Ben’s birthday. The whole mood of it seemed to fit him like a glove: Johnny’s spooked country boy tone of voice coupled with the moody darkness of Johnny Froosh’s guitar and the old-timey piano sums him up pretty well. It’s left of center and unexpected, just like him; and add to this, the Man in Black makes it into a mantra of “be your own god”, something which I’ve followed since I played that cover out of curiosity that cold autumnal day in 2013. It was right after he released his solo album In Deep Owl, so it seemed all the more a propos on top of everything else, too.

Six months and an intense bout of anxiety later, I wrote my first letter to him. My mom and I were able to look him up--I won’t say, just out of protection for him--and I spent a total of three days, right after my finals and before I took six months off from school to heal myself, putting pen to paper and writing in the best way I could without trying to sound weird or crazy: I told him my story and my background, but I have to confess I felt weird doing it--on a side note, I felt weird giving myself away when I wrote to Lars last November. But I sent it off to Bainbridge Island within a few days of Soundgarden returning to the US following the South American stint of their King Animal tour.

I wrote to him again that September for his birthday and included a pic of me and a little charcoal drawing of himself. I also asked him, since I was to see them at the Bridge School the next month, if I could meet him. I didn’t hear a peep--and we grew pretty sick of the lawn area pretty quickly; it was a miracle we were able to stay around to see Pearl Jam--so of course I felt disappointed. But I didn’t lose hope.

Fast forward to 2016, and a month after David Bowie’s passing, a year after I had lost about 20 pounds... and then gained it back plus another 15 so my figure had become much fuller and sensual: I wrote to him and showed myself a third time sort of as like a late Valentine’s Day card; I wore my Bowie shirt and I had my hair down underneath my fedora, and posed up on the foot of my bed with one of my paintings of Soundgarden and my watercolor of Rihanna for him. I guess that sealed the deal for him because like two weeks later I’m getting comments on the Chris Cornell Peru fan page from his mother and sister of all people. Then not even two months later, I stumbled on his daughter’s Instagram--she looks just like him, too, it’s uncanny.

In the wake of Soundgarden’s fan art contest which I won (!!!!!!!) along with a woman named Nicola Honey, I couldn’t help but wonder--and as I visited Honey’s art page, I spotted Ione’s name in the likes section. I think that was the day I thought “oh my God, this is getting very real.” That was an intense year for me, between losing my grandma and my sister-in-law within a month of each other and our fear that we could lose our house because we were surrounded by wildfires; hot wildfires, too, like they always happened when the temperature tipped upwards of 90. Whenever I thought about Ben during that dark time, I always felt a glimmer of hope.

Following Chris’ passing, we all wondered about him, like “where’d he go?” I had faith he was alright and I remember often assuring people that he was alright, and that we must be patient with him. But no one listened to me--indeed, that was one of the reasons why I decided to not be so active in the fandom anymore: no one wanted to believe me. After not hearing from him all summer (at least so I thought, this was before I found out about that guy meeting him in a coffee shop the month after), I wrote to him again for his birthday and I made him a handmade card. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but my intent was to be gentle and sweet but also to encourage him. Like “do something, but take as much time as you possibly need” or something along those lines.

My approach to Ben has always been gentle. Even when I had nights where I couldn’t sleep because anxiety gave me nightmares and on the days I felt like taking the edge of a paper to my wrist, I felt soft when came to him. When I posed for him that time, I actually felt sexy, even in my jeans and my shirt because they fit me and since they were black, they accentuated the curves of my body. I never knew if my gentle approach was out of respect because the last thing I want is to make people I love uncomfortable, or a sign of rebellion because the latest thing now is to “stan” and be like... borderline scary, like “if you guys are going to be obnoxious and entitled, I’d rather be the soft spoken girl next door picking daisies.” But no matter what, I’m the soft girl I am now because of this man.

Happy birthday, baby. I miss hearing about you about as much as I miss Chris. Cartoon on the right by me 💜💜💜💜

[josiebelladonna]

You might be wondering why I’m writing about this given this is such a private and personal matter, and with the NSFW ban in place (fuck you, Tumblr, really, I hope the rumors are true and Yahoo shuts your big shot asses down the toilet you disgusting cocksuckers), this is very risky for me to write about this. But this is starting to drive me nuts given the importance and given the fact I’ve been starting to get the eye from people now. So read on if you’re like me... and you’re curious about the 20-something writing this right now.

I have been confused about my sexuality since I was about 16 or 17--I started to give it some thought when I turned 16 and I heard the phrase “16 and never been kissed” getting thrown around. I always went to the default of “straight” and yet I never really looked at a boy in the school yard or on the street and thought he was cute enough for me to call him more than just my friend--and it wasn’t until my cyber encounter after I got out of high school when I really began to feel it.

Yeah, after I left high school. Never went to prom, never had a sweetheart, anything.

Whenever I was asked “do you like anyone?” (I still get asked that, too) I could never answer that. The answer was always no and I felt like I was missing out on something. Some people in school actually thought I was lesbian because I never swooned over the hottest guy, which is ridiculous because I was more focused on my schoolwork and digging myself out of the hole of a dysfunctional family than having my eye on some dude who didn’t even know my name and probably wouldn’t think I was attractive anyways (and even if I was gay, what’s the fault in that?)

There have been a few times I’ve thought, for sure, I was asexual because of that. It’s always been hard for me to feel that “spark” if you will; I hate looking at selfies simply because of this. Hate it, absolutely hate it. and I’m glad the “I was tagged to post selfies!” meme on here is finally dead, too, because I found it pathetic. You really have to actually look good in order for me to give you an ounce of attention, and even then I won’t be like those people who are like “OMG you’re so HOT!” because I take a look and I think “they’re okay. Nothing fancy and I can’t see wtf is so great about them but kudos for having the balls/ovaries for taking the time out to take a snapshot of themselves.” And other times, I think “god, no. Sorry if I sound harsh, but no. I didn’t want to see you and I didn’t ask to see you, either.”

I know I’m not asexual because I’ve had fantasies galore and I have felt desire now that I really think about it. Although I have thought I was bisexual because I’ve thought about making out with a girl just to see what it’s like.

I think it has to do with my past, all of the shame I experienced as a child and an adolescent. I remember being very small and putting my hand down my pants and my strict religious grandmother saying “nice girls don’t do that” (she would also go on to shame me for being curious about other things like erotica), or wanting to pull my shirt up to touch my stomach and hearing “no one wants to see your bare belly, hannah, that’s not allowed.” When my chest started coming in, I was shamed for it (”she’s got boobs now, put a safe guard on her!” or *in a mocking voice* “chesty little thing”). When my hips started coming in, I was shamed for it (a favorite insult I’d get is “fatass”; or whenever I walked in front of a bunch of people, I did as best as I could to not bring attention to my hips). Or I was flatout shamed for the way I look, called ugly or gross. My uncle, aka the driving force in my body dysmorphia and my encounter with eating disorders, once said that I’m too heavy in build--I really am heavy, too, I’m like a female Lars Ulrich with a more olive complexion and I’ve got about a hundred pounds on him--and no one would love me or find me attractive if I was fat or above a certain weight. The first boy to have a crush on me was a total creep about it--I was 9 years old then, too, imagine how I’d feel if it happened to me now. All of this shame, all of this negativity... no wonder why I feel almost insulted when someone asks me “do you like anyone?” or “are you seeing anyone?” or assumes that I must have a hot boyfriend in my life. I really do feel insulted by those assumptions. Like, you just made fun of the fact I gain weight easily, and the fact I have a large bra size and now you’re asking if I’m thinking of getting railed? Fuck off. I don’t care who you are, either. Fuck. Right. Off.

Now that I think about it, I know for a damn fact that I’m not ace: when Ben and I were getting closer, in my third letter to him, I included a pic of myself where I dressed nice for him (he later said it felt like I was seducing him). I did as best and as decent as I could for Lars when I wrote to him last fall: I’ve written erotica about him, ffs; and I'm at the point now where I don’t go a day without thinking about Black Album era, where he had that long Jesus hair, that sexy beard, and a little “extra.” I guess I just like a little roundness and a little softness: I think about pinching his little cheeks or rubbing his tummy or just giving him a hug, and after all the bullshit he’s been through--and feeling unable to unsee the shocking amount of fanfics about him that paint him in a gross light--it’s understandable that I think about... you know, giving him a little lovin’. The same goes for Ben, too: after Chris died, I wrote to him with the confession that I’ve thought about comforting him and being there for him after Soundgarden broke up initially--I think I actually wrote a fic about that once. In fact, last night, to unwind after the trip back from Dodger Stadium, I watched some Anthrax videos and I never realized how cute Joey is. Everyone in Anthrax, actually: I guess I have a hair fetish because I think Scott doesn’t look right with a bald head; I’ve often thought about what Ben would look like with long hair, and I think about long haired, young and rambunctious Lars whereas Load era or St. Anger era practically never cross my mind (really, in my Dave and Lars folder, I have all of two pics of him without any hair, whereas the rest are from the 80s or the early 90s). And I think men who love their mamas are sexy, too, so there’s that.

And like I said, I have fantasies and I’ve thought about being touched. In my first encounter, I felt aroused, and the whole point of my tag nirvhannah shepherd chronicles is to act like an erotic memoir. Or maybe I’m gray: I can’t look at some person everyone deems as “hot” and feel the way their admirers do. Whenever my mom points out a cute guy, I’m like “yeah, okay” and then I just leave it at that; or I shrug, like “sorry, Mom, but... what do you want me to do?” And yet one of my aspirations in life is to be a sex symbol and I’m not sure how I feel about that, either. Or maybe I’m demi: in my first encounter, I already knew the guy, he sat behind me in math class and I was there to comfort him. I had already written to Ben twice and I found Lars just by happenstance. And I like to wear clothes that draw attention to my hips and my chest, just because I like wearing them and to serve as a middle finger to the bitches who body shamed me and told me I’m a girl, I’m never supposed to feel good about myself otherwise I’m a fucking whore and should be smote.

Really, if you’re religious, stay away from me. I won’t give you a hard time if you go to church but... stay away from me because organized religion has done more to wreak havoc on my life and my overall health than anything, and I grew up being smacked over the head with Watchtower magazines and the Jehovah’s Witness Bible while getting asked “why aren’t you going to the Kingdom Hall??” Second to that is conservative beliefs and that everyone should look and behave a certain way--and that goes for all of you social justice bloggers, too. If you identify as conservative, and conversely if you get offended by me saying certain words, stay the fuck away from me.

But either way, I’m still rather confused about my sexuality and how to describe it succinctly. I see people left and right identifying as gay or bi or whatever and on top of this, saying they’re proud of it. I mean, really, more power to you, but to be honest, I feel left out because it’s almost impossible for me to place a neat label on mine and it’s even harder for me to feel proud of it. The further I delve into it and peel back the layers and kick off the shackles of dysfunction, the more I feel weird inside and uncomfortable about myself, like I’m not this beautiful human being everyone I know thinks I am. And I wanted to write about it because I just wanted to air it out. I feel like a freak and I want to make that known.

[josiebelladonna]

I saw Soundgarden for the first time back in February of 2013, in Portland in this theater called the Arlene Schnitzer, and I remember it was one of those rather small venues from like the 1940s--a small venue for a band with such a monstrous sound at that. After the show, after standing in a room full of some 2000-3000-odd people, many of whom were smoking pot (and before the show, we hadn’t even eaten dinner yet), and thus my mom and I were not only thirsty like all hell but famished as well; we walked down the sidewalk to the side street where we had parked. We crossed the street because their techs and stage hands were already loading up everything for their next two shows up in Seattle: we reached the corner before the parking garage where there was a kid a little older than me standing there on the corner with his hands in his pockets. He turned to us and pointed up at the third or fourth floor, and said, “I just saw Chris up there.”

So we turned to follow his gaze, and sure enough we spotted the window in question and a silhouette. I thanked him before he disappeared and went back into the parking garage, but we walked down the sidewalk a bit so we faced head on at the window, about thirty feet up with the shades drawn just enough so as to peek inside. And it was the middle of the winter, thus raining, in the middle of the night in downtown Portland: not only were we thirsty and hungry, but we were a little bit cold and wet, and my feet were tired from wearing my Docs all day.

My mom used to have this loud whistle--I mean, it was LOUD, you could be a few blocks away and you would hear it--and she put her index fingers in her mouth to do it, and she managed to make it. Mind you, we were the only ones on the street: everyone else had already gone back to their cars, and the techs were busy loading up the trucks. And when we saw that silhouette in the window--I have no idea if it was Chris, Kim, Ben, or Matt, or Krist or Dan Peters, both of whom were there that night themselves--and I waved to grab their attention, I knew whomever stood before that window saw me. My mom, on the other hand, searched about the pavement for something like gravel to chuck at the window. But we found nothing and we ended up going back to the room.

But ever since then, I coined the phrase “look for some gravel” when it comes to seeing your favorite band or standing next to your favorite musicians or celebs or whomever. When you get that opportunity (the latter especially), and then chicken out because “you didn’t want to bother them”, look for some gravel and get their attention because, face it: you might not have that opportunity again. More often than not they want to meet you; I’ve found that it’s actually very rare a big name wants nothing to do with you because it’s you, the fan, that makes them who they are in the public eye, and if they don’t see that, it’s not your fault. Lucky for me, I was able to meet Chris, I got to write to Ben (and did I ever), Matt came up in my notifications so much (not so much these days, I threw Instagram in the trash after Chris’ passing and I think he deleted his Facebook), and I gave a birthday card to Kim. But still: look for some gravel.

[josiebelladonna]

My brother and I, we’re the kids that got out, but there’s an unspoken debate as to who’s the quote unquote “real” kid that got out, because he’s married and got a family now (arguably two because my new sis-in-law comes from a big Mormon family) whereas I’ve got two cats who bunk with me and a link to Ben and his family.

but see--and this is just speculation on my part, you can disagree with me until the oceans rise and drown us all--I have a much more healthier relationship with my parents, though (I’ve long forgiven both of them and I know their intention was to protect us from their lifestyle) whereas he seems to have a lot of resentment against them, like he doesn’t talk about it but I can hear it in his voice and I can see it in his behavior. And the other night, we were talking on the phone for the third night in the row, I told him not to call me for a week, the tone in his voice was one of... shock, I’d say? like he was actually surprised to hear me tell him off for a long stretch of time, and in retrospect, his tone towards me lately has been one of condescension (he called me “honey” at one point, too; that was weird because it’s one thing when my dad says that to me), and it makes no sense because I may have psychological issues but that doesn’t mean I’m stupid, though (I’m pushing genius range on the I.Q. scale ffs).

this is more speculation on my part, but I’ve been attentive to economics since the Great Recession, and he’s 33, got a mortgage on his house, two car loans, and five kids; what do you wanna bet he’s gonna be a bum by the time he’s 40?

so really, it’s up to onlookers as to who’s the real as opposed to the phony kid that got out, is it the guy with everything the elder generations had when they were young (and I know for a fact it’s not going to end well) and talks down to his own sister, or is it the chick living simple and on a different page and can speak to anyone? is it the guy who’s cold, almost businesslike towards his parents, or the chick who knows she’ll be judged for forgiving them but loves them anyways?

[josiebelladonna]

Some more things leftover from yesterday (don’t mind if I do)

I have literally lost count how many times I’ve overheard my dad talk about some woman or female celebrity, calling them pretty or whatever, and always spoke about me... secondarily; like I’d say, “well, what about me?” and the response always felt throwaway. There were times where I didn’t feel important to him--I still don’t, my dad always talks to me like there’s something wrong with me.

Corollary of that: I have never heard anybody tell me that I have a beautiful body, much less say it in a way wherein they meant it. I’m always told “oh, there was guy checking you out!” like, really? Where did you see him? Because you know, I didn’t see anybody, so how do I know you’re not just saying that? Unless you tap on my shoulder and talk to me, I’m oblivious, Jack.

Whenever my grandmother lifted herself up onto her moral high horse or criticized... something, and I’d tell my dad about it, he always dismissed it or used the excuse of “she’s my mother.” I actually recall saying that I frankly don’t care if she was growing off your ass, you need to stand up for me because anything I ever said to her went in one ear and out the other or was treated as trivial

I have always been curious about my heritage, like why do have such Nordic features and yet I have coarse dark hair and brown eyes? Like I think I might have some black blood in me, or something else, because as far as I know, I have some Native American, Norwegian, and a lot of German blood in me. I asked my uncle about this once and he goes “we’re Irish through and through” like, how the fuck do you know? because when you look at me (my brother, too) it’s very obvious that we’re not, and just because my racist, holier-than-thou grandmother had flaming red hair in her youth does not equate to Irish blood (red hair is a distinctly Nordic trait, anyways)

My uncle was a fucking perv now that I think about it. I mean, I was never assaulted or exposed to anything horrific like that (and I think all #MeToo does is distance ourselves from our intrinsic nature), but when my body started developing, he kept wanting to touch me and get close to me and *shudder*

Since yesterday, my breasts have turned into a significant source of concern for me. They, along with my stomach, are probably the one part of my body I dislike with a passion. They’re just so... big. They get in the way and they stick out, even when I’m braless.

40DDD, and I could probably fill out an E cup if I wanted. I have to wear larger shirts because of them and it’s kind of humiliating, because I’m actually a size 14/medium but here I am having to put on upwards a size 16/XL because of my big fucking tits. And I’m being told that “Bs are perfect.” I look at mine and I feel like they belong on a stripper’s body. I just.. can’t imagine anyone ever touching them or seeing me as sexy because of them.

Now that I think about it, my chest has never been complimented. Only ridiculed, made fun of, and spoken about in a hushed whisper (or I get told to cover up because sOmEoNe MiGhT gEt ArOuSeD).

Someone once asked me if they were real and I said yes and they laughed. Another time someone described me as “buxom” and... not in a good way O_O

I wear lingerie because it’s what I have not because I want to flaunt what I’ve got. That’s ridiculous.

“Some guy was looking at your butt/your legs”. WHERE! WHAT GUY WAS STARING AT ME! I DIDN’T SEE ANYONE!

Speaking of butts, whenever I even so much as wore hip huggers or low riders (ah, the fashion of the mid-to-late 2000s), I always got told to pull my pants because no one wants to see my lower back. Whenever I say aloud that I wish low riders would come back because the whole high waisted thing looks dorky and old-fashioned, I’m met with a whole round of NOOOOOOOOOO!

Never been complimented on my butt, either, or my hips, now that I think about it. Only mocked and told that no one wants to see it.

I never had “the talk”. It’s true. My mom was either too busy with work and my dad was too caught up in his own headspace to even tell me that human beings are inherently sexual and that it’s okay to want it. I took sex ed classes every year in school from the fifth grade to my sophomore year of high school and I fucking hated it because I always felt awkward and grossed out by it (I actually almost threw up once).

My sister-in-law (my brother’s first wife) didn’t like me. I can’t say how liberated and simultaneously horrified I am to say that, either. It may have been the fact that she blended into my dad’s family so very well, or it may have been the fact that when we met, I was 15 and she unfairly compared me to herself (e.g., “I had two purses and kissed two boys by the time I was 15″), but she was killed in a car accident three years ago, so all I have now is the fact that I didn’t cry at her funeral, or my brother’s second wedding for that matter. She’s another one who thought I was gay, too, simply because I never kissed somebody or didn’t start having thoughts until after I graduated high school.

When my cousin Harmony came out as lesbian--I was real little, so I don’t even remember it--everyone in the family freaked the fuck out and disowned her. Really, my mom and my aunt Chris were the only ones who made her feel safe--and this was before she decided to undergo conversion therapy and become a man. Considering the amount of body-shaming I experienced, I think that if I even so much as came home with a boy, he’d be questioned as all hell--imagine the horror if I came out as lesbian myself or (heaven forbid) bi.

I swear to fuck, the amount of people who assume I have a boyfriend. It’s almost laughable at this point. Really, you just made fun of my appearance and now you have the gall to assume I’m seeing someone.

“Im just teasing!!” fuck you. Really. Fuck. You.

Alright, consider this: what if I did it to you? Would you laugh it off or would you yell at me? Odds are you’d choose the latter, you stupid fuck.

Selfies are so stupid, there I said it. They’re stupid. They’re stupid! There’s no point to them other than showing off how much more attractive you are compared to someone else.

When I turned 20 (-ish?), I started growing whiskers on my chin and my upper lip. My dad once asked me about and then showed concern because it’s a hormonal thing (even though I know for a fact that I don’t have PCOS). My mom--who’s had far more experience in the field of biology--said all men and women have varying levels of estrogen and testosterone, and for whatever reason, I have more testosterone in me than the next woman and--you guessed it, I don’t know how I feel about it.

I think what people don’t understand is teenagers are impressionable. They’re vulnerable--so are twenty-somethings. When you’re a grown person and you tell a 14 year old kid--or, shit, a 26 year old marred by the world at large--who’s trying to maintain her weight and keep those thoughts of “I want to cut myself” or “I want to starve myself” at bay that she needs to pull up her jeans because no one wants to see her lower back, or you tell her to wear a T-shirt because any other blouse will cause some random horndog guy to want to hit on her, I hope you realize that amount of damage and abuse you are inflicting onto her. You make her feel ugly and used, and you basically preach to her that nobody will ever find her attractive--and sorry, but you don’t fix a damn thing by saying “you are in control of your emotions! don’t listen to me!” I mean, if anything, you were the one staring at me and you got offended by my body. I guess I really am unattractive.

I don’t hate anyone--and I think all of these self-proclaimed liberals saying they hate Donald Trump or conservatives or whomever are totally missing the point--but I hate my family has done to me. My cousin Harmony, too. Families are supposed to be comforting and supportive. They are supposed to listen to you and make you feel welcome, no matter what. But my relatives have done nothing but shame me for being female, feeling curious about myself, and just wanting to live. Sex and sexuality were never spoken about, and if they were, they were spoken in whispers. Take a deep breath, go to church, be a good girl and keep your hands off your boobs and the place down there. And as much as I love him, my dad’s an idiot.

[josiebelladonna]

This is true, I'm not making this up: I still kind of have a way of words with Soundgarden even now with my old Twitter account dead and buried and then resurrected under a new name.

A couple of rather recent examples:

This past fall (like October) I tweeted to them that their Tumblr got hacked and then not even a day later they deleted that blog. I noticed that on my Ben blog when i was searching for a GIF for the 6 crushes thing the other day and a reblogged pic showed Soundgarden’s URL and it said it was deactivated as of... October. It didn’t say the full date because of URL space, but I just had a hunch.

Last week, when I tweeted my Down on the Upside meets the Upside Down drawing, and they tweeted about it rather late in the day, as if they had otherwise forgotten about it had it not been for me. That one’s trickier to prove because they didn’t give it a like, but hunches are hunches.

The damage is done beyond repair with the fandom, but God, some things just never change.

[josiebelladonna]

Okay... this part is probably going to get me in a heap of trouble (as if the other part didn’t get me into a heap of trouble), but this is another thing that has to be talked about, and it might--just might--give you all some more insight into my mind. Or it might not, idk how you’ll see this one.

When I was in school, I didn’t really like talking about my day or things that happened at school (re: Jeff and me becoming loners from a young age). It started the first day of school at my new school, with the kids in the class staring at me and my feeling like a total intruder on their little group. When we lived in Carson City, and I played at recess, I was either with my friends or on the swing set. I remember being showed around the campus by two of my classmates and it just felt wrong, like “I shouldn’t be here, I should be back home in Carson City.” I spent recess by myself so many times, starting from the fourth grade and going into fifth grade.

Fifth grade... oh, god. OH GOD. OH MY GOD. OH. MY. GOD. I’d like to forget such a year even happened.

There was this boy in my class, his name was Michael. I remember he was tall and lanky, tall for a fifth grader, too, with short jet black hair and hazel eyes and buck teeth: he was a basketball player. I remember the first week of school, he was real friendly to me: we sat next to each other near the back of the class and I even lent him a pencil and we traded notes. Mind you, that was the first week of school. Something happened on that second Monday back to school, I don’t remember exactly what--may have been how I held my pencil because my hand was hurting me from holding the bicycle handle too tightly the day before or I couldn’t wash my hands or something, I don’t quite remember, but he looked at me right in the face, and said in the flattest tone of voice ever, the two words that will haunt me forever as much as the number 48: “you’re weird.”

The next thing I know... this kid’s doing everything from screaming at me--literally screaming at me--calling me every childish name you can possibly think of, calling me stupid (retarded in multiple cases), straight up mocking me, to throwing a basketball at my head or my back: one time he almost broke my glasses. I got those transition glasses in about March of that year and in the first week, I got hit in the side of the head with his basketball and luckily my glasses stayed on my face.

...he even threatened to rape me at one point. “Put duct tape over her mouth and throw her into a trunk.”

“Well, Hannah, why didn’t you tell anyone about any of this?” Because I was a kid, I didn’t understand why all of this was happening to me. Maybe he wasn’t ready to fully accept me. Maybe he felt uncomfortable in his own skin (he was pushing 6 foot by the time we were 12 after all). Maybe he had mommy issues and using me as a punching bag to cope. I don’t know. But I’ll always remember what he did to me. Scars don’t lie.

He’s not the only one, either. My dad’s older brother Pat often made me very uncomfortable, especially when my body was developing. I never told anyone this so consider yourselves lucky: one time he told me I’m going to wake fat up one day and no one will love me. I mean, he’s right in a way, look at me: I’m big. You say “boo” and I gain 10 pounds. And when my body was changing, I remember overhearing my dad saying, “she’s gonna be a big woman.” If I wasn’t going to be tall, like 5′10″, I was going to be heavy. And I’m only 5′7″... also, when you’re at that age, to say you’re confused is an understatement. So of course, I didn’t take it lightly.

In middle school, I don’t think there was a day where kids would make fun of me for the way I look or look at me and put on a slightly condescending smile all the while, or do that “up and down” glance at me. It just happened every day. Things came to a head in seventh grade when for some inexplicable reason, I was being asked when was the last time I took a shower and when I said “the other night”, I was met with jeers. Suddenly, “you’re weird” became rather tame because I was met with “that’s disgusting” or “you’re gross”, even “why do you look like that?”

What’s interesting is I’m not a fan of #MeToo: I think it’s a bunch of hypocritical, misandrist bullshit. But threats are threats, and they may not remember what they did, but you sure do.

What’s even more interesting? I discovered music around this time: it was February 2005 when I heard Soundgarden the first time, and they spoke to my isolation in ways I can’t even describe. That swirling bass, those grinding guitars, those drums that sound like a black smith’s hammer, and then there was Chris’ voice: his blues resonated with mine. And then I heard American Idiot and Billie Joe’s sense of alienation spoke to mine.

I remember the first time I cut myself: it was right after my grandpa died in 2006, a little paper cut on my wrist. My wrist was rare: I often pricked my fingers with pushpins or gave myself paper cuts, or I’d take my pocket knife and scrape my finger tips with the edge of it. I quit doing it because I wanted to stop hurting myself. Add to this, Pat’s words cut through me like a knife and I all but started starving myself: I wouldn’t eat much, and I’d skip breakfast, or I’d go for hours, sometimes a whole day, without eating. In retrospect, it’s a miracle I didn’t develop an eating disorder like anorexia, but I was definitely pushing it.

Two things kept me from going into it, though: the first was my mom’s Cincinnati chili on a cold night. It’s just the kind of thing that warms up your belly and she always puts her heart into her cooking. The second--and this is going to seem strange at first--was Metallica. I discovered them when my dad and I were getting dinner one day, and there was a jukebox in one corner, and he asked our waitress if she had any suggestions, and she said Metallica. They were an unknown to us, so my dad put in the first song he found and that was Enter Sandman. It came on right as our food was getting ready and I thought, “oh my God, this rules!” Later on, the title track to ...And Justice for All ushered me into art school, and the title track to Ride the Lightning would become one of my lullaby songs (no, I’m not kidding). So I associate Metallica with feeling good and the good side of life.

And that’s the holy trinity for me right there, too: Superunknown, American Idiot, and the Black Album. On the tier below is Nevermind, Ten, and the Downward Spiral, and I just kept going after that. But those three are to me how Dark Side of the Moon is for most straight music fans (that said, I was introduced to Dark Side of the Moon around this time, too). Then some time in eighth grade, I discovered the Sirius station Lithium, which played grunge and 90s alternative rock, thus sparking my love affair with the grunge scene.

So music became my best friend in middle school when I was feeling all alone and hiding the scratches on my arms and my hands, and keeping my head bowed so no one would have to look at the painful pimples on my face. No one wants to be my friend more than at surface level, so why bother? I’m just going to go to the library and read during lunch time.

The other thing that helped me survive 7th grade was drama class. I thought it would be interesting to take and indeed it was interesting: I’ve long known that I have an inherent need to be dramatic, and so that class, now that I look back on it, helped me tap into my inner actress. The other thing was my obsession with Formula 1.

But I think that’s why I feel such a connection to people like Ben, Lars, and Chris. Ben often got beat up because he was tall and thin and where everyone was blasting Zeppelin 4, he was playing the Ramones and the Stooges. Chris grew up around drugs (and how: I remember reading a quote from him where talks about walking past someone’s window and they’re shooting up heroin, literally two feet away). Then Lars, little Lars, and his round face and gentle features were subject to a great deal of ridicule (I’m sure he’s heard the phrase “pretty boy” as much as I’ve heard “weird” thrown at me) and he can’t fucking look at himself in the mirror without seeing a fat man.

And I think that’s why I’ve been cozying up to Metallica lately, especially Lars: he has a lot of qualities that remind me of myself.

And you know, they refer to their fans as “family”.

The Metallica family, and the four of them are at the forefront. When I joined their fan club back in September, I got an actual welcome email and it was basically the equivalent of “hey! how you doin’? come on in!” Whereas I didn’t get that with Soundgarden. I kinda did but it wasn���t friendly like that (it was cold and business-like, now that I think about it). I can’t hardly stand their fans anymore anyways: they’re reminiscent of that “small town” feeling, they’re just as guilty of participating in the whole social justice guilt tripping thing now as anyone, and most of all, they won’t let Chris rest. It took me a full year before I could talk about my grandpa without tearing up and here we are two years without Chris and I’m starting to wonder if I really was the only sane person in groups like Knights of the Soundtable.

I’m not sure if there’ll be a part 3: if there is, it’ll be an expose of my life after my parents’ separation. I don’t know... I think I’ve said enough already.

And again, if you read this to the end, thank you. If you didn’t, oh well.

[josiebelladonna]

I don’t know any other way to do this aside from writing about it. Everything I do is personable in some way, but if you’re willing to get to know me, the woman behind the curtain, read on.

I think the only other way to do this is to break this apart into separate volumes because there’s a lot. It’s one thing to do it when you’re a fanfic writer, or just a writer in general, and you can make your creation over a thousand pages and we have the convenience of technology and we don’t have to use so many trees. It’s another thing when you’re coming clean with people about what ails you on the inside.

I was born on the beach, in Ventura, California: and if you don’t know where that is, it’s about 30 minutes south of Santa Barbara and then it’s another 30 minutes from downtown LA. A little beach community trapped by Oxnard and the site of the Thomas fire last winter. My mom worked at Patagonia while my dad was often subject to the oil fields; my brother Jeff and I are 8 years apart, so I was not only raised by my parents but by him, too. My parents both did drugs, specifically speed; my mom did LSD and psychedelics, and she was a little more easygoing with all of it, but that’s as far as I know. My dad on the other hand, did it (and also drank) because of the oil fields and also because of how he grew up, too: born in 1959, grew up in the 60s and the 70s well before it was considered cool to be a nerd and take it up the ass as a result, yeah, you’re going to succumb to that when the opportunity presents itself. I didn’t find out about any of it until I was 17 in my senior year of high school. My dad’s sober 5 years as of today (2/23) and my mom finally kicked the habit, too.

For the first--I’d say, four years of my life--we did nothing but move around. From Oxnard to Simi Valley to Reno to Sparks to the northern part of Carson City to a street called College Parkway because the community college was about a mile away from the little apartment we lived in. My memory’s real vague (well, and I was 3 years old then, too--the hippocampus doesn’t start holding onto memories until about that age), but I do remember we didn’t stay there long.

Right around the time I started preschool, we moved to a trailer park on Carson Street. I remember the trailer we lived in almost down to the detail: it was about thirty feet long, real ugly butter yellow and eggshell white on the outside. When you walked in through the front door, and you looked to your right, there was my parents’ bed, which turned into the kitchen table. Right above that was a wooden shelf and the front windows with these crappy yellow curtains; and then overhead were these wooden cabinets. When you looked to your left, there was the fridge and then the coat closet; and then right in front of you was the kitchen sink and then the stove and the oven. When you walked through the trailer towards the back, on the right were mine and Jeff’s bunk beds: I was on the bottom right over the water pipes while he had his little space overhead about an inch from the ceiling so he always got real cold in the winter time. On the left was a small desk for a computer (and this was the late 90s going into 2000, back when Windows 95 and 98 were actual entities that we had at the time and not a childish meme), and a place to put my toys and my clothes. Then at the back of the trailer was the cramped bathroom, and I mean it was cramped: there was barely enough room for Jeff and me to get in there, or for my mom and me to be in there; and it didn’t help matters that we had a cat box in there, too.

I remember we were number 48, too. I think I’ll always remember that number, too.

We lived about five blocks from my school so whenever my mom went to work at the warehouse up in Reno, my dad and I always walked to school. Although I think there were a few days I walked to school by myself, though.

I always felt weird talking about the trailer at school (I still do feel odd talking about it--you know, the whole thing about “bass-ackwards white hick trailer trash” and whatnot). Kids would talk about how nice their house is, or do the whole “my place is nicer than yours”, like that. I actually remember a few times, going through the neighborhoods of Carson City, simply by getting older and riding my bike or my razor scooter around the block outside of Camp N Town, or just going to the grocery store, looking at those big suburban houses that are almost multi-million dollar houses now and seeing kids playing out in the yard or in the street; there were a few times I would think to myself “why can’t I have that? why do I have this thin strip of a yard made of gravel and a rickety picnic table when I should have grass?”

Those feelings only got worse in 2003 when my parents and I moved to this small in Central California called Tehachapi to live with my grandparents, and in the middle of the school year at that. And if you don’t know where that is, you’re not missing out: it’s by definition a small town. I remember my first day of school, everyone in the class stared at me. I mean, actually stared. Hard. With their eyes. Like, “what are you doing here? why are you here?” I was this weird girl from Nevada with a different lingo and a different way of going about with life. I was out of step with everyone, and friends I made were always on the surface, like they knew my name but they didn’t know my heart, though. It only carried over into middle school when I really began to take it up the ass but I’ll go more into that later.

Jeff and I started talking about it recently, because I’ve been going off lately on Facebook, not necessarily here or anywhere else but mainly on there: I want to be seen, I want to be recognized, I don’t want to be seen as “awesome” or “talented”.. ever. Ever. And it’s not just because those words don’t do jack shit to help me in any way, but those words tell me is I fail to connect with another person. If art is so human, what the hell am I doing that’s making everyone turn up their noses at it? Those are face value comments and when I see them, that means you don’t see more than face value. It’s a feeling of failure that stems back to living in a trailer where I couldn’t even talk about where I lived without feeling like I’m going to be judged and labelled white trash (this current social justice obsessed society we live in now is especially not helping matters with that, either). I say “I give up” and yet I keep at it because art is my whole world and it’s just a vicious cycle that hasn’t been having a good effect on me.

I also want people to see just how lonely this profession is: it really is, being an artist of any kind is a lonely profession done in a remote place, so to see surface level commentary, while it’s reassuring at first doesn’t do justice in the long run. The only exception is when you’re doing a collaboration with someone, like a partnership or even in a band, and even then you can still feel lonely.

And for the record, you can’t snap your fingers or be like I Dream of Jeannie and make the loneliness go away at the drop of the hat. You can’t back off for an hour, or even a day and then come back asking “feeling better?” It doesn’t work like that. That’s why when I talk to someone in place, I always say “take as much time as you need.”

When I went up to Reno this past Thanksgiving, at one point my dad told me he didn’t want Jeff and me to think we grew up in “a drug house”, which is why they hid it from us for so long. But I think that, that hiding from me, hiding the truth from me, has played its part in my depression and my anxiety (middle school and high school life has done it, too, but like I said, I’ll get more on that later).

I think it’s amazing that pix of me from my first big depression in late 2012 into 2013 get as much attention as they do because I looked like death had rolled me over. I really did, I looked and felt like death: my face was gaunt and I just wasn’t eating. And no, i’ve never gone to therapy (I feel terrible for that, too), I only talk about it because I want people to stop looking at me as the weird girl. Nowadays, you are considered weird if you don’t seek out therapy after all. Maybe that’s why I’m not a fan of this whole social justice thing anymore: it’s just everywhere you turn, but I’m getting mixed messages about how I’m stupid and full of shit and on the side of the oppressor for not participating, so go right ahead and be angry with me for lying about seeking help in hopes of connecting with my fellow human being.

Jeff told me he would isolate himself outside of the trailer, like he’d go to the showers or the bathrooms on the other side of the park, and he’d stay there for good stretches of time just to get away from there. In fact, I remember him doing that a few times, now that I think about it; like he’d take the keys to the men’s showers and leave for about an hour and then come back.

I would isolate myself, but I did it much more differently because I’m a lot younger (he was a teenager and I was in elementary school): I went outside and played. I rode my bike or my scooter around the neighborhood outside of Camp N Town (and this was the turn of the New Millennium, so I was part of the last generation of kids to play outside until the streetlights came on). Or I watched cartoons, or I went to the school library and read books, or when I went to school, I played at recess or with my best friend Elizabeth. I did it after we moved, but not much longer, though; when I was in middle school, I found solace in music and art, but like I said, more on that later.

I told Ben only about my parents’ separation and my struggles; Chris found out about it just by hearsay; and I went into it a little bit better with Lars (no offense to Ben or anything, that was 5 years ago when I wrote to him whereas I wrote to Lars this past November). I always feel like I shouldn’t be focused on music so much, but I do it anyways because it’s my comfort beacon. It’s what I turned to when I was looking on at my teen years and I was all alone, and it’s what I turn to now when I feel lonely amongst a bunch of people who are connecting with each other and having fun without me.

If you read this to the end, thank you. If you didn’t, oh well.

[josiebelladonna]

Revisiting the nirvhannah shepherd chronicles because I can’t hardly contain my excitement and I thank you if you read this to the end

I got acquainted with this woman, Jessy, back in.. September, I think it was? It was right after I took a lengthy hiatus on Tumblr the days after Chris died because I just couldn’t stand being around all the “no one sings like you anymore” BS, and then I came back in late July in search of new people to follow because I was just getting lonely and I remembered that that site is more than just depressing people. But anyway, I explored her blog because her username just caught my eye and I gravitated to her. We quickly built a rapport and I found out she had a VIP package and resultantly, started an email account specifically for people to write letters, notes, etc. to the gents of Metallica and she would print them out and hand give it to them when she met the four of them.

Now I’ve been a Metallica fan for a long time (about as long as I’ve been a Soundgarden fan), but I could never figure out my favorite member. I went to James and then to Cliff and then back to James; and then--this was right after when I came back to Tumblr and I was writing my sci fi book Blue Monday, and I was listening to isolated drum tracks on Youtube because they give me a good rhythm and drive which in turn helps me type. I remember I was listening to the isolated drums to Soundgarden’s song Black Rain when I thought to myself, “you know, I haven’t heard any Metallica drums, and their rhythm section is just downright groovy.” So I typed in “metallica isolated drums” and the first one I saw was the track for Blackened. I soon found out last year marked 30 years of ...And Justice for All, too.

The next thing I know, I’m reading about Lars, I’m listening to his scratchy high pitched voice, and I’m looking at pictures of him and wondering why every other Met fan can’t stand him because he’s just a guy and he’s done a lot of good. If people have a problem with him because Papa and Grandpa Ulrich are big name tennis players back home in Denmark or because he’s an immigrant, then they’ve probably hadn’t had a good upbringing and they’re probably xenophobic (he was at Chris’ funeral, too, so I think that has a lot to do with why I like him so much).

I recall the exact moment I looked at him and thought, “he.. kind of looks like one of my cartoons.” And then like right after that, I looked at him again and thought, “no... he kind of... looks like me” because my cartoons are always made in my image and I think I have a bit of likeness to him (and then I got bangs cut and now I have a Lars Master of Puppets era look).

So returning to Jessy: I had the idea of writing a whole letter to Lars in Danish to “speak to him in his essence” as I put it; the first week of October, I started to read about Danish and how to write it. I figured that since I did it with Italian and Latin, I could do it with Danish. After listening to him speak it, for those of who you haven’t heard it before, it’s very... interesting. It’s like the bastard child of German and Swedish, but it’s funny, though (and by funny, I mean how a speaking voice played in reverse sounds funny). And that was this past October, too: I was beginning Night Owls and working on Inktober, and so I had to rearrange things because writing by itself is very time consuming--it’s a whole other level on an international scale. It came to a point, I had to whittle it down to just teaching myself how to write it instead of speaking it.

So November came along and I devoted myself to NaNoWriMo and preparing a trip up to Reno to spend Thanksgiving with my dad, my brother, my nieces and nephews, and my new in-laws. The week before I went up (I remember this was a Friday), I had writer’s block, and it was that point, I thought to myself, “okay, Jessy’s deadline is the end of January and it’s coming up, and I also have this novel to write and on top of that, I’m leaving in a week, so I need to do SOMETHING.” This was about two-thirty in the afternoon, I was by myself, the fog was starting to come in, and I was staring at the MS Word file I had open, and I thought, “alright. I’m going to do this exactly how I did it with Ben the last two times: I’m just gonna do it in one shot and be completely honest with him.” And I did it in two hours, and then I went to dinner, and then I emailed it to her and that was it.

The last thing I told him was he’s like the full moon to me. When Chris died, my sky went dark. I thought I had a future with him and Soundgarden and that all went away on May 17 (and a lot of fans weren’t helping, either; re: my whole thing with “you did nothing to help me when I felt like doing it myself and now here you are, preaching mental health awareness, why the change of heart all of a sudden?”). I experienced my quarter life crisis that summer and then all I could do after that was write. I didn’t speak to anyone and I didn’t want to be seen, either. And then I found him and his round face, round and full like the moon, and he lit up the black sky for me. And if you haven’t seen my recent posts, he (indirectly, anyways) pointed me to my art’s purpose: to draw what ails you.

Jessy’s blog is gone now par in thanks to Tumblr and its idiotic new policy on adult content (she’s an erotic fanfic writer and Tumblr staff wouldn’t know a well implemented rule if it killed them). It was about a week ago I saw she had gone, and I thought “wow, that was close. Like I threw my hat in before the balloon went up and now I’m on my way.” And now here we are: yesterday was the deadline and she’s on her way to them very soon. So now I thank her, endlessly. Without her, I never would’ve found my way to Lars. He might by my full moon but she’s my rocket.

Being for the most part from the Soundgarden fandom, I’d like to dedicate Searching With Good Eye Closed (”is it to the sky?”) to her, and also Rocket by the Smashing Pumpkins 💜

[josiebelladonna]

Back in April, around my birthday, I made a bet with somebody on my old Instagram that if Ben didn’t come out to face the world by August, in my next letter to him I’d include 12 kinda sensual photographs of me (that’s what I get for running my mouth). Sensual, though, I wouldn’t say sexy or even risque; more along the lines of showing some skin but keeping it decent, much like how I’ve been taking pictures of myself lately.

Granted, he has seen me, he knows what I look like but he hasn’t actually... “seen” me, if you know what I mean. He hasn’t seen me heavy, either; last time he did see me, it was a couple of years ago, before I gained a lot of weight and my girls and my ass got a lot bigger.

Here it is, August, and he’s looking at 50 in about a month, and we still haven’t seen him since last Thanksgiving when he took that picture with Pete Cornell. Alright, Ben. Brace yourself: big mama’s coming your way. If my writing about touching myself to a couple of pics of him to get that extra anxiety out of me didn’t put me in a vulnerable position, then.. what is this

[josiebelladonna]

When I went off to school in 2011, because the campus was on a hill and I was either walking uphill or up a flight of stairs (and more often than not, in my big black Doc Martens), by the end of the school year, I had lost a good deal of weight, like 12 pounds. Add to this, I wasn’t eating a lot and when I did, it was usually healthy stuff.

When I moved off-campus, I lost even more weight and then I fell into my depression, where I lost even more. I guess you could say I was pretty much wasting away.

So after my anxiety bout in that winter going into 2014, I took a good long look at myself in the mirror and that scale. I decided I was done being thin and that I”m just going to eat whatever I want (but also take care of myself because I’ve witnessed just how miserable it is to be fat). But my logic was that I won’t ever deprive myself of anything, like if I’m hungry, I eat.

I actually didn’t start getting heavy until 2016.. but yeah, I gained 60 pounds, I went from 158 to 218 in three years. It’s actually almost 70 at this point (I’m at 227 now heh), but it’s still significant.

But the thing is is I feel a lot better. I feel like this is where I need to be and this is what’s been missing. My clothes fit me better, I actually have an ass now, and overall I like the way my body looks now. I actually feel sexy for once. I recently learned that I just have a very large, very heavy frame so I can carry a lot of weight and look decent:

and I think it’s part of being an artist, too, but I’ve been finding myself wearing a lot more black and a lot more jewel tones, and it’s all flattering.

I’ve always had kind of a tummy fetish, too, and maybe that’s why I’m so attracted to Ben now. He looks gorgeous with extra weight and he doesn’t seem to give a rodent’s behind, so.. why can’t I?

It always bugged me to hear about people talking about weight loss, like they’re trying to get me into that. I know they’re not, but that’s how I feel sometimes and there’s no denying how I feel.

[josiebelladonna]

The first time I wrote to Ben it was a few days after Soundgarden had played Superunknown in full at SXSW in Austin, back in 2014. I was in hell of a head space at the time--like my anxiety was real bad and I couldn’t speak to anyone about it because my mom had her own shit to deal with, my dad was getting sober, and overall, no one seemed to “get it” what was going through my mind at the time. It was the same random, painfully intrusive thoughts playing over and over again to the point where it was starting to drive me batshit insane. And if you’re curious as to what those thoughts were, I don’t even remember now, but they were just weird “what if”s that didn’t make sense.

I felt like I was literally going crazy. Career counselors weren’t helping. People telling me to get a job weren’t helping. If anything, pressure onto me to find a job added fuel to the fire and.. felt a little cruel, especially once you consider I was on my knees begging for help from these people.

But anyway, I was coming out of a second intense bout of depression that coincided with the winter months, although in retrospect I had had been dealing with it much longer than that; it just so happened to increase when the darkness incrementally spread out over the Northwest. I think there were a couple of days I actually considered checking into the psychiatric ward of the hospital, because I do remember my logic at the time was “what do I have to do to make you all listen to me? what do I need to do to show you all that I’m serious here? that I could very easily die from this? if my anxiety doesn’t kill me, then your pressuring me to be like everyone else will?” I literally remember thinking that a number of mornings: I seriously am going to live another day? Mind you, this was a few months before Robin Williams committed suicide, but even then, people still wouldn’t listen to me.

But the only thing that was keeping me out of the hospital was music and in particular Ben’s music. I played his album In Deep Owl nightly, from the day it came out on August 27, 2013 and all through that difficult winter. I remember playing Collide while in my room all alone, wrapped up in a sweater and a blanket to protect myself from the cold (the room I had at the time was separate from the house, in what was known as the “mother in law” building; the unfinished floor was solid stone, so it served as heat sink in the summer and an pool of frozen solid ice in the winter time, and that winter was the coldest on record: -25* F around Christmas).

I’d fall asleep to Keystone. Neverone Blues shone a light on my broken mind. Loose Ends was my anthem for feeling like time was passing me by (it still is, too). The Train You Can’t Win--in the vein of Audioslave’s Light My Way, Metallica’s Wherever I May Roam, Megadeth’s Good Mourning/Black Friday (and also Hangar 18)--was like a guiding light in the existential darkness, like he was telling me to not give up, to claw out of the hole if I need to.

Another thing I’d do was frequent his Facebook page: I finally turned on notifications because I didn’t want to miss him. It was funny, too, because every time I logged on, he was always at the top of my feed.

And then I’d listen to Hater. Oh, my GOD, I’d listen to Hater! in particular the 2nd because it has my favorite song, Uncontrolled. I’d post a link to it but Youtube doesn’t have it anymore, and the site I frequented for both Hater albums (and also for a short lived, jazzy/Morphine-ish Matt Cameron project called the Tone Dogs), Grooveshark, is now totally defunct.

My fantasies about Ben around this time were getting really weird, too, almost dreamlike. Prior to then, I’d fantasize about things like stroking his belly and holding him close to me to keep me warm; around this time, I’d have that same fantasy but we’d be doing it in a shark tank. Or a beach on Mars. Or underwater. Weird, surrealist environments like that.

It was also around this time I did my Superunknown 20 drawings, drawings to accompany each song on Superunknown. And I was in school on top of that. If it sounds like a lot, it was a lot, but I needed it to get away from myself.

Initially, I wanted to get in touch with him because I had made a couple of drawings for him that I wanted to give him as my way of telling him thank you. I told my mom I wanted to do that the summer before, and since I couldn’t hardly reach out to people for anything much less finding out where he is because everyone I asked always came up short, she and I finally put our heads together and we were finally able to find him via the white pages of Bainbridge Island and an online person finder (I couldn’t tell you what it’s called if you asked me, but all I remember is it cost about a dollar to look up somebody).

I was finally able to sit down and write to Ben on St. Paddy’s Day, right after my writing class final and three days after they played Superunknown in full. It took me three days to write it because I was writing in pen and I had to be careful not to say something off-kilter lest I be like Stan. I remember introducing myself to him, telling him that I was an aspiring artist and future MFA, and I’m a child of divorce and a patient of clinical depression and suicidal thoughts, but I was lucid enough to keep it together and to keep myself from going sideways. I told him his music helped me through the darkness, and also my parents’ divorce and my moments of loneliness. My words were a bit stilted, robotic even, but.. can you blame me?

I think the worst thing I told him was I find him to be a beautiful soul. I remember telling that to him on his Facebook page a couple of times, too. Whenever I wrote a comment on his page, it was always sweet. I’m just a sweet girl who loves boys, and her big beanpole of a boy in particular.

I sent my letter to him--three full pages, front and back--about a week before my 21st birthday, soon after they came home from South America and right before Ten Commandos took off.

The day after I completed my letter, I messaged Matt because he was on Facebook (I don’t know if he still is, I haven’t been online since the week before the 2016 election) telling him that I wanted to share my art with him. I bring this up because about a week after I mailed off my letter, a picture popped up on Alain Johannes’ Instagram of Ben, Matt, and Dimitri Coats congregating in a dining room: Ben’s sitting at the table with a concerned look on his face and Matt and Dimitri were like.. awestruck. I hope you can see my logic here.

Speculation or not, allegedly or not, that picture gave me a clue that I must’ve struck a chord with not only Ben, but Matt, Dimitri, and potentially Alain, too, because he was right there.

Anyways, this is merely the first installment of the nirvhannah shepherd chronicles: stay tuned for more xoxo

[josiebelladonna]

So I’m restarting Twitter in about a week: I have it all planned out and I’ve had it all planned out for about a month now. I’m just going to sign up again first thing in the morning next Thursday or Friday (or, hell, I might do it this weekend because I need it). I wrote down the names of people who were good to me on my old account and then I’m just going to follow bands and musicians I love to pieces, and other things that tickle my fancy, and then I’m just going to let ‘er rip.

I say this because I remember why I went on such a long hiatus as I did on here (aside from the fact that Chris had died and I found myself more and more alone and disconnected from fandoms): Tumblr gets exhausting after a while.

Everyone’s so obsessed with being good and being pretty, and it’s such a popularity contest now. Not to mention, there’s very little motivation around here to do great things. I have faith in An Enchantress’ Bones and also the nirvhannah shepherd chronicles, but I’m still figuring out how to break through to people on here with both my writing and my art, though. I’m starting to feel like tags don’t do anything anymore and neither does following people because no matter what I do, I can’t seem to spark interest in people. (Maybe that’s the real reason I have difficulty writing fanfictions, and maybe that’s why no one on here wants to speak to me, either. I seem “too good” because I like to aim high and I shoot first then ask questions, when I’m just as messed up as anyone.) Add to this: for the past week, I’ve been dying to follow more blogs run by boys, too, no offense to the girls who follow me, but I want to see more boys. I’ve been a dude magnet my whole life, so you can kind of see now how it’s like... where are all the guys at?

See, I remember back in 2013, I could follow people of all walks of life and we were a fabric. It was a far easier time then, too, not nearly as much anger. Now, you follow people on here and they look at you all snotty like (that is, if they see you at all).

Besides, Twitter’s got a special kind of falling apart now that could use a love bug such as myself. There is a slight change of plan, though: instead of badmotorauthor, my @ name will be badmotorartist like my art blog and the watermarks I’ve been putting on my artworks lately. Writing is just the other part of my career: art is where my heart is.

If anyone reading this right now is interested, keep that name on tabs and be on the lookout.