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Journalisa's avatar

I knew there was a reason I don't watch violence, and haven't watched horror since I was stuck at a slumber party in 6th grade with friends at an outdoor theater watching Wait Until Dark, after I got through Haunted House. Not since then and I'm glad I haven't. There is enough terror in the world, I can't have created or recreated ones piping in as well to scare me. I appreciate telling the truth and being rejected. Few want the truth. You do write well.

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Alexx Hart's avatar

Oh my gosh, double dose!!! I have such a complex relationship with violence and horror tales. Certain kinds I just can’t do; others are one of my guilty…not “pleasures” but staples that I don’t fully understand why I need them. Or why I love Haunted Houses. Why I write fiction about some of my greatest fears and phobias, like giving my Persephone a little spider friend when I’m an arachnophobe. It’s like…maybe exposure therapy to help me deal with them? Changing the narrative? I don’t fully understand it.

And no. Truth is…a rarely appreciated treasure. So glad you’re here!

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Journalisa's avatar

Reading about your nightmares pulled me in. I rarely have scary dreams. This morning I distinctly was channeling through health information. I think what we focus on, we attract. I like that actor... the brunette. There was a guy in my Berkeley freshman politics class that looked like him. I like that look but I was tempted to shut it down and never go back. I performed as the Birthday Princess. I could relate to bringing back an old character. Sure it's therapeutic. Helping kids of all ages believe their wishes and dreams can come true. Utilizing the birthday as one's own personal NEW YEAR's.

I am not judging you. I talked to my high school boyfriend today and that was scary enough!

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Alexx Hart's avatar

🤣 That definitely can be! I used to be a super avid “we attract what we think” girl for years. Being super focused on only thinking about the positive things I wanted to attract in my life got me put on disability from an angry guy’s punch, the destruction of my career and friend base, an NPD boyfriend who tore my neck & shoulder apart, then destroyed my rep with a smear campaign, an ugly battle with a govt agency that required intervention from Disability rights, and a second car wreck.

So now...shrug. Eh. I think whatever I think. I feel however I feel and I express it in the moment. I still keep my primary focus on what I always did: wanting to become the best version of myself to send helpful and healing and beautiful things out to everything I touch...

I sometimes think maybe LOA really IS working and it’s because I ask for stuff like that, instead of “I want to be healthy and wealthy, I want Twue Wuv wiff Da One, I want everlasting world peace...” that I get the shit sandwiches slathered with such glorious silver linings that I do. I’m too much equal scientist and mystic to discount it or to Believe. So I just try to clean up my own messes in the hopes of the ripple effect. 🥰

One’s own personal new year. I like that. I actually do that, and it’s all wrapped up in one. My birthday, the anniversary of my big car wreck (winter solstice), and the start of the holiday season all coincide within days of each other. I call it my RebirthDay and that slides straight into the calendar new year. Of course, I also do big things for summer solstice and equinoxes as well. 🤓

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Journalisa's avatar

When I trash talk, trash invites itself. When I've been uber positive, good unfolds. I think we have to be really specific. That place on the beach arrived, but the one owning was a control monster. I did a Uranus workshop last Saturday and it spelled out the phases in which I made specific choices that kept me on my own specific path. I just got done with a really long couple hours of effort and I need to veg a bit.

I do know, the more I bemoaned my abusive brother, the more abusive he became. The more I saw I can't sleep, I can't. The more I say I need whatever, whatever stays at arm's length. But the more specific I am about what my top priorities are, the more they are mine and I'm at peace. zzzzzzz

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Alexx Hart's avatar

Mmmmmm lucky!! That’s so cool when it works. 😻😻😻 I actually had the opposite experience. It was like I was brainwashing myself or something. The more I saw the good in them the more violent they became. The more I talked about and believed “I am healed, I have a stable income again, etc” the farther it all fell. Even switching to “and it WAS so cool! I miraculously healED” brought injury and misery in even faster. So I just stopped. And now it just...goes up and down. Shrug.

I need to stop worrying about it for my sanity. Because when you follow it to the letter and your circumstances become worse, it starts heading into the New Agey version of Catholic guilt. “Wellllll if you werent such a sinner these bad things wouldn’t happen to you. Welllll you must not believe hard enough, good enough, must actually just be a negative person or else your life would become like roses if you were doing it right.”

Whatever. We’re talking 20 years of being a believer here, where the more I learned how to make the specificity better and better, more and more positive, leaving no loopholes, etc the worse, faster, and more compounded the traumas became. So I don’t believe; I don’t disbelieve. And I absolutely will not be silent about things anymore. Not for fear of attack, and not for fear of speaking “bad” things into my life. Who says they’re bad? Ask me once I’ve died if I would choose another route. So far, I wouldn’t.

I do love when other people have amazing stories about it working though! 😻

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Journalisa's avatar

I hear what you are saying. You be you!!! I spoke to a friend who was really free when we met and knew each other at UC Berkeley. In 1993 she couldn't talk to me anymore because she was getting really into catholicism and I was having sex outside of marriage. 1993. Huh? You are right. When we die, we will know how it all went down. For now? We're just living it!

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