Writing a story about myself!
Kia ora, friends!
On Friday just gone, my anxiety was doing a big ol’ spike after I had an interview for a course I am hoping to get into (more on that in a later update - if I get in, that is), so when the plumbers and electrician showed up to fix some stuff, I pretended to not be home. This was pretty dumb because those things really do need fixing, but now they won’t get done til at least the day you’re reading this, but my brain said no and I wasn’t about to disagree. Long-story-short, when I was getting ready to go to the supermarket and the plumbers were still packing up their gear to leave, when I had an idea - I should write something about this. So I did.
Not all the details of this story are totally accurate to what actually happened - I only wish I had had the energy to shout at the people who were partially the source of my anxiety, but alas, I did not. But a lot of this is true. I’ve had a couple of passes at this now too, so hopefully it comes off as at least a little polished compared to what it looked like a couple of days ago when I first sat down to write. I’ve got a couple other things to talk about today, but before I get to those, here’s ‘A Story About Myself’…
Rebecca awoke at about 11am to the sound of someone knocking on their front door. They fucking hated it when people did that – no text, no call, just shows up at their door. They stayed quiet for a few moments, waiting to see if the random stranger outside would knock again. They didn’t, so Rebecca relaxed a little bit. They could hear two or maybe three men outside the door, working with tools and such. “What the fuck are they doing?” Rebecca whispered to themselves. Several minutes later, there was another knock. “For fuck sake…” again, Rebecca waited to see if another knock would come. It didn’t. Rebecca wasn’t sure how to proceed, they last thing they wanted was to alert these strangers to their presence, but they also didn’t want to spend however long the men outside would be there, hiding in bed, so they got up and went to feed Fara, the cat.
Rebecca then proceeded to spend the next few hours, while the men outside were doing whatever they were doing, playing video games, and talking to Fara whenever she came into the bedroom to graze on her biscuits. A few times they would get up and sneak a glance out the front windows to see the vehicle these strange men had arrived in, and one time they saw the blue lettering down the side of a white van – plumbers. “God damnit,” Rebecca muttered under their breath, “I forgot they were coming.” Rebecca had planned to make their house a little less hostile to anyone that wasn’t them but had instead just completely forgotten about it. So instead of doing the normal, reasonable-brain thing and inviting the plumbers inside and simply apologising for the mess, Rebecca’s anxieties, practically all of them, spiked, and all they could do was hope and pray that the men outside would simply vanish soon, and then they could give the plumbers a call on Monday to sort it all out.
Several hours went by, until finally, they couldn’t take it anymore. They had to leave the house. The plumbers were still outside, but there was no sign of when they might leave. So, Rebecca got dressed, put on their Bluetooth headphones, and opened the front door. They stepped out and almost immediately ran directly into one of the plumbers. “We’ve been trying to-“ he started when Rebecca looked at him and blurted out “I’ve got covid!” Rebecca then promptly stormed off toward the street while the plumber stood there, not sure what to make of what just happened. Another plumber was coming around the corner, “Hey, are y-“ “Covid!” Rebecca shouted, without looking or slowing down. The second plumber also left dumbstruck, looked at the first one who looked to him and just shook his head, shrugging.
Rebecca did not, in fact, have covid. It was just the first thing their stressed brain could think of to say to get these strange men who were giving her so much anxiety. All of the anxiety. It wasn’t their best ad lib, but it did the trick.
The plumbers were, finally, gone when Rebecca got home again. They fumbled for the front door key in the dim glow of the sensor light, unlocked the door, and stepped through. Once inside, their cat Fara greeted them with a soft little meow, curled up on Rebecca’s warmest coat draped over a chair – if was Fara’s current favourite place to sleep. “Hewwo darling,” Rebecca smiled. Fara smiled back. “Awh you hungwy?” Rebecca asked, rhetorically, Fara was always hungry. At the sound of those words Fara stood slowly and stretched herself out. “Aww big stretch!” Rebecca gave Fara a little chin scratch and then went to the cupboard for the cat biscuits and wet food pouches. It had been a process, finding the exactly right food that Fara would consistently eat, but once Rebecca had finally figured it out, there was no way they would attempt to change it up. Fara was the fussiest little bitch they had ever met. But she was so pretty.
Rebecca didn’t know what kind of cat Fara was; likely just a mixed breed, a tabby, but she had the biggest, fattest, fuzziest little tail they had ever seen. It was like a raccoon’s tail; it was so bushy. And Fara’s fur was super soft. Fara had adopted Rebecca a few months after they moved into their current house. One day Fara just started showing up and watching Rebecca from the fence, so Rebecca decided to try feeding her. It wasn’t long before Fara started showing up nearly every day and expecting food, and then not long after that that she was showing up every day and staying over most nights. It was at that point that Rebecca had decided this cat probably needed a name. They settled on Fara Sherazi, the name of a character from a TV show they liked, and it took no time at all for Fara to begin recognising and responding to the name.
I hope you liked this! This was an interesting excercise for me because even though I have been using they/them pronouns for coming up almost four years now, I’ve never tried to write a story with a central character who is non-binary against a cast of other characters with no names or real identities like this - I hope it wasn’t too confusing! I got a little confused myself when trying to decide if I should use a pronoun or just repeat my character name instead for clarity haha. This is definitely something I want to work on more though, and if you have any specific feedback about it I would love to hear from you!
Before I let you go, I want to let you all know that I have finished The Marvellous Mrs Maisel now and that piece I’ve been teasing about is almost ready - it will most likely be the drop for next Monday unless I finish it sooner, but it might surprise you to know that I’m leaning a little less hard on it as I was in the beginning. I’m still not happy, but I’m not going to be quite as mean as I originally intended.
And one last thing; I mentioned a little while back that I am planning on doing a bit of streaming on Twitch, and I am still working on that, but it’s taking a little longer than I’d have liked to get into a good routine because of some health problems. I haven’t forgotten! It’s just taking a bit longer. And speaking of things that are taking a bit longer: my Tabitha serial story is still on the way, but I think I was just a bit over ambitious about what I could potentially commit to - it’s coming, but it might not be until around the end of the year at this point, so I’m sorry if you are excited for that! You’ll just have to wait a wee while longer for that to start.
As always, thank you so much for reading! I really appreciate it. If you like what I do here, please consider telling a friend, or sharing a post you liked on social media! I don’t do advertising of any kind except yelling about it on my social medias when I remember, so for me to grow I need your help! Any comments, questions, suggestions, leave them in the comments or hit me up on the aforementioned socials (links at the bottom of the page)!
Have a great week everyone, I’ll talk to you again soon. Ka kite anō au i a koe. 💚
- Rebecca