Author: Melissa Snyder

Melissa Snyder https://awriterbecoming.wordpress.com Melissa Snyder is an introvert with a flair for the dramatic in her writing. She is a wife, mother, teacher, compulsive writer, voracious reader, and fierce defender of Love and Imagination. She likes to write about faith (her own and faith in general) and self and emotion and society and hobbies, as well as revealing the myriad paracosms that inhabit her mind. These paper bullets of the brain live in her blog and on Facebook where she endeavors to write about life and Imagination boldly and share honestly.

Arsenic Candy (complete)

Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This is quite the departure from any sort of story I’ve ever written, I think. But I enjoy its bite. I finally figured out how to finish this quick-write (only took me four years to do so). Enjoy.

= = =

“I taste arsenic on the back of my throat. Are you trying to kill me again?”

I slowly, gently nudged the brown-glass bottle to the back of the open cabinet in front of my chair with the toe of my shoe. “No,” I said, not moving from my microscope, though I knew my voice carried a bit of five-year-old pout. The sort of pout that you get when something doesn’t go your way but you can’t admit it.

Of course I had been trying to kill him. I had been trying to kill him for years. But it seemed that he had developed a tolerance for rat poison after all the dollops in his morning coffee. Oh, well. Scratch experiment #275 for a failure. Back to the drawing board, I supposed, literally and figuratively.

He just shook his head and looked at me in that contemptuous, pitying way. “You’d do better with ricin,” he commented rather sagely and shuffled over to his lab table.

Who was he to pity me and, moreover, give me advice on how to kill him? It was his fault I was still stuck here, amongst these fumes and biologicals all day long. If he’d simply approve my thesis, I could move on and be done with it. But no.

“I have determined,” as he loved to say, “that your thesis lacks depth, structure, and you need more time to perfect your method of experimentation.”

More tests, more experiments, more data. Evermore data. It had been seven long years, my financial aid was just about dry, the university was dead set on being rid of me, and here was the old geezer pissing time away because he was a lonely, old, sadistic prick.

The place smelled like mothballs and formaldehyde and it clung to me when I left. Even showering with hot water and lemons didn’t get rid of it. That was no way to pick up a girl in a bar or club: smelling like a convalescent home. Once, a girl told me that being with me was like sleeping in a coffin or a morgue. Yeah, that relationship went well, meaning it was blessedly brief and long ago.

I hadn’t had sex in three years. Three damned years with nothing but my own hand for company! Even the macabre girl was good for a roll at least.

So, yes, I was trying to kill him, had been for years. But the old dotard just wouldn’t keel over and die. It was like he had made a deal with the afterlife to be my personal torment here on earth just so long as he could keep living, keeping me from my goals, from even the barest acknowledgement of the scientific community. Because of a foul ordinance of the university that required doctoral candidates to have the signed approval of their supervisor on any article they wished to publish, my professional dossier was empty. Old Crab wouldn’t sign off any even the merest observational report that was intended to leave his lab.

Yes, Old Crab. And he looked the part, too. His eyes were beady and black and glittered in the lights of the old-fashioned Bunsen burners that he insisted on using, scoffing at modern heating plates. His hands were gnarled and he had arthritis so badly that his fingers sort of clamped together most of the time so that he looked to have two claws instead of ten fingers. When he flew into a rage, he turned a bright orangey red. Not even a pinky red like most humans. His skin was so sallow that the red fused into an almost carrotish color when the blood rushed to his face and neck.

I hated this man, hated him with all my gut and being. I was ready, I was done. I wanted to be free. But I was so invested, so in debt, that I couldn’t afford to just walk away. I had to graduate, I had to have at least something to show for my years of servitude. I was so busy stewing in my utter rancor and hatred that I didn’t realize that it had fallen quiet in the lab. It was never quiet. Old Crab was always clanking things together and dropping stirrers and such. So quiet was a curiosity. A curiosity that made me turn around.

And I couldn’t help it. I laughed. I laughed and laughed and laughed until I cried. And then I picked up the phone.

They said he died of heart failure due to old age and an extremely carcinogenic habit of particular cigarettes (Weren’t those things banned years ago? He must have eaten them like candy).

Me? All I could think of was the sight of him on the floor, arms and legs splayed out in like a crab that’s been flipped onto its back and stomped on.

Is this what they would call a frabjous day?

Stranger in the Mirror

1 Comment

My most recent article published by The Well Written Woman:

“My aging was very sudden. I saw it spread over my features one by one, changing the relationship between them, making the eyes larger, the expression sadder, the mouth more final, leaving great creases in the forehead. But instead of being dismayed I watched this process with the same sort of interest I might have taken in the reading of a book.” – Marguerite Duras, The Lover

I have a few friends who have sometimes exclaimed to me that I haven’t changed my looks since I was seventeen. Heavens above, but I hope I have. And I think I have, too. Looking at myself in the mirror, I often have to push past the tendency to see myself at seventeen, the first major changing point in my life: when I went off to college. That image of me has stuck rather stubbornly over the past fourteen years. But, if I can look past it, I can study my reflection for quite a long time and find subtle differences.

I think back over the critical points of my life and how my body – my physical form – has changed and transformed with them. I gained eight pounds my freshman year of college and no one at home had the heart to tell me until I wore my favorite dress to my friends’ high school graduation. Afterward, I was told by a young man that I had known from my church’s youth group that I shouldn’t have worn it, that I “looked fat”. I don’t think I ever wore that dress again, nor spoke to him beyond what was polite.  That dress, formerly beloved and the very same one that, only a year or two prior, I had been proclaimed “beautiful” in by another young man (can’t tell you how many times I read that email), the poor thing faded away into obscurity in my closet. Don’t know what happened to it to this day. What can I say? Words have power and the social movement for self-love in young women was at least another decade off.

In my first semester of graduate school, with the stress and a myriad of changes in my life, I lost almost twenty pounds in quick succession, my rapid weight loss finally slowing to pause around ninety-seven or ninety-eight pounds. It was corrected with a visit to the doctor, some meds, and conscious efforts to relax a bit more the following semester. However, that didn’t stop the comments of “You look great! You lost so much weight!” when I went home for the holidays. Unfortunately, they weren’t as much of a compliment as those giving them probably intended for them to be, as I knew that I was currently unhealthy. But, eventually, I found a happy and healthy place again.

I am a late bloomer as far as my looks and physique go, at least in my opinion. My skin has never been perfect but I can keep it fairly under control. My body never really settled into its shape until after I got married. As I entered my thirties last year, I found that I began to notice a more mature look to my eyes, the curve of my cheeks, and the turn of my mouth. If I tilt my head, I find the line of my jaw. I trace it with my fingers and find it still strong, still defined but without all the softness of my youth. A softness is still there but of a different sort, borne of a deeper understanding of love and life. Sometimes I hardly recognize myself. I see a new depth of experience in my eyes and wonder, “Where did that come from?” Smiles and laughter have begun to imprint themselves in the corners of my mouth, moments that I cherish and am thankful for hiding there along with Mrs. Darling’s kiss. I read, with my fingers, the slope of my neck into my shoulder and find it strong from burdens borne. The way I hold my hands is permanently influenced by my years in belly dance. I’ve lost a bit of my curve since having my daughter, my waist coming out to meet my hips a bit more. There’s more of a fullness here, a roundness there. A scar where there was none before. The landscape of my body has changed over the past fourteen years, and that’s all right.

I am finding that I am growing happier and happier with myself. I have managed to lose most of the baby weight after fourteen months and I am getting back into toning again, little by little. But, most of all, I am learning to appreciate myself for just that: myself. That is hard work in and of itself, an exercise of the mental and the emotional as well as the physical. I cannot pretend to tell you how it’s done; I don’t have a secret, I don’t have an answer. Just a fortunate turn in years of difficulty with self-esteem and body image. It catches me by surprise sometimes, me looking at myself and smiling. When did I become so chummy with myself? I don’t really know, but I like it.

Hey! I Was Playing With That!

Leave a comment

The other day on Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood (my daughter’s favorite show), the characters were dealing with feeling jealous and what to do about it. I held my fourteen month old on my lap and talked to her about it. Though I know that she still is too little to really understand, I know for a fact that she is familiar with that feeling already. She doesn’t have the capacity yet to recognize it for what it is or think about what to do about it aside from take what she wants but I still talked to her. I told her that, when she gets bigger, if she feels jealous or wants something that someone else has, she can come to Mommy and Mommy will help her talk about it and figure out what to do.

No one has to teach a child how to be jealous. We see it immediately in toddlers with no prompting whatsoever. They aren’t necessarily interested in a toy or item until they see you or another person with it. Then, immediately, desire kicks in and the child is at your side, or the side of another child, reaching for and/or taking the item for themselves. If it is between two children, there is no mistaking the look on the face of the other child. We all know that look or those words.

“Hey, I was playing with that!”

 It’s a protest, a cry against the sudden change. What was dear to us, even for a short amount of time, has been snatched from us, even feels like it has been stolen. I have seen Elizabeth both take and be taken from and observed her reactions, as well as those of the other little ones. My girl is not retiring or demure when she wants something but it was clear to me that she did not like being on the other side of the mirror (who does, after all?), having had something taken from her by another child. She almost seemed to wilt a little bit, coming over to me with that look in her eyes of, “What do I do?” And all I could do was hug her and give her a new toy from nearby.

Adults are no different from children in their needs, wants, and the resulting jealousy and fear. However, with adults, it tends to be less about things and more about people. We treasure the attention of the people in our lives, enjoy the novelty and excitement of meeting new ones, and relax in the comfort of familiar attentions. Whether those people are siblings, parents, significant others, or friends, we will, at some point, find ourselves in the position of “sharing” that person’s friendship, time, and/or attention with others. And that is hard, especially at the outset. For lack of a better example, adults often have the same reaction as children when someone new comes along into the life of someone they care about.

“Hey! I was playing with that!”

 However, that reaction is usually hidden away in our private thoughts and feelings (as we are painstakingly taught to do in ‘polite society’), but they are still there. We have to give up the attention of the person in question, or at least a modicum of it, to make room for this new person in their life. And you’re often very right: you were there first, you were playing with them first. We all know that people are not toys, they are not possessions to be “played with”, but the principle is the same. We have to share because interdependence and relationship are part of the human existence. However much of a loner we may wish to be, there is no escaping relationship, not really. With relationship, then, comes a vulnerability born of caring, and jealousy is part of that. If you don’t like the term “jealousy”, call it “envy”, call it “being protective” or “territorial”. Use whatever describer you may prefer, but the result is the same. It happens when you care, even the littlest bit. It can blindside you in a moment’s blink. It can make your cheeks flush and stomach flop and make you want to become the Incredible Hulk and just SMASH!

“Hey! I was playing with that!”

Life is constantly new and exciting and jarring and it comes along with new twists and turns, well-met’s and fare-thee-well’s, for all of us. Along the way, somehow, we learn to cope. We learn to deal, to speak, to adjust, to adapt, and to love nonetheless.

Reblog: Weird Boobs and Little Wieners

Leave a comment

I love this gentleman’s perspective on the gorgeous treasure and gifts that our bodies are, no matter what shape or what have you. It’s very honest and very edifying, no matter what view you may hold on relationships and sex. Please do check it out.

Weird Boobs and Little Wieners.

The Unfairest of the Fair

Leave a comment

Artist unknown

Artist unknown

It is fair to call her the Fairest, though most would choose the Most Unfair of the Fairest. Like every Fairest One in the Land, she is looking for love, for that enchanted ever-after. She has been at it for stories and stories, pages and pages, chapters and centuries.

These are the faces of the men she has rejected, perfectly good men who, for one reason or the other over the centuries, did not measure up to her lofty ideal of a mate and perfect love (pictured in the bottom left) and so have become part of her tapestry, trapped for ever after in their rejection, wounded pride, and broken hearts. It doesn’t matter whether they be man, god, or beast, all must be weighed and measured, and these have been found wanting.

A Cuppa Flirt

3 Comments

Author’s Note: Here is the process by which this little incidental came to be. 

**My IM status reads: what to write? what to write?** Friend: write about the steam rising off of the first cup of tea in the morning. 😉 Me: Hmm, a descriptive piece. Nice! *tucks that away in her piece-bag for later* 

So here it is, written (of course) first thing in the morning.

= = =

I watched as she took the ceramic mug that contained her beverage and moved over to the window-seat to curl up in its corner. The day was still dark, the room quiet, and I watched. I watched as she held the cup lovingly in her hands, cherishing its warmth on this bitter mid-winter Saturday. And the steam seemed to respond.

Grateful for not being blown away instantly, as an immature child would do, it rose to meet her, to inspect this perspicacious woman. Serpentine and smooth, it gathered and poured from the surface of her mug, reaching up shadowy tendrils to caress her cheeks tenderly, craftily steal a kiss off her lips, and tease her like the coyest of beaus, stroking the tip of her nose. It grazed up into her ear and whispered bergamot-scented promises of warmth and relaxation, yet with a hint of elegant class and tradition. It curled around the shell of her ear and sighed anecdotes of white gloves, hidden novels, and sunny parlors, stories to charm even the most pragmatic of females.

I watched her smile, even blush a little bit. Or maybe that was just the heat of her drink? The shiver of steam’s warmth as it hits your skin and suddenly cools against your own balmy temperature? Or maybe I had made her tea a little too strong? A little too brazen in its flavor? Either way, I would hold afterward, for forever and a day, that a woman could actually be flirted with by the tea in her cup.

New Steps, New Challenges

Leave a comment

I am pleased and honored to announce that, as of today, I am a contributing writer/blogger to The Well Written Woman. I am excited about the new challenges and writing that is ahead of me.

Here is my first article: Hiding Behind a Valentine.

Hide It Under a Bushel?

Leave a comment

Something has been on my mind lately and I have, again, debated back and forth whether or not to discuss it here. The reason being that it might cause more harm than good, at least that is what I fear. Granted, my view of it may not match up with the actuality of the situation. Yes, I have considered that, too. It’s one of the reasons that I have been reading up on self-discrepancy theory lately.

The self-discrepancy theory was first developed by E. Tory Higgins in his work Self-Discrepancy: A Theory Relating Self and Affect in 1987. Self-discrepancy theory is an attempt to understand the different types of negative emotions experienced by people who hold conflicting self-beliefs, or a discrepancy, about themselves.

The theory is composed of three domains of the self, which are actual self, ideal self, and ought self.

The actual self consists of the attributes that the individual believes he or she possesses or the attributes that a significant other believes he or she holds.

The ideal self consists of the attributes that the individual or a significant other desires or prefers for him or her to acquire.

The ought self consists of the attributes that the individual or a significant other believes he or she should or ought to possess. An example from literature helps distinguish between the ideal self and the ought self in the sense of a hero’s “personal wishes,” or ideal self, versus his “sense of duty,” or the ought self. –   Self-Discrepancy Theory

I will say that I struggle with the “ought self” fairly frequently but my current conundrum is a little more…reversed than usual. So, as Inigo Montoya would say, “Let me ‘splain. No, is too much. Let me sum up.”

Almost fourteen months ago, I gave birth to my daughter. I had spent nine months being pregnant and dealing with all the body image and self-discrepancy issues that came with pregnancy: the loss of my figure, the changes in my body and emotions, the raging hormones, the cravings, the lack of activity, the being told “you can’t”, etc.  I spent this past summer working very, very hard on getting fit again, walking and working out every day, counting calories, and all of that. My progress was slow, at least to me it was. But now, after almost two years, I am within two pounds of my average pre-pregnancy weight.

Until now, until tonight and a very specific conversation with a friend, I never would have posted that. I never would have let myself celebrate that, not in private and most certainly not in a public forum like this one. I have been very scared of posting my progress with weight loss because I fear people thinking I am bragging or that I am shaming them, or, ever more the worse, them feeling badly about themselves, for whatever reason. I’m no worrying about what I am not. I am worrying about what I am. I feel like I ought to keep my weight loss to myself. I ought to do it to protect those I love and keep them buoyed up, give them no reason to be down on themselves. I ought to not be…well, me. But my friend pointed out, “But by doing that aren’t you doing to yourself the very same thing you’re afraid of them doing? I imagine if they knew that you were internalizing your sense of self-love they’d be sad. Does my loving myself make you feel down on yourself?” And, the truth is, no, it doesn’t make me feel down. It makes me smile to see my friend happy and doing well. I guess I can only hope that expressing myself can encourage others to do the same thing, to celebrate their accomplishments, their triumphs.

So here I am, honest in my accomplishment. After almost two years, I am within two pounds of my weight goal, I am getting stronger, getting my figure back, and feeling pretty happy with and proud of myself.

Thank you for listening. I leave you with this quote from Marianne Williamson that my friend also gave me to ponder.

The Kind of Fairy Tale I Like

Leave a comment

“Knot” by Secondlina. Here is a preview of this wonderful comic about the power of writing. Read the rest of this gorgeous story here – http://secondlina.tumblr.com/post/76073595885/here-is-knot-a-short-comic-i-drew-to-sell-at

 

 

The Beatific Smile of Melody

Leave a comment

A friend recently asked me what makes me happy, what always brings a smile to my face. The first thing that popped into the forefront of my mind was music. Music has always made me happy. I once said, in answer to a question, that I would rather suddenly blind than deaf because I cannot imagine a world without music.

Music taps into my emotional core. Like movies, I do not listen to music, I inhabit it. Lyrics strike my heart, make it warm or break, make me smile and cry. Stories write themselves around the lyrics, memories thread their way through the melody, hopes for the future flow over the bridge. Music impacts me the way that few other mediums do.  I hear my thoughts, my fears, my life, my self reflected in music. It can express me better than I ever could, but a soundtrack of me would take forever to compose, I think. I obviously don’t know a song’s impact until I heard it/read the lyrics, but, when the moment is gone, I might forget it for a while.  Then I will randomly hear it again and be flush with those emotions once more.

Music makes me giggle and blush, dance and cry. It makes my heart soar and my stomach crash. But, more often than not, music makes me smile. Whether I’m singing it, playing it on the piano or flute, or listening on the radio or my iPhone, music is melodic joy to me. It speaks my heart, stories my life, and I love it.