What’s in a Name?

Where did your name come from?

I always hated my name when I was growing up.

Why did my parents have to name me something so borinnnggg?

Why couldn’t they have named me something more exciting, like Cleopatra? Or Leah? But no, instead, I had to share my name with multiple cousins.

Larisa.

So unremarkable. I refused to be called by that name, so my older sister gave me another name, Loren, and I eagerly accepted it instead. My mom even fell in line and called me Loren during my formative years.

It wasn’t until I had to start using my name legally for work that I truly accepted my name, but I still had to stress to everyone that it was “Larisa with ONE s!” I had no idea who this Larissa character was that everyone tried ascribing to me.

That, in turn, got me the actual moniker of “Larisa With One S.”

“Good morning Larisa With One S!”

“Good morning Debra.”

Anyway, after a while, I stopped fighting it and finally accepted that this was indeed my name and that trying to run away from it was futile. Strangely, whenever I’d read about a character in a story named Larisa (with one s), I’d always like the name and immediately felt drawn to the character.

I also love it when a romantic interest calls me by my name. Why does it feel like a caress?

Oh, I should probably answer this prompt question—where my name actually came from. It just came from lack of creativity and lack of baby naming books in the Soviet Union where I was born. Larisa is a common Slavic name and my parents didn’t have a Larisa yet so they bestowed it upon yours truly upon my birth.

In the Grip of a Narcissist

A narcissist will make you question if you are worthy of love. They will almost make you hate yourself because they can turn your natural need for their attention against you, making it a shameful thing, making you ashamed of yourself for being so weak and pitiful. You start hating being inside your own mind, inside your own skin. You start becoming intimate with loathing.

Losses

It’s so interesting how quickly we lose ourselves. It’s as if we don’t believe in the weight we hold with how swiftly we find ourselves shuffled underneath the weight of someone’s opinion, or rejection, or even if it’s an impossible thing, it still feels like rejection. When you make the choice to heal and to start gathering all of your scattered pieces, it feels like getting to know yourself all over again, and what a lovely thing that is. I stumble upon bits and pieces of myself with a surprised exclamation every time. “Oh, I DO love to write poetry, and I can write to my hearts content! I have a blog, and that IS an excellent thing, and I can enjoy it as much as I want. Oh yes, I remember now, I do love my inquisitive nature and I can find joy in pursuing all of my hobbies again. And no one can take that from me.” It’s a shame how quickly we snuff ourselves out when someone fails to recognize our inherent gifts and we die a sort of death. But the beauty is that we can always choose to come alive again, and each time feels a little more magical than the last.

Happy New Year and all that

It’s been a whirlwind of a new year so far, I feel like I’m caught in a type of tornado and can’t quite catch my breath. But thankfully, it’s a tornado of positive happenings, so I’m both buoyed and exhausted. I don’t know how that even works but it’s really a thing.

I sincerely hope everyone’s year has begun on a positive note, or at least has the potential to become positive. Back when I was taking psychology courses in college, I remember learning about self-fulfilling prophecy and how we can become the authors of our own fate, and I’ve been on a journey of discovering how that works. The pandemic has really made the entire thing play out in a rather dramatic way, at least in my own personal little world. I spent Christmas in Paris on a solo, self enlightenment journey of sorts, and I’m happy to report that faith really does make things possible. I think for the Christian, the psychological phenomenon of self-fulfilling prophecy is better known as faith, and that all it takes is one tiny little step.

Anyway, I came back home refreshed and with new perspectives and I feel like I’m sprouting new shoots and unfurling new branches that are eagerly stretching towards a life well lived.

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Fever Dreams

I search for you in my blackest

midnight,

my drunken, misguided North Star.

Born of cunning and velvet

and the spaces between stars,

you were clothed by your maker in all the ways I yearned for you.

Were you a fever dream I restlessly brought forth

or were you sent to torment me

for all my wanton sins?

I’ve repented of each one a thousand times

if only to remove the scent of you from every layer of my skin.

Between pleas flung into the inky night,

I pray,

are you come as my salvation or my ruin?

Leaving Eden

Silence descends heavily in the wake of
your retreating footsteps,
desolate,
cruel in its unrelenting neutrality.
My thoughts are a startled murmuration
of starlings
with desperately flapping wings
resounding mournfully into the middle distance.
They settle delicately on my shoulders,
unable to bear the weight of our
existence.
We were the beginnings
of a dream,
a building crescendo,
the first strokes of a masterpiece
that fate or folly deemed never know
the fulfillment of completion.
A bitter wind sends its piercing cry
through the spaces of my ribcage.
Cold as a January frost.

Thank You Tim

I’ve been thinking about this post from the moment Tim nominated me on his blog. It was such a beautiful thing of him to do because I’ve unintentionally been so absent from the blogosphere that I thought for sure everyone forgot about me. But this was a post in the back of my mind that was like a little beacon of light consistently calling me to return. I don’t usually participate in blog awards on my blog because I applaud everyone who is brave enough to take up the pen and write down their most intimate thoughts to share with passersby, but the questions Tim asked intrigue me and I find I am curious to answer them. So without further ado, let’s dive in.

• What is your favorite Star Trek episode? All spin offs, generations and films count.

I feel like the following will be an admission of guilt, but it’s the truth so there’s no getting around it. I’ve never watched Star Trek. Not even a single episode. But in my defense, we didn’t grow up with a TV so you can usually catch me reading something..

• What line from a song makes you say, “I wish I had written that!”, every time you hear it?

To be honest, it’s not a song that comes to mind, but rather, two of my most favorite poets that I happen to know here on WordPress. Rachel and April bring me to tears with their poetry and each time I have to sit back and dream of what it would be like if the enchantment they weave flowed from my pen instead of theirs. Sigh. ErroneousChoices is another WordPress siren whose words ensnared me forever into their depths. 

Oscar Wilde is another favorite of mine. I wish I said a lot of whatever he said first. 

• If words could only be written a finite number of times, would you write them not knowing if it they could be written again?

Yes. I would. Words deserve to be given life, whether shouted from the rooftops, or whispered in the dark of night. Perhaps the written word would be all the more eloquent if they could never be penned again. 

• If you could walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, who’s shoes and why? (any person, any time, any reason)

This one is so difficult to answer because there are so many many people I would love to walk with for a while if I could. But if I were forced to choose, I would choose to walk in the shoes of one of the men on the road to Emmaus.

• If you find yourself standing at the intersection of ‘Right’ and ‘Legal’, which path would you choose?

Right. By the grace of God. 

• Dogs… or cats?

Cats. Without question. If you argue with me on this you are wrong. So sit there in your wrongness and be wrong. 

• Is is okay to benefit from knowledge, technology or skills that were gained by morally questionable means?

The jury is out on this one. I mean, advances in medicine could not be accomplished without men and women practicing on cadavers or people who were close to death, and in those times, that was very questionable indeed. 

• How much better, or worse, is your singing voice than you believe it is?

This is timely 🙂 I was belting along to a country song this morning at the tennis academy and a stranger told me she really liked my voice. I often get complimented on my singing voice but I don’t actually have the talent for it. So my answer is it is worse, and people’s answer is it is better. 

• Where do you think all the lost socks went?

They return as tupperware lids. But really, I have absolutely no idea where they go. It frustrates me to pieces.

• “I think, therefore, I am”. I feel, therefor, I _______?

Can enjoy carnal pleasures… yep, my mind went there. Not sorry. 

• You have a magic wand, you waved it. What happened?

World order was restored. Coronavirus vanished forever. The stock markets skyrocketed. All the racial injustice stopped, utopia commences…

I know the rules list a few things that I am supposed to do and I’m also supposed to nominate others who I feel are amazing. But to be honest, you are all amazing. So I nominate everyone who comes across this post. Feel free to answer the above questions in the comments section if you are so inclined. 

 

Addictive Poison

You weave around me with the grace of a swordsman,
only your weapon of choice is your words.
What a lethal dance we engage in,
parrying,
striking with focused precision,
sliding that unbearable hurt between my ribs with a lovers skill.
How beautifully I fall apart before you,
as you watch in silence with glittering,
hungry eyes.

Unmapped

Like a melody that I once knew,
you sink into the buried spaces of
my mind and stain all the dull grays
a vibrant carmine.
Echoes of conversations long since past drift on a million horizons,
illusions of a mirage,
tattooing my retinas with a constellation of loss.
I weave your words from threads of
forgotten memories
and run them across my body.
But they lose their way in the
unmapped galaxies
you refused to venture near,
competing only
with the same spectacular way
I used to lose myself
at the mere thought of you.

 

Body Language

Men and women are so different. The contrast fascinates me all the time, until sometimes, it doesn’t. Like when men and women cannot read each other’s signs or body language they are giving off.

There is this little grocery store down the street from my neighborhood that I frequent because it is so convenient. Well, one of the workers there recently took a shine to me. He works behind the seafood counter and maybe he interpreted my questioning him what type of salmon was the best to buy as an interest in him, I’m not sure. Well, the next time I ran into him in the store, he asked me for a hug. Being a little taken aback and not wanting to be rude, I said sure. So we hugged. Well, that quickly escalated into him exhibiting stalkerish behavior. Every time I go into that store, even when I’m nowhere near the seafood section, he will pop up right beside me and start chatting. And now he goes in for a hug without asking me. It’s making me hesitate as to whether or not I even want to go there anymore, and I hate that because it is so convenient for me! I know the best thing for me to do is to tell him straight out that he needs to tone it down because my silent hints of avoiding that side of the store are not carrying over, but honestly, that is so much easier said than done. Ugh what to do what to do 😕

On the flip side, I tend to read way too much into something when I like a guy, especially if I’m not certain if he likes me back, and I’ve certainly lost my sh*t before in former relationships where I misread or overthought a situation. You would think that with all this information at our fingertips in this day and age, we would certainly learn how to communicate more effectively, but nope. We revert to our lizard brain when certain chemicals are triggered in the brain.