My Own Hell

If I were to manufacture a hell for someone with body dysmorphia and/or an eating disorder, it would be this. It would be an ill-defined, easily denied health problem (likely caused by damage from decades of the eating disorder).

That removes the ability to affect that hated body.

That makes it so no matter how they starve or purge or work, the weight packs on with no explanation.

That turns those hallucinated pounds into reality then adds more.

That steals the lie from the dysmorphia then steals their hair.

That compromises every objection to the hate flowing through their mind.

That makes the mirror more unbearable than when the cutter waited there.

That they blame themselves for, just like everyone else.

That traps them in their own skin, steadily drowning in the increasing weight of their flesh.

That is only outweighed by the humiliation of losing to whatever this is.

That has no treatment or cure.

That has no stillpoint to accept.

That makes them dearly miss the time when it was just dysmorphia’s distortions and eating disorder’s demands.

That makes it seem like they were so much happier when they just hated themselves.

That makes them want to cut just to exert some control over their body again.

That makes them want to end things not to die but to be out of this broken vessel.

Sorry. We’re here again. Alopecia flared and took all my hair again.
Side effects and backsliding. And dark feelings.

Christina Bergling

https://linktr.ee/chrstnabergling

Like my writing? Check out my books!

• Followers – You never know who is on the other side of the screen. Followers is a mystery and thriller that blends women’s fiction with horror.
• The Rest Will Come – Online dating would drive anyone to murder, especially Emma.
• Savages – Two survivors search the ruins for the last strain of humanity. Until the discovery of a baby changes everything.
• The Waning – Locked in a cage, Beatrix must survive to escape or be broken completely.
• Screechers – Mutant monsters and humans collide in the apocalyptic fallout of a burned world. Co-authored with Kevin J. Kennedy.
• Horror Anthologies

Drowning Inside

My mind has been completely hijacked. As usual, by itself.

I have had body dysmorphia and an eating disorder since probably the late 90s. Hell, they were standard issue being raised back then. But it all masked very nicely under being “healthy” or “losing weight”. I even went to get treatment for it years ago and managed to run the therapy sessions. I am so painfully high functioning with it that it took going completely bald for it to break me.

And it has broken me. It has taken over my mind in a way it never had opportunity before.

It feels like the past decade has been tagging one physical suffering for the next. I had a miserable pregnancy, rough birth, and terrible recovery that ate a couple years. Then I tore my hip, which took over two years to just get properly treated. I had a major surgery, and the fix only lasted a few months. Then I got sick. With whatever all this has been.

As that (allegedly) recedes, it leaves me feeling a bit like a broken husk.

My appearance has always been a source of fixation and distortion, creating a rift between my sense of self and physical vessel. It never looked how I wanted (not that it could with my cracked lens), so I hated it. Now, as my body has literally turned on me and itself, it feels like it is all backlash from the years of abuse I delivered to my flesh.

The health details and symptoms and side effects are incidental. Things have been managed enough to alleviate the daily misery and anxiety, leaving me in the aftermath. Better but not good. Between survive and thrive. Relieved enough to focus on the undesirable and annoying.

My eating disorder, my dysmorphia had been flowing like a current all along. I was aware of it, but no one else needed to be. It was pacified with enough restriction, dieting, starving, and compulsive exercise. I never realized how deep it ran until I was staring at a bald gremlin in the mirror, until my body dissolved into foreign landscape.

My body does not feel like mine. Ironic, since I always drew such an illusory line between myself and it. It does not look, feel, or function like mine. No longer in the killing me way but in a way that constantly grates on my nerves. I feel every thread in my clothes, every fold in my skin, every ache in my joints.

I feel consistently and constantly uncomfortable.

And with that static in my brain, I can’t think of much else. My body feels like a sinking ship. It feels like the water is rising, cresting my chin, flirting with my mouth, and I am about to be suffocated by my own flesh. And my mind is compelled to catalog and broadcast that in real time every moment of every day.

I want to work. I want to write. I want to experience. I want to escape. But my mind has been completely hijacked by these relentless sensations.

So I am working on it in specialized therapy. Therapy I could have used 10-20 years ago. I’m not new to therapy or treatment. I know how this works. As we trench up these pervasive, deep rooted, dusty issues, their true form and extent are revealed. The carefully constructed walls and masks are revoked, and it all get so much worse. The monster feels untamed and bigger than ever.

But that is the only way to actually deal with and change it.

I haven’t had to do a full, retrospective unpacking since my bipolar diagnosis over two decades ago. I have been spoiled into complacency, coasting by on functionality. Opening these wounds has me vulnerable, insecure, off balance. That fucked up, lost kid again.

I’m old enough to know THIS TOO SHALL PASS is the truest thing someone can say about life. But I’m also dumb enough to forget it every time the situation swallows me. Last year, I was barely struggling through. I would have given anything to get this far. Pragmatically, I can understand this is another step, another transitory thing. Yet my emotions mire me in the suffering.

I want my life back. I want my mind back. I want to reclaim all the space this is taking in me. Even if it’s just enough to get lost back in my stories again.

Christina Bergling

https://linktr.ee/chrstnabergling

Like my writing? Check out my books!

• Followers – You never know who is on the other side of the screen. Followers is a mystery and thriller that blends women’s fiction with horror.
• The Rest Will Come – Online dating would drive anyone to murder, especially Emma.
• Savages – Two survivors search the ruins for the last strain of humanity. Until the discovery of a baby changes everything.
• The Waning – Locked in a cage, Beatrix must survive to escape or be broken completely.
• Screechers – Mutant monsters and humans collide in the apocalyptic fallout of a burned world. Co-authored with Kevin J. Kennedy.
• Horror Anthologies

Tales from the Drive-in: It’s Me, Hi, I’m the Ghost, It’s Me

Another round with Tales from the Drive-in podcast! Are you a paranormal believer or not?

Horror makes the best friends. Christina Bergling, Eva Bordeaux, and the Mighty Quinn have been partners in horror for years. From horror movie festivals to fake blood photoshoots to epic Halloween costumes. They often work together to lose at horror trivia. Christina is a published horror author with 5 books and over 20 shorts. The Mighty Quinn is the creator of the Wyrd Wanderings show on YouTube. Eva is a movie addict and the best damn hype person on the internet.

Wyrd Wanderings is a ghost-hunting and paranormal adventure show that takes viewers from haunted woods in Tennessee, a prison museum on the East Coast, and lots of spooky places in New Orleans. Check it out to see where the Mighty Quinn ends up next.

Christina Bergling

https://linktr.ee/chrstnabergling

Like my writing? Check out my books!

• Followers – You never know who is on the other side of the screen. Followers is a mystery and thriller that blends women’s fiction with horror.
• The Rest Will Come – Online dating would drive anyone to murder, especially Emma.
• Savages – Two survivors search the ruins for the last strain of humanity. Until the discovery of a baby changes everything.
• The Waning – Locked in a cage, Beatrix must survive to escape or be broken completely.
• Screechers – Mutant monsters and humans collide in the apocalyptic fallout of a burned world. Co-authored with Kevin J. Kennedy.
• Horror Anthologies

Surviving 2023

I would open by commenting on what a rollercoaster of a year 2023 was. However, saying that four years in a row now takes the impact out of the sentiment. 2023 was a lot, but it appears this is just the tone since 2020.

Last calendar year concluded with me freshly hairless and mired in autoimmune and medical issues. That adventure devoured a lot of this year too. However, I saw progress in treatment and coping, shifting it from something smothering me to something standing menacingly beside me.

I have hair regrowth. I don’t feel like shit every moment I’m awake. Gladly, I take these victories.

In all honesty, health issues and other losses were consuming for a long time. Writing and even more the business of being an author took a backseat to survival.

And much of it was survival. More so than I was willing to acknowledge at the time. On the other side of the storm, I can truly see how dark the clouds were.

Yet I still accomplished things. Part of it was therapeutic. The rest might have been compulsion.

I did get published this year:

• “Hairs” on 96th of October
• “Double-edged” in Inside the Indie Horror World
• “Opportunity” in The Horror Collection: Monster Edition

“Hairs” is a special piece. I poured in all my Alopecia pain and trauma and made it horror (as if it wasn’t already). It was cathartic, and I needed it.

What I want, however, is another published novel. Not this year. I have three novels written–in various stages of editing. This is largely because I escaped into writing. I lived in the story then plunged into the next without a breath or a glance so I didn’t have to feel my life.

Again, survival.

With this editing backlog, I did skip NaNoWriMo this year. Since I was more functional by November, I repurposed the time for editing–NaNoEdiMo. It was ridiculously more challenging to quantify content reviewed and reworked versus pages written. I set my goal to go through two of my WIP novels–and I made it!

That progress leaves Invisible Girls ready for final polish (though I still have doubts about querying it), Monster Lane (for which “Opportunity” is a prequel) ready for critique group, and Savages 2 next in line.

Nothing may be “done”, but the progress must be acknowledged.

Now, I find myself torn. I want to write new works (I have a short and a novel knocking at my brain), but I need to get these WIPs out. And I’m not very good at alternating between the tasks.

I just end up with three unedited novels.

Perhaps the largest accomplishment of 2023 is that now, finally I feel capable of working again. I wrote, and I edited. Next, I can find my way back querying and promoting.

I had to set much aside and give myself a lot of grace to make it through the last year (+). What I find now is the optimism to be able to do more than just survive.

Christina Bergling

https://linktr.ee/chrstnabergling

Like my writing? Check out my books!

• Followers – You never know who is on the other side of the screen. Followers is a mystery and thriller that blends women’s fiction with horror.
• The Rest Will Come – Online dating would drive anyone to murder, especially Emma.
• Savages – Two survivors search the ruins for the last strain of humanity. Until the discovery of a baby changes everything.
• The Waning – Locked in a cage, Beatrix must survive to escape or be broken completely.
• Screechers – Mutant monsters and humans collide in the apocalyptic fallout of a burned world. Co-authored with Kevin J. Kennedy.
• Horror Anthologies

Tales from the Drive-in: Post CoFoH Podcast

Last month, I went to Colorado Festival of Horror and made some friends! Listen to us talk about the festival, horror in general, and my writing!

Christina Bergling

https://linktr.ee/chrstnabergling

Like my writing? Check out my books!

• Followers – You never know who is on the other side of the screen. Followers is a mystery and thriller that blends women’s fiction with horror.
• The Rest Will Come – Online dating would drive anyone to murder, especially Emma.
• Savages – Two survivors search the ruins for the last strain of humanity. Until the discovery of a baby changes everything.
• The Waning – Locked in a cage, Beatrix must survive to escape or be broken completely.
• Screechers – Mutant monsters and humans collide in the apocalyptic fallout of a burned world. Co-authored with Kevin J. Kennedy.
• Horror Anthologies

Telluride Horror Show 2023

I just got home from my 7th Telluride Horror Show (yes, I’m counting the 2020 fest streamed from home during the pandemic). A younger, drunker Christina used to cram in every possible screening and skid out of the weekend on her face the shell of a human. This old, post-illness, recovering Christina took an more moderate approach. But even with uncharacteristic rest and self-care, I did manage nine movies over three days.

And I had a great time.

The Movies

Favorite of the Fest

I attended my first Telluride Horror Show in 2017, and Never Hike Alone premiered there on that Friday the 13th. I loved the movie and started following and backing Womp Stomp Films. I had been watching hoping to see the sequel grace Telluride again. When another Friday the 13th premiere was announced, I was ecstatic.

It did not disappoint.

Never Hike Alone 2 takes threads from Never Hike Alone and Never Hike in the Snow and ties them up in a gruesome little bow, delivering the splatter we want with added depth. Never Hike Alone is a narrow narrative that brings us back to Camp Crystal Lake with foolish solo hiker, Kyle. In Kyle’s misadventure, Tommy Jarvis reenters the scene. Then in Never Hike in the Snow, the world expands, stepping back to before Kyle and an earlier murder, painting a picture of what serial loss does to families and the community over decades. Never Hike Alone 2 then hands the narrative baton from Kyle to Tommy. We see a chunk of the events in Never Hike Alone from Tommy’s perspective, weave in the grieving mother from Never Hike in the Snow, then jam on for a bloody climax.

Loved

If this year’s films had common theme, it could easily be “bad shit happening to children”. I don’t know what the fact that two of my favorites were the worst offenders says about me. But the Horror Show came hard for one of the remaining taboos in horror.

When Evil Lurks

In 2018, I saw Terrified at Telluride Horror Show. Loved it. This year, Demián Rugna returned with When Evil Lurks. Like Terrified, this is another story involving demonic possession. However, the manifestation and the world it happens in are different, unique. The movie starts twisted and depraved before punching the audience right in the throat. It got a touch shaky toward the end but not enough to unravel the story.

The Coffee Table

THE talk of the fest.

The Coffee Table is billed as a black comedy. NOPE. It is just black. Black, oppressive discomfort that captivates you in every frame. I kept waiting for the tilt, the turn into comedy, but it never came. However, the film is so well made, so compelling that I ultimately did not need it. I was unpacking it through my nightmares and into the next morning.

Infested (Vermines)

Arachnophobia traumatized me as a child. Scenes of spiders under toilets and in bowls of popcorn still live in my mind rent-free. Which is why I had to go see Infested. While the ending got a little loose and the commentary a little clunky, it is a fun watch. I jumped; I cringed; I imagined my earrings were little spider legs.

Liked

Not every movie punched me right in the feels (or stomach). Plenty of them were entertaining without being perfect.

Where the Devil Roams

I have been following Adams Family Pictures since The Deeper You Dig and Hellbender at previous Telluride Horror Shows and again at Six Feet Under Horror Film Festival. I adore their dark, quirky style and adorable family. Yet Where the Devil Roams didn’t land as well for me. While the filmmaking and effects have evolved, the storytelling is a bit convoluted. I spent too much time being confused.

Frogman

Frogman is wild. It is apparent that the filmmakers are new to found footage in the amount of shaking and static applied. While the movie could benefit from an aggressive edit, the characters have great chemistry, and it is a super entertaining watch. When you can keep your eyes onscreen.

Suitable Flesh

There is nothing like a Lovecraftian body swapping tale. I forgave a lot of ridiculousness because the events happen in Arkham. Suitable Flesh is not a watch for quality but instead for wild, spinning sex scenes and gratuitous violence.

Eh

While every movie was not a hit for me, none where a total miss either. I didn’t see anything I hated. However, there were some for which I had critiques.

If the fest had a secondary film theme (besides child trauma), it would have been continuity issues. Multiple films came to wobbling conclusion violating their own rules or leaving something unexplained or just ending.

It’s a Wonderful Knife

Christmas for Halloween is always rough, but there is often a holiday movie at the fest. It’s a Wonderful Knife plays off (surprise, surprise) It’s a Wonderful Life with a slasher twist. However, the movie comes across a bit sloppy and Hallmark-y. It is a bit disappointing after seeing Tragedy Girls from director Tyler MacIntyre.

Vincent Must Die

Vincent Must Die has a great premise. People just start randomly assaulting Vincent with building violence. However, it seems like the filmmakers didn’t know how to consummate that idea. By the end, I felt like they were trying to say something significant and I had just missed it.

The Fest

Telluride is GORGEOUS! The weather year to year is really roulette, but this year, we landed on perfect, idyllic autumn. Abundant sunshine (according to my weather app), aspen leaves so bright they looked on fire, even temperate nights.

We went on our annual hike, this time selecting a loop around Mountain Village. For being a “popular” trail, it was horribly marked, and it took three apps to navigate us successfully. Since we started at the mid-point of the gondola, it included a bizarre trek through the village, shops, construction zones. However, it was gentle and beautiful. I feel more intimately familiar with Telluride now that I have hiked up grassy blue runs and over frozen snow machines. Like being behind the scenes of the resort.

At this point, this pilgrimage is steeped in tradition with our “family”. I have been going to the Horror Show long enough that our annual trip feels like home. We know the places. We have tips and tricks. I have friends and connections who I look forward to seeing each year.

With explosive growth over the years and post-COVID, the culture of the Telluride Horror Show is changing. Everyone is still super nice. Filmmakers are still very accessible. It is just less rowdy. Gone is the wall-to-wall mass of humans at Last Call, fogging up the bar windows. Tamed are the late night screenings, cheers and whoops exchanged for more pious observation.

Telluride Horror Show is growing up. The same part of me that misses drinking misses the more rambunctious energy. But the same part of me that requires sobriety realizes this is probably for the best.

Christina Bergling

https://linktr.ee/chrstnabergling

Like my writing? Check out my books!

• Followers – You never know who is on the other side of the screen. Followers is a mystery and thriller that blends women’s fiction with horror.
• The Rest Will Come – Online dating would drive anyone to murder, especially Emma.
• Savages – Two survivors search the ruins for the last strain of humanity. Until the discovery of a baby changes everything.
• The Waning – Locked in a cage, Beatrix must survive to escape or be broken completely.
• Screechers – Mutant monsters and humans collide in the apocalyptic fallout of a burned world. Co-authored with Kevin J. Kennedy.
• Horror Anthologies

“Hairs” – Reading Body Horror

I’m back! I have been avoiding the camera since losing my hair. But here I am, reading horror I wrote inspired by said loss. It then, of course, gets so much worse.

You can read my short “Hairs” in its entirety for free at the 96th of October.

Christina Bergling

https://linktr.ee/chrstnabergling

Like my writing? Check out my books!

• Followers – You never know who is on the other side of the screen. Followers is a mystery and thriller that blends women’s fiction with horror.
• The Rest Will Come – Online dating would drive anyone to murder, especially Emma.
• Savages – Two survivors search the ruins for the last strain of humanity. Until the discovery of a baby changes everything.
• The Waning – Locked in a cage, Beatrix must survive to escape or be broken completely.
• Screechers – Mutant monsters and humans collide in the apocalyptic fallout of a burned world. Co-authored with Kevin J. Kennedy.
• Horror Anthologies

“Hairs” – Short Story Release

Losing my hair last year was traumatic. Even with the medication coursing through me and hair slooooooooowly returning, it is still every day. Waiting for me in the mirror.

I write horror because that is what comes out of my brain. Nightmares and worst case scenarios. To no surprise, I processed this life event by writing horror.

“Hairs” is a deeply personal story for me. I poured my pain into the premise and the beginning then let the ugly thing sprout legs and sprint into the horrific. I cried as I wrote it and when I read it. Yet, by the end, I do feel better, more settled.

Find “Hairs” on 96th of October, and let me know what you think of this slice of my hell.

There is more hair in the sink. There is always more hair in the sink. And in the shower. And in the drain. And in my hands. And everywhere. Tumbleweeds of hair across the tile. Webs of hair embedded in the carpet.

And I feel like I lose a piece of myself in every strand.

http://96thofoctober.com/articles/hairs/

Christina Bergling

https://linktr.ee/chrstnabergling

Like my writing? Check out my books!

• Followers – You never know who is on the other side of the screen. Followers is a mystery and thriller that blends women’s fiction with horror.
• The Rest Will Come – Online dating would drive anyone to murder, especially Emma.
• Savages – Two survivors search the ruins for the last strain of humanity. Until the discovery of a baby changes everything.
• The Waning – Locked in a cage, Beatrix must survive to escape or be broken completely.
• Screechers – Mutant monsters and humans collide in the apocalyptic fallout of a burned world. Co-authored with Kevin J. Kennedy.
• Horror Anthologies

Redefining Success

The past week, I have been reading (listening to) Inside the Indie Horror World. Narcissistically, yes, my essay “Double-edged” is included, and I wanted to hear my own words read to me. However, the book is full of pieces from many other authors (some I know, some I didn’t), and it really has me thinking.

It is no secret (since I publicly publish it here on this blog and on my socials) that I have been struggling lately. With my health, with life in general, and (for the purposes of this blog) with my writing. In “Double-edged”, I talk about the ways being a published author is not exactly what I expected or dreamed about. As I discuss in “Compromise“, I have been grinding at writing since I got published; then I just broke.

But this book, all these insights from other authors in the same world, has me adding more shades of gray into my black/white mentality. It has me redoing exercises in my head that I did early in my career. Specifically, I am ruminating on how I am defining my success. I am mulling over what I want in the short term, right now in this unexpected time.

My main, grand goal for my writing has not changed. Publish things and be read. That’s it. However, I think my mind had constructed this linear, ascending path for my career. Big then bigger, more then MORE. Taking a step back, I don’t know that my career needs to be cumulative. I don’t think I need to achieve arbitrary milestones.

Publish and be read.

When I decided to compromise with myself, the words returned. In force. I have plenty to write. I need to reassess and pivot on what happens after it’s done. I need to start fresh on the publication and promotion front.

What do I consider success there?

Publication is being published, obviously. But perhaps I need to include a positive, supportive relationship with my publisher. Perhaps finding a good fit is the success.

Promotion equals sales, again obviously. Promotions have changed since Savages. And those changes have frustrated and discouraged me. I miss finding and communicating with readers the way I used to. Perhaps success is finding new ways to connect with readers and community that I don’t hate. Perhaps success is getting creative without having to pay for every bump in exposure or spend countless hours creating materials.

Success will be finding sustainable things that don’t stress me out and dry up my inspiration.

Inside the Indie Horror World reminded me that those things are out there, that the industry is never just one way. There is no one path to one success. It is something I’ve always known, but after taking a few hits, I needed to be reminded. I needed a mental reset.

Now, onward. I have 2.5 novels that aren’t going to finish themselves…

Christina Bergling

https://linktr.ee/chrstnabergling

Like my writing? Check out my books!

• Followers – You never know who is on the other side of the screen. Followers is a mystery and thriller that blends women’s fiction with horror.
• The Rest Will Come – Online dating would drive anyone to murder, especially Emma.
• Savages – Two survivors search the ruins for the last strain of humanity. Until the discovery of a baby changes everything.
• The Waning – Locked in a cage, Beatrix must survive to escape or be broken completely.
• Screechers – Mutant monsters and humans collide in the apocalyptic fallout of a burned world. Co-authored with Kevin J. Kennedy.
• Horror Anthologies

Myselves

My mind has been a shifting and unfamiliar labyrinth lately. I used to understand my brain chemistry, defective though it may be. The rollercoaster track was familiar. However, events and illnesses have shaken everything up. I have plunged into a new darkness, groping and feeling along the walls to find my way.

With that, my writing rhythm has been shattered. I have had stories pour out of me. Then I have had the words, even thoughts in general, dry up completely. As I talked about in Compromise, I am trying to just go with it.

Since the novel inspiration has abandoned me for the moment, I turned the words to therapy homework.

My therapist told me I need to integrate my self with my body, creating one holistic me. However, when I was struggling through a hike, I realized that the fragmentation of my self into myself and its shell is functional. It has been self-preservation.

I don’t know when exactly I compartmentalized my body from my larger self, severed the idea and made it an other. Likely, the crack started and spread when my eating disorder took root in my mind. A tumor with tendrils burrowing and branching into the deepest parts of me. It happened quietly, a trench opening under that dark ocean of poison.

When my body was never what I wanted or what I was told it should be, I changed from a part of me to this defective, unsatisfactory thing I was forced to reside within. This toxic idea was just another damaging symptom of the disease and served no purpose but to make it worse.

As the years passed, it wasn’t just appearance and horrendous self-image. There was injury. There was illness. My body came with increasing limitations and shortcomings. It became harder to live in the shell. Whereas deciding my body was something else because I didn’t like it made it worse, separating myself from its frustrating and disappointing home let me take a step back from the pain.

My body had the broken hip that took running from me and kept me writhing in pain for years. I didn’t give up. My body is the ugly bald freak with hideous tufts of wayward hair. I am not that gross. My body is ill with relentless new and unexplained symptoms. That’s not what’s wrong with me.

I’m not that dreaded reflection waiting for me in the mirror. That’s just where I am stuck living.
It has given me a degree of separation from all of these things that make me miserable. I am already trapped within them, bound up in their side effects and constraints. Thinking of it happening to just my body reduces the ownership. I can hate my body without having to roll my full self into the package.

Coping mechanism.

But is it helping?

On the one side, my brain started doing this for a reason. It offers a degree of pragmatism. It insulates me from what my body is. This allows me to be the victim in the dynamic, allows me to baby myself and turn all my rage and angst at my body. Because there is nothing else to blame in these situations.

Yet, on the other, it turns me against my body. All of my negative feelings are poured onto my own flesh. I do not care for my body because it is the enemy in all this. It does not do what I ask. It consistently fails me. I punish my body for all of it. I am burning down my own house.

So, at this point in my journey (hopefully halfway through), what should I do?

I have hated my body for decades, and it has made me miserable and insane. But it has also elevated me out of the bottom of these depressions. Do I keep myself guarded, hiding my most tender self? Or do I finally integrate and face what I would need to accept? I honestly don’t know which is better.

I fear it would take a lot for my body to forgive me after all these years of blame and abuse. Often, I think all that is happening with my physical body and health is a final revolt on the part of the flesh. I never appreciated or cared for it, so now it gives me what I deserve.

But even in this musing, I put myself and my body at odds. I have wrong it; it has punished me. If I am ever going to attempt another approach, my brain needs to break that binary.

Can we be one? Can I truly adopt these problems, make them mine rather than what is happening to me, and care for them?

It feels like surrender, acquiescence. Even though my efforts have amounted to nothing in years, it feels like giving up, and it feels like things will get worse if I do. I don’t want to accept living in this body, but will it make it easier if I do?

I need to try something because this is currently not sustainable. As my body (or I) encounter more challenges and physical setbacks, I can’t turn more aggressively on myself. My body won’t give me peace lately, so maybe I need to make peace with my body.

Christina Bergling

https://linktr.ee/chrstnabergling

Like my writing? Check out my books!

• Followers – You never know who is on the other side of the screen. Followers is a mystery and thriller that blends women’s fiction with horror.
• The Rest Will Come – Online dating would drive anyone to murder, especially Emma.
• Savages – Two survivors search the ruins for the last strain of humanity. Until the discovery of a baby changes everything.
• The Waning – Locked in a cage, Beatrix must survive to escape or be broken completely.
• Screechers – Mutant monsters and humans collide in the apocalyptic fallout of a burned world. Co-authored with Kevin J. Kennedy.
• Horror Anthologies