Tabitha Grace Challis – Page 2 – Modern Creative Life

August 27, 2017

Sunday Sensations: An Open Letter to Chester Bennington

On July 20th, the frontman for the band Linkin Park, Chester Bennington committed suicide. As someone who felt so very personally connected to his music, I wanted to dedicate this month’s column to him. While Bennington had always been open about his struggles with addiction and depression, it was a shock to everyone (including myself).

Dear Chester,

I know you can’t really read this letter now. Nor do I harbor the delusion that if this letter would have been written sooner and read it that it would have saved you. I grieve for your loss in such a way that I need to express the impact you made on my life. I hope it may help someone else.

I remember in vivid detail the first time I contemplated suicide when I was in high school. One day I was sitting in the bathroom, looking at a bottle of bleach under the sink, and the thought occurred to me. I didn’t have a terrible childhood. My parents loved me, I had a strong support system and I was extremely happy. I didn’t know where the thought had come from and I tried to move on from it.

I knew about depression as a young adult, but never thought it applied to me. Again, I had so much going for me. College was some of the best times of my life, but I was depressed. There was a weight to things that I couldn’t explain. Some days everything felt so hard. Even if I had reasons to be happy, I wasn’t. It wasn’t until I wrote a paper for a grad school class that it occured to me that I might be depressed. I can’t even remember the focus of the paper, but I remember my professor wrote in the margin of it, “do you think you may be depressed?”

My life took a crazy nose dive after that grad school paper moment. My relationship with my family was terrible, I lost a boyfriend, and everything felt terrible. Sorrow closed in all around me. I nearly lost my job because I couldn’t function. I couldn’t tell you the number the times I thought of suicide. I felt so alone. So lost. At the darkest moment, I found Linkin Park’s music. Suddenly, there was a voice and words to describe exactly how I felt. I was no longer alone. Your music was an oasis when everything felt so hard.

Depression lies, but music heals. I firmly believe that God gave mankind music because it has such a powerful effect on us. The right song, the right time can mean the difference between life and death. There have been so many times where music has given me words when I felt like I had no voice. I quickly put you on the list of my all-time favorite singers. Linkin Park was not the kind of music I’d normally listen to, but I listened over and over again.

While your music wasn’t the only thing that pulled me out of my depression, it helped more than I could ever say. Your pain eased mine.

Over 12 years later and Linkin Park became a back burner thought. I had no idea there was a new album. I was wrapped up in my own life. When news came of your suicide I cried. I had no idea the struggles you had gone through. Tender strings were severed so very early for you. Very few things can repair that damage.

I still have some bouts with depression. Days where staying in bed is the only thing I can do. Other days where the only feeling I can feel is not caring. I don’t know your pain, but I know how pain works. It’s not easy.

One of those new songs, “One More Light” has the following lyrics:

Who cares if one more light goes out?
In a sky of a million stars,
It flickers, flickers.
Who cares when someone’s time runs out,
If a moment is all we are?
We’re quicker, quicker.
Who cares if one more light goes out?
Well I do.

I cared. You helped me and I cared. I’m sorry your light went out. I hope you know it meant something while it was burning.

About the author: Tabitha Grace Challis

Tabitha is a social media strategist, writer, blogger, and professional geek. Among her published works are the children’s books Jack the Kitten is Very Brave and Machu the Cat is Very Hungry, both published under the name Tabitha Grace Smith. A California girl (always and forever) she now lives in Maryland with her husband, son, and a collection of cats, dogs, and chickens. Find out more about her on her Amazon author page or follow her on Twitter: @Tabz.

July 16, 2017

Sunday Sensations: On Chickens

Forgive me, chickens, for I have sinned. It’s been about two minutes since I last fed you and now you follow me like some kind of modern-day Moses. Please, don’t believe in me, I will only let you down. I have no more of life-giving substance. You’ll probably starve.

In my defense, I didn’t want you in my life. You see your adopted father, my dearest husband, is the country-farm-wanting one. I live in a world that’s entirely gray and cement. I pine for skyscrapers while he just pines for the sky. City girl isn’t just a cute nickname, it’s my way of living.

Despite all this, you peep peep’d into my heart. While you were boxed in our bathroom for three months I learned that your tiny chick bodies so fragile. I nursed and cradled each of you as tenderly as if you were my own. I wept for the ones who didn’t make it.

You went through an awkward stage after the fuzzy little chicks. Your body and feathers didn’t quite match. Yet, still I loved you. We’d bonded. Well, I bonded. You mostly just still wanted me for food.

Now, fully grown, we’re counting down the days for you to lay eggs. Meanwhile, you still follow me about the yard as if I, and I alone, am here to save you. Yet, I know you do it for anyone. You hop over the fence at the sound of a human voice. I lie to myself and say it’s unique to me.

Truth is, my dear chickens, you’re not the smartest animals I’ve owned. I know BBC Earth says chickens are smart, even empathetic, but I have yet to see this displayed in you. Your first spot for looking for food was a three large plastic fertilizer bags. While I gave you the benefit of the doubt, thinking there must be a plethora of bugs on said fertilizer, I walked over to find none.

There was also the time where, instead of going into your coop, you fluttered up to roost on the roof. This may have been permissible if one of your number hadn’t been brutally murdered the day before. You really need to learn about protecting yourselves.

My favorite is, upon escaping your run, one of your number just ran around and around the outside of it, begging for the food inside. The fact being, the door to the run was wide open. You just chose not to go inside.

There are over 19 billion of you on the planet – a fact that staggers me. How you flew into my heart staggers me even more. I look forward to seeing you every day. Much like a happy mother, I stare down at you in your coop every night. Watching you in your run is as soothing as a fish tank. You peck, hunt, peck again on the search for your one true love — food. There’s little more to your life than that and a lot less to worry about.

I like the little noises you make. I had no idea that they could be so different from each other. There’s a near-growling sound you make when our dogs run up to you. A happy little trill that our blue ameraucana makes (though, with the puffy face she has, she looks more like a stereotypical British Col. Mustard). There’s the happy calls you make to each other as you roam the yard every afternoon.

It’s weird to think that I’m so close to something that usually winds up on my dinner plate. I know it’s odd to label some animals “friend” and others “food,” but it’s the way of the world, especially for a city girl. Yet, you’re so hilarious and fun to watch. Plus, I bonded. Much like you did with food.

So, forgive me chickens, for not providing for you in the way you’d like to be accustomed, but I’ll try better tomorrow. Backyard farming may not have been my thing, but I’m a little more convinced now about this pining for the open sky thing. As long as there’s a Starbucks within driving distance.

About the author: Tabitha Grace Challis

June 18, 2017

Sunday Sensations: An Introduction

Even before a lyric is spoken there’s a visible reaction in my friends. The opening song of Hamilton ekes out of the worst sound system possible, my friend’s iPhone flipped up on the table between the three of us. Suddenly the random nothingness that we were engaged with stops. Despite the terrible, slightly tinny sound there’s power in those opening notes. It compels us to stop and then invites us to sing along.

The sensation of that moment was palpable. Relegate it as a fad or passing fancy if you must, but that opening two seconds of music siren-called us into another world. What writer can’t admit to wanting that ability to, with a single piece of work, command that much power?

Over 25 years ago I decided to become a writer. Books have always been important to me. The idea that writers could make black marks on white pieces of paper and it would have an emotional, intellectual, and physical sway over their reader was fascinating to me. When I became serious about my writing, I embarked on a journey of truly understanding sensations. It seemed appropriate to me then to entitle my Sunday column “Sunday Sensations” as a tribute not only to my journey in writing, but a reminder to myself of the nine-year-old girl tucked up in the corner of a room thoroughly wrapped up in a book.

“Show. Don’t tell.” This is a mantra countless writing teachers droned at me throughout the years. Yet, sensations squirm away from me, unwilling to be pinned down. Often, I think it’s sheer desperation that allows me to hit on how to describe something in a way that will impact a reader. Writing sensations require much thought and the ability to see outside oneself. This is the task of the writer.

So, there I sit trying to compel the magic that has entranced me for years. There’s the soft scratch of my puppy’s nails on our wood floor, but that’s not something everyone has heard. How do you describe that? Where would you start? Cliches come to the front of the mind first, but must be systematically rejected. Next, you try to think of new cliches. Those seem even worse than the tried and true cliches. At this point, you’re wishing that there was never a puppy to describe at all, much less the problem of the sound of its nails.

You turn to music, poetry, art (or possibly watch three hours of infomercials) just to find the right words. Two or three times you think you get there, but reject all attempts ultimately. There’s a vexing frustration that roils and boils. Yet, you press on, determined to describe that sound in a way that invokes emotion in the part of your reader whether they like it or not. The thesaurus and dictionary are consulted and come up dry. You spend more time than you’d like to admit on Facebook. Every life decision that has lead you to this point is reconsidered.

And then, inspiration strikes. The words flow, the description is made and all is peace, joy and harmony once more.

Until the next scene.

That’s the funny thing about the things we often call magic. Movie magic, book magic, or even the magic of the way your favorite shampoo makes your hair feel — they are actually a lot of hard work wrapped into a single, effortless-looking package. So maybe that’s where the magic comes in, where us music-makers and dreamers of the dream make all that work looks so easy. From a musical like Hamilton to my next blog post, we’re all searching for that ever-elusive sensation that will thrill and delight our audience. Here’s to hard work and here’s to finding it.

About the author: Tabitha Grace Challis

March 19, 2017

Dear Blinking Cursor by Tabitha Grace Challis

Dear Blinking Cursor,

Yes, I see you. I know that you sit there waiting. “Great things are to come,” you seem to telegraph as if you were an 18th century Morse code. My head spins with stories. They have since I was tadpole-like in my ability. I have scattered words from there to here and yet, you still blink.

I’m no Euripides. No one will probably be reading this tangled web of beautiful lies I spin thousands of years from now. I will not be quoted and misquoted on Facebook like Mark Twain when all that’s left of me is dust.

And yet, you blink. Eager to be fed.

Do you not know I have a kid who needs another glass of milk? A husband with lips made just for kissing? Do you not see my hands full of bags of cat food?

You relentlessly wait. Wearing at my mind. I close my eyes and yet you are there. I’m renaming you Godot. Curse you, cursor, and your all-the-time-in-the-world stare at me.

Sometimes I imagine that you’re the entrance to a black hole. If I could just unlock you, the words would come out on their own. It’d be so easy. Less effort. Less feeling like I was letting you down. Tap into the deep part of my brain, o blinking one. Release the wild things.

I’m so tired of disappointing. I picked up this perfection mantle at age 10 and have been unable to drop it. It is tattered, frayed and worn. I want to do it all, be it all, see it all, taste it all. Yet it leads to nothing.

The whispers I ignore tell me that I’m a writer. I was meant to tell those stories. But the siren’s call (the loud kind, not the irresistible one) of life’s essentials pulls me away from you, cursor. There’s piles of laundry to tackle, dishes to clean, a dog to wash, bills to pay, and floors to vacuum.

Life happened while I was busy making plans to return to you.

Don’t give up on me, please. There are tales that I need to tell you of chickens that live on the roofs of odd buildings. I long to lose myself to chasing you across the page. I ache for there to be more and more and more words that follow you like Orpheus chased Eurydice. Were that my ending were not so tragic.

I like to think I’d give up so much just to please you. I’d sacrifice time and effort and energy. Yet, I’m spent. There are days when I can barely lift my thought process beyond survival.

Could you wait? Or will this be like the pot of water that’s been left to boil on the stove too long? Empty. Charred. Will my words burn away and be of no use to anyone? Will you keep blinking your slow, patient S.O.S. that calls to me? I want to be like my author heroes. I want to stick to a page until the story unfolds. I want to chase you from here to the end. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is so weak. I binge watch old TV shows as you sit in a sea of white. I play games on my phone to drown out the noise of your silent requests.

Don’t lose hope, little cursor. Together we will do great things. Perhaps we will attack them like they did on D-Day. A full-scale invasion will march forth and you will not have blinked in vain.

Too much?

Then I’ll be truthful.

Please wait. I’m coming. In the snatches of time before falling asleep. In between the rush and bustle of the every day, you and I will dance. I will find the quiet times to put thoughts to words, inaction to action, and magic to paper.

And it will be beautiful.