Skyla Dawn Cameron

Feb 16 2016

Becoming

This has been my week of Doing Scary Things, this blog post included.

One of the things I’m drawn to in stories, both the ones I write and ones I consume, involve characters having to become someone else in order to survive. The most literal example in my work would be Zara Lain.

Exhumed contained three flashbacks: the first follows newly-turned Ana as she hunts the living humans in her old home, ending up at last in the bedroom where her husband (and betrayer) sleeps with his new wife. The final flashback is when Ana has fully embraced being Zara Lai(ghea)n in 1739, no longer the broken woman she was but now the heroine we (really awesome people with excellent taste) all know and love.

The middle flashback, though, was her turning point, after she slaughtered everyone and had her revenge but knows she’s lost everything she once was:

Ana is gone and I don’t know who I am. What I am, beyond a monster.

But something lingers under my skin, pushing, pushing. Something urges my eyes open, forces my head to lift. I look at the canopy of trees, at the stripe of black that is the night sky. My heart is torn, chest ripped in two, hurting so badly that it surprises me the times I glance down and see it still looking whole. A sob wracks me, anguished cry tearing up to my lips, and my hands clutch my smooth belly, where a babe once grew before being snuffed out.

I could die. It would make no difference to anyone. But still, something is there, a thread so deep I can scarce comprehend it that simply says: No.

No, you will not die here.

It is no god. No devil. No spirit. Perhaps it is my own insanity, but still, it whispers to me.

No.

And then the rain comes.

It patters down, beating leaves and striking my face, rolling down my forehead and into my closed eyes, tickling my parted lips. I let it wash over me, soak me, weigh down my bloody clothes like I’m drowning in it.

I am lost. I am tiny and broken and I can’t imagine a world in which I don’t hurt so deeply, so constantly. I am a weak girl, not yet eighteen, who let herself be betrayed, who could not fight off a vampire when he descended upon her, who relied on her husband and believed the only life she would ever have was as his wife.

But the whispering continues, faint in the darkness. I can no longer be Ana. I can no longer be this demon. I can no longer be a damaged little girl nursing her wounds and contemplating death.

I have to be more than that. And while I do not yet know my name, I know who I need to become.

Although she’s my polar opposite in many ways, this is why Zara’s always meant so much to me. Her ability to become someone else in order to save herself helped save me when I needed it.

We adapt and we change all the time to better exist in this world–we’re forced to, interacting with people, learning to navigate life. This is one of the reasons the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot appealed to me so much, to play Lara as she realizes she won’t escape Yamatai and save her best friend unless she becomes someone else–someone less squeamish, more brutal, more daring; a believer and a killer:

In our darkest moments, when life flashes before us, we find something. Something that keeps us going. Something that pushes us. When all seemed lost, I found a truth.

Some wounds leave us scarred but able to continue on. But other times, other traumas, cleave too deep. When you lose your future, part of your identity–when you have no other way of continuing on–you sometimes have to become someone else.

I realized a few months ago that I wasn’t going to survive.

We talk about depression as a chemical imbalance, which it is, but it also has triggers. And when you’ve lost everything you’ve ever wanted, and your life is over, what the chemicals are doing in your head is irrelevant; no amount of drugs, even if I was inclined to take them, was going to fix that. I had no hope, no aspirations (I still don’t). For eight months I spent 80% of my waking hours in tears, every day. I didn’t want to get out of bed, or wake up, or breathe; I didn’t want to be alive.

I knew time was running out and depression was going to win. I wasn’t going to survive because there was no part of me left that wanted to.

Several years ago, I was nothing. Literally. Someone spent a decade taking me apart piece by piece until I was a half-person, unrecognizable, and so deeply broken after a trauma that I had to become someone else (like Zara).

So I did. Bit by bit I made a new person. It’s a surprisingly powerful position to be in (regardless of the Hindu accuracy of that post, it’s an excellent point), when you are nothing and have nothing and get to decide who you become. I picked traits of mine I’d always thought–been told–were negatives and learned how to twist them into virtues (with Aunt Judy’s help). I became someone I liked.

But things happened last year that this girl I liked wasn’t going to make it through. And she has to go away now.

I still don’t want to say goodbye to her, or to her hopes and dreams even if they’re all dead now. I mourn her. I’ll miss her. Others will too, and those not super close to me will likely drift away as they don’t find the same Skyla they used to know. But I hit the Depression Event Horizon, and she wasn’t coming back from that.

So I’m becoming someone else. Rebuilding piece by piece, deciding what characteristics might fit and what to discard, picking the qualities that will let me survive and deciding who I want to be. It’s an uncomfortable process, like my skin doesn’t fit right; a physical process as much as it is a mental one. I’m a little colder, a little more distant, a little less patient while I work out becoming the girl who will live through this.

The hardest thing in this world is to live in it. So it’s okay, if you ever find yourself in a position like that, to become someone else to survive. The thing you have to realize, the thing I keep reminding myself of when I have no hope, is that you never know how your story is going to end. I look at the things in my life I never in a million years believed would happen–most recently, that I spent the holidays with family who only learned I existed less than two years ago and who have welcomed me as part of their pack–and I am entirely certain, I can promise you, that you just can never know.

But you have to be here to see it.

It’s okay to change and adapt. It’s okay to become someone else. It’s okay to mourn who you were.

It’s okay to survive.

I don’t know yet what I’m becoming, but I think at least I’ll be here to find out–and that’s more than I had a few months ago.

Tomb Raider We Become 1 Tomb Raider We Become 2 Tomb Raider We Become 3

Feb 02 2016

Every Step Matters: The MS Walk & Who I Walk For

A couple of years ago I did the MS Walk (I think I raised about $700 or so?). I didn’t the following year as that was when my own illness hit, and didn’t last year because everyone died and it was very stressful, but I’m committed again for the 2016 one.

You might remember this picture from the 2013 walk:

MS Walk Shirt — There are my boobs front and center for you. You’re welcome.

I blurred that out to protect her privacy because other than to a handful of people, she’s never come out before publicly. This is something she’s lived with for ten years and she didn’t want to be treated any differently because of it, so I remained silent and I crossed my fingers in the hope that saying “hey, help my nameless friend” would be enough to get the support of others.

She has dealt with multiple sclerosis for a decade. Not just the progressively fewer spoons but the knowledge that one day there will be none left (although she’ll always have knives). Through example, she has taught me how to be stronger, better, braver, and how to face terrible truths not because of a lack of fear but in spite of it.

For a myriad of reasons, she’s finally come out now in a post I urge you to read and consider.

One of those reasons is because the way this disease operates, chipping away at her bit by bit, there is a clock ticking over her head. As it progresses, she’ll reach a point in the future where she won’t be able write that post and say what she wants to say–hell, MS might even cut the signal from her brain to her lungs and she’ll stop breathing suddenly and without warning.

The thing is, I want to stop that clock.

I firmly and totally believe I can stop that clock.

There are huge strides being made right now with regards to MS research. Seriously. Every single day we’re that much closer to the cure. Canada has the highest rates of multiple sclerosis of any country, and research being done in this very country with money raised by MS Walks hold the promise of not only stopping the clock over Dina’s head but maybe reversing it.

It’s her fight, but I’m in her corner, now and for always (because she’s my Platonic Murder Wife). This year’s goal is $500. Every dollar counts, so please support me in my walk to cure MS.

Dina James is the only person who has given me hope in the past year when I was at my worst and had nothing–now I want to give that back to her. She has saved my life before.

I believe together we can save hers.

Jan 31 2016

Forty-Year-Old Heartbreak

One day, when you’re receiving the deceased’s personal effects, dismantling a life box by box, you’re handed a pile of stuffed manila envelopes to do with what you will. Letters, cards, and photos of old lovers. One stands out, marked with “Memories – R. <3” and, at first glance, yes, the contents seem to be from someone named “R____”

But it’s something else that catches your eye.

An old-fashioned cardstock framed photo, the school class kind, and this doesn’t look like the “R” from the rest of the photos and letters. With the pictures are old newspaper cartoon cutouts about love along with three letters in envelopes.

It’s voyeuristic to look, but it was left in your care, so you give it a quick once over.

The first two envelopes and letters are old but smooth, dated July ’73. Nothing overtly personal, just catching up over the summer, but end with a boy promising his love forever.

Then there’s the third.

The envelope and letter within have been crumpled, probably repeatedly, and only smooth and crisp now because they’ve been tucked away for forty years between two flat surfaces. It’s a brief letter dated Aug ’73, tone shifted from friendly to short, revealing it will be the last one because the writer has gotten engaged to another girl.

The final line is “I know I’ve been unfaithful and I hope someday you may forgive me.”

The pieces slide together then–you remember this story of the boy she loved, who couldn’t wait when they were apart for a few months and cheated on her, and how that betrayal changed everything. She relayed it when you couldn’t see through the cloud of grief and rage at having been betrayed by a boy yourself, a moment of understanding.

And now you hold a tangible piece of that, forty-year-old heartbreak.

I talk a lot about death now (I’m really fun at parties).

Unsurprising, I guess, not only because I write about death a lot, but I’m a very depressed person for whom suicidal thoughts have been a recurrence for twenty years. But losing people you’ve grown up, whose constant support has always been there, drives one’s mortality home even after living with it for all these years.

Especially when you’re holding a piece of someone’s life in your hands, even in the form of a crumpled letter. Something that was cried over, hated, probably tossed out, but later retrieved and kept. For forty-two years.

The same time I was writing this blog post, I was messaging with a writer friend who knew Aunt Judy. She mentioned how she ended up with her friend’s old journals when the woman passed, and how periodically she’d have dreams about her. Each time she’d pull out a journal, stop when she felt compelled to, and what she read left her feeling like her friend was there speaking to her again.

Maybe it’s the benzos talking, but I felt something, holding this little pile of tucked away treasures no one other than their owner held for many years. Some resonance, some message even if it hasn’t quite clicked yet. People break our hearts, and part of us holds onto that for the remainder of our lives, and then we’re gone and someone else is left pondering the pieces remaining.

In the movie version, this is when the music swells and the heroine has her epiphany, rushes outside, and runs to the hero’s house–probably in the rain although her makeup is still pristine–and “Something I Need” plays along with her confession about how life is short and this is what she wants, then they kiss and the credits roll–

Except in real life, the heroine has only spoken to the hero for ten minutes and is pretty sure he doesn’t remember her name, and if she heads out in this weather, she’ll probably freeze to death anyway. There’s no movie, no soundtrack, no sudden chill as if a message is being passed between the living and the dead, no meaning but what I bring to it.

I wish I could ask her if she ever did forgive him.

Jan 15 2016

Stuff I Liked in 2015: Games Edition

Last list! ICYMI: TV/Movies and Books.

1. The Last of Us

TheLastofUs So I know I’m behind, but I JUST got a PS3 (I know, I know, not even a PS4, but I can’t afford next gen stuff). And I mostly got it for The Last of Us and even if every other game I played on it sucked (which they haven’t), it would still be worth it.

Father/daughter stories aren’t usually my thing, probably because it rarely rings true for me (look, I have issues), but this got me in a way few things can. I connect better with games than I do a lot of other mediums in part because I am thrust directly in the place of the protagonist, and this one left me frequently weepy. It has a tremendous amount of emotion, brought to life with excellent writing, extraordinary voice acting, and beautiful graphics.

Twenty years after the zombie apocalypse started and his young daughter died, Joel is tasked with smuggling a young girl Ellie to a group called the Fireflies. Ellie has survived a zombie bite somehow and humanity’s best shot at a cure.

The Last of Us has a lot in common with typical zombie media, including Humans Are Worse Than the Zombies, but that emotional core of Joel and Ellie bonding that really makes it stand out. I cheered for them, I cried for them, I screamed incoherently at the screen for them, I had to stop playing and take a chill pill because I was starting to get stressed out, and by the time Joel finds Ellie after she’s killed [spoiler, you know, in the restaurant that’s on fire] and reassures her with, “Oh, baby girl. It’s okay.” I just completely fucking lost it.

It’s about losing and finding family, about letting people in, about how grief can blind us. And Ellie is the true hero of the story, this badass fourteen-year-old girl who has had to grow up very quickly and sees things so much clearer than Joel (THAT ENDING, OMG). I can’t wait for the possibly-in-development-sequel even though I will probably need to start saving my pennies now for a PS4.

2. Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Rise_of_the_Tomb_Raider C’mon, you knew it would be here.

Flashback to early 2013. I eagerly bought the Tomb Raider reboot new, a few days after release, and was not prepared for the awesomeness. I finished it over a couple of days and immediately said WHERE IS THE NEXT ONE?? And lo, here it is.

RotTR is the perfect continuation of the previous game. It builds on the plot, on Lara’s character, on the in game skills, so it never feels like a rehash of the previous game, nor does it feel like an entirely new game either. It’s a true continuation: this is the Lara of the end of the last game, more confident, more capable, but still finding who she is.

It’s also visually stunning. The gameplay is varied, the world is dense with a lot to do (instead of just big for the sake of big), and I just adore everything about it.

It also brought us this glorious new video/theme song:

(I listen to it on repeat a lot when I need reminding to rise.)

There are extra game modes and you can unlock packs of “cards” that you can select from to affect your gameplay in these other modes. Among the new DLC releases is Endurance Mode where you’re stuck in the Siberian wilderness and have to keep warm/fed while finding artifacts.

In this mode, I almost died in the tutorial because I refused to kill any animals for food.

So it turns out that it’s really hard to play as a vegetarian. I eventually compromised with eating the meat of already dead animals and of animals that attack me, until I found the best card ever: gaining food by melee stealth kills of people. This means that when Lara is hungry, she can sneak up on people and kill them for food, which makes her a cannibal to me and it is my favourite thing ever.

ALSO: if you retain any doubt about Lara being ridiculously sexualized like in the old games…just know that yes, she has unlockable outfits in this one, and instead of bikinis SHE GETS MOTHERFUCKING ARMOUR. <3

I have played RotTR all the way through three times already. I also have the season’s pass and am awaiting the next DLC packs. In the meantime, I am obsessively refreshing for news of the third game in the rebooted series.

3. Life Is Strange

maxresdefault-8459 This supernatural teen thriller is in serialized format, following student Max Caulfield as she discovers she can rewind time after saving a girl from being shot.

Against this backdrop of time travel and visions of an impending disaster, the game tackles bullying, rape culture, and other serious issues faced by kids. Occasionally the dialogue doesn’t quite hit the mark, but the voice acting is fabulous and the overall story is well done. The focus is on problem solving instead of punching things, which makes for a nice change of pace, and every action in the game has a consequence. At one point, only your observations in previous episodes will decide whether or not a character commits suicide; it’s an incredibly upsetting moment for a lot of gamers, which speaks to the storytelling power of this medium.

There are five episodes total, released last year about two months apart, and now the entire game is available. Admittedly, from the very first episode I was already certain who the killer was; by the second, I knew what the likely final choice Max would have to make. Even though I was right on both counts, I was still incredibly impressed that the writers had the ovaries to give the game the RIGHT ending instead of a traditional happy one, regardless of your character’s choice. It’s smart and thought-provoking and I’d love to see more people play it.

If you played LIS, please ping me and let me know what you thought–I’d love to discuss the ending choice with someone and why they went with what they did!

So that’s it for my lists. Tell me, what games did you play last year that you loved?

Jan 13 2016

Stuff I Liked in 2015: Books Edition

Once again, three things!

I also limited myself to books by people I don’t know, which was VERRA difficult because people I know wrote some great things this year. Interestingly, it also ended up being dude authors. Most years I honestly read more lady-written books by about 90% but last year I was into horror and these are the books that often popped up.

Anyway, here are some books.

1. Josh Malerman’s Bird Box

BirdBox Technically I read this December 31 2014 but it ruined me for all other books for weeks afterward.

It is creepy as fuck. Hey, remember me, who can count on one hand all the movies/games/books that have scared her? This creeped me out. It’s very well crafted and atmospheric, and it has what I think a lot of modern horror is missing: the protagonist and therefore reader doesn’t see the monsters. Having that missing piece is likely to drive some people nuts but the reader’s imagination is much more terrifying than any description could be. I’ve devoured a lot horror books the past year, some really good ones, but Bird Box stuck with me for days and days.

To summarize….there are these creatures and if you look at them, you go insane. The story follows Malorie both in the past as the world descends into chaos and survival at all cost and the present a few years later when she takes her boy and girl away from the safety of their house in the hopes of finding other survivors. WHILE BLINDFOLDED. It’s chilling and dark and suspenseful, and part of me wants to read it again while part of me is like NO NO NO DO NOT DO THAT.

(Also, warning: some dogs die. It’s basically “off screen” since the protagonist has to be blindfolded all the time but if you’re sensitive to that, as I am, be forewarned.)

2. M.R. Carey’s The Girl with All the Gifts

girl-with-all-the-gifts_305 Zombies! Apocalypse! Plucky survivors! Except…

Yeah, it’s one of those books that sounds like it’s going to go one way, and yet it doesn’t.

At the center of it all is Melanie, the titular girl with all the gifts, who is…special. Eat-your-brains special. But even among the eat-your-brains special, there’s something not quite right about her and the book spends the time figuring out why and what that means for humanity.

Why this book stuck with me was the ending and obviously I can’t spoil that. But it was a thoughtful message about humanity and hope and the world that felt very in line with one of my favourite movies, Cabin in the Woods, oddly.

3. Christopher Fowler’s Plastic

51Of7S3EntL._SX308_BO1,204,203,200_ Picture Bridget Jones.

Now stick her in the middle of a crime novel.

That would give you an idea of this black comedy. June is a suburban housewife and shopaholic whose husband is cheating on her. When he decides to leave her and sell the house, June–with nowhere to go–ends up apartment-sitting.

It pretty much spirals downhill from there.

This is bound to be one of those divisive books–you either jive with the black humour and the character’s tangents or you don’t (and it’s okay if you don’t). For me, I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard, and if you make me laugh, you’ve got me as a reader.

How the hell did I ever get here?

All I can think is that I must have fallen into a deep sleep the day I got married, like some character from a fairy tale, except Sleeping Beauty was out cold before she met her prince, and he fought a dragon and slashed his way through a forest of poisonous thorns to get to her, whereas Gordon just said ‘I suppose I should marry you if you’re not going to have a termination’, and instead of the Kiss of True Love bringing me to my senses it was his unrepentant affair with the bitch next door.

PREACH IT, SISTER.

So there are my books, here were my movies/TV shows, and on Friday I’ll have games!

What books did you read in 2015 that stuck with you?

Becoming

Every Step Matters: The MS Walk & Who I Walk For

Forty-Year-Old Heartbreak