Welcome to Bri's Bits & Bleeps!

Hey there! I’m your very opinionated, sometimes loud, and always mushy friend from this literary corner of the internet making little stories come out to play!

One thing that you should know before we get too far into this: I have slight anger issues. Slight, because indulging in them was a thing of my past.

Imagine a little me. Small and round from eating meals full of love and butter with clips in my hair, cheeks puffed with air as if I’d been fried in tempura batter because I was just so, so mad.

I like to think I’m classier with my frustrations now. You know, tossing in the occasional “shit” or “fuck” and only glaring at people on a monthly basis. Twice monthly tops!

I’ve come a long way from wanting to smash bowls in my mother’s pristine kitchen because I felt so much, but had so little words to explain it. I even make bowls every now and then at my local pottery studio.

Life is funny that way.

I did what so many people do when they want to make sense of the intense shit they’re feeling…

I became a therapist specializing in family dynamics, depression, and… wait for it… anger management!

My decade of therapy experience gives me insight into why I think and feel the way I do. It’s a blessing and a curse.

Coping strategies can only go so far, especially in a capitalistic world that thrives off of having customers that feel like the sticky shit on the sidewalk, stomped on by strangers and stuck.

My daily yoga, reflection walks, and playing with mud in the pottery studio have bravely carried me and my anger. That is, until I’m thwarted by a news update about Nazi salutes, a disintegrating middle class, and threats of World War III. Each of these tales feels like they’re being shared with me in my own living room, painfully intimate while the caffeine I’m guzzling leaves me physically vibrating.

The last thing I want to do in these moments is cope.

I want to rage.

My anger bubbles inside of me like an intoxicating old lover trying to pull me from my happy life with my husband, fancy coffee beans, and ten-pound toy poodle.

I’m a pot of salted water waiting for someone to drop pasta in me. Except, there’s no carby-deliciousness at the other end of this. It’s just me, pissed off and eyeing the person in the car next to me on the highway that doesn’t notice my stare because they’re looking at their phone and swerving into my lane. I imagine forcing them to pull over so that I can wave my fist in their face and yell, “Don’t be an idiot! We gotta look out for each other out here!”

It would be hours, maybe even days before I realized that I was envisioning yelling at the entire world.

I write to stop myself from boiling over.

I write to reflect.

I write to release.

I’ll share what I write with y’all, sporadically through passages like this that seem as if they were plucked directly from my brain, but mostly through fiction.

As Albert Camus beautifully said, “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”

My stories run the gamut of genres and topics, between romance and horror, dark and light. My one promise is that you’ll have a few minutes to yourself, away from whatever it is that makes you also have daydreams of yelling at reckless drivers.

These bits of writing with bleeps of curse words are my playground.

I hope you’ll swing with me and feel some release as well.

With love,

Bri