what is real?

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My entire life has been me struggling to figure out what is real and what my OCD is tricking me into believing. I’m always trying to figure out if my feelings are just results of something fictitious I made up in my head or if these feelings are really there in the air. I just need you to own up to the truth because if you really did lead me to feel a certain way and choose to lie that I made it up in my head then that is literally the cruelest thing you could ever do to me.

Veronica

– Valerie Parente (5-10-2019)

Value

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Elohim

Value by Valerie Parente

I know my value and I see it every day
I need to stop punishing myself
when it isn’t seen by someone else.

– Valerie Parente (5-5-2019)

There Might Be More To Me Than The Emotions I Keep

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There Might Be More To Me Than The Emotions I Keep by Valerie Parente

My feelings aren’t as complicated as my mind is making them
with this dissonant narration.
I’ve been caught in a loop
about a story I wanted to be true.

You see my brain does this thing where it prioritizes my feelings
over logic and reason.
Making a stable personality
the most dominant part of me.

Meanwhile I have these thoughts, irrational obsessions that haunt.
For years they were caught
associating you with my name
but now my emotions have changed.

Now my ego is anxious, though it’s really quite simplistic.
No matter how much I resist it
I know I’m moving on
whether I like it or not.

The truth is, I think it’s scary that there might be more to me
than the emotions I keep.
If I get over how I felt
then how do I define myself?

But then I think of how happy I can be now that I’ve set myself free
from that same old story.

Valerie The Doll

– Valerie Parente (1-31-2018)

Inquiries

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Inquiries by Valerie Parente

What do you want when you are the only one in charge?
Who are you when nobody else tells you what to want?
How long will it take you to let go of your flaws?
Do you even think before you talk?
Where are you in your thoughts?

Vyne

– Valerie Parente (11-27-2017)

Intention

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Intention by Valerie Parente

He was sick. Nose stuffed. Ears blocked. Miserable on the couch. His only movement came from his fatigued thumb gently scrolling through the phone.

“Open the door” came a text from his close friend.

His eyes burned. He hesitantly typed, “Door’s unlocked”

The floorboards creaked as the girl walked into the loft with a bright smile and a piping hot container clasped between her hands.

“I got you your favorite soup from downtown. Maybe it’ll make you feel better.”

He didn’t get up. He didn’t thank her. “Why did you do that?”

In that split second her eyes shifted from glowing to deeply hurt.

She didn’t shut down. She didn’t back track. She said what needed to be said. “What is wrong with you?” Those piercing words sounded more like they were begging for an answer than asking a simple question.

“I- I just don’t know why you’d waste your time-”

“Don’t pretend you have my best interest in mind,” she snapped. You never would have guessed that this was the same sweet and giddy girl that just came skating into the loft.

He knew he had a problem. He knew this was his problem but his mind was trying so hard to categorize this as her problem. His thoughts cranked away, trying to rationalize the panic coursing through his veins in a way that didn’t pin the blame on him.

The problem wasn’t that she did something nice for him. The problem was that she paid attention to what his favorite soup was. The problem was that she went out of her way to drive to his favorite take-out restaurant and then in another direction to his loft. The problem was that she thought, in her time alone, that doing something for him would be a worthy use of her energy. The problem was that she thought of him.

Before he could translate his thoughts into verbal daggers she called him out.

“How miserable it must be to be you,” she shook her head in disbelief, “How little do you think of yourself that you feel the need to stop or shame anybody for caring about you? Not just doing a nice favor for you… but really caring for you. Understanding you. Just because you don’t see your own value doesn’t mean I have to stop caring. You hate yourself so you project all of that onto me and I am so sick of it.” Her mouth quivered in contrast to how strong and stern her tone was.

He didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t figure out a rebuttal fast enough.

“I am NOT your punching bag!” she cried out with a voice so strained you could hear the exhaustion in her vocal chords.

He rubbed his fingertips on his bloodshot eyes up to his temples. Why was he like this? Hurting her feelings was never his intention. His intention… well… what was his intention? He didn’t know.

Her eyes were wet but she didn’t break eye contact. “I’m not going to apologize for having emotions just because you can’t handle your own! I am entitled to feel things when I’m around you. I’m not going to let your self-hatred stop me. I’m sorry but that’s not a war you’re going to win.”

He panicked, “I- I’m sorry-”

“I don’t want to hear ‘I’m sorry’!” she was crying now. “I want you to get professional help! I need you to! I need you to be okay! I need you to accept yourself! I need you to take care of yourself! I need you to understand your worth! And in order to get to that point you’re going to need to cry and hurt and feel a whole bunch of uncomfortable feelings and I need you to know that it’s going to get better… and I need you to believe me when I say that! Because if you don’t get to a healthy point then you’re going to lose… and if you can’t handle someone having emotions around you then you’re going to wind up alone.”

Alone.

That.

That was his intention.

A dominating part of him was trying to push people away. Not just any people. The people who care… really care. The people who get inside his head. The closer they were to understanding him when he couldn’t even understand himself meant the harder he needed to push. And she understood him and she got in his head and she saw all his flaws but still cared. That’s why this girl was getting the brunt of his insecurity-spawned and fear-born frustration. An unconscious facet of his brain was trying with full force to wind up alone… because being alone would be easier than handling the emotions that come to the surface when you have a real connection with someone.

– Valerie Parente (4-22-2019)

toxic relations

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toxic relations by Valerie Parente

There’s something I need to say
about the way you behave
You’ve become a cliché
just a guy who plays games
a fool desperate to claim
that you aren’t so strange
thinking a girl can replace
all of your negative traits
as if you could erase
every ounce of self-hate
with the sound of a female’s name
but at the end of the day
your connection with her is strained
she doesn’t really relate
you use each other to manipulate
that dark and empty space
that rots in your depressed brains.
But you won’t admit your mistake
I know you’ll try to debate
say that you’re honestly okay
but say it with a straight face.
say you’re not a pathetic display
of all that time you had me waste.

There’s something I need to get off my chest
about the way you’ve digressed
You’ve become so obsessed
with destroying relationships
in the name of loneliness
imprinting the egocentric
on someone you barely met
and it’s so inappropriate
how you made her your outlet
meanwhile your friends
the ones who emotionally invest
can only shake their heads.
You know I tried my best
cause I’ve been in that mess
so Goddamn depressed
A mind with no self-respect.
And I just want to protect
one of my favorite humans
from a pattern so toxic
because if you weren’t worth it
I wouldn’t have written this.

– Valerie Parente (4-3-2019)

Dissonant Demons

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Dissonant Demons by Valerie Parente

My eyes want to cry
but I’m not sad in my mind.
My body wants to be burned
but my heart is already warm.
I’m trying to think of ways
to hurt myself without causing pain.
These demons, they try to stay relevant,
but my glorious God is not hellbent.

Dissonant Demons

– Valerie Parente (3-4-2019)

Switching Perspectives (Analysis of In Touch) [Part 1]

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Why is it so much easier for me to write from the point of view of a male? In Touch, being the third story I’ve completed, was by far the most effortless piece I’ve written to date. One could claim this is because the themes of In Touch were purely an autobiographical experience against the backdrop of a fiction story. The odd but magical part of writing this book, though, laid in the fact that I was writing about obsessive compulsive disorder from an outsider’s point of view… a male’s point of view. Sitting in this Starbucks, for the second Sunday in a row, now writing scenes for another story through a male narrator, I find myself asking the question- why is writing from a male’s perspective so much easier for me? My guess is that it has something to do with the prisons we call ego and expectations.

If you’ve read any of my poetry and prose work then you’ll quickly realize it is no secret that I am extremely tied to my female identity. So you would think I would write more effortlessly from the female point of view, but from a personal standpoint that just doesn’t feel like the case.

In Touch was honestly the easiest book I’ve written to date. Was it the “best”? I don’t know. But it was certainly less difficult. Most notably, it was effortless. The words flowed from my brain with no hesitation. I barely had to think. I just wrote. I remember lying in bed scribbling dialogues between the main characters, Jef and Lacey, with no interruption of thought. I remember phrases and comments popping in my head when I was working my retail job and jotting them down on scrap pieces of paper. Many brief but key comments unraveled into beautiful chapters and concepts that I genuinely do not feel took any brain power. They just popped into existence and my mind acted as the translator between wherever art spawns and where it is destined to be recorded. Bringing my daily thoughts and imaginary conversations alive on paper was as easy watching TV.

In Touch (Cover, No Binding)

Writing as a person who is so obviously not me, that being a young man, brings no pressure. There’s no ego conflicts or stress to “get it right”. Any expectations I have on the identity I project to the world is irrelevant. All that matters is writing meaningful passages. The ego that haunts “Valerie” is no longer in control. It really is freeing. I imagine this kind of disconnect from the self but connection to the collective consciousness that is the rest of the world is what it is like to feel free. And for this reason I think I not only have a more effortless experience purging the words on paper through a male narrator’s voice. The idea that it is easier to write as somebody who is not me is rich with irony, and that fascinates me more and more every day.

When I have writer’s block I look at that 488 page novel and wonder how the heck I did that. Then at moments like today when I started writing from another male narrator’s perspective new words flowed instantly and I remembered what it was like to be inspired.

Yes, I identify with all my narrators to some extent. We do share the same brain after all. But there’s something flawless and liberating about writing without Val’s ego and Val’s expectations breathing down my throat. No interruptions. It’s easier to write and write and write until the thoughts dry out. I feel more “natural” writing as a different gender and identity, and I think that’s why In Touch came out exactly as I dreamed it would.

To purchase In Touch you can go to Amazon.com!