In Which I Don't Know Where I Am But I Am Here

 (content warning: This post goes into some seriously heavy stuff about my recent experience with mental illness, and other not-pretty things. If you're sensitive to any of that stuff, you may want to skip this.)

Hello, Internet.

So.
Stuff has happened.

It's been a long time, Internet, and I feel incredibly guilty about that. The truth is, I have been avoiding this blog, because for some time I have felt that it was taking away from the fiction writing I have been wanting to do. And then I was avoiding this blog because I had no time to write anything ever. And then.

And then, Internet, the bottom sort of fell out of my world. I am currently coming off a four-month depression relapse. I won't bore you with details, but it was bad. Bad enough that there was the all-concerning Plan that doctors, counselors and psychiatrists ask you if you have, during particularly long episodes. Bad enough that I had to move houses and quit my job and am now living on ODSP with no cushion and am scared out of my mind, but I HAD to go, because things were just bad, and they weren't getting any better, and I was going to the Terrible Scary Place more often then I was doing human things like eating and sleeping. Bad enough that for the first time in my life I was eating to SURVIVE, rather than because I was hungry, or because a particular thing looked tasty. I was actually eating a meal a day, purely in order to function, because I could not summon up the emotional energy required to actually ENJOY food. I was hospitalized for a six-hour long dissociative episode. My mother was on suicide watch. I refused to allow the kids to even talk to me on the phone, let alone to visit because I was afraid of the awful things I would say to them, because I could not filter anything, and everything inside me was ugly.

We don't really talk about depression like we should. We are aware, I think, that depression affects many, many people, and that it is not the same thing as sadness, and these things are important to know, but they don't convey what happens, I mean what REALLY happens. For me, depression is like I am a little kid being lost in a supermarket. Five minutes ago, my life was fine, everything was familiar and everyone I loved was right there with me. But now it's not, and they're not, and I'm not sure how to get back to that place, because I never really know what I've done to lose it in the first place. And that's a really awful and scary thing, to know that because of some chemical trick being played on me, sometimes I feel bad for no reason, and sometimes there is a reason, and I never really know which it is, and worse, neither does anyone else. And then, Oh. And then.

I think the hardest part about that kind of depression is the amount of love and support I get. Growing up, my depression and my anxiety were mine to deal with and now, they are mine and my mother's. My brothers and sisters, all of whom struggle with it in some form or another, just aren't available to care. Which may actually be a blessing, because there are times, during that period, where you actually wish you were loved less, so people would stop telling you they know you're going to get better. Because the hardest, the absolute worst thing about depression? Is not the pain you're in. It's when the pain goes away.

For the first few weeks of a depression relapse, I am always in a great deal of pain. It's all very visible, and visceral, and noticeable, I start sleeping 20 hours a day, I either refuse food, or eat whatever is available. I take the dogs on shorter walks because I don't want to be seen by anyone trying to be nice to me. And I cry. Oh my Goddess I cry all the time over everything. And then, slowly, it goes away. It's a funny thing, about depression. There's this idea that even though we know depression is an illness, not a sadness, we still imagine it as being sad. It's not like that. When I am happy, I am aware that I have been sick, I have been depressed, and I remember that that hurt, that it was scary and it was bad and I don't want to go back there. But I don't actually know how it feels. I am wrapped in cotton wool and nothing I feel is real, and I barely feel anything at all most of the time. I am not part of the world. Happiness, however, is a vibrant and alive thing. So while I am depressed, I remember every single second of what it was to be happy, everything I had and lost, and I don't know where it is, or how I lost it, and what if I never get it back? People keep reassuring me it's there, but they are the same people who reassured me that I was so happy, while I was happy, and how could I have been, when this has always been there?

I find it's a common attitude among particularly young writers to sneer at a happy ending as taking the easy way out. I always had a darkly private giggle over that. Having been undiagnosed til I was 17, I can still say with some certainty I have been dealing with some form of depression and/or anxiety from probably eleven years old. I'm always curious as to who and where these people are that their happiness had an easy answer. My own has been so hard-won, and often, much too fleeting. There is, of course, a part of me that understands that conflict makes a story, but there's still something off about the glamorizing of misery that goes on. I don't mean people shouldn't be writing sad books, or making sad movies. I mean the fetishist that says, "I like sad things because they are more real." Sad has never felt like a real thing to me. Most of the time, sad is a trick of my brain chemistry, out of proportion to who I am and how I feel, usually brought on by nothing, and offering nothing in return for what it takes. In real sadness, you pick yourself up, learn from your mistakes, and try not to let it happen again. In depression, you pick yourself up, slowly crawl back to the world, and hope the monsters won't find you again. Another version of this is that I hate the number of people who feel that my disability have made me a stronger person, not because I don't think it has, but because I don't know why I'm supposed to be so strong when so many aren't. Is it just so that I have space inside me to be more unhappy then they do? Why would I need that, if I didn't have the thing that made me so 'strong' in the first place?

After I got out of the hospital, I stopped writing. That was a conscious decision. I had been through a rough patch, was unsure if I wanted to write anymore, at all, and that was scary to think about, because as I have previously discussed, writing has never been about what I do. It's who I am. But I gave it up. For two weeks. Then I wanted to get back to it. I missed it. I had things I wanted to do, and there are things I feel like need to be written, because they should exist, and they don't yet. I sat down to write. And promptly started screaming.

I've had panic attacks while writing before, fear of failure that creeps up without warning, makes it hard to breath, and I have to go sit in the other room AWAY from the computer for a while. This was not that. I stared at the blank doc for twenty minutes, and cried, and then I screamed. I screamed how much I hate myself, how much I hate doing this thing. How it was the only thing I ever had or ever would have. How I didn't even know who I was anymore, and how I hated that everything inside me meant so much, and so little of it was real. How I am never going to be the person I wanted to be, and nobody was even bothered by that, except me, and that meant that I am apparently the only opinion in my own life that doesn't matter. And that went on for another six weeks. Six weeks of being cut off from what mattered most to me, after nearly four months of alienating my entire family.

I don't know what to say about all that now. Things have slowed down. My world has started righting itself, but it has taken on a very different shape from what it was, and, I think, so have I. I don't know if it's a good shape or not. I mentioned above about depression never offering anything for what it takes. Last time I was in this bad a shape, I had a similar moment of suddenly knowing the truth about who I was and what that meant, and how people saw that, and how that mattered. It was not a good moment, for me, but it was an important one. I think this is another of those. I think. I don't know yet. I think the reason writing has made me angry was not, as I guessed, because it too had nothing to offer me, because that could never be true, but because I was angry about having so little to offer it. It is indeed a poor workwoman who blames her tools, isn't it? And Goddess help me, but I think maybe. Just maybe. I can do better. I don't know that, mind you.

But I'm still here. And I'm still doing this thing.

It's New Years. I Make Lists.

I love New Years. In fact, as I get older, I think I love New Years almost more than Christmas. I love optimism. I am an incurable optimist, and I always think something great is coming. Like, you know, some people look at the world and see that the glass is half empty. Others see the glass is half full. I’m one of those people who look at the glass and goes, “Okay, everybody get ready, because this thing is about to fill up, and I don’t want to miss it.” Sometimes, this is a good thing. Sometimes, not so much. But usually, even when it does nothing else, it reminds me that I am okay, even when nothing else is.

Example: This year, I began my first year of University after a five-year absence where something happened and it took a long time for me to recover from it. But I felt like I was ready, and more importantly, I felt like I was tired of being an uneducated smart person. Unfortunately, I failed to take into account that A) the last time I was in post-secondary education, it was college, and B) Distance education is complicated. At least three times this year, I wanted to quit. I loved it for the first three months, and after that, I felt like I hated everything about it.

I’m still in school. Presently, I don’t know if I should be. But I am, because it was something that was taken from me, and that is unfair. Also because people make a big deal about my being smart, when really, they’re just amazed I can hold a normal conversation, and dammit, if that many people are going to call me smart, I am going to make sure they’re doing it on MY terms. It is a new year, and I will continue doing all the things I did this year: I will work hard to write every day, and I will read every day. Those are the most important things. But there are a few other things which fell by the wayside, and I’d like to change that. So here goes:

1.    I will post more often, because writing every day is no fun when no one’s reading it.
2.    I will keep my house clean and stop eating like a student. Not only have I gained a lot of weight, thanks to the constant stress eating and being too lazy to cook food, which, by the way, has NEVER happened to me, but I’ve been sicker this year than ever before, and this is coming from someone who is never altogether healthy.
3.    I have always taken pride in the fact that I enjoy food without being overindulgent, and I’ve always been good about money in the same way. I have no problem spending money on things just because I want them (see: multiple trips to England), but I don’t need to leave the house with money in my pocket in case there is something I want. Stress, however, has the unique and horrible side effect of massively lowering my impulse control. I’ve been through some rough roads with depression before, but this is just ongoing stress and struggle. So I buy things I don’t need or want, hoping they will cheer me up. They don’t. I must stop doing that.

Basically, I just want to get back to Ally before Ally was a student again, and still be Ally The Student, because another thing about distance education? You think it’s going to take you next to no time, because you can customize it. But it is complicated and often takes more time than regular schooling, and I cannot live like this for four or five years.

I am taking up the Goodreads challenge again, because it was a lot of fun last year, and helped me to read more. I am also writing more, and in fact, I have a little announcement, more on that later. But another thing I have been doing while being stressed is I have been noticing that the crazy goes a bit deeper than I realized, which, of course, is to be expected and is still a surprise. But. To combat the crazy and the self-loathing that goes with it, I promise every day to do something I am proud of. This year, in fact, right now, I am doing something I always wanted to do and becoming a child sponsor. I chose the Because I Am A Girl program with Plan Canada for 3 reasons:
1.    I’m a feminist, duh.
2.    It’s not an organization which promotes religion as the answer to feeding starving children, so there’s no conversion going on here. That’s important for many reasons, firstly, I don’t think a person should have to give up the faith they may have acquired to pull them through the hardships, in order for it to, uh, not be so hard. Secondly, I’m not Christian, so I don’t like the idea of my money going to spread ideas I don’t believe myself.
3.    I like that I can direct my funding to the countries and communities with issues that matter to me. I am currently sponsoring a little girl in the Togolese Republic, where the foundation works to provide infant and mother care, education for young girls, and bringing women’s political issues to the forefront. I was a preemie baby who struggled to attend regular schooling and now, occasionally, writes about social justice. It’s a no-brainer, really.

There are of course, other reasons, but those are the main reasons. So today, I will be doing that. Dunno what will make me proud tomorrow. Maybe I’ll perfect my ham sandwich or something. (Trust me, if you’ve seen me in the kitchen, you would understand the achievement.)

Now, I must head off. I have to read Joseph Conrad for an English class, and something on sexuality for my Health class.

Oh, while we’re on the subject, can we talk about sexual education? Firstly, I don’t know how it is for anyone else, but our sexual education classes in high school always went with our phys ed classes. So for those of us who didn’t take phys ed, we missed out on all that. Talk about desexualizing the disabled.

Seriously, someone talk about that, because I’m ace, and I can’t.

Also, an asexual taking sex ed must be the world’s most annoying student. I actually considered briefly writing an email to my instructor explaining that I was having a hard time with a textbook that described lack of interest in sex among females as a serious health problem, similar to impotency in males. I am not stupid, and I understand that some people with a lack of a sex drive have serious health issues, but THESE ARE NOT THE SAME THING!

I have not written the email. What do you think?

A Bit About Singularity, Harry Potter, and Things In My Life

Hello blog! I have missed you!

My apologies to this blog. Real life has been absolutely and ridiculously busy. Here are some of the highlights:

1. I am in school! I just finished my first round of exams. I did not fail. This is a good start, for me. But school is pretty much ass-kicking, in that it is both very awesome and it is also sapping me of any desire to you know, do anything besides study and eat and sleep and veg in front of the computer to watch all the television I don’t get on this side of the Atlantic. Sorry for that.

2. I am now OFFICIALLY OUT OF FIRST DRAFT HELL! So there was that one week, as there always is, where I was hating myself and OMG WORST WRITER EVER WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING?! And now I’m all *gleeface* because now I can like, actually make something. And it’s good. Really. I mean more than it just has STOPPED SUCKING, it’s actually fairly decent and good. Which I owe to the fact that

3. I have been reading a lot! A lot a lot a lot. I signed up for the Goodreads challenge at the beginning of the year. I was planning on reading 35 books, which I felt was a fairly decent number for someone whose book eating had dwindled after the whole School Thing We Don’t Talk About. Actually, it began dwindling when I started school, and reading for academic reasons, and then picked back up again, and then I got so that I felt so guilty for not writing that I didn’t read and we all know how that worked out. So, since I started university this year, I had to promise myself I was going to read more, so that the book didn’t starve. And oh my gosh I mean *really*. Actually, most of my reading has been audio books, since I’m able to squeeze in time to listen to reading everywhere, and I’ve gone all old-lady and can’t read a physical book while in a moving vehicle anymore, which is a huge change from the days when I could walk down the street with a book on my face and navigate through peripheral vision. (See? The lazy eye is good for something!) Which reminds me:

Harry Potter.

Have you seen the movie? Are you sad? I’m sad. The storyteller in me is sad because, well, you know how the New World Order is essentially that we can all go on our merry little weirdo way and always find someone like us, and that’s awesome? I love that, I really do. Like I love how I wrote one day on my twitter that I couldn’t decide between the Death Star cookie Jar or the TARDIS cookie jar. And one of my followers is like, “OMG DUDE GET THE TARDIS!” and one of my other followers is like, “I have no idea what that is.” But.

Harry Potter is public consciousness. It’s something you have an opinion on whether you actually know what you’re talking about or not. We have new words, thanks to Harry Potter, we have a new concept of magic, of fairytale and epic and YA fiction, and everyone knows what and who these people are, even if they don’t know where or how they know it. You know what I mean? And we really don’t have a whole lot of that. It kind of feels like when Michael Jackson died. I remember feeling really weird about it because saying you didn’t know Michael Jackson is like saying you didn’t know music. Because everyone had at least one song they knew that was a Michael Jackson song, or a Jackson Five song, even though they may not know that’s what it was. People will be making Harry Potter jokes and barely understanding that they started out as Harry Potter jokes. People will spoof those books and those stories and those ideas so often, that the copies will gain notoriety separate from the original. For years, if not forever, we will hold that up and say, “This is how you tell a story.” I think about Robert McKay’s “Story”, and how the whole thing is based around Casablanca, and I think about similar books about how to write that are really about Star Wars, or whatever. This is that, for us, for our generation. And I’m getting a little annoyed at the number of times someone says, “The Next Harry Potter.” Because I’ve got news for you, guys. The Next Harry Potter? Is not due for the next twenty five years. At least.

But that’s okay. I try to focus on that, on the next twenty five years, which is huge and terrifying, because whatever this next thing is, it will belong to my grandkids or something. Which is also a bit depressing, in its own way. Now, please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not writing this to tell you that I hope, or that I think, I could bring about that Next, whatever it is. I don’t even aspire to that, not really. I don’t think anyone ever does. I get really annoyed when people sneer at JK Rowling for hiding away. I don’t think there are a whole lot of people sitting behind a computer screen who ever aspire to that kind of fame. And I honestly don’t think anyone really thinks about it. I mean, the people who sign up for reality shows and sing on talent shows have an inkling of wanting to be famous, and known. But as the love of my life has said, it’s no longer a matter of The Big Thing, but a whole bunch of Things That Are Important To Someone. We are parsed and separated, and I’m not sure that it is, as the cynics would say, a result of our technologically inclined world, and I am not even sure, as I write this, if it is necessarily a bad thing. Like I said, I revel in my own singularity, in each individual thing that I love, that other people love, and still others know nothing about. I love that I can build a world around myself, and still belong to a bigger world, almost but not quite as much as I love that I can build a world for other people to hopefully wander around in, one day. But I also love those moments when we realize we are all on the same planet, no matter how different we are. It reminds me of the day I was in a bus station in Toronto. The bus station was quite old, so instead of the invisible motion detectors on the doors, it had those little pads, like you get in some stores. What would happen is someone would set one off and a seagull or a pigeon would fly in. Then the seagull or pigeon would land, and the door would open, and the bird would get startled and fly away, missing the fact that its freedom was essentially, right in front of it’s face. Then it would fly off again, and someone else would come in and repeat the process. One day I was watching this little musical doors presentation, and a little girl came by, holding her mother’s hand. She could not have been more than three, and she ecstatically pointed to the door and yelled “Bird! Bird!” Her mother smiled indulgently, and pulled her along. Not five minutes later, an older child, belonging to a French couple, passed by where I was sitting, pointed at the doors and shrieked “Oiseaux! Oiseaux!”* as loudly as she could. Her parents held tightly to her arms, smiling, so that the little girl did not run out of the doors in her excitement. Ten minutes after that, there came an Asian family in my line of site, with another child somewhere between three and six, who pointed at the door the bird had just flown

out of, and yelled one word in a language I did not understand. And his parents laughed, and smiled, and gently but firmly guided him away from the birds. I think about that sometimes, when I need reminding that I belong to a wider world than I sometimes recognize. I’m not saying Harry Potter makes us all happy. I’m just saying, there’s not a whole lot in the world that can cut through to everyone, all at once. For that, I will thank Ms. Rowling, and I will sit patiently and wait, and not pout and not call random objects that look like YA fantasy books “The Next Harry Potter.” Because trust me, when the Next Whatever hits? We’re all going to know it, whether we like it or not.

Thanks, Jo.

*In case you’re not Canadian, it means bird.

DIY

This is not a post about building things, except it sort of is, a little bit.

My father is a contractor/construction worker, and has been for most of his life. Growing up, he told me hilarious stories about the time he worked as a pizza delivery man, and the tricks he and his friends used to play on the university students. "University students," he would tell me, "are some of the stupidest people you have ever met in your life. They have no common sense. Everything they know comes from books. They don't exist in the real world." Gratitude, Common Sense and The Real World were the million-dollar concepts to my father. Whenever we were lectured for anything, leaving a mark on the wall, not doing our homework, fighting at the dinner table, my father's lecture was the same:

"You kids are so Ungrateful. You don't have any Common Sense. You need to wake up and realize that in The Real World, you can't act this way." Theoretically, I could have come home carrying a human head, and the lecture would have likely gone something like this:

"You are so Ungrateful! Do you think your mother and I ever chopped someone’s head off? Common Sense says you cannot just chop someone’s head off. You should know better! In The Real World, people don't do that! Smarten up!"

This explains the somewhat tumultuous relationship my father and I have, and have had since I developed what we refer to as Independent Thought. My poor mother had to play referee, but every once in a while, my Dad would say something so off the wall that even my mom had to go, "Huh?" So one day, somewhere in my angry adolescence, my father was lecturing me on the dangers of my not having a backup plan. This lecture was another oldie, and at some point, my father made the mistake of asking me if I knew how many people tried to write books, every year. Because I was ticked off at this point, and because I was a bit of a snarky kid, I responded with, "Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. Do you?" His next words were, "Well, I could write a book too, you know." At which point, my mother stared incredulously at my father and said, "You know you're full of it, right?"

My dad, realizing his misstep, floundered for about half a second, and then amended himself. "I'm not saying it would get published..." So of course, the snark in me responded with, "Yeah, and I could build a house, but I'm not saying it wouldn't fall down."

It's strange, the things we value in this world, and why. I value people like construction workers, because I know they're necessary, but I don't understand why a person would rather do that than do this. In fact, most of the time, I assume they only do what they're doing because they don't have any other options. Like maybe they're just not good at anything else, or maybe the money's better and they need it. It sounds harsh, but then, sometimes feel the same about this venture, and in fact, most ventures of mine. In writing classes, they warn you that if you can do anything else, you should do it, because this is a long and painful road to nothing for most of us. For me, it was this, or struggle on disability for the rest of my life (which I may do anyway). I know that I have a decent job right now, and it's a job I like, but it's not what I would choose for myself, so I don't understand people who would. It was easy to be the one to say, "I'm going to be one of that 3%, because I don't have other options." Now I have another job, I have other options, I'm not miserable, and I know this is still an integral part of my sense of self, and my goals. It's a comfort of sort, to know that, but it makes other people's decisions and choices all the more confusing to me.

I've always been a DIY of a different sort than my father. My father needs to know that he is where people expect him to be. Everything that I've ever wanted, I've wanted for myself and by myself, and those have been some pretty concrete goals. I chose my profession at four, and decided I would stay single for most of, if not all of my life, at sixteen. And because of that, and because of the disability, I'm not afraid to move slowly. I get impatient, sometimes. But I take comfort in the fact that I am not like other people. I want to do things, not just at my own pace, but in my own way, and that takes time.

I think when you're a parent, with a child with a disability, you harbour a deep-seated fear that failure is inevitable. I was lucky, because I have two parents who cope with that fear in very different ways: My father, by denying the possibility of failure, and pushing me well beyond my capacity, pushing me towards goals he feels I can actually accomplish, and my mother, by denying the rest of the world's importance and embracing the failure. On their own, neither of those are particularly good ways to parent a child with a disability, and there are a lot of ways and a lot of times the whole thing worked out really badly for everyone. Put them together, though, and I grew up in an environment that if I wanted something, it was up to me to tell my mother I would have it, and if I couldn't do something, it was up to me to tell my father to back off. Sometimes this led to disaster and shouting, but it also led to me knowing exactly what I wanted, and exactly why, and understanding that if I was going to have something, I would have to get it myself. Because the people who believed I could have it also believed I didn't need help, and the people who didn't weren't going to waste resources trying to help me do the impossible.

So here we are. Me, attempting to self publish. Earning my online degree. Being at least functionally single for the foreseeable future, but daring to dream and plan for children. In part because it's the path life has led me to, but for the most part, purely because that's how I work. On my own. I suppose people are right then, to accuse me of being a bit self-interested. I am interested in myself, not at the expense of others, but because others don’t really factor into my life much. Possibly not the most lucrative way to live, and most times I seem antisocial and hard-headed. (I'm not. Well, antisocial.) But I think certain things are hardwired into you.

Recently, I had the flu. And I remember thinking, “So this is why people have partners. It’s so they can have someone to walk the dogs, and cook food and do the dishes while they can’t stand up.” It was the first time it occurred to me that being single might be in some ways harder than being coupled. Another day, I was talking to a friend about my severe lack of a social life, where I talked about having very few friends, and she offered many solutions, how I could go out and meet new people, and what do to once I had. And after making excuse after excuse as to why I couldn’t, I realized that it wasn’t that I lacked friends. It was that I had lived too full a life, I had friends on three continents, scattered all over the country, and that didn’t even include the myriad of amazing people I had met through other people, online. I wanted more time and more space in common with those people. I am not lonely for friendship or for romance. It’s just that the world is made for people who come in pairs and sets.

Good things and bad things to everything, I suppose. There are times I take on too much, sometimes, because like my father, I forget what I'm up against. I get stagnant and sometimes I'm easily overwhelmed, because I think, like my mother, that I should just revel in the fact that I have any ambition left, and sometimes that's enough to be grateful for. But one day I'm going to have all the things I want to have, a family, a career, and a life that I earned, and the job I always dreamed of having. And when I do, I know it'll be in part because I have good people in my life, and lots of support, and a little luck. And part of it will be because I learned how to stand up to the people who loved me before I had to stand up to the people who don’t. But mostly, it'll be up to me. Because there is the world, and there is me, and when we work together, it’s awesome, but when we don’t, somebody has to look out for me.

I sort of like it that way.