The Lying Disease

Hello there.

Sorry for the hiatus. It’s been a bit of a time.

I want to talk about this depressionanxietyadhd thing -- specifically, something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Although I’ve mentioned it before.

This disease? It lies.

“You are worthless.” it says.

“I know.” I say.

“No one has ever loved you. No one ever will. You know that, right?” It says.

“Yes.”

“You take up too much space. Every inch of you is just too much. Hunch over, slump those shoulders. You’re too tall. Be smaller. Be smaller. Avoid eye contact. Oh yes, ignore that phone call. Pretend it never happened. Hyperventilate about that voicemail. Good girl.” It says.

“Okay.” I say.  

“You have wasted thousands of dollars trying to get rid of me. But I’m your shadow. You can’t get rid of your shadow. A shadow can only exist by the existence of something physical. And that’s you, baby. That’s you. I’ll always match you, step for step. And you will always be looking over your shoulder for me. I’ll be there. Don’t worry.”

“I want you to go away.”

“You know exactly how to do that.”

“No.”

“Well, then.”

“I’m so, so tired. Why doesn’t the medicine work? Why don’t I ever feel better? Am I ever going to feel better?” I say.

“Darling, would you even believe it if you did feel better?” 

And I know. I know these things aren’t true. There is a very, very small but clear voice in my heart that somehow manages to hold me together, no matter what. I am thankful for that voice. Some days that voice is all I have when the chemicals in my brain echo in my head: you’re worthless, you’re nothing, you are a burden.

I have proof that these things aren’t true. I have friends, family, a certain someone who never fails to make me laugh -- even through tears. These are people who, on good days, I know love me. But on bad days … well. It’s a lot harder when this shadowthing is determined to deafen me to a kind word, a gentle touch, a friendly smile. This shadowthing darkens these affectionate gestures with paranoia and terror and desperate sorrow.

I try to ignore the shadow. How I try.

Often, my genuine self-confidence and optimism and certainty bubbles to the surface and I have whole days and weeks where I think I’m okay. Maybe even better than okay! That I am doing a good job, making a difference, that I am kind and empathetic and worth the time of day.

It is for those days that I push and I push and I push through the bad days . It’s just, you know, sometimes it is hard to push through a shadow.

I’ve been a little less plucky in the face of the tough for the past while.

But I’ll be okay. I will get through it. I always do.

Why Do You Write Like You're Running Out Of Time?

I genuinely don't know if I would function as well as I do ("well" being highly subjective) if I didn't carry pens and a notebook around with me at all times.

Pretentious writerly bullshit? Probably. Still a thing that helps me live? You bet.

I was having tea with a lovely new friend a few weeks ago, a fellow writer. I said something that I didn't know was so deeply truthful to my experience until I heard the words hanging in the air: I feel safer holding a pen and paper.

I always have. I haven't always journaled traditionally, but my personal narrative in diary form stretches all the way back to early middle school. Xanga, Livejournal, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram ... and now Tough Pluck. Each of these sites holdes paragraphs and paragraphs of random bullshit and my deepest, most heartbreaking growing-up secrets. Not to mention several posts worth of Broadway lyrics from shows I've never actually seen. (I'm looking at you, Wicked.)

When I started therapy five or so years ago, I began keeping a tangible pen-and-paper journal. It was incredibly tough at first -- I didn't know what to write about, I felt like I was always complaining, I was worried that someone would find it. Or that I didn't really deserve to have feelings. I was still reeling, perhaps subconsciously, of losing a handwritten journal I kept in Freshman year of high school -- and the months of shame that meant: terrified that someone I knew, or some stranger, would know the secrets of my 14-year-old heart.

There is blood in those lines pages from when I self-harmed, and felt I had no one to ask for help. There are pages wishing I could just -- not wake up. That I could find peace in eternal sleep. In nothingness. I've never really felt like I deserved to die. I've never wanted to put that pain on the people I love. But I have desperately wanted relief, so deeply I do not know how to explain it, even still.

I still have those days, weeks, months.

Currently, I semi-routinely use 4.5 journals. One I carry with me every day, everywhere I go. One is a journal specific to an exercise I am doing in therapy. One is a watercolor art journal, for Brene Brown's "Art of Imperfection" online course. One is the Steal Like an Artist journal. And then, a tiny mini-journal I bring along if I only have a small bag with me -- which is what I wrote this very entry in. Yeah, it might sound excessive, but it helps. Purging myself of bad or painful experiences makes me feel more in control over them -- it helps me sort through them, understand them better. I am steadier. If life is climbing a spiral staircase whose end you cannot see, writing -- journaling -- is the handrail I can grip when I am off-balance or frightened or heartbroken.

I write down the happy stuff, too. I write lists. SO MANY LISTS. Ideas get jotted down in the margins of what I need to pick up at the grocery store. I freewrite for my plays. I occasionally do to the oft-touted "morning pages".

It is a way to look back and understand my past. It helps me to organize my future. It helps me survive the present. It helps me remember and it guides me towards forgiveness. Toward others. Toward life. And more importantly, toward myself.

My latest Decomposition journal. 

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” -- Sylvia Plath 

An Imperfect Metaphor

There is a commonly held belief that there is a link between creativity and mental illness. Even more specifically, there's something called the Sylvia Plath effect suggesting a correlation between poets and suicide. The romanticization of depression: a lovely, sad, quiet girl who dies by her own delicate hands.

Fuck that. Depression sucks. It isn't lovely. It is an ugly, crippling, all-consuming emptiness that steals the color from your life. Suicide is heartbreaking and the statistics around it are staggering, especially among certain groups. Depression is a monster, and it lies.

For me, anyway. To me, anyway.

I can't write when I am busy wanting to die. I sit and I try. The words don't come. I sit and I type and I type. Nothing. I'm not waiting for some writerly lightning strike (I can hear advice echoing in my head now ... ), just hoping for something other than "I'm sad, I'm sad, I'm sad," to find its way out of my mind and through my fingertips.

There's a story about a knot. Gordian's knot. One with no visible ends, no easy access. A puzzle with no solution, hooking an old wagon to an old pole. Until Alexander comes along -- who, just like everyone else, cannot simply untie this knot. So he does what no one else has thought to do: he slices it in two with his sword and he becomes king.

But you can't do that if you want to survive depression. Anxiety. All of these invisible illnesses that rage and quake within our hearts. The Gordian knot of clinical depression cannot be cut in half. The Alexander way does exist. But, well, like I said -- I'm talking about coping, living through it, learning, healing, surviving.

You can only pluck here and pull there. Try something new. Meditate. Work on mindfulness. Eat better. Exercise. Take medicine. Go to therapy.

This metaphor isn't quite right, because most days, there is an eclipse of hope.

It's not quite right.

Yet, in "not quite right" there remains a tiny sliver of right.

There are days. There are days I twist and tug and yank and struggle and bite and weep over this knot. There are days when I get rope burn from trying so, so hard to unravel it. My mind works to untie this knot, for days, for weeks, for months. Maybe I will be working to untie it for the rest of my life.

It's not quite right but it is the best I can do to describe what it feels like to have depression, when chemicals in my brain shoot like stuttering fireworks. They're not quite right, either.

There are those who have told me to my face that I don't deserve to be depressed. That my life is great. And there's a kernel of truth, you know? I have lots of great things in my life. I feel joy, I can give love and am given love freely. I am smart. I am skilled in certain things. I have passions and ambitions and family and cats. I have an eclipse of hope. Some days there is even sun.

But when this condition I have -- this depression -- creeps in like an unearthly, choking fog? All I can do is try to untie the knot.

And that's the best I can do.  

Imperfect, Enough: Lesson #1 from Gifts of Imperfection

A few days ago, I finished lesson #1 in Brene Brown's Gifts of Imperfection online course. It is, essentially, a really neat art journaling course that focuses on the mantra: I'm imperfect, and I'm enough. 

Sounds great, right? Then depression-brain sets in and, like the devil on your shoulder, whispers cruel things in my ear, like: oh please. You really think this will work? You are too fucked up to get better. Imperfect is right, but you'll never be enough. Ever. And like. Alright, depression brain, fuck you. By whose standard am I not enough? There is no such standard. It doesn't exist. There is no objective scale that determines "enough". Obviously, that's easier said than believed, but I'm working on it. And this is one of the pieces of the healing puzzle. A puzzle for which I'm still missing a lot of pieces, but I am confident -- on good days -- that I'll find them. 

The course encourages sharing, so I thought I'd do so with y'all.

Assignment #1: Permission slips. A lot of these came easily -- to fail, to be vulnerable, to play. But both to say yes and to say no found themselves on my list. And both were born out of my odd, kneejerk phobia of "getting in trouble" (what does that even MEAN when you're in your midtwenties? I have no idea! But it scares the shit out of me!) and fear of disappointing people. So, there ya go. Natalie Feelings, pt. 340593450945.

Assignment #2: Pledge. See? My printer is also imperfect! Life reflects art, la la. 

Assignment #3: Courage is a heart word. Inside this envelope (which hails from my obsessive letter-writing days from my first year out of high school!) are tiny sheets of paper with the names of people I feel safe sharing with. I realize that it's a little funny to have a very short list hidden here, and to simultaneously be sharing my first few pages with all of you. But ... here we are. 

I'm excited to keep working on this course, if a little (a lot) nervous, a little (a lot) frightened. It is not easy for me to dive down into all my murky-swampy thoughts. It's not a pleasant place to be. But if I'm looking for a lighter life, I guess they've got to see the sun at some point. 

Natalie and the No Good, Very Bad Anxiety

Alert readers may have guessed (because most of you know me, and also it is in the title of this blog) that I have a great deal of social anxiety.

It has improved over the course of my life. For instance, I spent my 4th year, would-be (it wasn't) senior year of college vomiting nearly every morning out of straight up anxiety. The prospect of going to class where there would be, you know, other people and the possibility that I might have to stand up in front of them and say words frightened me so deeply that my body fought back. Turns out, my previous 20-something years of social interaction suddenly unhappened and I simply forgot how. Granted, a lot of other things were going on with depression, etc, and all of that combined helped prompt me to ask for some damn help, BUT STILL.

I don't do that anymore. But there are bad days.

For the people who live under rocks, the East Coast got slammed with a blizzard this weekend. Which meant, naturally, that in the week prior, everybody -- and I mean EVERYBODY -- was at the store buying enough bread, milk and toilet paper to choke a horse.

Picture me circling like an overly-caffeinated vulture around the dairy aisle at Safeway. First loop: a person was checking their grocery list on their phone directly in front of the yogurt that I wanted (or watching porn silently, I don't know their life). Second loop: another person. Third loop: No people, so I went in for further investigation. There was just one key lime greek yogurt cup: IT WAS MINE. But it was on the top shelf and I am not that tall, so I would have to step on the lowest shelf to get i -- OH GOD ANOTHER PERSOn. Away I scuttled. Fourth loop: RETURN OF THE GROCERY LIST CHECKING/PORN WATCHING LADY. Fifth loop: No one.

This was it. Key lime greek yogurt or die.

I practically flung myself at the shelf, snatched my bounty, and scurried away like an overlarge rodent.

As I sit here eating said greek yogurt (made tastier for the battle won to attain it, or something), it occurs to me that probably I could have used one or two of the myriad tools I've learned over the years of therapy to, you know, not freak out in the dairy aisle of Safeway. I wanted to share some of those tools with you all, just in case your fight or flight impulses start to override your desire for sweet, tangy deliciousness. BECAUSE YOU DESERVE IT.

Some of these are for in the moment panic situations, others are for helping deal with day-to-day anxieties. I have dealt with anxiety like an undercurrent through my life for as long as I can remember. Some days are easy, some days I turn into a squirrel at the grocery store.

1. Acknowledge the fact that you are maybe, very possibly, freaking the fuck out a little. That's okay. You are okay.

2. Take out your phone and use all of your senses to tell yourself a little story about it. Like so: This phone is real. The case is matte black and hard-but-smooth. The glass is shattered because I dropped a mug on it, and the surface is now a little rough but it won't cut me. So often, anxiety puts us in a constant state of fight-or-flight, and our poor little human bodies are not meant to be in that state all the time. It is too much. Tell yourself the story of something real; engage your senses. This tactile practice gently but surely pulls me back into reality. Where the people are, yes, but also lunch.

3.  Breathing. I know. I KNOW. If you are self aware enough to know you've got anxiety and also have internet access, you have probably read 45093450945 articles telling you to breathe. But truly: just fucking breathe a little. Count if you have to. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Your chest will rise and fall with life. Breathe deep into your belly. This is also called diaphragmatic breathing.

3. Get the fuck out. Even if just for a moment. Excuse yourself if you need to, step out of the room and go to a quiet place (a bathroom stall, or an empty hallway) and just be there. Think of this like the first time you were in a college class and didn't have to raise your hand to ask to go to the bathroom. It feels weird at first, but taking care of yourself sometimes means being alone for a minute or twelve. You'd be surprised how many people will understand.

4. Meditating. Y'all. I do not like to meditate. It is next to impossible for me and it pisses me off that it works so nicely when I actually do it. I prefer guided meditations, however: like this one! Or this one!

5. Writing. Write down your feelings. Your feelings are great. They suck, but they're great. Keeping track of them can be both helpful for future reference (instances in which you feel anxious or bad, to bring up when talking to people about these things, to know for yourself) and for catharsis.

WORTH IT

What works for you?

PS -- I'm not a doctor. I feel this is obvious, but ... just in case.

An Abbreviated List of Things I Did and Thoughts I Had Instead of Just Starting to Write the Fucking Play

1. Did you know they have cherry-flavored m&ms now? That sounds amazing. Except real cherries are weird and have a gross texture.
2. That will probably alienate people. Sorry, cherries.
3. My ENTIRE ROOM must be re-organized right this second.
4. Also, I organized all of my books into rainbow order.
5. Except for the 20+ books I've recently purchased used on Amazon or at the thrift store, which are piled high around my bedside table and are I suspect intentionally intimidating me.
6. (I have only completed one of these books -- FURIOUSLY HAPPY by Jenny Lawson -- because I am THAT BAD at starting things.)
7. I shouldn't say that I am bad. I have intense anxiety about starting things.
8. Or to spin it in a positive way, I am INTENSELY GOOD at procrastinating.
9-31. Hold on, my cats are being cute and I need to take a picture of them so the rest of the world can know their glory.
32. Do I Instagram my cats too much?
33. Nah.
34. ... But do I?
35. NAH.
36. Work and stuff, I GUESS.
37. I really like my new water bottle. It matches my hair.
38. (I dyed my hair.)
39. Is my face crooked?
40. I think my face is crooked.
41. Porter is starting at me with those moon eyes that say: WHAT IS FOOD I HAVE NEVER EVEN EATEN BEFORE IN MY LIFE
42. Feed the dang cats.
43. Paint my nails a really pretty shade of lilac.
44. Oh my god I am a horrible failure.
45. Read a quote on Twitter that was like "REAL writers write EVERY DAY blah blah you're a stupid failure idiot," or something like that.
46. Meltdown about status re: writership.
47. Eat. Nap. Feel nebulously better.
48. CHECKED ON MY NEKO ATSUME CATS. Fuck you, Tubbs.
49. This new to do list app is cool but also I think it might be giving me invisible hives.
50. Oh! Timehop!
51. Woof. I posted a lot of statuses that were angsty RENT lyrics. I take back what I said about forgetting regret.
52-59. Text boyfriend pictures of adorable mice.
60. Therapy.
61. Begin an art journaling course by Brene Brown.
62. Get incredibly excited about CRAFTS SUPPLIES YAY
63. Contemplate feelings.
64. I am a woman lousy with feelings.
65. I like that phrase. "Lousy with _____." I think I learned it from Buffy?
66. ... I SHOULD RE-WATCH ALL OF BUFFY
67. Get anxious about how much time that would take.
68. Remain tempted, but strong.
69. Buy a Ravenclaw Quidditch sweatshirt, despite the fact that I would probably never have played Quidditch, for lack of athletic prowess.
70. I am really glad that JK Rowling confirmed that Wizarding Theatre exists.
71. ... I SHOULD RE-READ ALL OF HARRY POTTER
72. Deja vu?
73. Get weepy over the fact that my owl bookmark lost an ear.
74. I am a terrible owl bookmark mother. 
75. I think I actually started this blog in a vaguely productive way of being procrastinatory.
76. Can procrastination ever be productive?*
77. Check social media.
78. Attempt to be funny on social media.
79. WHY DO I SO CRAVE THE VALIDATION OF OTHERS
80. I should train Porter to reliably walk on a leash so he could be an Adventure Cat and we could like, go on hikes together.
81. Read clickbait that January 18th is the most depressing day of the year.
82. This is not good news because I am already depressed.
83. PORTER YOU CAN'T EAT THAT. GODDAMNIT
84. For being so smart, my cats are idiots.
85. Think about my life as an artist + theatre maker.
86. Anxiety re: future builds.
87. I should really start writing this play.
88. What if it is bad?
89. What if people hate it?
90. WHAT IF PEOPLE HATE ME
91. I AM 26 AND MY CAREER AS A PLAYWRIGHT IS OVER
92. Shave undercut. Achieve mild catharsis.
93. Nap.
94. Maybe I should go out! Be social! I am a twentysomething! Beer and bourbon! Yeah!
95. Become overwhelmed with crippling social anxiety.
96. Have anxiety about my anxiety.
97. Nap.
98. Journal about feelings.
99. Panic about deadlines.
100. Blog about it.
101. These cherry m&ms are A+++.

 

*Yes.

Brain Monster

It is hard for me to chart my moods. It was one of the first practices I used when I first began therapy, and I kept it up for a few months ... but then I ghosted on myself.

I fall very easily victim to the "however I am feeling right now is how I have always felt, and will always feel" phenomenon. This goes for the bouts of no good very bad depression and the all-too-brief moments of happiness. When I'm sad or anxious, I find it difficult to imagine having felt any other way -- though, obviously, my rational brain knows this not to be true. I have trouble believing that I will ever experience happiness again. On the flip side, when I'm feeling more upbeat, I wonder whether I have clinical depression at all. Both of these thought processes are great/terrible examples of the distorted thoughts that I experience as part of my condition.

Right now? I'm not feeling good. I haven't accomplished as much of the personal writing as I wanted to over the past several weeks. I moved back home. I am worried about the future and ashamed of the past. I am living -- despite two years of dedicated mindfulness practice (which is essentially the hard as fuck art of living in the moment) -- anywhere BUT where I am. My brain is rattling.

Hold the phone, this computer (my own laptop is tragically deceased, so I am borrowing my dad's 2007 HP laptop until it, uh, magically comes back to life) has Paint, so here is an artistic representation of ALL OF MY FEELINGS RIGHT NOW.

Yeah, so, that's sort of how things are at the moment. 

Starting things is particularly difficult when I am experiencing a low. I have plans. I have excellent intentions. I have to do lists. I HAVE TO DO LISTS WITH TO DO LISTS. And yet, this weekend, I've done barely a thing besides curl up in bed with my cat and read a book about other people feeling shitty. Which was hard enough to do. I am in a moment where I am struggling to hold onto hope that the medicine, the therapy, the seemingly endless self-work that I do to protect myself -- and other people -- from myself will actually ever work.

But then, that seems problematic: I shouldn't quantify healing. I shouldn't give it an end date, because there's no such thing. Happiness ought to be a process, not an end result.

Today I meditated for a whole thirty-some minutes. And, guys, I have adult ADD like a motherfucker so I was pretty proud of being able to sit still for that long without giving up and throwing my computer out of the window. It was a shame-release meditation, which ended with the mantra (sorry for the spoiler?): I am enough. I have always been enough.

It's so simple, isn't it? But believing that. Really, truly believing that with my guts and my veins and hot blood and every tiny atom that creates me? That's a lot harder. 

The Art of Staying Alive

I know, I know -- I've done this before. "I'll start a blog!" I say, clutching pen and paper to my chest*. "I will reveal my soul to the world paragraph by paragraph! There will  be universal in the specific, and also my cats will be famous." And for a minute there, do you know what, I really believe it with the whole corn husk where my heart should be.

In theatre -- and especially as playwrights -- we often ask the question, "why this, why now?"

Here's my answer tonight, this sixth day of January: because I am writing a survival guide for my life. because I want to survive it.

I don't quite know where to begin (though I hear it is a very good place to start). Until, oh, four years ago, I suffered from mental illness silently -- because I had no idea that crying oneself to sleep wasn't normal. That a burning, all-consuming desire to die wasn't just, like, a thing that happened to everybody. That most people can remember their childhoods and didn't spend them hiding in the laundry room out of a crippling though at the time unnameable anxiety.

After that -- and I don't remember why, except that one day it just became a little too obvious, a little too painful, a little too something -- I came out of the mental illness closet with fire and glitter rainbows. Immediately thereafter, I was (mis)diagnosed with bipolar II and given a cocktail of pharmaceutical medication big enough to choke a horse. Lithium, Seroquel, Welbutrin, Trazadone, Prozac -- all these and more. Not all at the same time, but various and sundry throughout the next four years of my life.

Please do not misunderstand me. I am being hyperbolic here (you'll get used to it). If I hadn't finally admitted to myself (and others) that something was capital W wrong with me, and I hadn't taken the steps to get medication and so on and so forth, I would be dead.

Sorry to be so brutal, but it is true. That is not hyperbole. Note that that is the last time I will apologize for myself here. I am not here to apologize for anything, merely to document.

Here I am, though, four years later and living to joke about it on the internet. I saw roughly a million therapists til I found one that fit (and that I could afford), have been on and off medication, read some self-help books (I recommend Augusten Burrough's This is How), filled A LOT of journals with some real sad shit, meditated, yoga'd, got acupuncture done til I couldn't afford it anymore, had one really weird session of energy work, and even a brief little stint in a psych ward.

What will this blog be? A safe space (hopefully, and also I originally wrote "space space", so it shall be that too) for me to memoir-as-I-go. Radical transparency, especially regarding invisible conditions like mental illness, is important to me, so there will be plenty of that. I used to want to run a style blog, so fuck, that too.

I'll also post pictures of my cats because they really should be famous, to be quite honest.

We'll see what comes next.

*I realize blogs are on the internet, but this is my mental image, okay?