The Abyss

I am currently in one of the worst depression episodes I have ever experienced. I've had depression for over twenty years, so I have a lot to compare this to.

This coincides with a very rough patch in our marriage, and is the third? fourth? major long-term health crisis for me this calendar year.

One acquaintance picked up on the shift within two weeks of my depression symptoms (re)starting this spring and opened a conversation with my husband and I about it. Things between my husband and I deteriorated this summer, though I kept trying to reach out to him, kept trying to tell him I was struggling badly and needed him to be there for me. He consistently and categorically refused. I reached out at one point to a mutual friend of ours, who ghosted me. I added her to the very long list of 'people who said they cared about me and would be there for me and then definitely weren't.'

The message was clear -- I was still too much. So I suffered in silence, as I always had.

In the middle of August, there was an incident between my husband and I that broke me on a deeper level than anything I had ever experienced before. At that point, I reached out to the acquaintance from the spring again because I had nobody else, fully expecting that he would help for two weeks -- a month, tops -- before dropping me just like everybody else always did. Turns out he had been observing the situation for years and knew exactly which threads to pull, so he did. And while everything I had tenuously built my life on unraveled around me (some of it pulled apart by my own hands when I saw how much of it was lies), he stood calmly in the middle, an anchor point when nothing else -- not even my own life -- was guaranteed.

As my life burned to the ground around me (again), my depression fast-traveled to new and unexplored depths. I am too exhausted to be actively suicidal and I have no plan, but I told Sam on Sunday that I just want to lay down and never wake up again. I told another friend that I don't see a future at all, good or bad. I don't know if my husband is in that future or not, because I see nothing, at all. I told Sam I used to have writing projects and dance goals to keep me moving forward, but right now I don't have any of those either. There is nothing to keep me tethered here, to the ball of death hanging in space. What other people didn't tear to shreds, the depression has built fortified walls around. All I do now is sleep and argue with my husband. The fact that I'm writing this -- writing anything -- now is a big deal.

Yesterday I had a doctor's appointment, and my doctor talked me into trying an antidepressant. Despite two decades with this disease, I have never actually tried meds for it. Today was the first day, and he warned me that my symptoms could get worse before they get better. (So far, no change -- good or bad. It's been not quite two hours since I took them.)

When I got home from the appointment, I told Sam I was scared to take the meds.

The lens of depression has filtered every single thing I have thought, or said, or done, or heard, or seen for over twenty years. Practically every artistic thing I have ever done was inspired by something I saw or heard through the lens of depression. 'If I take that lens away,' I said to Sam, 'then who am I? Will I find the real Kate, or will I fall for an imposter? Will you even recognise me?'

Despite Sam's reassurances, I'm still frightened. I know I can't go back the way I came, through the depression, but I'm afraid to go forward into a world that for all I know might not even exist. Is there a world without unbearable pain crushing my brain, without the white-hot poker of rejection burning in my lungs every day?

All I see is darkness, and as far as I know, there is nothing on the other side of depression.

Negatively Positive

Not long ago, I was filling in a new-ish friend on some of my trauma lore -- 2015, the miscarriages, and the early years of my marriage.

 

That last bit is something I have not really spoken to anybody about. I had already learned that honesty was an offence punishable by public dismemberment and being buried alive, plus I couldn't reconcile being honest about the pain while simultaneously loving my husband. I shut down. I spent probably four years in an eternal present. I had no past and no future. No thoughts besides how to prevent the next blowup or smooth over the current one.

 

Early on, I had been messaging my friends about my confusion at his sudden change in attitude. How the calm, generous listener had overnight started screaming insults over basic use of the English language. Their response was unanimous: Leave him.

 

The thought was very tempting, I won't lie. But I had seen who he had been before, and I was unwilling to believe that kind act had been only an act. This isn't who he is. He wasn't always like that. It has to be just stress or something.

 

When I tried to explain this, with my rapidly-decreasing ability to think (let alone write) in comprehensible English, they escalated. I will not watch you self-destruct. If you don't leave him, I will not be a part of your life.

 

How do you respond to an ultimatum like that?

 

I had been friends with some of these people for over a decade. I had helped most of them through life-threatening crises of their own. I had offered so much time and energy to them freely, even in times when my own life was crumbling. Now I was in crisis, and they could not remember the times I had moved heaven and earth to help them through worse.

 

I don't have the mental capacity for your problems as well as my own, they told me, one by one. I can't handle your negativity. Don't bring me into your problems anymore.

 

But it won't always be like this. It'll get better... right? Marriage is hard and we're both learning and it'll get better, it just sucks right now.

 

I was speaking to an empty room by the end, with only my own voice for company.

 

It has to get better. This isn't who he really is. I made him a promise. I made a vow before God.

I promised. 

 

I hung onto that thought with all my strength. But my fingers were slipping. 

 

Five years earlier, when my world had crumbled around me, when the Angel of Death took a combine harvester to every part of my life, the friends who didn't die in the devastation turned on me: you're too negative. You always see the worst in everything.

 

Now, as my loving husband turned into a monster before my eyes, as I clung to the insane hope that this was only a season and not an eternal condemnation... my friends still left me. I chose to look for a sunrise while buried alive, and that still wasn't good enough.

 

When everybody died, I was too negative, too sad. When my husband turned out to be a real-life Jekyll and Hyde, I was too positive, too hopeful.

 

Make it make sense.

 

Like if you hate my guts and are just looking for an excuse to cut me out of your life -- this is a Pro-Tip, by the way, take notes -- just say you hate my guts. Just be honest. Don't do this 'you're too X' song and dance. It's like trying to kill a grizzly bear with a spoon -- it takes way longer than necessary, and everyone involved feels way more pain than they needed to.

What's more, I am sorely tempted to message every single one of those people who couldn't find a scrap of compassion in their hearts -- hearts that in some cases were still beating because of me -- and tell them you know what? I was f--king right.

 

We are coming up on another wedding anniversary. If anything, we are happier now than we were even in those early days of dating. And if I had followed their advice and left him, he would be dead and honestly I might be too.

 

 

P.S. -- Do you want to know what the problem was? Why my husband went from sweet, romantic, caring, and generous to angry, manipulative, vicious, and did I mention angry?

An allergy.

A food allergy to a very common seasoning.

By the time I convinced him to go to the doctor about it, it had mutated into five other major chronic health conditions which we are still trying get treatment for, to say nothing of the ongoing emotional fallout for both of us individually and in our marriage. Our marriage still exists only because I'm a stubborn German who is still too bitter about my uncle leaving my aunt (for literally zero reason) to give up on my own marriage for any reason at all.

One Month Of Vacation

Today marks one month since the day we drove away from our decrepit old apartment in the desert and did not come back.

 

I drove past it a few days ago. There were no Christmas lights on the balcony, for the first time in five years... I have always made sure to put up at least one strand of Christmas lights. And they are up... just not at the blue apartment.

 

It still feels like we're on vacation in a beautiful little guest house, with our Christmas tree and my husband's streaming setup and my grandma's rocking chair and my husband's mead-making station and all my plants on their stand. It still feels like one day we'll wake up and we'll have to leave and go back 'home' to the desert apartment with the spiders and the mice and the four-storey hike one-way to the laundry room and the cinderblock walls with no storage that pressed in around us.

I cried when we left... I was shocked at that. While there were memories in that apartment, most of them were bad ones... ones of my husband so sick that he was quite a different person, one who screamed and threw things and allowed his relatives to dictate my life without standing up for me. Those are all memories that dominated that place and dominated our first three years of marriage, before we were finally able to diagnose and cut out a food allergen that was wrecking absolute havoc on his brain.

I am so grateful for this new place, for the storage space and the natural light and the general livability and lack of lead pipes and the quiet streets. We have heard one (1) vehicle the entire time we've lived here. At the old place we were both routinely woken at night (sometimes multiple times) by people street-racing in souped-up Fords at 3am. I sleep like the dead (I have had roommates consider calling 911 because I sleep so deeply) and even I was sleeping poorly.

I'm not sure whether I should treasure those troubled memories of early marriage or if I should be happy to turn my back on them. I don't want to forget how much better things are now. Both my husband and I are coughing less. We can drink the water straight out of the tap and it tastes delicious. We get curbside recycling pickup... there wasn't even a recycling depot in the town where we used to live (let alone pickup) until mere months before we moved. We have more of a social life already than we ever could have dreamed of in the old town. This is an upgrade in every way.

 

I am struggling to set up my dance studio. I have the flooring pieces (although I do want my larger one from my parents' house), and the room is almost cleaned up (it's been a disaster for most of the time we've lived here because it was one of the lower priorities for unpacking and organization). I'm struggling to want to. I don't know if the stress of moving (and work -- currently in the middle of a show that breaking ticket sales records for the theatre as well as launching ticket sales for next season) is zapping my motivation, or just thinking of all the times I've tried and failed to get dance going again since I've gotten married. I have an opportunity to teach in the new year, and I think I might take it... although last time I tried to teach choreography, I was raked over the coals for being 'unrealistic' and my co-worker actively sabotaged my work so I'm very nervous how it will go. I don't know if the flame of dance has died, necessarily, but it has certainly had a large amount of dirt shovelled onto it.

 

I also want to write again. NaNoWriMo 2023 was the last time I wrote anything longer than a blog post. I don't have any ideas, but I'm finding myself poking absentmindedly around for one. I mentioned wanting to write again to my husband the other day and for the first time in our entire marriage, he said something supportive instead of telling me how I'm wasting my time writing. It might be a while before I actually write something, but I'm open to an idea.

 

I don't know if I should post practice videos on Instagram again when I do start dancing. The world of social media changed significantly during the pandemic, right at the time my in-laws banned me from posting on it. It's an alien landscape to me now, all ads and fake positivity, both of which I have always avoided. There's a definite allure now to the thought of not posting a single thing about dance until I create my next major work... maybe during Nachmo? I do have the space for working out choreography now, so maybe I can do an honest-to-goodness Nachmo for once instead of just a thought experiment (I say that as if I didn't choreograph an entire one-woman show during Nachmo 2023 that got screened in their online festival and is now one of my highest-viewed videos on YouTube).

 

So far, both my husband and I are healthier and happier. I had hoped that this move would give us a place of peace where we can heal from the old wounds and grow into a life instead of just an existence.

 

So far... I think it just might be working. 

Update: Nothing Has Changed (And It Probably Never Will)

I'm tired of being a useless, lazy, stupid, 'entitled,' 'out of touch' failure.

 

I'm in a busy season in my life right now -- a job I enjoy, doing a show that's been on my bucket list since I first saw it in 2018, finally making some measurable progress toward what I've always wanted to do with my life, actually managing to keep up with the household tasks 95% of the time (thanks, meds).

However, despite trying for over three decades now, I have never figured out how to stretch time, or pause it, or beat it, or whatever it takes to pack more activities/responsibilities into every day. And as a result, I sometimes have to prioritise some things over other things. Last week, I prioritised cleaning the kitchen floor over putting away the (already washed) laundry. It's worth noting that every single household chore that I am responsible for got done except for putting away the clean laundry. What did I get for my efforts? An eight-hour lecture that has now bled over into a second ongoing, multi-hour period of silent treatment because I also dared have the audacity to pick the 'wrong' flavour of ice cream for myself.

Yeah. I'm just as confused about this as you are.

I've spent the last 24 hours remembering all those plans I made to disappear, to catapult myself past the wall of sleep, beyond the stars. I stand in our kitchen doing dishes, listing all the reasons I should live... I'm doing a show that I've wanted to do since before I met my husband, I want to go shopping with my best friend again, I don't want to make my parents and siblings have to lose me like that, I want to see all those goals I have set for my dance career get met, I want to see things get better because even after spending thirty years watching my life spiral deeper and deeper into hell with no sign of stopping I'm still dumb enough to believe that it'll get better someday.

I can't talk to anyone about this, I burned all those bridges multiple 'rough patches' ago. Even my best friend snapped at me last time I told her I wasn't doing well mentally, insinuating I was selfish for thinking I was the only person in her life having problems. After that, I realised if I wanted to have any kind of relationship at all with any human being ever, I would have to hunker down and get through depressive episodes entirely alone (my husband made it abundantly clear LONG ago that he was going to be personally offended every time I even alluded vaguely to being depressed). That had worked just fine until now.

Those are all great reasons to live, on paper. But they don't seem to connect with the bruised, bleeding, hacked up remains of my broken heart that's already mangled by third-degree burns. I know logically that those are good reasons, but they don't mean anything to me at this moment, even though I know they do (or at least they should).

Right now, all I can see and hear and feel and taste is how EVERY. SINGLE. TINY. INSIGNIFICANT decision I make is somehow the wrong one. It does not matter what it is, it is always wrong. Even if I ask for clarification a thousand times, everything I do is still somehow wrong. I'm so tired of always having to defend myself and always having to walk on eggshells and giving 275% of myself every single day of my life and still being reamed out for 'not even trying.'

It's just like freaking college all over again. I very nearly didn't survive that. I'm not sure I have the energy or desire left to survive this too. What's even the point? The longer this goes on, the more likely it seems that nothing ever will actually get better, and there's no big reward coming for hanging on to breathing like this.

So how much of my blood do I need to spill to make right the wrong I have done by existing?

Uprooting My Brain

Yesterday I officially got prescribed ADHD meds. This comes three and a half years after actually being diagnosed.

While journaling helps my memory (sort of), it absolutely does not help my motivation (rather, the complete lack of it). Performing slightly more regularly seems to be helping my memory get back in shape a little bit, but there seems to be no way to trick my brain into accidentally being motivated to do boring things like washing the dishes and sweeping the floor.

Though I have the container of capsules beside me as I type, I won't be starting them till Monday. I'm literally opening a show out of town tomorrow, and if I'm deathly allergic to these capsules I would rather find that out when I'm not supposed to be holding a hundred or so people in a state of suspended reality.

I am very aware that as a creative person who still manages to at least flirt with the performing arts industry, it's likely the fantastically-fast and somewhat melodramatic ADHD mind that got me this far in the first place. I'm worried that the meds will dull my bright, shining (I hope?) artistic ideas. But on the other hand, I am sick to death of the screaming matches with my husband about whether or not I'm making his life miserable on purpose by not keeping the house clean.

I'm also afraid that these meds won't work. And then the screaming matches will continue with no hope of an ending in sight.

I'm not sure what to expect, or what I even want to happen. Is it unrealistic to hope that (most of) our marital difficulties can be solved with a pill? Should I even be seeking to change who I am and how my brain operates to be palatable to the man who is supposed to love me unconditionally (whether or not the change I'm attempting is successful)?

Even if it does help, it's not a magic bullet, and I'm afraid we'll both be disappointed that it's not. This is the last thing I can think of to try, and if it doesn't work... am I just going to have to resign myself to being yelled at for the rest of my life?

I know this isn't a permanent change. If I decide I don't like it, I can always stop the meds. But I worry that what I love about myself and what my husband hates most about me are both growing from the same root and if I kill the things my husband hates, it will also kill the things I lived for.

The Annual Goalpost

I love and hate making these posts.

On one hand, I love dreaming up all the possibilities. But on the other hand, I hate trying to guess what kind of goals are reasonable and what aren't. After probably close to seven years of making these annual posts, I still feel that I don't know what I'm doing.

Anyway, here goes. It might look a little different this year.

- At least two new dance films.

I think I know which two. I just have to DO them (this includes memorising!).

- Create a long-ish (15+ minute) dance show.

- Audition for three shows.

- Make a plan of attack to rewrite Kyrie again.

First step is to reread the thing and make lots of notes. I already know Act I has severe pacing issues. I might try adding a subplot or something... I'm actually not quite sure how to fix it.

- Start pitching to magazines.

- Write at least four articles/stories a week.

- Enter a writing contest.

- At least one date night every two weeks.

- Read more (soft goal of nine books in 2024).

- More watercolour painting. I am deliberately not putting a number here.

- Sustainably cut back hours at the day job.

I am so burnt out with my current job it is not even funny. The management has been restructured, and now the workplace culture is so bad that I would literally rather die than work one more day there. I'm also not making nearly enough money there to cover our living expenses so every day I work there I feel I get farther behind. I'm really trying to grow my dance/writing network so maybe I can at least freelance enough to cut my hours at my current job even if I can't quit outright.

- Save $1000 for a house.

STRETCH GOALS:

- Apply for at least one festival (ideally with above longer dance show).

- Take at least three dance classes (or courses of some kind).

- Crochet myself a sweater.

- Make a third dance film.

This year's list is deliberately much shorter than previous years. It turns out it's just not possible to sustain the kind of creative output I was expecting from myself while also holding down an extremely emotionally draining full time job and being married.

The other thing is, the projects I'm undertaking now are a step up from the things I used to do. Ten years ago I was building a portfolio. I was making dances and honing my creative voice on small projects. But now I'm building on that experience to make bigger things. My goals used to be 'choreograph X amount of dances' -- small things that I could easily knock out in a week if I wanted to. But now the goals are more like 'make two dance films.' And learning, shooting, and editing a dance film is a lot more time-intensive than simply choreographing one on paper. Sottovoce took me 58 days -- nearly two months (granted, I am including the choreography time in this), and that was very much a speedrun. Inside Of You -- a much shorter and smaller-scale piece -- was still a solid month of editing even though I only filmed for an hour, and I'm not even counting the astronomical amount of time it takes me to memorise a dance piece nowadays. I'm looking to take some serious steps in this coming year -- bigger, more time-intensive steps, and those take up less space on the page.

This is exactly what I've spent the last ten years or so working towards. Last year I took some big steps. This year I'm looking to build on those steps and take bigger ones.

NaNoWriMo, Day 26 - An Announcement

I'm into the final 7k of what may be my final NaNoWriMo event. At least for a while.

It's been a solid run. I've written twenty novels out of this contest since 2008. Only a few of them are really beyond redemption (or at least would take more work than I'm willing to put in). Kyrie (2014) is obviously my favourite, but there are definitely others I will be revisiting when Kyrie is closer to true completion.

This farewell to NaNoWriMo would not be complete without a huge nod to Chris Baty, the founder, and his book No Plot? No Problem! which I borrowed from the library at age 14 -- not knowing it would change my life forever.

Chris Baty made writing accessible for those of us with ADHD. He made writing seem like madcap fun, not a tedious chore. He made it exciting. He gave it a deadline (and you know how great deadlines are for ADHDers). He made it a social activity.

Chris Baty revolutionised what writing was. He unlocked the gate of writing so the ADHDers, with all our whimsy and colour and verve, could have a seat at the table too. He gave writing ADHDers a voice. And I am so grateful for that. Without that zany book, and without that deadline, I would never have written anything. I would still be spinning my wheels, wondering what could have been if I had only managed to try writing just once.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not quitting writing altogether. I intend to rewrite Kyrie again starting in 2024. As mentioned above, there are other drafts lined up for once Kyrie is 'done.' I am so excited to actually work towards publication for some of these stories. I still intend to write blog posts and maybe the odd short story.

Maybe in a few years I'll revisit the possibility of NaNoWriMo. But I'll be taking an indefinite, likely multi-year, hiatus. Up till now, the only years I sat out were 2017 and 2020. But my job, my marriage, and my mental health have all suffered during the past few Novembers and I have decided it's time to recharge. The annual hit to my marriage especially is just not worth it.

Is it sad? Definitely. I loved this event and the madcap fun it brought into my life. I loved writing alongside M and then writing to keep her memory alive. But as much as I love M and will never forget her, 'keeping her memory alive' can't be the only reason to subject my marriage to this substantial strain every year. I have other art pieces dedicated to her that accomplish the same thing. And NaNoWriMo just isn't the same without her actually in it. Every year since her death has been a huge struggle, and I think at this point, five years later, I have to accept that NaNoWriMo will never again be the same amount of fun. Time does not heal all wounds. Not completely.

For the time being, I think I have gotten what I need to get out of this event. Maybe one day I'll return. Maybe I never will.

But for now, I will try to savour these last 7k as much as I can.

NaNoWriMo, Day 18

I am struggling HARD this year.

I'm exactly at par right now. I'm getting hundreds -- not thousands -- of words done on work days, and have written maybe five words today -- my day off. I had hoped to write 3k today, but I just don't have the mental energy.

I keep going back to LinkedIn, looking for jobs, looking for connections, looking for anything that will get me out of this hellhole job that I'm currently trapped in. This is quite literally eating my life. My marriage is failing and I am almost convinced it's work stress that's making me an ineffective marriage partner.

On top of that, somebody tipped off the NaNoWriMo Board about the moderation drama that's been going on all year THIS month, of all months, and got all the forums shut down for all users during the LITERAL ANNUAL EVENT THAT THE FORUMS ARE THERE FOR. I've never been a huge forum presence, but I have a couple threads that I'm active in and not having the forums there for support and encouragement has almost killed my writerly will to live. I understand why they did it, I do. Moderation is, apparently, a dumpster fire (I have not witnessed any of this, but I've been hearing others complain about it all year) so in order to 'suspend' mod activities and sort out the allegations, they had to also suspend the forums lest it become the Wild West. But in an already-difficult time in my life where I am feeling extremely unsupported and unheard both personally and professionally, this is the straw that has broken this camel's back. Even if everything is sorted out, I really don't know if I will do NaNoWriMo next year. I understand the Board is doing their best and I do appreciate their efforts to sort it out and make it right as best they can but I'm just done having all my support systems taken away from me and this has left a really bad taste in my mouth. NaNoWriMo made me a writer and for that I will always be grateful. I have nothing bad to say about the event. But I don't know if I have the strength to put myself through this again, and that breaks my heart. I loved this place. But I feel it didn't love us back.

I'm so tired. I've had a headache for *checks notes* eighteen days now.

Even my story feels dead. I guess it matches my soul right now. I loved the concept of it, but I'm struggling with execution, as I did with last year's story. Both years I've had amazing ideas that I really loved, but was completely bored of the story as I wrote it. I don't remember feeling this before with any of the previous eighteen NaNo-related works I've written.

Is it a sign that I need to pause writing rough drafts and focus on editing these into actual published works? Maybe. I have easily five drafts that are very workable candidates for eventual publication. But I do want to finish this one. Only 20k left to go. It's still very doable, but only if work and marriage stress don't drown me first.

I hate that this is the NaNoWriMo experience I'm having. Even before the forum shutdown, I was struggling mightily. I'm so tired. I'm so done. Even with an outline, I can't seem to get from point A to point B. I honestly wonder if I would have been better off not making an outline at all. It's not stifling me, per se... I think the outline itself is just not interesting enough to me at the moment, especially with everything else draining me of hope. Writing used to be a welcome escape for me, but it's not working anymore. And that hurts a lot.

ADHD

Originally written 13 September 2021, 11.40pm.

Two days before our first anniversary, I was diagnosed with ADHD and officially told I am on the autism spectrum. This is not a self-diagnosis for attention; this information came from a licensed neuropsychiatrist following an hour-and-a-half assessment and screening.

I was fully prepared for an autism diagnosis. I was not prepared, however, for ADHD.

This has rocked my world -- it explains SO MUCH. I’ve been reading through the NaNoWriMo Adult ADHD thread all day (13 September) and literally crying because all of it is me. Time blindness/underestimating how much time things will take, inability to switch tasks, hyperfocus, inability to focus on anything boring (including sleeping, which is why I will 100% stay up till 4am if no-one actively stops me), inability to just sit still, constantly being busy, brain constantly going a million miles an hour (turns out this is why my brain always feels like it's being eaten by acid), self-teaching myself everything under the sun, millions of brilliant and unfinished creative projects in my wake, constantly interrupting people, executive dysfunction…

I’ve been a dancer for 22 years, I routinely overloaded myself in college and mostly managed to get almost every assignment done hours before it was due (a famous example is when I wrote four papers and two final exams in 36 hours), all while still dancing 12-20 hours a week and keeping up a theatre career on the side (I’m also usually in three shows concurrently, and the only reason I still get away with this is because I’m always on top of things – if I miss a rehearsal for another rehearsal for a different show, I study my butt off and show up next rehearsal looking like I didn’t miss a thing). Twice I wrote two 50k novels in a month for NaNoWriMo because doing only one was too easy and I had enough plot ideas to sustain it. My mother was CONSTANTLY on my case for forgetting my chores and knew that if I was reading or engrossed in a project that nothing short of an atomic bomb under my seat could get my attention (and even then, it would take me a minute to realise where I was and that something was happening). I once choreographed an entire 4.5-minute dance piece for seventeen dancers start-to-finish in one single eight-hour sitting (during which I did not eat, drink, or go to the bathroom), and also recently finished a far less complicated five-minute dance for four people that took me seven years. There’s really no in between. I notoriously learn entire dance pieces three days before I perform them and then perform them better than everyone else in the piece (none of my teachers have ever known what to do with me).

I would never have known I had ADHD until the pandemic took all of my coping mechanisms away – theatre and dance had been giving me enough controlled chaos to keep me sane, and then when it was all taken away, my symptoms (both ADHD and autism) finally presented, big-time. At first I thought it was just depression, brought on by the stress of the pandemic and my first real romantic relationship/marriage, but luckily I follow a few autistic performers on Instagram who regularly post autism/ADHD memes, and I began to see myself in a few too many of these posts. I took my autism suspicions to my therapist, who told me how to go about getting assessed. The process happened very quickly, and it was at my autism assessment that I was screened for and diagnosed with ADHD.

I am not medicated yet, pending a more detailed autism assessment, and also because they want to put me on Wellbutrin and I've shied away because I am TERRIFIED of Wellbutrin. I have not met a single person who has had a positive experience with Wellbutrin. Everyone I know who has been on it has had severe side effects that were ten times worse than the issue that they were trying to treat. Plus, it only comes in pill form, and I can't swallow pills (thanks, autism-related/hereditary texture issues).

As difficult as life is with ADHD, I'm glad to have a diagnosis. Not only does it explain things that I honestly thought meant I was just a no-good failure and a waste of skin/God's punching bag, it also saved our marriage. My husband was constantly on my case for forgetting to do things and he would get extremely frustrated and accuse me of doing it on purpose and I would get angry because I was angry at myself for forgetting (again) and angry at him for not believing me whenever I tried to explain that I didn’t mean to forget things (that's literally what 'forgetting' means...?). Since my diagnosis, we went from screaming matches every other day to I think maybe one or two in the past month. It’s helped me understand myself and make a conscious effort to be more attentive to the things I forget that annoy him the most and it’s helped him understand me and be more patient with me.

There is still a lot to learn and a very, very long way to go. I've borrowed some books from the library to try to understand myself and how to function as an adult human in a world that I never did feel I belonged in. It's a lot to catch up on, and right now I'm feeling rather overwhelmed by it all... but I'll keep trying.

Stay tuned...

Broken Magic

Written 29 May 2016.

Seventeen (now eighteen - 2017) years ago a child stood at the front of a church and watched as a covenant, the deepest and most magical of all promises, was made.

Fifteen years later she watched as it crumbled to the ground, as meaningless as a feather on the wind, only less beautiful.

And now she stands in the ruins of it, even as she prepares to be a witness to another, very similar, covenant.

The child who once stood in awe of the beauty around her now stands shattered, pieces of sharp glass held together by naught more than fairy floss, which could be cut by the glass it holds together at any second. Where once she threw rainbows of light and sparkled in the sun, she can only see darkness so thick that it can be felt, so heavy that it has the ability to suffocate.

This is what happens when the magic is broken and the covenant is disregarded. It hurts the people who created it and the people who broke it. But it also hurts those caught in the explosion, those who were at ground zero when it was initially forged, and those who watched the trust build in layer after slow layer as those fifteen years ran by, only to see it mangled by one of the very keepers of the covenant.

It is the very worst of betrayals; one of the most treacherous ones that does not end in a quick and frightening death. Instead it only initiates a slow breakdown in the world, in the way things should have been, in the way that the covenant keepers had pledged they would be.

Dream Funeral

Originally written 2 January 2016, 11.36pm.

Lately I've been realising how much I think about death, particularly my own death.

I've mentioned on this blog before that I was suicidal for the better part of nine years. That time is past, but even after the suicidal thoughts were gone, I still thought about my own death a lot. Because I'd been suicidal for so long, it seemed normal to me. And because I'm an (aspiring) artist, it also stood to reason that I would ponder my own mortality more than the average person.

It never occurred to me that this might be strange until after Christmas. Over the past two weeks, like five people I know have gotten engaged (and I knew of at least eleven before that), and while everyone's talking about wedding planning and stuff, it began to occur to me that I'd never really even considered my own wedding or marriage. My (chronically single) sister has planned out her entire future wedding down to the amount of seconds it will take her to walk down the aisle, and I'd never thought to work out anything more specific than 'I'll be in white.' This might not seem strange to you until I tell you that I have my entire funeral planned out.

I'm not dying -- at least not of anything chronic (sometimes it feels like it though -- but my rant against the Canadian Health Care system is for another day). There's nothing in my life that is generally a harbinger of an early death. I mean, I could be taken out by an accident or something, but at the moment, I'm likely to live another seventy or eighty years (if the genes are any indication).

The other day I was thinking about this, wondering if maybe it was odd for me to have planned out my funeral while all my friends are planning weddings. Then I realised that in nearly every novel I've written, I make a cameo. And in almost every novel that features such a cameo, that character dies. Usually they die young, and usually they die suddenly -- one was murdered, one died of a virus, another indirectly committed suicide. But they're usually the 'me' character -- the one I identify with the most. And usually that character's death drives the book's plot. I've been dying vicariously through my characters. Why?

Again we turn to Kyrie. Only in Kyrie did I actually write a funeral, but that funeral was almost exactly the one I've planned out for myself. I featured some of the same songs I want played at mine, I featured the 'open mic eulogy' idea I want for my funeral, I featured a dance -- the same thing I want at my funeral. I focused on the heartbreak of the first-person narrator and the dead character's closest friend. It was pretty much my dream funeral.

The character who died was the 'me' character. Her goal was to touch people's hearts and encourage them as they trod the weary path of life -- as is mine. Her goal was to bring truth and beauty to a world that increasingly despises both -- as is mine. She had the courage to pursue her dreams of being an artist and when she died, although she touched the lives of many, and many missed her, there were 'villains' at her funeral: her parents (caricatures of everyone who's ever told me I was stupid and worthless purely because I'm not wired for a 9-to-5) and the director of the show that she was performing in when she died (who, as the narrator noted, mourned only the great talent he had lost, not the person herself).

In reflecting on that story, I recalled how much of my life has been spent in despair over this black hole in my heart and soul of feeling like I wasn't important to anybody. The question that has dogged my entire life since I was about nine years old was, If I died, would anybody miss me? That question fueled the lengthy suicidal episode and it still haunts me now. I asked my mother once and her response was, "Pfft! Of course I'd miss you," but it was so flippant and she seemed to think the question was ridiculous and annoying -- just like everything else about me. I'm not sure that if I died today, anybody would miss me for more than a week. And maybe that's why I took it so hard when my cousin died. After we got the phone call saying she was dead, my parents' reaction was, "well, God's in control," as if that settled it. They didn't ache, they didn't hurt, my mother didn't shed a single tear, though heaven knows my sister and I sobbed until we couldn't breathe at her funeral. They didn't mourn. They didn't care. They literally just shrugged and moved on. Less than a month after her death, my mother actually got upset at me: "Look, I don't know why you can't just move on already!"

Again -- less than a month after the third death close to me in as many months. The death of a child. And we're not counting the divorce-deaths in this tally.

And I'm starting to wonder if that's why every spark of life and joy and peace has shriveled up and died within me -- if that's how my parents react when a child close to them has died, how will they react if I were to die? Would they even care? Would they mourn me at all? Would they even notice a difference? And this is my parents. If I'm inconsequential in the eyes of my parents, how much less am I loved by those who aren't obligated to love me? Would I even be lucky enough to get a funeral? Or would people just send pithy cards to my parents with their regrets because they had work and call it good enough? Do I mean anything to anybody?

Some time ago, I wrote a post outlining my personal mission in life, and I've already alluded to it in this post. I want to touch people's lives. I want to encourage them and bring them a spark of hope or joy, the same way David Meece, Terry Scott Taylor/Daniel Amos, White Heart, and so on have brought to me. But if I can't even manage to touch the lives of my own family, never mind the random people I've happened to cross paths with in my life... then I've failed.

People always say on their deathbeds that the most important thing in life is the relationships you have and the people whose lives you've touched -- your spouse, your children, your parents, your family and friends. So many films, so many books, so many stories have that at their core. I'm one of the very few that have picked up on this long before actually dying, but I'm so inept at it. I want to know that I've helped somebody keep their chin up for even one more day. I want to know that something I created helped bring refreshment to a soul weary of this depressing world. But I don't know that I have. I don't know if I or the work of my brain and my hands have been important to anybody. I don't need to be famous. But I want to know that my life meant something to somebody.