Reclaiming my Balance

Serotonin, dopamine, ephinephrine, norephinephrine.

It’s amazing how thoroughly our bodies listen to those neurotransmitters, and they in turn shape our reality. Early humans developed these neurotransmitters — and resulting feelings — as an inducement to seek out beneficial things (like food and sex) and avoid or attack harmful things (avoid tigers, attack neighbors trying to steal their land). A sense of sadness from loss spurred them to seek out others for commiseration and healing.

In mood disorders, these feelings come up without any trigger — anger without a target, elation without a reason, sadness without actual loss. Anger leads to frustrating arguments and rants, elation leads to expansive affect (expression of mood) and a sense of being involved in bigger things, and deep, bottomless sadness leads to hopelessness.

The community can’t understand the strength and depth of these feelings, so they shy away from the person with a mood disorder. We get the label “crazy” because these feelings, and the compulsive effort to try to express them to our and fix things, don’t make sense to those around us.

So, I’ve been depressed, as I’ve mentioned before. Depression isn’t a matter of “cheer up”, “just get over it,” or “why don’t you volunteer?” When I’m depressed, my vision narrows to a pinprick where I’m alone in the room and will always be alone and I will die in that room. Yes, I know that sounds dramatic, but I’ll write the more subtle poetic version someday.

My excellent pdoc (psychiatrist) put me on a drug called Latuda, which was working for a few days. But now I’m showing signs of lability of emotions — which is a nice way of saying my emotions are all over the place. To understand this, imagine all your emotions and states of being — fear, confusion, sadness, hopelessness, eudaimonia (grounded happiness) — as channels on a television. Someone else has the remote and they hit the buttons randomly. I literally have gone from “I have nothing left in life” to “Hey, did you know dahlias are edible?” in a span of 4 minutes.

I’ve been having other symptoms — and of course, the physical symptoms get more attention, because emotional symptoms are nebulous, not easily understood, and — “just get over it”.

It could be the Latuda or the high thyroid; we don’t know yet. It could be something else — but I doubt it’s my heart despite wearing a Holter monitor overnight.

I hate being in this situation. I avoid people because I’m afraid they think I’m “crazy”. I second-guess every interaction I have. I struggle between writing honestly and feeling like a circus sideshow.

I hope I’m not losing you over this, dear readers.

Disillusionment with the Internet

My friends, this is why I wish I knew who read this blog:

Late last week, I got a barrage of 10-12 hits from Russia in a very short period of time, from a domain I discovered was a hotbed of bot activity. That means instead of a reader, Russia was data mining.

Two days ago, I hooked my account to Google+, and three things happened:
1) A foreign acquaintance had linked to me at one point, but unsubscribed as soon as I linked back to him;
2) I got a flurry of US hits all at once, which suggested a US bot;
3) Three people with almost identical profiles (Canadian or French, lots of inspirational posters, and then all sorts of ads for questionable loans, smart drugs, and a sugar daddy service. They had the same ads.

I’m an idealist. I’d like to believe that person from France isn’t trying to sell me modafinil. I’d like to believe that my Canadian audience is following me instead of using a borrowed personality to try to suck me into a scam. I’d like to believe that there’s a Russian teen out there who wants to understand writing better, and someone from Portugal who finds my writing interesting.

I’d like to believe I’m not setting myself up for more spam.
*****

I’m an optimist, I understand. I would like to believe that all of you are reading and getting something out of this blog, and that it’s helping me not only improve my writing skills but helping me make connections, real and caring connections.

I’m beginning to wonder if I’m deluding myself.

The Writer and Happily Ever After

We love happily-ever-after stories:

We want the good guys to win — although in reality, the good guys don’t always win and sometimes it’s hard to spot the good guys. And often we pick books to read in which the good guys look like us.

We want the world saved, but we’re aware that that same world may need saving again the next year, or even the next week. Isn’t this the gist of superhero comics?

We want the protagonist to fall in love. We assume they never break up, no matter how ludicrous their matching is. Opposites attract, sure, but that’s opposites in experience, not morals and values.

We assume the end of the book is the end of the story. It’s comforting, because it’s not real life. Perhaps it’s an escape from real life.

I will argue that happily-ever-after is a bad thing in real life. Why? First, because we couldn’t stand that in real life. It is human nature to move forward, and moving forward always concerns a sense of loss — loss of innocence, loss of friends, loss of the secure past, sometimes loss of life. The poignancy of age and mortality season our lives with a deeper meaning.

Second, total stagnation would make us uneasy. The movie Groundhog Day illustrates how frustrated people get with the same thing over and over again. Scenarios where nothing changes are the material of Twilight Zone. Stagnation is the “uncanny valley” of life — it resembles life, but it’s not really life.

I love Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series. I literally cannot bring myself to read the series any more after the stories of abuse her daughter revealed, but Darkover was one of my writing influences. However, in her series, she had a talent of making happily-ever-after stories end badly in the sequel, often offstage. The renegade telepaths of the Forbidden Tower are mentioned in future books as having been killed by fanatics. The heroic Regis Hastur becomes a paranoid, prematurely aged man in later years. This became part of the intrigue of the series, because those deaths set up new plot lines and character development.

When we writers don’t write series fiction (duologies, trilogies etc), the happy ending stands without need for update. In series fiction, we have the opportunity to make our world richer by continuing character strands in positive or negative ways.

In real life, we keep striving, and there are many endings in our lives, but many beginnings as well, until the ultimate end.

Writing about the moment.

Good morning, dear friends!

I feel like I’m fresh out of ideas today. I just got another rejection email, it’s freezing rain out there and I still have to go to work, and I’m wearing one of those technological reminders of mortality around my neck — a Holter monitor. (Don’t worry about that last point — we’ve already found the problem with the little pitty-pat-cha-cha of my heartbeat, and it’s easily fixable with a med tweak. They’re just making sure that’s all there is.)

It’s a good day to be down. Not depressed, just down. The desire to wrap myself in the coccoon of my blankets (rather than throw my clothes on over the monitor, put on makeup, and trudge down and up a flight of stairs with my computer backpack) is almost overwhelming. Almost. After all, life is out there, not under my blankets, and the adult thing to do is make the best of it.

Girly-Girl is sitting on the arm of the couch next to me, purring. She’s my editor.

My editor is falling asleep on the job.

It’s definitely dark (and rainy) out here at 7:30 AM. I’ve had a Messenger chat with my favorite nature interpreter about aquascape and pond design. The rain hits the window like buckshot. I discuss the sorry state of American politics with Richard.

I check the seedlings downstairs in my grow room — the only evidence that there will someday be spring. The tomatoes and peppers and eggplant stretch and grow in their bigger fiber pots; the perilla seedlings perk up, the first of the miner’s lettuce seems to be sprouting.

Someday there will be spring. Someday I will find an agent, someday I will feel healthy enough to work out, someday I will accept aging gracefully.

But for now, I sit in a warm room lit by the glow of candles, next to my cat. I can live with that.

PS: Oh, No, I’ve Said Too Much

Sometimes, I post something of the “honest, raw, and vulnerable” variety (such as the last note) and I later wonder, “Should I have not said that?”

Should I have not admitted that I’m old?
Should I have not admitted that I have bipolar 2?
Should I have not admitted crushes, or magical thinking about crushes?
Should I have not have put in yesterday’s very political post?
Should I have not expressed my feelings about being rejected by agents?
Should I have not talked about the times I’ve been depressed, etcetera?

And every time I ask myself those questions, I come up with the same answers: I have to be who I am. Who I am is fanciful, open, articulate. Maybe I’m doing a lot of navel-gazing, but I don’t know how to not be me. I do me, and I hope it gives someone something else to think about. I hope it helps someone else fall in love with my world. I hope it helps someone else fall in love with my writing.

Postscript: Apparently I have said too much for one person. I’m sorry about that.

Real-Life Fairy Tale

Nobody thinks they’re going to get old.

I didn’t either. People in my family age gracefully, but I assumed I would age so gracefully that I’d still look 35 when I looked in the mirror in later years. I don’t. I look every second of my 54 years and then some when I look into the mirror — the skin under my eyes is translucent and thin and bears a network of fine wrinkles. I have traces of laugh lines. My hair — everything I didn’t like about my hair at age 20 still applies today, only with 50% gray. Bizarrely, my face has more character than it did when I was younger: I look at pictures of myself now, and I look less vague and more — I don’t know — striking?

Portrait of the writer as an old woman.

My mother, my role model for all things feminine, hated getting older. Like me, she looked striking as an older woman. Like me, she grimaced when she looked in the mirror.

Like me, she maintained a fairy tale in her mind. In this fairy tale, a young, beautiful man would tell her she was beautiful, and she would be beautiful. There would magically be no repercussions from this on her marriage. In her bouts of compulsive shopping, she picked outfits she thought would make her more beautiful to this mysterious man.

Apparently, I take after my mother here too, except for the clothes shopping.

I occasionally develop crushes on beautiful young men (I am susceptible to beautiful young men). They have to seem like nice, honest men, who would not hit on me or string me along to make fun of me. It can’t develop into anything more than a friendship. They have to be believable if they tell me I’m beautiful. It helps if they’re in another country. The more hopeless the situation, the better.

I can’t ask them if they think I’m beautiful, because that breaks the magic spell, the alchemy that happens when the person I find most beautiful thinks I’m beautiful.

My fairy tale: Someone sends me an anonymous message telling me I’m beautiful, and I have to figure out who it is. Or an non-anonymous message, but they write it with heart. Or someone shows up to my coffee hours on campus* Notice that I didn’t say flowers. I need words, because I have trouble interpreting anything else. I need meaning so I can intuit meaning. Flowers will scare me away if they’re florist-types. Courtly tokens are welcome. Locks of hair?** In other words, an unsolicited message*** with honesty, simplicity, effort. Something transgressive — not in terms of boundaries, but in proclaiming that feelings are important and don’t have to result in harm.

In other words, I have set a nearly impossible quest, just like the set of instructions in the song “Scarborough Hill” (Tell her to make me a cambric shirt /Without no seams nor fine needle work). It’s seemingly doable, except for the part where it violates human nature — middle-aged women are not considered beautiful, beautiful men have suspicious girlfriends, nobody makes an impact on the Internet, people just don’t do that.

But it’s a fairy tale, a magic quest. And maybe those still have a purpose in life.

* If you are a student, don’t tell me you think I’m beautiful. Just don’t go there.

** Cut the hair at the bottom of the hairline at the nape of the neck. Cut the whole lock, no wider than half the width of the pinky. Secure one end with string or a small rubber band. Mail to my home address.

*** Some of you might be asking about my husband at this time. Richard is a delightful lot of things, the love of my life, but romantic is not one of those. First of all, Richard is one of the most pragmatic people I’ve ever met. He’s in his head most of the time; he’s the “I married you, didn’t I?” sort. He does housework to show me he loves me. He brought me a lemon tree from Hy-Vee for Valentines’ Day, which shows he knows me better than anyone. But the only time he tells me I’m beautiful is when he’s reminded to. That’s just who he is. He’s a lot like my father.

Mental Illness and the Gun Question

To those whose only solution to school shootings is to prevent the mentally ill from getting guns:

Let’s forget for a moment that we often don’t find a shooter is “Mentally ill” until they’ve killed 15 people.

Let’s forget that the mentally ill can get guns from other people if they want them.

The fact is, you want me to be a second-class citizen.
You see, I’m mentally ill. I have bipolar 2, which means sometimes I’m a bit hypomanic (even with my meds) and sometimes I’m very depressed. I am the person you picture when you think of the mentally ill, even though if you met me on the street you wouldn’t know.

How would you make me a second-class citizen?

Think about how the government could keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. A voluntary admission that one was mentally ill? How could that be enforced? Some people will lie. Some people don’t know they’re mentally ill. Some people believe that their mental health status is not the business of the government, and they are correct. According to HIPPA (the health insurance patient protection act), the government is not allowed private health information except for research, with the patient’s name kept seperate for confidentiality. This information would also be accessible to gun shops, whose owners have no interest in keeping private health information private.

This has nothing to do with gun ownership and everything to do with violating the rights of the mentally ill.

Let’s go one step further, because we know people could lie on that form. Let’s make mental health status mandatory reporting, such that doctors have to report their mentally ill patients for a national registry. The very nature of a mandatory national registry should evoke the specter of other groups who have been singled out and registered — such as Jewish individuals in Germany in WW2.

As for detection and treatment — in the country as it is now, there is a shortage of treatment for the severely mentally ill and those without health insurance. Recent budget cuts by Trump have decimated what had been available. The current state of mental health treatment — inpatient and outpatient — ranges from excellent and expensive to frighteningly lackadaisical.

And what if the person doesn’t believe they’re mentally ill? If school shooters are mentally ill, why don’t we make outreach available to those people who show clearly identified warning signs — white supremacists, domestic abusers, heavily armed teens — before they strike?

Because it’s easy to stigmatize the mentally ill. Everyone else is doing it.

Hi! Help me understand!

I would like to know who my readers are! Don’t worry; it’s a very short (five minute or less) survey.

I can see where you might not want to tell me who you are if, say, you were my secret admirer or you were a foreign operative who’s investigating my blogs for coded information (I’m talking to you, Russia Bot!) so I will not ask your names. Like all reader surveys, no harm is expected from taking this survey.

The survey can be found here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/WSVXHGR

Thank you!

PS:

Orange sherbet

melts in my hands

when I try to make it

into a sandwich

or chicken stew.

I am hungry

and all you can give me

is orange sherbet.

No, not ‘happily ever after’!

A question I asked the other day in my Positive Psychology class: If there was a machine you could hook up to that would give you a medication that would keep you happy all the time, would you?

Almost all my students answered no. When I asked why, they said things like “Would you know you were happy if you were never sad?” “Would you be able to detect a threat?” “Wouldn’t you get bored?” One student said, “I think what you’re describing is called ‘heroin’.”

All good points. The type of happiness we can seek on demand, the type of happiness the machine dispenses, is called “hedonic happiness”. It makes us happy in bursts, much like heroin sends the taker into short-term bliss. Hedonic happiness is short-term and can become addictive. Things like compulsive shopping and other addictions (including the aforementioned heroin) result from a perfect storm of complications in life, including the compulsion to self-medicate with happiness. Who wouldn’t be tempted if their life started to spiral out of control?

I have two characters in two different books, Allan Chang and Ichirou Shimizu, who both fight the lure of perpetual hedonic happiness. Is it a coincidence that both are Asian? That might be just because I think Asian men are underrepresented in literature and demoted as sidekicks or comic relief. It could also be because I think Asian men are cute, as evidenced bythis photo:

This is my husband, Richard Leach-Steffens, and I. He’s your typical Asian-German mix, brought to you by living in the USA.

It’s interesting, however, that Asian cultures emphasize balance and harmony, because the hedonic treadmill (represented by heroin for Allan and by a fantasy world for Ichirou) is counter to the values of an Asian society. Yet that harmony is broken for both — Ichirou by a hidden talent and the pressures of being young in contemporary Japan (see hikikomori), Allan by an abusive family situation. I set up the balance/imbalance dichotomy accidentally, but I love the results.

This is the kind of stuff I mean when I say I put the things I know into my books. I don’t want someone well-balanced with no difficulties to be the addict, because research shows that happy rats don’t do smack, but the stressed-out ones do. And people don’t escape if where they’re at is just fine. (I’m not talking about the later stages of addiction, when the behavior becomes the life — just why some people can take drugs and quit, and others can’t.)

By the way, I wouldn’t hook up to the happy machine either. Being at the same level of happiness all the time doesn’t make for good writing.