Shout-outs

A shout-out to my lactation consultant, who assured me it wasn’t my fault that my baby wasn’t breathing when she was born.

A shout-out to my OB/GYN, who held me as I cried during my first postpartum visit.

A shout-out to my psychiatrist, who prescribed me the antidepressants I needed to make it through and after my pregnancy. Who prioritized my mental health without an ounce of judgment. Who did not demonize me for my suicidal thoughts.

A shout-out to one of my best friends, who pushed me to seek medical help when I was having suicidal thoughts.

A shout-out to my therapist, who has helped me accept myself—the new parts and the old.

A shout-out to my postpartum group and the women I’ve met in that circle, who have made me feel less alone.

A shout-out to my husband for being there for me in every single possible way.

And a shout-out to my daughter. I was so certain I would resent you. I was so certain I would feel imprisoned. I am so glad I was wrong.

Earworm

we are outgunned

I spent my 30th birthday in New York City.

outmanned

It was my first trip back since cramming two suitcases into a cab, saying goodbye to a roommate whose name I don’t remember, and leaving for Laguardia on a cold morning in September 2011. Like any proper flashback, I recall a dark, rainy skyline in the rearview as we crossed the East River, and the calming certainty I felt in that moment warmed my bones. I was finally leaving.

outnumbered, outplanned

I was doing the right thing.

Aaron Burr, sir

The best word to describe my emotions upon returning to a city that used to give me panic attacks is relief. Relief that I no longer live there. Relief that I can leave whenever I want. Relief that I’ll never feel as scared or as alone or as trapped as I did then.

and his right-hand man

Knowing I could leave whenever I wanted allowed me to finally enjoy the city. I met several beloved coworkers whose voices I knew intimately from daily conference calls; I finally walked the High Line; and I saw Hamilton.

she’ll be happy as his bride

I go through cycles with my anxiety and depression where I’ll be functioning at a nearly “normal” level for months at a time. I’ll sleep relatively well; I’ll only cry at appropriately stressful or sad moments; I will shower because I feel like it and not because I have to remind myself that most people bathe themselves and don’t simply change their clothes once every few days.

and I know

I de-cycled a few weeks after my wedding and honeymoon, before which a significant amount of anxiety had been funneled into planning and expectation. I hit the bottom of that cycle a few nights ago at 4 am as bits and pieces of “Satisfied” from Hamilton relentlessly and unmercifully played in loops in my head.

outnumbered, outplanned

It was not an annoying but harmless earworm you get after driving home from work with the wrong radio station on.

outnumbered, outplanned

It was a jackhammer.

we are outgunned

I could not close my eyes without a refrain, a chorus, or even three words replaying. Tears leaked onto my pillow as I forced myself to imagine the song in its entirety, convinced that if I started from “All right, all right, that’s what I’m talkin’ bout,” it would leave me.

close the door on your way out

Subtly but surely, my full-blown anxiety—and insomnia—were back in a way I had never expected. Like any obsessive person, I researched this bizarre and infuriating phenomenon to discover that earworms can be manifestations of obsessive-compulsive disorder, or in those with low levels of serotonin. According to Dr. Joseph Carver, PhD, “[An earworm] has the same neurophysiological basis as obsessive thoughts, counting rituals, etc.”

George Washington!

I’ll be damned.

rise up

Today, it’s one-quarter “Satisfied,” three-quarters “Right Hand Man.”

here comes the general

I can’t even write a blog entry without having to sing aloud “outgunned, outmanned, outplanned.”

he will never be satisfied

When I start losing count of the number of times I’ve cried in a day, I know it’s time to break the cycle.

rise up

When I can’t physically do it anymore.

you’re like me

When I can’t stand to hear another Hamilton song.

rise up

rise up

rise up

Boom.

You knew.

The only people I really, truly blame for Trump assuming office are the people who voted for him. There are tiers of blame, of course. There are the politicians responsible for racist gerrymandering; there are all of the reporters and writers who devoted so much ink to Clinton’s emails while ignoring the most damning charges against Trump; there’s the outdated and highly problematic Electoral College; and there’s Comey.

But ultimately, I blame the voters. And not just the Trump voters.

I also place a lot of the blame on people who voted third party or didn’t vote at all—because you knew. You knew he was a piece of shit, a catastrophic excuse for a public servant, and you still chose not to vote for Clinton. This wasn’t the election to exercise your third-party voting rights. This wasn’t the election to sit on the sidelines. There was one way to stop Trump, and you chose not to do it.

I don’t care if Clinton personally drowned your cat and took a shit on your kitchen counter. They were not even on the same cosmic plane of malevolence—if you are the type of person to subscribe to the belief that Clinton was, indeed, corrupt. This was not a clash of two evils; this was an experienced, intelligent politician facing a rich, megalomaniacal, intellectually bereft government neophyte.

I want the two-party system to change, too. I don’t know any reasonable person who doesn’t want that. But I also am a fervent believer in accepting reality. Trump as our president is not normal. The circumstances around the 2016 US presidential election were not normal. By voting third party or not voting at all, you rejected reality. In the process, you put a racist, uneducated, inarticulate, inexperienced sexual predator in office.

You knew that a dangerous man needed to be stopped. And if you didn’t know that the only way to stop him was to vote for Clinton, you need your head examined.

Inside the practice room

I picked up my flute from the band room every day after school in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. It didn’t matter whether I was planning on actually practicing, it was just part of my routine. The faint hope that I would practice was always there, even if my night was booked solid with “homework” (as much homework as you get in middle school). My first boyfriend, Roy, walked with me once, and we shared an awkward first kiss after exiting the back door on a freezing January afternoon. I remember these walks to the band room like they were the most important moments of my preteen life.

I vaguely recall it being regarded as “nerdy” or “dorky” to carry an instrument around. I didn’t care. I was a badass. And in high school, when I joined the marching band, added a second instrument to my repertoire, and got to participate in actual marching band competitions, everything else came second.*

The practice rooms adjacent to the main rehearsal area were usually reserved for grading or assigning chairs. They were small, airless, and not particularly comfortable or useful for anything besides practicing music. Still, I enjoyed many hours crammed inside those rooms with friends playing beloved charts from marching shows, locking the door and sitting in such a way that no one could tell the room was occupied, and killing time between classes, during lunch, and before and after school.

I spent one morning working through a few technically difficult bars with Mrs. Funk, one of the band director’s assistants. In this tight, suffocating space, I loosed a silent fart and believed (hoped) it would not smell. Mrs. Funk’s pausing midsentence, eyes slowly meeting mine, spoke the truth. Instead of being properly embarrassed, I decided The Fart was a story worth retelling to about fifteen different people that day.

Later in high school when I had switched to tenor sax for symphonic band, I started dropping off my instrument in one of the practice rooms on account of its barely fitting on a regular storage shelf. I had managed to create a reason to go into a practice room literally every single day. A friend or two would follow me to chat or wait as I packed up my sax so we could walk together to our next class. One of my boyfriends in high school—who of course was in band (c’mon, they all were; even the Unattainable Crushes were band nerds)—would often find me in that practice room with one of my gay friends, his suspicions running wild. That was the first time—and it would not be the last—that I had to explain to a straight man that gay men are not “pretending” to get into girls’ pants.

The music I produced during those years was well rehearsed and perfectly memorized. I worked very hard, and I was an excellent marcher. I was not the most talented musician to walk those vaguely pungent halls. My vibrato and tone were not going to blow you away, and if those sixteenth notes weren’t slurred, you could forget about it. But I was good enough to be regarded as among the best in that particular high school. Our program and its directors were excellent—even if that excellence only existed within the confines of a few counties in southwestern Michigan. Having pride in what I did with my fellow musicians and marchers made me want to be successful, and an unshakable community formed as a result of that shared goal. It was our first brush with greatness, the type that is relative in hindsight but at the time was absolute. It was before we knew what else existed outside of our 7,000-person town. It was hope.

Music was where most of my friendships became bonds that I can still feel. Not necessarily with individual people, although many of those are still firmly rooted in my memory. It was the magnitude of the bond that has never stopped resonating with me, a depth that I continually fail to re-create with others in my adult life.

I had so many reasons for wanting to leave my high school and hometown. I have spent years in therapy wading through those reasons. But I have spent zero minutes regretting band.

*Except AP US history. Nothing came before APUSH.

My new year’s resolution

Unironically.

1. Meditate daily. Try again the next day if I don’t. Forgive myself. Repeat.
2. Hit 10,000 steps daily. Try again the next day if I don’t. Forgive myself. Repeat.
3. Adhere to a partial low FODMAP diet. Try again the next day if I don’t. Forgive myself. Repeat.
4. See a therapist twice a month.
5. Be social even when I don’t want to.
6. Don’t weigh myself. If I happen to see how much I weigh, I will attempt to not use it as a reflection of who I am as a person.
7. Create a morning routine I am mostly happy with.
8. Create a nighttime routine I am mostly happy with.
9. Acknowledge that any routine may dissatisfy me simply because I find reasons why it’s not good enough. Try again the next day. Forgive myself. Repeat.
10. Forgive myself. Forgive the people who may have been responsible for my lack of ability to forgive myself.

Mental illness in the era of Trump

I was on my third drink when the election results began to sink in. Considering I rarely drink nowadays, it was hitting me hard. The election, the booze, my exhaustion. 1:30 a.m.

I padded to my apartment’s rooftop in slippers and my winter jacket, still sick with fear and shock. I looked out over the city and shook with rage and cold, hating Ohio and hating every person who didn’t care enough. I hated every Stein voter, every Johnson voter, every complacent white person and every man and woman who found Clinton so profoundly detestable that the alternative—a completely unqualified megalomaniacal, predatory racist—was preferable, or at least tolerable. I sobbed and screamed and wanted someone to hear me, because in that moment, I felt the most hollow loneliness. No one heard, no one responded, and the city answered with silence.

I didn’t think feeling grief over a presidential election was possible, but as millions have proven, it is. It’s not a joke, the waves of nausea. The fear is not hyperbole. It’s visceral, it’s nearly palpable, and when anyone—Trump voters, abstainers, whoever—says to get over it, I am convinced that I cannot. This wasn’t just another election. For so many people, it’s the difference between safety and danger. Freedom and repression. Literal life and death.

The morning after the election, numb and groggy, I took my dog out for her usual walk, and I expected something to feel different. I expected to feel as if the world had stopped, or at least been knocked off its axis of sanity. And because everything felt the exact same, I felt like crying again. I felt alone, once again.

***

I have an anxiety disorder with comorbid depression and PTSD. I have a history of an eating disorder and an undiagnosed gastrointestinal disorder. My mental and physical issues are completely at odds with each other, and solutions to comfortably manage my symptoms continue to elude me.

The need and compulsion for control is omnipresent. It’s my mind’s reaction to the anxiety. Control everything, and you’ll feel better. It’s a lie, and I know it is. But it doesn’t stop me from wanting that control.

To say Trump’s winning the presidential election was an anxiety trigger is as much of an understatement as saying Ohio is only a little Republican. That loss of control, the feeling of abject helplessness—to know I can do nothing to change those results—eats away at the perimeters of my typical, everyday depressive blackhole, the one that tells me to stay in bed, to not shower, to not try. When everything can’t be fixed at once, then it’s settled: fix nothing. Do nothing.

For the people lucky enough to never experience chronic anxiety or depression, know this: there are always small things we can do to fight our illness. But having the energy or mental fortitude to even attempt to do those things is a whole separate issue. For those who suffer from very debilitating absolutist thinking, the pressure of needing to repair everything that’s broken is so intense that nothing short of perfection is acceptable, and because that in itself is unattainable, the fight is lost before it can begin.

That’s what this election feels like. My anger and rage and desperation kept me kicking for a few days, but I have slumped over. I feel all-consuming defeat. Especially after seeing everything he promised continue to play out, and everything he lied about—that so many of us knew he was lying about—reveal itself, I want nothing more than to hide under my covers for four years and numb myself out.

I know that is not a viable option. I know how badly we need to fight right now. But goddamn, I am struggling. And I am trying so hard to tell myself that that’s okay, because right now, struggling is the best many of us can do.

Opting in

About a year ago, I was a Canadian resident. I lived in Toronto, one of the most diverse cities in the world, while working for a healthcare agency and enjoying my downtown-adjacent neighborhood, Cabbagetown. I loved it there. But for many reasons, my partner and I decided it was time to move back to the United States. After four years of living abroad, I came home.

Then last night happened.

I will be frank. I am feeling undulating waves of desire to move back to Canada right now, but I know the source of that desire. It’s anxiety, and it’s selfishness.

I didn’t do enough.

I know I’m not the reason Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump last night. But I’m still part of a much bigger reason.

I didn’t have difficult, uncomfortable conversations with my close family members, who are white, about what it would mean if they voted for Trump, or what it would mean if they abstained.

I continued to have nonexistent relationships with my white, extended family—my aunts, uncles, most of my cousins. Even though I knew 90% of them were Trump supporters, I didn’t even make an effort to reach out to them and try to effect change.

These were among the most basic things I could have done—that we all could have done. What was the worst that could have happened to me? That I’d continue to NOT speak to my uncles? What was the worst thing that could have happened to you? Imagine the worst possible social scenario for yourself, then remember: people of color suffer through that shit daily. Daily. They don’t have a choice. They can’t opt out.

That means white people—privileged people—have to opt in.

I was also afraid to post on social media, because I was afraid of conflict. I was afraid of harassment. I was afraid of being that opinionated bitch from high school all over again. I used to be fearless, but then my skin grew thinner. Silencing tactics started to slowly but surely work. And at some point, I decided I’d rather be emotionally and mentally safe than risk exposing my thoughts, ideas, and opinions to critics.

I didn’t do enough.

When I looked into a mirror, I was seeing a woman who was suffocating from her own silence. A woman who had been successfully silenced in large part because she is a woman with an opinion.

I didn’t do enough.

As a white person, I am among the people who have the least to lose from a Donald Trump presidency. And I’d hazard a guess that the people who abstained or voted third party have the least to lose from a Donald Trump presidency, as well.

I didn’t do enough, and neither did you.

But now, we stay. We fight. Like we should have been doing all along.

Now, we opt in.

 

Who I am/am I?

How do I find the balance between the person I thought I was and the person I currently am, which often feels like a shell of my former self? How do I accept who I really am AND live an authentic life? Not a life that is full of logical decisions, but of ones that honor who I am (and are still tempered with logic)?

I can’t make decisions honoring who I really am when I have no fucking clue who that person is.

Double-blind, peer-reviewed studies wouldn’t change your mind

Women do not owe men “proof” or “evidence” of their lived experience with sexism. The same way black men and women do not owe white people “proof” or “evidence” of their lived experience with racism.

Woman: “Women are unfairly labeled ‘crazy’ to diminish their opinions.”

Dude: “Which women? When? That doesn’t happen.”

Well, kind sir, it does, and even if I had a double-blind, peer-reviewed study conducted by the most ethical researchers and scientists in the world, whose sample size was well over 10,000, that would still not satisfy you.

Why?

Because the men, and white people, and able-bodied people, etc etc etc, who don’t believe marginalized populations when they say they’re being marginalized, are not interested in the truth. They are interested in the reality that’s been created for them—by privilege, by media, by like-minded friends and relatives—and will rationalize away anything marginalized persons have to say that would disrupt that reality.

Because if you ask them “What would you need from me to believe my lived experience is the truth?” they will not have a concrete answer. They have no interest in ever believing you.

I believe in every person’s lived experience, because they lived it. And if you’re the type of massive asshole who knows for a fact that that one person lied about being called a slur, and uses that as justification for not believing anyone, well…

Perspective

It’s so trite, isn’t it? I am going through this yet-to-be-identified illness and have developed a new perspective on a healthy body. No one else in the world has gone through a health crisis to only come out the other end valuing what health they do have, or their healthy body after the illness has gone. No one! I’m the first! And I’m also the first to write about it!

But because I carry shame around like some nasty leech that continues to suck the…whatever the antonym is for shame…out of me (it must be pretty fucking huge), I feel this twisted sense of shame for not valuing what pristine health I had before my stomach decided it had had enough of my perfect digestive world and was going to wreak havoc on my ass (literally). For fuck’s sake, right? I’m all grateful and appreciative for the health I do have but riddled with shame and shittiness for not valuing it before. Isn’t that always the lesson people learn? Is it possible to be wise enough to value everything you have, right now, to the maximum degree? But even if that were possible, will you be able to escape the pain, frustration, desperation, and loneliness that accompanies its lost? Or is it just about being capable of a higher level of happiness pre-illness?

I wrote a few “gratefulness” posts on this blog a few years ago. In one of the first, I gushed about my great physical health. But that didn’t really mean shit at the time, did it? Who knows how valuable their health is until they lose it?