Alcohol, I don’t want to drink you anymore.

Posted on September 25, 2011 by marandaelizabeth

Alcohol! I feel like so many of my friends are currently struggling with cutting down their consumption of alcohol, either by drinking less, or by drinking none at all. This is something I’ve struggled with for years, and I want to talk about it. I want all of us to talk about it.

I was thirteen the first time I got drunk, and then I didn’t drink again until I was nineteen (except for once at a party when I was eighteen – I remember my sister making me rye & cokes. Thanks, sis!). I didn’t drink excessively the moment I turned nineteen (um, except for on my birthday), and in fact, I had intentionally stayed away from alcohol because I had started taking new psych meds and didn’t wanna fuck them up. I also grew up with frequent warnings from my mom: “Don’t turn into your dad!” (My dad is an alcoholic and not a very pleasant person in general.) But then I discovered whiskey, the best cure thus far for my shyness & awkwardness, and I went for it. Long story short, alcohol was not really my best friend even though it seemed like it a lot of the time, I tried to quit about ten times in the course of five years, and today I am 159 days clean & sober, the longest time I’ve gone without drinking since I was nineteen.

There is no one way to quit drinking, and quitting once does not guarantee you’re gonna quit forever. What I’ve discovered in my recovery is that I need to quit 100% (as opposed to, say, setting a three-drink-limit for myself, which never worked out, or drinking only on certain days, or drinking only with certain people, etc., etc…), and that sometimes, I just plain can’t be near booze. Drunk people are almost never amusing when I am sober, and bars aren’t really a lot of fun unless my favourite band is playing or something – and if I’m going to a bar, or anywhere that serves alcohol, I reeeally appreciate having a sober friend to hang out with.

Unfortunately, a lot of awesome events are held in bars. If I end up in bar, or anywhere where alcohol is being consumed, I either get a tall glass of water with a slice of lemon (it’s free!), or I treat myself to a root beer or a cream soda or something. I don’t drink pop too often, so even something that simple can make the occasion feel special. It goes without saying that I appreciate sober spaces, and that when I organize stuff (or at least when I imagine organizing stuff – usually I have a bunch of ideas for events I wanna plan, but I don’t see them through), alcohol is not welcome.

Going to meetings has also been helpful for me. It’s hard, though. Meetings are filled with a lot of people I can’t relate to on any level except for the fact that we are both recovering, and that is just not a solid enough basis for friendship for me. So although I go to meetings frequently, and although “working the steps” has been useful for me, those are still spaces where I do not truly connect with others around me. Quitting alcohol is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, but it can also be an alienating experience when so many others around you rely on booze for fun.

I’ve written more about my experiences with alcoholism in issue 5 of Little Acorns and issue 23 of Telegram Ma’am, which you can get here.

What I’m looking for here is for you to share stories about your own struggles with alcohol, strategies for quitting, how you deal with situations where alcohol is present, and so on. I think we all need to support one another in our recoveries, and share share share. Let’s think about questions like:

– What do you do instead of drinking?
– What do you do when everyone around you is drinking?
– Why do you drink?
– What helps you stay away from alcohol?
– How can our friends support us in our decisions & recoveries?
– How can we embrace sobriety without judging others who choose to drink?
– & ask more questions!

Soberly Yours,

P.S.: If you’ve benefited from my writing in any way – if my words have inspired you, helped you feel less alone, or sparked some weird feeling within you; if you’ve felt encouraged, or curious, or comforted – please consider compensating me by offering a donation of any amount. Whether you’ve been reading my writing for years, or just stumbled into me this afternoon, I invite you to help me sustain the process!

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Ask first.

Posted on July 18, 2011 by marandaelizabeth

Friends and readers, I want you to know that I have a hard time saying no. I also have a hard time stating what I want or need, and making decisions (big decisions like whether or not to continue playing roller derby, and small decisions like choosing between an iced drink or a hot drink). Lately I’m learning that dealing with all this shit is necessary to my self-care process. Even if I continue to have difficulty saying no or making decisions, it helps that I can at least tell folks about those problems. More often than not, they seem to have the same issues, and we can discuss them and work on them together.

In the workshop I wrote about in my last entry, when we broke into smaller groups and discussed our wants and needs, practicing how to ask for them, and how to say/accept no as an answer, one of the folks in our group said that they needed clear and direct communication, and for folks they’re involved with to make their boundaries known. It sounds simple, right? But myself and another person in the group both admitted that we have difficulty clarifying our boundaries for others, and that we were both dealing with our own issues surrounding assertiveness and communication, so we couldn’t promise that we could always be clear and direct. It felt good to be able to say that, and I think our answers were fairly respected within the group. It’s funny that discussing our poor communication skills actually led to a kind of honesty that I often find difficult in day-to-day life.

Consent kept coming up as well, as it has a tendency to do. I feel like the word ‘consent’ is often so tangled up with connections to conversations about sex, that folks forget that consent is important and necessary in so many other aspects of life as well.

Here’s an example. I was recently Googling images of myself, as you do, and found some photos I had never seen before. They were pictures of me at a zine reading, taken by someone I’ve never met, and posted online without my permission. I didn’t like the pictures, and I didn’t like the fact that he thought it was okay to share them with the world without talking to me first, so I emailed him and told him to take them down, and to consider, you know, asking first, in the future.

Another example: A few months ago, I made a flier, scanned it, and posted it on my blog. Without my permission, somebody posted it on Tumblr. I’m not going to rant about it right now, but I will say that Tumblr confuses me and I refuse to try to understand it. I don’t have an account on Tumblr, so it really weirds me out when I see my stuff there. Anyway, last I checked, the flier I made had been reposted nearly two-thousand times (!) [EDIT: two-thousand forty-nine times]. You could say be grateful people like what you wrote, blah blah, and I am, but the whole situation makes me really uncomfortable, and it’s hard to explain why. On a related note, somebody recently posted a picture of me on Tumblr, without my permission of course, and credited it as my sister. Oh internets, you confound me.

So yeah, I will note here that I am okay with folks reposting links to my blog and links to my Etsy and whatnot, but reposting my stuff without credit or permission is mean, and posting photos of me without permission is especially creepy. I am a human being and I am allowed to not be okay with this, and you really need to learn how to ask first.

Here’s another example: a few weeks ago, I was at a derby bout, and at the end of the game, the league members were hugging one another and posing for pictures with their friends and whatnot. Some dude showed up on the track with his camera phone and proceeded to take pictures of cute girls in hot pants, clearly trying to get shots of their asses. It’s not uncommon for folks to take pictures of league members in their cutsie derby outfits, but the more we watched this guy, the more we began to realize that he wasn’t there with anybody, he didn’t know any of the derby girls; he was essentially a stranger who thought it was okay to take pictures of girls simply because they were out in public, thus had become public property in his eyes. I didn’t have the guts to say anything to him, so I mostly just stared him down until he walked away.

And one more example. This is something I have written about extensively in the past, but it always bears repeating: Tattoos. YOU DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION TO TOUCH MY TATTOOS. They are on my body, and it is really really gross and disrespectful to touch somebody’s body without their permission, especially when you don’t know them. It’s happened to me countless times, and happened at least twice over the weekend while I was at a derby after party. Note to dudes in bars: Don’t ever touch me without asking first, ever. I am already uncomfortable in bars, and you are making it worse.

On a related but opposite note: Derby girls who greet me by pinching my bum: That is allowed! I have added that to my list of acceptable behaviour, but only for derby girls. I adore my derby pals, and I am actually a very touchy-feely-huggy person, a lot of folks just don’t know that about me because I am also shy and angry. But yeah. Derby pals have permission to touch me, and so do close friends, but nobody else.

For folks who are reading this and realize they may be unknowingly crossing somebody’s boundaries: keep repeating to yourself ASK FIRST ASK FIRST ASK FIRST. If you’re wondering whether or not something is allowed, you can save yourself and folks around you the trouble of hurting or being hurt by asking.

Questioningly,

P.S.: Whenever I write about this stuff, I receive a lot of support from folks who are dealing with the same or similar things, like girls who have trouble saying no, lack assertiveness skills, or get angry when strangers touch their tattoos but don’t know how to tell said strangers to fuck off. So I recommend trying to share this, if you can, with folks who may be on the other side, folks who don’t know a lot about consent, and haven’t thought about asking for permission in all these situations and more. Nothing is going to change if we don’t demand these folks take a few steps back and ask themselves some serious questions about what makes them think their behaviour is okay.

P.P.S.: If you’ve benefited from my writing in any way – if my words have inspired you, helped you feel less alone, or sparked some weird feeling within you; if you’ve felt encouraged, or curious, or comforted – please consider compensating me by offering a donation of any amount. Whether you’ve been reading my writing for years, or just stumbled into me this afternoon, I invite you to help me sustain the process!

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Mindful Communication and Consent (this is what I need)

Posted on July 14, 2011 by marandaelizabeth

I just got back from an excellent workshop on self-care and activism, and I really ought to be going to bed right now because I have to get up in the morning, but my mind is spinning, so I need to write. I spent my time in the workshop taking very scribbly notes in my cheap notebook, brainstorming stuff for zines, and daring myself to speak.
One of the activities we did in the workshop was write down the following three statements, then tape our answers to the wall.

1. Something you need.
2. Tools you have for yourself.
3. A tool you can share.

I wrote down that I need mindful communication and consent, that one of my self-care tools is my writing, and that I can offer my time and my writing to others.

Mindful communication is something I’d like to talk about. Part of mental health treatment is discovering what are often called your “core beliefs.” These are the beliefs you hold so deep down inside yourself that you often don’t have the words for them, and don’t realize they are even there, even though they are playing a very large and important role in how you feel about yourself and how you interact with the world. Some common examples of negative core beliefs would be: I am worthless, I am broken, I will never be happy, etc. They can be counteracted with a positive affirmation, such as: My life has value, I am learning how to take care of myself, I find joyful moments in my daily life, and so on. Of course, saying them is not the same as believing them, but it can be the beginning of the path to healing and self-acceptance.

One of my core beliefs was that my time was not worthwhile or valuable to others. And one way this belief has, and continues, to manifest in my life is that when I’m trying to have a conversation with someone, I tend to speak quickly and condense my words into small, vague sentences so that the person I’m talking to doesn’t have to listen too long. So I end up not truly saying what I mean, and don’t give my own thoughts justice by sharing them with others and having an honest discussion.

It’s no wonder I don’t feel as connected with my friends as I would like to, and have trouble connecting with others as well. And it’s no wonder even the therapists I’ve had in the past had difficulty understanding me, when I wasn’t being as coherent or direct as I need to be in order to receive a validating and thoughtful response. I often think to myself, ‘I’ll talk about it later’, and I even plan out the letters I’m going to write to my friends while I’m sitting beside them. I have always said that I communicate better through writing than through conversation, but I want to change that.

When I talk about mindful communication, what I mean is this: I need to allow myself the time to process my thoughts and to find the words that best suit the story I’m trying to tell, and that means taking pauses and deep breaths, and not trying to cram all my thoughts into one short sentence. I also need to learn how to listen actively, how to ask questions, how not to interrupt, and how not to agree when I actually really don’t agree at all. And when I disagree, I can do so respectfully and compassionately.

In another workshop activity, we split into smaller groups, and were then told to ask our group for something we want/need right now. It was a lesson in assertively telling someone what you want/need as well as a) telling someone you can give them what they want/need, b) saying no, you cannot give that person what they want/need, and c) learning how to accept no as a valid answer.

When my turn came around, I said that I needed to be listened to without being interrupted, and that when I pause and take a breath before moving onto the next thought, that is not an opportunity for you to dive in with whatever you were planning on saying beforehand. I think a lot of us, myself included, have a tendency to plan our response before the person we’re talking to has even finished, which puts the focus back on themselves, and kinda derails the conversation. I’m learning how not to do that anymore, and hope others are doing so, too. And honestly, one of the guys in our group kept interrupting and it was really grating on my patience, so I brought it up in a way that didn’t come off as a personal attack. It’s really annoying when people try to finish my sentences for me and they don’t even say what I was going to say, and I’m like, hey, let me finish, except I usually don’t have the courage to actually say that.

As for consent, that’s a topic for another million discussions, so I will write some more about it at a later date. I will note here that when I mentioned it as something I need, I meant it in a context of Ask First before just about anything at all, and not just the obvious sexual situations the word ‘consent’ is usually associated with.

It’s late. I just finished drinking a cup of tea meant to help promote peaceful sleep. It contains organic oat flower, lavender, limeflower, and valerian. That cup of tea was one of today’s crucial self-care actions, and even though I’ll probably get up at least three times in the night to pee it all away, I’m glad I took the time to make this drink and sip it slowly. Goodnight!

Communicationally Yours,

P.S.: Now I want to ask you the same three questions: What do you need, what self-care tools do you have for yourself, and what tools do you have to share?

P.P.S.: If you’ve benefited from my writing in any way – if my words have inspired you, helped you feel less alone, or sparked some weird feeling within you; if you’ve felt encouraged, or curious, or comforted – please consider compensating me by offering a donation of any amount. Whether you’ve been reading my writing for years, or just stumbled into me this afternoon, I invite you to help me sustain the process!

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Be Your Own Therapist

Posted on June 24, 2011 by marandaelizabeth

Today marks one month since I got out of Homewood, a local treatment centre. In some ways, it feels like I was just there yesterday, and in others, it feels like a year has passed. Time moves in strange ways in hospitals; one day drags on and on, yet a week flies by like nothing, and suddenly your discharge date has come along and it’s time to go home.

When I was discharged, I was referred to a 12-week outpatient program that would function the way the Process groups in inpatient did; essentially, we sit in a circle and bare our darkest secrets in the presence of other residents, a therapist, and a psychiatrist. Unfortunately, outpatient treatment was canceled before it began as they were no longer able to staff the therapy sessions. I had a minor freak out when I found out, but the truth is, I’ve been here before. I have left hospitals with no follow-up treatment many times in the past, and it was bound to happen again. It’s a messy, unfair system.

Before I went to Homewood, I embarked upon one of my many weirdo personal projects. I called it Be Your Own Therapist. It’s exactly what it sounds like. In lieu of an actual one-on-one face-to-face therapist, I became my own; essentially, it entails reading about mental health; reading self-help books; rehashing the tips I learned in cognitive behavioural therapy when I was nineteen; asking myself questions in my journal as though being asked by someone else and then answering them as honestly as I can no matter how scary it is; reading books about creativity and writing and actually doing the recommended prompts and practices; and so on and so forth. Unfortunately, this does not solve a lot of my problems – in fact, it probably doesn’t solve any of them, but I don’t know what to do without either a book or a pen in my hand, and I have just about exhausted the resources in this town and come up empty-handed every time.

And yet, when I left Homewood, this was exactly my plan: play the Be Your Own Therapist game because I didnt know what else to do. I had to justify this plan to staff members who didn’t think it was very safe, but couldn’t refer me to anyone or anywhere else anyway. I told them about the merits of the Psychology section of the used bookstore and of my determination to take care of myself for real this time, and not just fall back into old patterns after a week or whatever. I was truly hopeful when I came up with this game plan, and sometimes I still am. It can be helpful in some ways, but the fact is, being my own therapist is not a replacement for being directly involved in the mental health system, and writing to myself is not the same as talking to somebody. For all the griping I do about the mental health system (and I will never stop), there are obviously some useful and positive elements. It’s just a shame that it remains inaccessible to many who need it.

Folks ask me if staying at Homewood has helped me, and I don’t know what to say. I get the feeling they’re asking if my depression is cured forever. The answer is no. It never will be. Overall, being at Homewood was a positive experience for me, but it is also yet another place that has set me free with no one to turn to. If I’m feeling extremely unsafe, yeah, I can go to the ER or call a crisis line, but those are short-term solutions, and not what I need right now.

Embitteredly Yours,

P.S.: If you’ve benefited from my writing in any way – if my words have inspired you, helped you feel less alone, or sparked some weird feeling within you; if you’ve felt encouraged, or curious, or comforted – please consider compensating me by offering a donation of any amount. Whether you’ve been reading my writing for years, or just stumbled into me this afternoon, I invite you to help me sustain the process!

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The Kindness of Strangers, and the Search for a Potentially Healing Community

Posted on June 19, 2011 by marandaelizabeth

I have a tendency to think that the whole world and everyone in it is inherently good when I stumble upon one kind stranger, and to think the entire opposite when I stumble upon a particularly unpleasant stranger. I recently began attending NA and AA meetings, and so far, it’s been a positive experience. I had gone to an AA meeting back in Lindsay when I still living there and had a pretty bad time, so I wrote off the whole program as entirely useless to me. But now I realize it was simply the place and the time that wasn’t right, not the program. Anyway, at NA meetings, keychains are given out for milestones like attending your first meeting, thirty days clean and sober, sixty days, ninety days, etc. When I was given my ‘first meeting’ keychain, I dared myself to actually use it, to put my keys on it, knowing it would be visible to others. It was a scary move for me, but I felt good about it.

One day, while I was standing in line at a convenience store, a man behind me placed his hand on my arm. At first I was angry because I don’t like it when people touch me without my permission, especially men, and especially when they’ve come up from behind me without my knowledge. But then he told me that he noticed my keychain, and wanted to congratulate me. On our way out of the store, he showed me a bunch of his NA and AA keychains and medallions, and said, “My family says I seem a lot more clear-headed now.” I said, “Yeah, this new-found clarity is pretty wonderful,” and we went on our way. It sort of brightened up my day to get this positive encouragement from a total stranger who seemed to feel somehow connected to me in some vague way. That was one of the days where I felt like the world could be a good place.

Later, I was at Starbucks (yeah, shut up, their drinks make me happy, and they cost the same as the indie places here anyway), and they had Eddie Vedder’s new album, Ukelele Songs, for sale at the counter. Luckily for me, it was payday (and by payday, I mean disability cheque day). I bought the album and had a pretty great discussion with one of the baristas about how I kind of really love listening to artists who are still alive. I do. And I remembered how I had recently read in Lonely: Learning to Live with Solitude by Emily White how store clerks are actually being trained these days not in the sales tactics of old, but in engaging folks in conversation that may or may not be related to what they are trying to sell, but simply cheers the spirits of the person they’re talking to. Starbucks especially has been trained in this approach, which is not surprising; I could be cynical and say what a bunch of jerks, being fake-nice to me so I’ll keep coming back and buying their addictive coffee, but frankly, even it’s just a money-grab, I kinda like it. For some folks, myself included, a little conversation with the person who just made me a cup of coffee might be the only conversation I have that day, and yeah, it does make me feel better sometimes. (This is a topic for another day, but the fact that salespeople are being trained in kindness and conversation is an effort to respond to statistics showing that loneliness rates are getting higher and higher – sad, but neat.)

My mood went down the other day for some unknown reason. I think I was just sad about being broke, and not being where I want to be in life, which is just about everybody’s story, so whatever. Anyway, I knew I had a choice to keep on dwelling on stuff and hating the world and hating my place in it and being bitter and resentful, or I could sit down and relax and do something good for myself. So I wrote a list of what I wanted, and wondered where and how to find it. The list was purple ink on purple paper, and it said:

– recovery
– healing
– calm
– restfulness
– openness
– honesty
– mindfulness
– wisdom

I lit a candle, made a cup of tea, and asked my Tarot cards. Where will I find all these things I need?! “Within myself, obviously!” I thought, but when I drew a card, it was The World. I was reminded of a quote I had recently read: “Survival may happen in hospital but recovery happens in the community.” (From Borderline Personality Disorder: The Facts by Roy Krawitz and Wendy Jackson)

I’ve been mulling that one over for a few months now because, um, what community? What fucking community?! I’ve never felt that sense of community that everybody is always rambling on about, and the world has always seemed far more destructive than healing for me. But I can’t hole up in my apartment and hope for everything to magically be okay, so the challenge now is to go out into the world, and try to find the things that might heal me. Attending meetings is part of that, riding my bike along the river is part of that, getting re-involved in roller derby is part of that, positive encounters with strangers is part of that, and, as of yesterday, volunteering in a community garden on a farm on the outskirts of town is part of that. And writing, as usual.

The original title of this entry was, “The Kindness (and Fucked Up-edness) of Strangers,” and I was going to juxtapose positive moments with strangers with a few of my recent negative experiences with strangers, but I am no longer in the mood to write about the things that make me angry. Maybe another day.

Communally Yours,

P.S.: If you’ve benefited from my writing in any way – if my words have inspired you, helped you feel less alone, or sparked some weird feeling within you; if you’ve felt encouraged, or curious, or comforted – please consider compensating me by offering a donation of any amount. Whether you’ve been reading my writing for years, or just stumbled into me this afternoon, I invite you to help me sustain the process!

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What’s Your Diagnonsense?

Posted on May 31, 2011 by marandaelizabeth

Borderline Personality Disorder, that’s what. Here’s what I knew about BPD before being diagnosed:

– more women than men receive this diagnosis
– many argue BPD does not actually exist
– it’s often viewed as the last resort diagnosis; given to someone who is too difficult to treat
– and of course, Susanna Kaysen in Girl, Interrupted is the poster girl for BPD

And that’s about it. Despite my fascination with all things mental health-related, I didn’t know much about Borderline Personality Disorder. That’s because there’s not a lot of information out there. My first question, of course, was the same as Susanna Kaysen’s: “Borderline between what and what?” And when I tell folks about my newest diagnosis, that’s usually their first question, too. BPD was named in the 1930’s, and originally referred to a borderline between neurosis and psychosis: a person diagnosed with BPD was considered to be too neurotic to be neurotic and not psychotic enough to be psychotic. That’s not the view anymore, but the name persists. Other names have been put forth by mental health activists and professionals, such as Emotional Regulation Disorder and Emotional Intensity Disorder, but it’s still widely referred to as BPD, and if we want to change it, well, that’s up to you and me and eventually, the DSM. Right now, I’m okay with the name. Just don’t call me “a borderline.” As I often remind folks, that kind of language is dehumanizing and unnecessary. You don’t call someone a cold, nor do you call them cancer. Want some examples of what to say? How about, “Maranda has been diagnosed with BPD,” or, “Maranda has BPD.” The second one is a little iffy since it can’t be proven, but I do fit all nine diagnostic criteria to the nth degree, so… I guess I can describe myself as someone with BPD, but would prefer to be referred by other people as someone who has been diagnosed with BPD. (I wish this was the last time I had to have this conversation! So tired of the language thing!)

Moving along…

I received this diagnosis while I was in an intense inpatient program, after having completed a Psychological Assessment Inventory (PAI) and having a few appointments with a psychologist. Incidentally, I had filled out the same 344-question PAI back when I was fourteen, but was never told what my results were. After being given this new diagnosis, I started my research. The library at the treatment centre had only a handful of books, especially compared to the dozens upon dozens of books on depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder, and I read whatever I could. The more I read about BPD, the more my life made sense to me. I suddenly understood my constant feelings of loneliness that have persisted since childhood, I understood the ridiculous and regrettable behaviour of my early-twenties, I understood my lifelong tendency toward self-destruction, my constant feelings of instability both in life and in my head, and my ever-unstable sense of self and identity. It all made so much sense.

A few book recommendations:

Borderline Personality Disorder: The Facts by Roy Krawitz and Wendy Jackson
I Hate You – Don’t Leave Me: Understanding the Borderline Personality by Jerold J. Kreisman, M.D. and Hal Straus
The Buddha & the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, Buddhism, & Online Dating by Kiera Van Gelder

For the first time in my life, I felt grateful for a diagnosis. Of course, I was also angry that it had taken so long to figure it out when it now seemed so obvious, and I was also angry at having spent the last few years being treated for something I didn’t have (bipolar disorder). But I could also see why BPD tends to go under the radar and be misdiagnosed quite a few times before somebody finally figures it out. On the surface, BPD and bipolar disorder can appear very similar: they both have extreme highs and lows, they both result in erratic and often stupid behaviour… The trick in distinguishing the two from one another, among other things, seems to be naming the emotions behind the actions, and noticing how long a high or a low tends to last. And those things make such a huge difference. I could never relate to the bipolar diagnosis, and now I know it’s because it was never mine.

Having this diagnosis has given me a greater ability to learn about myself, to understand myself, and to have a better relationship with myself (and maybe even other people?). After my time in the hospital, I am now better able to separate my thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, to label my emotions before I act, and to live in and focus on the present moment. It’s all much more complicated than I’m letting on, but it is also very simple. I am embarking upon a new way of living, and I am a different person than I was only two months ago. This is a new era of my life.

Diagnonsensically yours,

P.S.: If you’ve benefited from my writing in any way – if my words have inspired you, helped you feel less alone, or sparked some weird feeling within you; if you’ve felt encouraged, or curious, or comforted – please consider compensating me by offering a donation of any amount. Whether you’ve been reading my writing for years, or just stumbled into me this afternoon, I invite you to help me sustain the process!

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Hospital Girl Has Left the Building

Posted on May 31, 2011 by marandaelizabeth

I am writing after having spent the last two months in a treatment centre for mental health. I did not have a crisis that led me there; well, I did, but it was a long time ago. I had been on the waitlist for this particular program for about four and a half years (the joys of no money and no insurance!), after having spent a short time in another unit at the same place back in 2006, after my first suicide attempt. I filled out referral forms every six months to keep my name on the list, had doctors call the treatment centre each time I was admitted to the psych ward in my hometown’s hospital, made frequent phone calls to the admitting department, and, after moving back to Guelph, began simply showing up in their office to demand they let me in. After a brief visit to the ER this winter, and two months in a not-entirely-useful outpatient program, my name finally came up. They gave me six days notice. I came back from a trip to Chicago for their annual zinefest, slept just a tiny bit, and checked myself in early the next morning.

I’m not going to write about my time at the hospital; I’m still processing it, and right now, there’s a lot I want to keep to myself. What I do want to write about is the transformation I feel I am currently undergoing, and daily life “on the outside”, after having only been out for a short time. Whenever I am hospitalized, I expect myself to emerge a new person. This has happened, but unfortunately, it rarely lasts. Depression creeps in. Lethargy takes over. I get totally jazzed about stuff like early mornings and bike rides and exercising and finding reasons to live. And then it just fizzles out. That kind of enthusiasm just never lasts.

For awhile, I was very bitter about the amount of time I had to wait to be admitted. I thought that if I had only been admitted to the program within a few months instead of a few years, all this terrible shit that had happened in the meanwhile would never have happened. That may be true. Perhaps I wouldn’t have been homeless that winter, wouldn’t have become a full-fledged alcoholic, wouldn’t have attempted suicide again and again, wouldn’t have become the horrible person I know I was back then. But maybe not. Maybe it would have happened anyway. I’m inclined to believe the latter. Even had I been admitted within a reasonable period of time, I know that I would have been extremely resistant to what they were trying to teach me. I would have scoffed at the very word “recovery.” I would have continued to destroy myself no matter what.

Right now, that just-outta-the-hospital enthusiasm is still bubbling within me. I am getting out of bed early in the morning, drinking yummy coffee, spending an hour stretching and exercising while listening to community radio, tending to all the plants I have recently gathered, showering, going outside, and keeping my apartment neat and tidy. I am having some really good days, I’m eating healthy food, I am paying attention to each moment instead of ruminating on the past and worrying about the future, and I am making plans. But it’s only been a few days. I know my history, and I’m not sure if I can keep this up forever, but I will try to do it for as long as I can, and if I can no longer keep it up, I’ll have to figure out where to go from there.

Over the years, I became absolutely entwined with my identity as a person I’ve begun to call “Hospital Girl.” I recently did a bit of an inventory of myself, attempting to name all the people I could feel inside me, so I could begin to have some conversations with them and put those pieces together into one whole being. I am still working on it, but I am much further along that path than I’ve ever been. There was Hospital Girl, the girl who is in and out of these damned places all the time, pretty much unable to get better since she relies on her own sickness to know who she is and doesn’t trust herself to take care of herself consistently. I also found The Goth Girl, The Journaller/Documenter, The Writer, The Angry Feminist, The Outdoorsy One, The Agoraphobic, The Genderless, and others… and more are lurking in there, I’m sure, currently unnamed. And everyday since I named them, I’ve been imagining them meshing into one person, Maranda, and no longer acting as though they are separate, unwanted, broken, bitter. I have this image in my mind of all them holding hands in a magical forest and meshing into one person, finally. It might sound silly, but it’s true. So I guess that’s one of my current ongoing projects – not tangible, like other projects, but a core aspect of what I’m going through right now.

Where was a I going with that? Oh yeah. The waitlist. Everything Happens for a Reason. I understand that now. I know the system is fucked up and a waitlist that long simply should not exist, but I also know that my stay at the treatment centre came at the perfect time in my life, and that I was not at all ready for this back in 2006 – I was an entirely different person, naïve and lost and trapped, and no one could have helped me. Everything that is happening now is happening just when it is supposed to, and I am having all these wonderful realizations about myself and my life that I would not have been able to understand and accept when I was, say, twenty-one. And now I am finally becoming the person I am supposed to be.

Somebody asked me if I thought I’d end up back in the hospital. I don’t know. I know that I don’t want to. I was very grateful to be in the program I was in, but by the end of it, I was sick of that place. Sick of the grey walls, the awkward bed, the lack of control over my own schedule. Sick of lining up at the med counter, sharing bathrooms with fifty people, eating in the cafeteria. But at the same time, all those things and more were exactly what I needed. The hospital got me back on track: it gave me a safe(r) place to sleep, a routine, three meals a day, people to talk to, and a hell of a lot of information. But I’m done with it. I’m ready to use these skills in what we call the Real World, in my own home and in my own life, and I don’t want to wear that plastic bracelet again for a long, long time.

Recoveringly yours,

P.S.: If you’ve benefited from my writing in any way – if my words have inspired you, helped you feel less alone, or sparked some weird feeling within you; if you’ve felt encouraged, or curious, or comforted – please consider compensating me by offering a donation of any amount. Whether you’ve been reading my writing for years, or just stumbled into me this afternoon, I invite you to help me sustain the process!

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Struggling through feelings of isolation, and knowing that our voices are valued.

Posted on February 24, 2011 by marandaelizabeth

This morning, I listened to someone on the radio say that there are only a few great voices in each generation, and admitted that he is not one of them. I thought his statement was sad and discouraging. If there are only a small amount of great voices, who are they? Who gets to decide? And does that discount the work of those who aren’t considered ‘great’? And if you can’t be great yourself, why do you keep on going? And and and…?!

Needless to say, I strongly disagree with his statement. I think it was a senseless thing to say. Those words offer such little hope. And frankly, it seems like the kind of thing someone with little confidence in their own work would say. I missed the beginning of the interview, and only listened to it in bits and pieces, so I’m not sure who it was who was speaking, aside from that it was some dude who had recently (self-?) published a book. After he downgraded countless of voices with his odd sentiment, I sort of stopped listening. I would rather listen to someone who has confidence in their work, or can at least fake it until they really do, and someone who believes in the voices of others as well.

There are thousands of voices I would consider ‘great’, maybe even hundreds of thousands, and into the millions, if only I had access to them. You’ll find them in zines, novels, non-fiction, poetry slams, on the bus and in waiting rooms, in the pages of diaries, scrawled on bathroom stalls and carved into benches. Everywhere, everywhere! It’s just a matter of seeking them out, and of having the guts to use our own voices and tell our own stories. How utterly foolish to claim there are only a few.

On another note…

Writing is solitary work, and it can be difficult not to feel isolated. I recently finished the third draft of my novel, and am about to embark upon the fourth (and what I hope will be the final-ish) draft. How very overwhelming, and exciting as well. When I finally finished writing the current draft, I was positively elated, yet there was nearly no one to tell. I simply sat at my purple desk, tore up a few notes I no longer needed, and admired my great big stack of papers covered with scribbles and notes and reminders in red ink all over the place. I like when my writing becomes a mess like that, it makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something. I tucked the papers back in their drawer and tuned into the local radio station to listen to skits from the 1950’s, and then I scanned my bookshelves and chose something to read, another world to get lost in.

Sometimes I consider starting a writing group. I am aware of only a few in this town, and the one I’d like to attend, held at Out on the Shelf, where I volunteer, takes place while I’m at derby practice, so thus far, I’ve been unable to attend. I’ve been to quite a few writing workshops over the years, and have always had such an amazing experience that it is hard to explain in words (funnily enough, since obviously that’s where the focus is).

Throughout Winter, I read Writing Through the Darkness: Easing Your Depression with Paper and Pen by Elizabeth Maynard Schaefer, Ph.D. It’s a useful book; it’s about exactly what it says, using writing as a method of healing depression, and it also works as a guide for beginning and/or participating in writing groups for folks with depression (though she gives advice on who would be an appropriate “leader” for the group, my ideal group would not have a leader, since I don’t believe in creating or falling into hierarchies, especially where organizing & creativity are concerned). The writing groups she talks about have more of a focus on listening over offering critique, and while that would certainly be helpful as well, I do also encourage critique, though I can also understand being a tiny delicate flower curled up in a ball of depression and thus unable to handle any kind of critique at all, since I have been that girl.

A writing group could help calm that sensation of isolation that washes over me now and then, but I am not currently in a place where I could organize such a thing; my life is too unpredictable right now to start adding anymore commitments and obligations to my schedule, though I will hopefully be able to do so in the future. I’ve also thought about having a writerly partner-in-crime, someone to go on weekly writer’s dates with, a la the Natalie Goldberg method, whereby we’d meet up at a café for an hour or two, and we would simply write. If one person can’t make it, the other goes anyway, as this is a time set aside once a week for writing and writing only, and you just happen to get the encouragement and company of somebody who ‘gets it’ as well. This is another one of those dreams I’ve got on my to-do list for when I actually have the time. For now, I go on random solo writerly dates, and I am in love with those as well.

What I’d like to know is, do you often feel isolated yourself as a writer? What do you do to combat that feeling? Do you participate in writing groups in your area, or online? What writing projects are you currently working on? What writing-related books and blogs would you recommend?

Greatly and vocally yours,

P.S.: In case you can’t tell, I want my blog to be encouraging, participatory, and inspiring, so if you’ve got anything at all to share, please leave comments! Also, I’m working on an entry with recommendations for writing resources that I have personally found helpful, so stay tuned for that!

P.P.S.: If you’ve benefited from my writing in any way – if my words have inspired you, helped you feel less alone, or sparked some weird feeling within you; if you’ve felt encouraged, or curious, or comforted – please consider compensating me by offering a donation of any amount. Whether you’ve been reading my writing for years, or just stumbled into me this afternoon, I invite you to help me sustain the process!

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Making a home, imagining a home.

Posted on February 13, 2011 by marandaelizabeth

Lately I seem to have developed a mild obsession with cleaning and organizing my apartment. It started with vacuuming. When I moved into this apartment last summer, no one had bothered to clean it, so it was covered in the previous resident’s dirt and grime and dust and hair. Frankly, it was disgusting. When I finally got hold of a vacuum, I filled the canister several times with unspeakable grime, and then picked up a habit of getting down on my hands and knees to vacuum, making sure the attachment I held in my hands picked up every little particle. But it wasn’t only vacuuming. I also had to scrub the walls. They were grimy and smoke-stained. After scrubbing them down several times with water, cleaner, baking soda, and vinegar, they weren’t even the same colours I thought they were when I moved in. Eventually, I tackled the bathtub, toilet, sinks, windows, refrigerator, floors, and so on. I’ve probably put in a good sixty hours of work since moving in.

Back in December, the kitchen ceiling started leaking. The hole in the ceiling sealed with mailing tape, I hadn’t noticed ’til I’d already been living here a week. I didn’t think much of it; every apartment has its flaws. It turns out my apartment is poorly insulated, and when the heat reaches the ceiling, it melts the accumulated snow, which then leaks into my home. Yesterday, after standing on a chair and scrubbing my bathroom ceiling, which was remarkably disgusting, my bathroom window started leaking. The sun shone on the icicles, and brown sludge dripped down the window and splattered onto the counter and the floor. Wonderful. I tried the mailing tape trick, but it didn’t work. Then I took a nap. This afternoon, it is still leaking, puddles gathering on the floor and the counter, towels laid over everything.

I’d like to stay here for a long time. I’d like this place to be my home for awhile, and I’d like to do everything I can to make it feel that way. Right now, I dream of having plumbing fixtures that work properly, ceilings and windows that don’t leak, and a little corner in this town that welcomes me in when I arrive tired from derby practice, shivering from a February walk, or catching my breath after a bike ride. I want to paint. I want livingroom walls of the palest lavender, and a bedroom painted light mint. I want tidy shelves and uncluttered closets.

It’s hard to think about making changes in a home that I do not own. Is it worth the effort, the time, the money? What if I paint, and then I leave? Will I paint the next place, or will I simply be shuffling through on my way to another? Does it matter?

In the first apartment I lived in after moving out, we had white walls and grey carpets. They sickened me. The non-colour of carpet became a running joke/ argument between myself and the person I was living with, and it funny for awhile, but then it was just frustrating. We talked about painting, but we never got around to it. Back then, I wanted to paint my livingroom like a forest of fairies, and my bathroom black and red. The closest I got was buying new towels that left my wet body covered in a thin layer of black and red lint that never seemed to go away. I threw them out, and I am happy to use the sage green towels my mom passed onto me, stained with hair dye in various shades of red, purple, pink, blonde, and black.

In my current apartment, I still have carpets in that ugly non-colour of grey/ blue/ I-don’t-even-know-what, but at least the walls are no longer white, at least the place is filled with things that make me feel like me.

I try to cultivate a sense of control here, as well as some kind of positive solitude. But as much as I clean, as much I organize and re-organize, as much as I get rid of things and acquire new things, I still know that this place isn’t mine. It is my landlord’s. For all I know, she doesn’t even think of it as somebody’s home, somebody’s safe haven, but simply a grey house on the other side of town that generates a meager income. And if she so chooses, she could get away with leaving the fixtures in their sorry state, not investing in having the leaks fixed properly; she could raise my rent and drive me right out of here with her disregard. I know that while I struggle to pay for my groceries and keep myself alive, a large chunk of my income is going toward the upkeep of her own home, and the education and well-being of her family. I am not quite throwing my money away; the rent I pay is almost worth it for the space I live in, and I am very lucky indeed to be able to choose to live by myself in a building where I feel relatively safe. It’s just that sometimes it does feel like I’m throwing money away. I know millions of others are struggling with this, too, and rent is not something you can simply wiggle your way out of. But I don’t want it to be like this forever.

I have grown quite fond of visualizing my future home, the perfect home, weighing the pros and cons of various locations, having the perfect balance of escape & wonder & beauty, with practicality & work & the inevitable inconveniences as well. It is a neat little space to dream of, to take care of even the littlest details in my mind as I work in my own ridiculous ways to make that happen. I would like to own my home, to know that I am in total control of the place I live. That dream, that vision, is something to strive toward, a reason to keep on going.

ApartMENTALly yours,

P.S.: If you’ve benefited from my writing in any way – if my words have inspired you, helped you feel less alone, or sparked some weird feeling within you; if you’ve felt encouraged, or curious, or comforted – please consider compensating me by offering a donation of any amount. Whether you’ve been reading my writing for years, or just stumbled into me this afternoon, I invite you to help me sustain the process!

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Taking control of my daily life, and attempting to eliminate the feeling that some unclarified thing is missing.

Posted on February 2, 2011 by marandaelizabeth

You know that feeling like something is missing, but you’re not sure what it is? I don’t know if there was ever a time when that feeling was not a part of my daily experience, but there are times when it comes on stronger, and this evening is one of those times. It’s not quite escape that I’m craving, but something near to it… or maybe actually the opposite of it. A kind of comfort that I can’t define. Perhaps just a different kind of life, a life with less needless stress and worry, with less anxiety, and a life with a certain kind of coziness that I am finding difficult, but not entirely impossible, to cultivate in my own home.

A friend was telling me the other day about how she was on a search for the perfect café, with shabby thrift store furniture and an inviting atmosphere, the kind of place where you feel welcome to curl up with your notebook and a knitting project for a couple hours, and don’t get the sense that you must keep spending money to stay, that somebody is waiting to take up the space that is currently yours. I know the place she’s talking about, but I haven’t found it yet either. The cafés I am familiar with are either furnished with leather chairs to attract a certain kind of client, and/or wooden chairs that are not comfortable to sit in for long periods of time. I do still spend plenty of time in these places, but there is something just a little off about them… I don’t feel quite welcome. I get stressed with the hustle-bustle around me, and often feel as though I am taking up space that were better-suited to someone else. I get overly irritated when I search for a relaxing, yet public, atmosphere, and find myself surrounded in folks staring at their laptop screens and cell phones, ignoring the beauty of the well-made drink in front of them, and the view from the window they happen to be near. I know I am over-thinking it, I know there are many more important things in life. And yet I am bothered.

It might also be the snow getting to me. Of course. I don’t dislike the snow the way I used to, but I miss riding my bike, I miss bringing my picnic blanket down to the river, I miss reading in the grass. So there is certainly a lack of nature in my life, since I’ve been spending most of my time simply hanging out in my apartment, trying to figure it all out. But there is a lack of something else as well, and I’m not sure what it is.

After I posted this entry and flier, I noticed a ridiculous amount of hits coming to my blog from Tumblr. I don’t have an account on that site (and I promise I never, ever will!), so I wandered on over to see what was up. A ton of folks had reposted my flier; unfortunately, many didn’t bother to credit me. Just so you know, crediting is easy-peasy, and it is disrespectful and lazy not to. The flier and the message did not appear out of the blue: I created them. I appreciate those of you who did credit, so thanks, but I will admit that Tumblr sort of gives me the creeps, and it’s not a community I want to be involved with. So finding my own words on there (and wondering what else of mine is on there that I haven’t found) is odd. Last I checked, my flier had been re-posted about six-hundred fifty times. And out of six-hundred fifty people who felt the need to share it, only two or three actually spoke to me about it. That is also odd, and perhaps quite telling of why I feel a lack of communication in my life. I don’t expect everyone to get in touch with me just because I’ve made something that’s spoken to them – that would be exhausting and foolish, and I know I sure as hell don’t get in touch with half the folks who make art I love – but a tiny bit of acknowledgment is nice sometimes, you know? I do plan on making copies of the flier so you can carry them in your pocket, mail them to your friends, stick them up around town, hide them in library books, etc. I just don’t have the money for copies right now.

As the flier mentions, I am still trying to accept that everything is a process. I am trying to remedy this restlessness, and I know that I will feel differently tomorrow. I am trying to become a more patient person. Little things irritate me: my neighbours’ loud music, noisy conversations in public, useless non-recyclable packaging in the mail, etc… But I’ll get over it. There are more important things.

On the topic of the internet, and of slowing down and learning patience, I have also been spending less time online, and trying to be more productive in Real Life. For example, after growing increasingly annoyed with folks who add me on Facebook, then, when I add them back to try to figure out who they are, they don’t even talk to me, I finally decided to just delete everyone. I am sooo not interested in passive fake-communication on the internets. I am not interested in collecting a great big friends list, and I don’t have the time or energy to keep up with what everybody’s up to. I don’t want to spend my life staring at a screen. So cutting down the friends lists, and spending less time online, is one way I am taking back control of my daily life, and taking care of myself. I recommend it.

What are you doing to take back control of your own daily life, and how have you been taking care of yourself?

Soy latté and olive green knitting at The Cornerstone.

Searchingly yours,

P.S.: If you’ve benefited from my writing in any way – if my words have inspired you, helped you feel less alone, or sparked some weird feeling within you; if you’ve felt encouraged, or curious, or comforted – please consider compensating me by offering a donation of any amount. Whether you’ve been reading my writing for years, or just stumbled into me this afternoon, I invite you to help me sustain the process!

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