runningfromhellwithel

Life is beautiful now, and it was beautiful then.  I just didn’t see it.  I didn’t see it because I was bent over in pain, and one thing about pain. It is paralyzing. And when it isn’t knocking you on your ass and making it impossible to breathe, it hurts. But this isn’t really about pain. Like an Eskimos describing snow in all its variations, a trauma survivor can write at length and with great depth about pain. I have written those words and at some point, they will help form the pages of my memoirs. This is not about pain. This is about how I overcame all of that pain.

Anyone who knows me well has heard part of my story, and I am not going to recount it here. (See A Family’s Reckoning Day). It’s enough to state that I was abused emotionally, physically and sexually. For years, I struggled psychologically. I tried to be fucking perfect so that I could somehow convince myself that I was worth something. Achievement followed achievement but I was only as happy as the last A grade or shutout or sub-7 minute mile I ran. Outwardly, I seemed like I had it all put together, but as I aged it got harder and harder to keep it together and hide the cracked and fissured parts of myself from the world.  The worst truth of all was that I was attacking my soul from the inside.

I learned as a teenager to hurt myself.  When other people talk about hurting themselves, I have always stared at them with frustration, especially the cutters. It made no sense, the concept that by cutting their skin, some of the pressure building up inside got released with the flowing blood.  It made no sense to my rational mind, but secretly, even though I didn’t cut myself, I had my own secret.  I used to beat the shit out of myself.

I don’t remember the first time.  Maybe it was when I got a B+ on a History Exam.  Not an A.  I wasn’t fucking perfect.  I was a failure.  I hated myself.  Rage and grief and fists balled up and then . . . it happened.  I hurt so badly inside and I would ball up my fists. I wouldn’t stop until I felt like stopping.  I didn’t enjoy it.  I always felt like shit afterwards.

In my late 20’s, I became an epileptic.  God sent me a message and I heard him.  What was the message?  He loved me no matter what.  And life is beautiful.  Every day I wake up in the morning, I remember his message.  The doctors never figured out why I suddenly started having seizures; then again, I told no one about my own personal Fight Club.  But I knew why.  I fucked myself up that badly.  No, this isn’t about me feeling shitty about all of that.  I did what I did—I did what I don’t do anymore.

I talked with my therapist about this self-hurting thing and she didn’t wince.  Hell, I didn’t either.  She did say that at least when I hurt myself I could control when the hurting would stop, and that made sense to me. And in the grand scheme of things, we have talked about far more painful things over the last two years.  Suicidal ideation. Promising to call when . . . . Rape. Incest. Crippling fear of abandonment and its sibling, paranoia. We have pieced together the memories and smells and visions and fragments of memories that constitute my childhood and we’ve made some sense of it all.  And what makes no sense, I am learning it is still okay to grieve and accept and in accepting incomplete and imperfect healing, I’ve begun real healing.

The first year of therapy was the hardest, because the wounds felt so fresh, but I learned coping skills.  When the noise in my head got too loud, I ran, and the running brought peace.  It also made me feel stronger.  After I ran my first marathon, I bawled my eyes out and kept repeating the last mile, “No one can ever take this away from me.”  Eight marathons later, I truly believe that I can overcome anything.  But I learned other coping skills, like sitting still or lying down on the carpet when the pain got too strong.  I know my enemy.  My enemy is my own hands.  My hands are what I use to open pill bottles or to hit myself, so when I feel it coming, that habit-bound rage at my inadequacies, I sit or lie on my hands.  And it passes.  Life is beautiful.

This post is about overcoming so I might as well give tribute to the other things I have overcome that caused me pain.  I grew up with alcoholics and they did evil things to me when they drank.  I don’t like the woman I am when I drink, and over the years, I went from someone who had a drinking problem to someone who, with God’s grace, does not drink.  I have not smoked cigarettes in 18 months because the smoking is self-destructive.  And I have worked oh so hard to become a better mother and to help my husband control his own dark side.

I take my meds every day, and when I get pissed off at the effect of my medication and go off the wagon, I rat myself out to my best friend, who laughs and tells me to do better.  I am currently pursuing a diagnosis for bipolar spectrum disorder and if that is what I have, I will deal with it bravely.  And finally, after two years of horrid vacillation, I faced my family and told them not to contact me anymore. I know I have a long way to go but I have come so far already.  And not a day passes without the realization that makes all of this possible: Life is beautiful. And so am I.

Novel Overview

            The other day, my writing partner Renee-Schuls-Jacobsen Lessons from Teachers and Twits and I tried to summarize my novel in a paragraph, and I’m here to tell you it isn’t easy to step back and pinpoint a book in one sentence.  And to be frank, I have been a little nervous about revealing the plot because it is, like so much of what I write, a bit raw.  I’m afraid that prospective readers will hear that and howl, “Gah!  Too dark!”  And the thing is, this is not a dark story.  Ultimately, I am weaving a tale of hope, redemption, friendship and love.  How is that you ask?  From chapter 9 to the end of what I am tentatively naming Ripple, I show how competent and loving care can resurrect a shattered young woman and her broken mother.

Because so many people have been helping me solve plot questions on my Facebook page Running from Hell with El, I wanted everyone to know more about what I am doing.  In one sentence, here it is.  After the rape of a 15-year old girl named Phoebe, her mother Helen protects her in a way she never thought she could, and after she seeks help, we see the ripple effect of women helping women.  That sounds simple doesn’t it?  But it took me thousands of words to cull it down to a sentence that could fit in a Twitter Running from Hell update.  And I owe my writing partner for helping me write this sentence.

Where does this concept come from?  Go ahead and laugh.  It comes from a Grateful Dead song.  The song is (yeah you guessed it) called Ripple.  Pretend you’re listening to background music as you hear these lyrics:

  06 Ripple

Reach out your hand if your cup be empty,

If your cup is full may it be again,

Let it be known there is a fountain,

That was not made by the hands of men.

In my novel, several characters, in their professional capacity as lawyers, therapists, the operators of a safe home for abused women, and even a horse trainer, reach out and help Phoebe and her mother.  In flashbacks, the reader will see how the mother’s attorney, Cassandra, went through her own periods of darkness.  In a very real sense, I am writing about the ripple effect of women helping women.

When I conceived this novel a year ago, I knew that my main characters, like me, would emerge from darkness and tragedy into a bright future.  This is why I named the girl Phoebe.  Her name means “Child of Light.”  From the very darkest places, if we reach out with our hand with an empty cup and someone reaches back and refills it with love, we will find our way to the light.  Always searching, always reaching . . . for the light.

stupidsober2

I’ve been writing about such numbing, serious stuff here on my blog while I spend most of my time on my Facebook page telling funny stories or outlining my quirky, eccentric views on a wide range of issues.  And it struck me that y’all might enjoy hearing about my lighter, stranger side. Well, I think my deep, dark muse is pretty freakin’ strange too, but you’re following my drift right?  Here is where it all started last night . . .

Tonight’s theme is stupid things I have done while sober.

1. I left the plastic wrap on the chicken when I put it in the oven. Yum. Sizzle.

2. I told my aunt that my mom said my aunt’s face “looked old and wrinkly” (um, I was only 9 when I engaged in this brilliant conversation).

3. I smoked weed while on school property in high school. I was sober when I thought this was a good idea; not so sober when I learned otherwise.

4. I left college after one month to pursue my starving writer’s dream (and because Walden 2 sucked and I didn’t want to write a damn paper about it).

5. Five years later, I went to law school at William and Mary and pursued a career for which I was temperamentally ill-suited (or so the partners at the Firm would later say).

6. This summer, I ignored the water bill for three months and our water got shut off (oops).

7. I ran 8 marathons last year (trust me, stupid).

8. I forget to put my parking brake on and my little Subaru rolled down a hill and slammed (splat) into my parents’ cherry tree (smirk).

9. When I was 16, I threw a party at my parent’s house while they were out-of-town and Xeroxed directions to the party; then, I handed out directions to all the upper classmates. Do you remember Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High? I channeled him that weekend.

10. I gave birth to three children in 2 and a half years.

11. One time, the guys and I snuck out after midnight, took my father’s car for a joyride, and then we couldn’t get the damn key out of the ignition. Now *that* was the most sleepless night I ever had. I did manage to wake up before my dad the next morning. I pretended I was going out for an early morning run, found the ignition release button on his gray Toyota Scarlet and got those keys out of the ignition JUST in time!

12. And finally, one time, when I was in 8th grade, I came home to our new house and I was locked out. It was pouring and none of the neighbors were home, and my parents wouldn’t be home for hours . . . so I took a rock and threw it through the window. This set off the damn alarm. It felt strangely liberating, until the cops showed up, and then I had to weave this long tale about how the window was already broken when I got home from school. This is one of the many stupid, naughty things Little El did. Anyone have any stories? I am already smirking.

A Farewell  <——- Click here to listen to audio recording of post.

My children ask me about my childhood and I push the grief out of my mind and change the subject.  I could talk about holding my Mom’s hand or smelling beef stew cooking on the stove, but the words won’t come.  The words are trapped inside, like miners buried deep underground.  It hurts to relay the good memories because moments, however brief, of feeling loved are incongruous with more painful visions of my parents hurting me.  I glimpse a fleeting vision of mom’s ivory white hand stroking my forehead, but the warmth it suggests makes me colder inside.   The hands struck and shoved and tore at me in conjunction with words that assaulted me.

I just listened to Queensryche’s “Silent Lucidity again,” and there is this part of the song that goes:

The walls you built within
Come tumbling down
And a new world will begin.

And the thing is, the hardest walls to strike down truly are the ones we build within.  Like so many sexual abuse survivors, I built wall upon wall to protect my fragile heart from the pain of every memory, and ever since I became an adult, I have been smashing down these walls.  The inherent difficulty in my task is that my soul will not be “set free to fly” until I finish tearing down these walls separating present from past, buried memory from vivid image and the few good times from surrealistically evil ones.

Ironically, the latest stage in my recovery is erecting rather than tearing down a wall.  In one sense, building the wall took no more time than it took to dash off a quick e-mail, but in a very real sense, it has taken me years to accept the inevitability of this relationship having to end.  It ended when they molested, beat and verbally abused me, but it took that long for my heart to stop crying out with anguish and hope for my mother to love me.  Is she my mother?  Are these my parents?  Yes, by birth.  I no more chose them than I chose to be abused.  But I am choosing to have no parents.

And in making this choice, in bidding them farewell, my soul will be set free to fly.  My heart can begin healing.  And somewhere along the way, I will become the woman I always wanted to be.

My man may not buy me chocolate tomorrow, but he sure gets the big things right. He came home tonight and astutely realized that I was wearing the same sweats I slept in. He: hugged me tightly; kissed my greasy hair; told me I was beautiful; asked me what was wrong; listened when I told him my day had started with Wang Chung and slid downhill from there; told me I had a sweet smile when I managed to smirk; and then, very kindly, said, “Have you had a shower yet? It will make you feel better.” Tender loving care feels good . . . oh, and yep, I got that shower.

Later on this evening, after we tucked the kids in for dinner, my husband read 17^th century Metaphysical poetry to me.  John Donne is my husband’s favorite poet, and when we dated, he used to read me these poems that made me swoon.  We liked John Donne so much that we read poems he wrote to one another at our wedding 15 years ago.  And we both love his poetry even now.  By the end of these readings tonight, I felt a million times better after my rotten, rocky Monday.

Finally, he agreed to help translate the raciest, sexiest of Donne’s poems for the readers of my blog.  All of the modern translations are in his voice.  So, dear reader, without further ado, here is my husband Travis Farris providing a 21^st Century interpretation of the first two stanzas from ELEGY XIX. TO HIS MISTRESS GOING TO BED.

“Come, madam, come, all rest my powers defy,”

He cannot sleep.

“Until I labor, I in labor lie.”

Until he gets laid, he will be distraught.

“The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,”

He is hot and bothered by seeing her

“Is tired with standing though he never fight.”

I wonder if this has gone on more than four hours (he has been erect and gotten no relief)

“Off with that girdle, like heaven’s zone glistering,”

Take off your bra!

“But a far fairer world encompassing.”

Her breasts are more heavenly than heavenly bodies

“Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,”

Please take your clothes off!

“That th’ eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.”

He’s not satisfied with just her taking off her shirt.

“Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime”

She is starting to moan in anticipation

“Tells me from you that now it is bed time.”

She is ready for sex.

“Off with that happy busk, which I envy,”

Off with the clothes already!

“That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.”

Both of them are turned on.

“Your gown, going off, such beauteous state reveals,”

He appreciates her feminine form.

“as when from flowry meads th’ hill’s shadow steals.”

Her naked body lightens up the whole room.

“Off with that wiry coronet and show”

Take off the underwear

“The hairy diadem which on you doth grow:”

And reveal pubic hair

“Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread”

Finish unclothing.

“In this love’s hallowed temple, this soft bed.”

And come on into bed (he pats bed).

*** Happy Valentines dear reader, from my husband and I to you.***

Judging Friends

Audio Recording above–click on the red words “Judging Friends” to listen.

In 11^th grade, I completed an essay and in it, I quoted the biblical phrase, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”[1]  I wrote a precocious albeit philosophically naïve two pages about the nature of condemnation without comprehension.  To my mind, the concept of judging others meant that we should not judge others before we take the time to understand them.  And it is a truism that as tribal humans, we tend to dislike anyone who looks unlike us.  We feel uncomfortable and fearful of that which we do not understand.  Hence, a lack of comprehension often results in condemnation of others.  And this is neither wise nor compassionate.  Wisdom and compassion both figure prominently in the traits to which I aspire.  In the world I live in, I try to understand what someone is saying or doing before I judge and condemn it.

I’m an adult now.  So much has changed in the way I view the world, and yet so little has changed.  I have a tender heart balanced by a strong jaw.  I stand by my friends and family, often to a fault, and I try to cast a naturally judgmental mind aside when a friend is in trouble.  But here is the rub: it is impossible to live with honor and mindfulness without judging others.

Hold on dear reader.  We need to define terms. To judge means:

1. To pass legal judgment on: The court judged him guilty.

2. To hear evidence or legal arguments in (a case) in order to pass judgment; adjudicate; try: The Supreme Court is judging that case.

3. To form a judgment or opinion of; to decide upon critically: You can’t judge a book by its cover.

4. To infer, think, or hold as an opinion; conclude about or assess: He judged her to be correct.

It is impossible to live, qua human, without “inferring, thinking, or holding opinions.”  It is unwise to interact with others without forming judgments or opinions.  Without judgment, how can we choose, for example, the man we should marry?  Would just any Tom, Joe or Travis do?  Without judgment, how do we vote for politicians to lead our country?  Without judgment, how do we navigate the twists and turns of our lives?

The clear conclusion, my friends, is that actions matters.  Words mean something.  Values are not relative.  And (gasp) some things really hurt or bother me.  That’s right.  Now we’re getting to the real issue here.  Or more precisely, we are going to apply the rule, that we must judge in order to live mindfully and make wise choices, to a real life situation.

I have this friend.  When I met her, I was struck by her larger-than life persona.  She talks too loud and laughs too loud and these aren’t bad qualities.  These are the special details that endear someone to us.  After we became friends, I started hearing rumors.  Mutual friends spoke of her drinking, and as the child of alcoholics, the hair on the back of my neck went up, but I resolved to ignore the rumors.  We talked more.  And because we live in the same neighborhood, I heard a lot more rumors.  “Watch out El.  She swings,” one friend warned me.  “What?”  I exclaimed.  “You heard me,” my friend replied.  “Just watch your back.”  I gulped and nodded and shrugged.  “Well, the way I see it is as long as she does not speak to me about the swinging or the drinking, we’ll be okay,” I reasoned.

Drinking is a hard thing for me to be around.  When I smell alcohol, the noxious swirling of years and years of my parents’ Manhattans wafts into my unconscious, and my insides clench up as I smell my father’s incestuous breath on me.  Yeah.  It’s that bad, that much of a trigger for me, to be around people when they drink.  And I had my own drinking problem, so I tread with care around alcohol lest its alluring, sickening vortex swallows me up again.

Swinging.  Wow.  That is even worse of a trigger for me than drinking.  I believe, more deeply than I could possibly express, that our bodies are temples, blessed and sacred.  I have not, nor will I ever engage in a sexual act without being in love.  And I do not believe love can or should be split among recipients.  Split love, divided love, destroys the stalk that feeds it; by dividing it, a man or woman destroys it.  And when we marry, we take a vow to remain faithful forever.  Words matter.   Words have meaning.  When I said I would love my husband forever, I meant it.

A year ago or more, I explained all of this to my friend.  I told her I did not want to talk with her or hang out with her while she was drinking.  Over and over, she abused the boundary I built to protect my weary soul from alcohol’s trespass.  She would write me these lengthy, tearful, desperate and drunken notes at night, and I would listen and write back and try to comfort her.  And the next day, I would mildly rebuke her.  Often, she had forgotten the entire conversation.  Don’t get me wrong: I should have walked away months ago.  But I did not.  Until I did.  More on that later.

One night, she asked me if she could tell me something without my judging her.  My chest turned ice-cold.  I knew what was coming.  Fearfully, I agreed, and she told me her long saga about her best friend, her lover, and some of the details of her bisexual lifestyle.  I listened as best I could, and told her I loved her, but did not appreciate or want to hear about any of her sexual behaviors.  She agreed, but her need was great, and so was my patience, or perhaps my need to be needed.  If I listened to her pour her heart out to me, I was being useful.  It is good to be useful.

This uncomfortable dance went on between us for months.  I tried to talk with her about everything but drinking and swinging.  Too often, she steered the conversation to those two topics and each time I let this happen, I felt the weight and stench of her darkness.  It made me unhappy; and yet, too often, I ducked but did not address it directly.  I hold myself responsible for not setting stronger boundaries.

Last weekend, it came to a head when she got back together with her ex-lover and insisted on talking to me about it while she was drinking.  I do not hold myself responsible for what happened between us when I finally said, in a calm, measured note, “Please do not talk about drinking or talk to me while you are drinking anymore.  Please do not talk to me about swinging, or about your rekindled friendship with your lover.  That also makes me uncomfortable.”  She blew up and accused me of judging her.  To her way of thinking, friends do not judge one another.  Friends stick together through thick and thin.  And for a week, she sent me notes.  Needy, angry notes and I stopped responding.  I had nothing else to say.

I have judged, I reckon.  But what I have judged is her behavior and how it affects me.  By making self-destructive, soul-crushing choices, she is choosing a lifestyle that I cannot abide.  I will not stand by and watch a friend drink herself to death.  And I will not applaud as she sleeps around with other women in contravention of her vows.  Words matter.  Actions have meaning.  Boundaries protect us from things and people that bring darkness into our lives.  And I am not blindly condemning someone or something I do not understand.  I understand it too well.  And it hurts me to see.

I winnowed my inbox down to 38 messages and while I clicked and deleted messages, I thought about a friend, a close friend, who is going to click and delete her Facebook account soon, and I smiled at the tight feeling I got in my chest.  That tight feeling is an old one, and it represents the physical fear that grips Little El.  What is the little me so afraid of?  Being abandoned, I think.  Yes, I know it’s crazy.  My dear friend will remain my dear friend even after she leaves the playground and social assimilation zone that Facebook has become for me.  She is not abandoning me.  It just feels that way to the sad little girl who never really got to cuddle up to her mom or dad.

I smile sweetly at this tight feeling in my chest and I don’t push it away with frustration or irritation.  It’s worth listening to the tender melodies and haunting refrains that play over and over again inside my heart when I make and then fear losing close friends.  What does it all mean and how do I reassure Little El without holding on tightly, too tightly?  I’m learning the answers through my children; more precisely, by taking a step forward and then back when my own children grip me too tightly.

I have three children and they arrived like little Irish triplets, one after another in a very short space of time.  The middle child, Jim, came with chubby cheeks and these orb-like blue eyes that light up when he smiles and grow dull and grayish, almost vacant-looking, when he feels sad.   Even as an infant, sweet baby James was more sensitive than his big sister and he summoned a side of me that felt foreign at first: a tender, gentle, unconditionally loving side.   Before he came into my life, I had no idea how to mother my kids.  I loved my daughter dearly, but I didn’t really know how to show her.  But Jim.  It was different with him.  He would gaze into my grey-blue eyes and smile-cry, or cry-smile and I would feel it all inside me, and I knew exactly how to turn the smile-cry or cry-smile into a smile.  And that has never changed.

The rub here is that as our children grow, they need for us to teach them how to let go of the arms that hold and comfort them long enough to muster out to the cold, hard real world, and with Jim, this process flattens both of us sometimes.  When I dropped baby Jim off at preschool, he cried and cried and his tears hit my heart like angry, hot darts.  But I had to walk away.  I had to.  I would whisper in his ear, “I will return, I promise, I will, and I love and adore you sweet Jim.”  And then when I picked him up from his classroom, he would glare at me for leaving him, but eventually he would let go of his resentment and messily climb into my arms, with a gratuitous grabbing of my long blond “Breck” hair.

Jim is 7 years old now, and he still holds a painfully tender place in my heart.  He is the easiest of my three children in all ways except for one: abandonment.  It is a truism I think that all children (especially male children) must find the strength to leave their mothers and Jim remains a work in progress on this front.  I help teach a Socratic seminar to Jim and a few of his first grade mates and a strange thing happens whenever I sit at this round table with 5 little boys and girls.  Jim shuts down.

Jim is a talkative, bright boy but he cannot function intellectually at school when I am near him, because his emotional need for me simply overflows his nervous system.  He’s terrified that I am going to like the other children better.  He is distraught that I will be leaving in 30 minutes.  And yet he sort of wants me to leave, so that he can go on being the autonomous and brilliant little boy he is when I am not there serving as his mental crutch.  Everything anyone says in that small little copy room enters his brain as a twisted message, heavily symbolic, of the mother sitting beside him who would love, does love . . . him . . . and it overloads his circuitry.

I have tried to talk with Jim, and explain that while I teach, I am there for all five little boys and girls, but will always and forever be there for him.  He hears me but his heart screams otherwise.  His heart beats and in each upbeat something inchoate cries out, “Don’t leave me,” but in each downbeat sounds the response, “Let me fly.”  I cannot push him too hard or too fast.  He must find the strength to leave me, knowing that he can, with the setting of his internal sun, always return to me.  For now, I can serve as his sun and moon and stars but eventually, he must find his own solar system deep inside, and use it, and not I, to navigate.

Until then, I wait with him.  Until then, he gathers tools and knowledge.  Until then, I hold on loosely but not too loosely.

And from Jim I am learning how to hold on loosely to my friends and to the people I would love.  My mother did not launch me gently into the egg-shaped orbit of my own life.  Yet I made it to where I am now.  Even if I didn’t realize it (even if I failed miserably at it) I am and always was strong enough to rotate gently, not too tightly, around the friends who people my existence.   My friend is not leaving me when she deactivates her Facebook account.  It has nothing to do with me.  And whatever happens, with her or with anyone else who I encounter, fearing their loss before they are gone warps the present by using the past to strangle the here and now.  And so I hold on not too tightly, not too loosely and I let go, not of her, but of whatever fear grips me.

7:07 a.m.  I hit the alarm and roll over again.  It goes off at 7:17 a.m., and this time I roll out of bed and start getting ready.  A nightmare resonates in my head and I file it away in the “Recall Later” category.  I hate nightmares, and I have them almost every night when I’m depressed.  They say that dreaming mirrors the work our unconscious is engaged in, and if that is true, I deserve a guest spot on Dirty Jobs because my brain’s work is a dirty damn job indeed.  I feel like hell but I know the moment will pass.  The moment, this moment, always passes.  The problem is, my emotions pass by me like a high speed locomotive carrying me and all that I am into an internal chaos, and there is no way off the train.  My mind, my brain changes from minute to minute, hour to hour and there is nowhere to rest, not even while I sleep.

8:05 a.m.  Elation strikes.  I ride it like a surfer curling into a 30-foot wave, and still I brace.  For an hour, I work and feel great.  Then the wave slams into the shore.  It happens all the time, so I don’t fear going underwater.  I know I will pop back up again.  The key is not to panic or thrash around or let the fear freeze me.

9 a.m.  I teach a seminar to first graders.  The absurdity of it strikes me.  It’s like I’m the director of a postmodern, surrealistic performance.  I disengage all emotion and focus on the children.  It’s for the children.  At 9:35 a.m., I traipse back into the office and sign out of the visitors and volunteers’ page on their antique computer and yet again I feel guilty and small and lonely, like I always feel when I spend time at my children’s school.  I don’t use the sanitizer bottle but I feel like I should.  And I drive home in my dusty, messy SUV and I should drive to the car wash but I do not feel like wasting time.  I should also take the SUV in for inspection.  The tags are expired but I cannot bother with details.  My characters await my return and they are all talking to one another in my head.

10 a.m.  I ride another swell as I write.  The scene from chapter 19 that I wrote over the weekend is dead-to-rights bang on, and I could fly, had I wings.  Like a conductor of a symphony of words, I ask one character to speak, and words are spoken; another character to run, and legs rotate rhythmically.  A conductor is all powerful and omniscient, and so am I.

Until I read a blog that describes how novels should be written.  According to her, I’m doing it all wrong.  I don’t write 15 page synopses for each “Act” of my novel and scrawl out the plot on 3 by 5 index cards.  I am a “pantser,” who flies by the seat of my pants when I write, and am doomed to fail.  I crash, and remain on the carpet, figuratively speaking, when my mom arrives for a brief visit.

I shut down emotionally when my mom surrounds me with her all-engulfing personality.  I am a patient on life support, placed into a life-sustaining coma until it is safe to breathe again.  I hide; I wince; I fake-smile, and I cannot write when the she-terror is near.

She leaves.  It is 3 p.m.  Relief hits me so hard it hurts.  I am breathing again, and the wave is climbing again.  I cannot bear riding it because I know I will crash again.  Elation to despair in 50 seconds flat.  What is wrong with me?  I research bipolar spectrum disorder and frown at the results.  It’s safe to say my score places me securely on the spectrum, which is the professional term for Bipolar II.  I need help; I know it, so I write my therapist:

            So I’m not feeling awful all the time like I was last week, but my mood keeps swinging almost on the hour and it is so freakin’ exhausting.  It’s like one minute I am elated; the next, in despair and I am just so tired of it.  What the  hell is wrong with me?

She tells me that she is worried about me, and that I need to get in to see my neurologist ASAP.  I know this, but there is no way I am calling anyone.  The phone is my kryptonite.  It is seriously poisonous.

My husband tries to talk with me at night.  I am too tired to say much.  I know he is liking the way I look and feel, but after I hug my three children and take care of them, I have no strength to hug anyone else.   Quietly, after he falls asleep, I work on Chapter 20.  And I write my therapist:

            The thought of another diagnosis is pretty hard to take.  It kicks into my “I’m a failure; therefore I’m . . . ” thing.  And my current neurologist, although he is a licensed psychiatrist as well, won’t believe me (no I am not delusional–he won’t, and like so many people, he thinks I’m the happiest depressed person he’s ever seen, if you know what I mean).  I would need someone more sympathetic–so that I didn’t feel like I had to hold together this facade anymore. Sometimes I feel like I do that with you even–just hide behind my intellect.  I’m tired of shielding and protecting all of these emotions and feelings from the world.  I feel like I’ve been carrying all of this self-protective shielding for decades and I desperately just want to set it down somewhere. It doesn’t feel strong having to pretend I am strong all of the time anymore . . . just feels freakin’ exhausting.

I write and talk to a friend on and off until after midnight.  We are building her nonprofit organization, block by block, and I can’t help but want to be a part of it.  I spend time creating a new blog for her page and work feverishly to get it all done before my anti-seizure medication kicks in and turns my brain foggy.

2 a.m.  I fall sleep, and while sleeping, dream, and while dreaming, create.  When the alarm clock buzzes I will face another day and I will fight.  And in fighting will find answers to the questions that I face.