This Is Me Trying

I was fortunate enough to grow up with Taylor Swift’s music, quite literally. She was always walking a step ahead of me, writing music that reflected upon the season of life I was currently in from the perspective of someone who’d just lived it herself. She felt like an older sister figure of sorts, creating the soundtrack to my own dreams and fears and letting me know that whatever interpersonal peril I’d gotten myself into, she’d been there as well.

Cardigan' Easter eggs decoded - CNN

She knows all too well.

This isn’t an article about Taylor though. It’s about me.

If you’ve been following this blog at all, you’d know that I could slap my name on a copy of the DSM-5 and market it as my autobiography. And for the longest time, I was getting shitfaced at my own personal pity party in a paltry attempt to numb my own head. I was a ragged tapestry of depression, anxiety, a budding eating disorder, and what was becoming an addiction to alcohol. My fiancee was heading down the same road, two flaming tanker trucks careening down a highway with no brakes. Two nights ago, we crashed. I was sick. She was scared. I didn’t know how to help her. She had the worst panic attack she’d had in years. I just passed out in my own vomit.

In “this is me trying,” Taylor Swift details her own failures. Once again, I hear myself in the words:

I’ve been having a hard time adjusting
I had the shiniest wheels, now they’re rusting

They told me all of my cages were mental
So I got wasted like all my potential

I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere
Fell behind all my classmates and I ended up here

I was always the “good girl.” The “pretty girl.” The “smart girl.” I’d had mental health issues my entire life, but I’d always been able to manage them somewhat, at least enough to retain my position as the golden child. The stresses of adulthood and the weight of some poorly dealt-with traumas wore down my defenses until suddenly, I barely recognized myself. Of course I wanted to drink myself to death. I felt like I had little left to live for in the first place.

Then I woke up.

My fiancee drew a line. No more drinking. No more self-medicating. Instead, we stand and fight, and this time, we fight together. The battle against addiction and mental illness is never an easy one, but now, we have something to live for. In just the first few days of sobriety, we’ve rediscovered our creative passions, our love for each other, and our futures. Today in Whole Foods (while shopping for tea to displace our alcohol), we stumbled upon a can of fancy-schmancy cold brew coffee. Nothing special at first glance, but the brand name? Cadence. The exact name she and I had agreed to name our first daughter someday. And it felt like this peculiar sign that maybe everything would be okay.

No, no maybes. We were okay. Even if the road is hard, we’re going to get healthy and happy.

It’s still early in the battle, but I already feel victorious. The first step is admitting there’s a problem. And as I go into my second month of work, I’ll get my insurance back and finally be able to tackle all of the physical and mental health issues that have been holding me back. Then eventually, I’ll be able to finish my music therapy degree without the weight of my own mind pinning me down. We’ll save up money and get into a better living situation. And someday, God willing, I can be the mother Cadence deserves to grow up with.

And I just wanted you to know this is me trying.

“Add Lbs.” (Or, How I’m Learning to Cope With Not Being a Stick Figure)

I remember the first time I searched for a music video on YouTube, I was in my early teens. I wanted to find my favorite band at the time (and still one of my all-time favorites), Heart.

You don’t look at the comments section of YouTube. You never look at the comments section of YouTube.

It was the first time I was made painfully aware of how important looks — specifically weight — was for a woman. I couldn’t scroll past three comments without seeing someone mention lead vocalist Ann Wilson’s weight, usually in a rather snarky manner. Quite a few comments of the “man, she really let herself go” variety, though not typically that kindly worded.

Album Review: Ann Wilson's 'Immortal'

OH GOD, WHAT A SHE-BEAST!

I didn’t understand it. How on earth was one of the greatest female rock vocalists — no, one of the greatest vocalists — of all time reduced to something as shallow as how she looked? Oh, was I a sweet summer child.

For the majority of my life, weight wasn’t something I struggled with. I was quite the sickly kid, so I was actually dangerously underweight for most of my childhood. Puberty led to hormones and its associated cravings, so I gradually got a tiny bit pudgy as a preteen, but nothing alarming. As a teen and young adult, though, I had the body most women only dream of. The slim waist, the sizable bust — there was a reason I was called the “Barbie doll” of the school.

That was then.

After getting my hormonal IUD placed, I somehow ballooned almost 70 pounds. Now, I try to put on clothes I wore not too long ago and struggle to comprehend why I can’t even pull them over my hips. I have the strangest kind of body dysmorphia, where I see myself as smaller than I am, just because I’m so used to my body occupying less space. Then, I grab a dress I haven’t worn in a while. Oh wait, you’re fat now. That happened.

I started getting desperate to get rid of it, to the point where I began forcing myself to throw up after eating quite a bit. This is obviously very, very bad.

I don’t like having an eating disorder, but the first step to getting better is admitting it’s a problem in the first place. I want to be happy and healthy again. I want to feel pretty again. I got my IUD out last week (my birth control nowadays is having a female partner, which is pretty effective) and managed to drop almost ten pounds in one week from that alone, but I feel like the damage is done. Some women love to brag about their stretch marks. Your body birthed life into the world! I have nothing to show for mine. I don’t feel like a badass tigress. I’m a freaking housecat.

Chonker fat cat : Chonkers

Actual photo of me at the doctor’s office.

I wish I had a happy ending for this, but I don’t think I will until I’m at a weight I’m finally happy at. Even then, I think this is something I’ll always deal with in some form or another. I think it’s something most women have to deal with in some form or another, whether it’s weight or wrinkles or zits or skin tone or boob size or any variety of things we’re conditioned to fixate on. Not that this is a uniquely female phenomenon, but men tend to be judged by what they do first, and then by what they look like. Women tend to be judged by attractiveness first, then by their talents, especially in the entertainment industry. Men act, women are. And unfortunately, not even the greatest rock vocalist of all time was immune.

Ann Wilson - 80's music Photo (41808456) - Fanpop

HOW DO I GEEEEET YOU to dismantle toxic ideas about women’s appearances?

Confessions of the Class Weird Kid

“Eccentric.”

That was the word my older sister used to describe me when I was struggling as a child to fit in. Not necessarily wrong or bad. Just eccentric.

I supposed she was right, although I wanted so badly to hide it. My social skills were admittedly lacking. People, especially kids my own age, were a strange anomaly to me. I wanted so badly to connect, but it was as if a brick wall stood between me and them. Despite my lack of friends, there were things I sought solace in, primarily things I obsessed over. Things like Bon Jovi, Pokemon, birds, and whatever else I could learn as much about as humanly possible and further alienate myself from my peers.

parakeet budgie

My nickname was “Tweety Bird.” It was absolutely not an affectionate nickname.

This is all textbook Asperger’s, looking back, but the idea that I was on the spectrum at all didn’t enter my mind until I was well into my teen years. The therapist I’d had at age 13 had mentioned the possibility to my mother, but I don’t recall her ever telling me for several years. And why would she? Back then, “autism” was even more of a dirty word than it is now. Why supply the kids who gave me hell in elementary and middle school even more fodder?

A few days ago, this popped up on my Facebook feed.

Credit: Hvppyhands

This comic hit me hard. I slipped through the cracks as a kid because I got good grades and didn’t cause any issues in the classroom, but no one ever bothered to address my difficulties relating to others and making friends.

You see, when you’re on the spectrum, you’re often forced to “mask” the quirks that make you, well, you. You’re a square in a circle world, and you better believe that world is going to hammer your edges hard until you barely resemble the shape you began as. I remember when I first became aware of my own weirdness, somewhere around seventh grade. The stereotypical teen dilemma. I had a crush on a boy, and a popular one at that. I observed the way his friends acted and dressed and tried my hardest to emulate that. Gone were the clothes I felt comfortable in, and I put away the childish things I was obsessed with in favor of more typical interests. It got easier in high school. I was lucky enough to come of age at a time when the “manic pixie dream girl” type was trendy, so suddenly it became “cute” to be the weird girl. It took me a while to learn to pass as “normal,” but I became damn good at it. By senior year, I was class president and colorguard captain, but I still felt like I was concealing parts of myself.

That’s one of many reasons why autism is so hard to detect in adulthood — you’ve had all these years to learn how to mask these quirks. By the time you ask your current therapist about it, you’re met with a shrug. You might be some variety of autistic, but it doesn’t affect your life, so why bother getting a proper diagnosis? You’ve held down a job, you’ve had relationships — hell, you’ve been married! You’re not a “true” Aspie. And to be honest, this hurts. Your identity is entirely invalidated by the hammers that smushed in your edges to make you a socially acceptable circle. Or perhaps hexagon, because you know you’ll never be the perfect little circle everyone expects you to be. No matter how well you pass, you’ll always feel “other.”

That’s why I want to be more vocal about my experiences with Asperger’s and being on the autism spectrum, “proper” diagnosis or not. Because someday, some little girl not unlike my younger self might read this and realize that she doesn’t need to change herself for anyone.

It’s okay to be eccentric.

Remember Who You Are

Simba

Quarantine has led me to pick up a couple of new hobbies, the weirdest of which is probably tracing my family tree. I think everyone wonders where they came from at some point — no one just emerged from the depths of the earth with no parents or ancestors.

Amethyst

We can’t all be Crystal Gems.

When I began going through various websites and databases, I was cautiously excited over who or what I’d find, cautiously for two reasons. For one, especially being a white person with some roots in the South, there’s a chance I could uncover less-than-savory things about my family. But what if I couldn’t find anything about us at all? I come from a humble working-class family from Appalachia. There’s nothing special about us.

I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

I started by Googling my maternal great-grandparents’ names and hometown. Simple enough, right? I find an ancestry website and notice links to information on their parents. And their parents’ pages contain links to their parents, and so on and so forth. Down the rabbit hole I went, until the names started including titles such as Captain, Sir, Lady, Lord, Princess, King! I even traced my ancestry back to a legendary Welsh princess whose tumultuous life was recounted in an article that dubbed her the “progenitor of Britishness.”

Queen

Not quite the royalty I was hoping to find when researching my British roots, but I’ll take it.

I write all of this from the literal hole I call my apartment, currently littered with unwashed dishes and clumps of cat hair because I can’t be bothered to vacuum lately. In short, no matter what my bloodline says, I don’t feel like royalty. Lately, my depression’s been taking its toll. I find myself lying in bed until 2 in the afternoon and spending the rest of the day on my couch. I don’t even have the energy to play Animal Crossing anymore — my poor town’s probably overrun with weeds by now and my villagers probably think I’m dead. And writing, obviously, has been a no-go as of late. I haven’t updated this thing in weeks now. I don’t have the inspiration. I don’t know if I’ll ever finish the story I’ve been working on. It feels meaningless.

I know it’s not entirely my fault. Quarantine has put a moratorium on everyone’s lives, but I feel like I’m just getting older and older and not getting anything I set out to do by now accomplished. I haven’t released a full-length album or toured since my time with my old band. I’ve never even moved away from Michigan to chase those dreams somewhere better, like Nashville or California, like I’ve always wanted to do. My ancestors would be proud, right?

I guess this is a “remember who you are” moment. I come from a long line of knights, explorers, and hard-working farmers and blue collar workers. There’s nothing they could do that I can’t do. Quarantine or no quarantine, I’m sick of wallowing in self-loathing and regret. I know I’m stronger than this.

To anyone reading this, so are you. Straighten your crowns, kings and queens. We’re going to get through this together.

This Apocalypse Sucks

I think a lot of people were like me in middle school social studies, learning about world-changing events and wondering if we’d ever live through one ourselves, fantasizing about what heroic deeds we’d do during such a crisis, forever etching our names into our great-grandchildren’s history books. I was one of those kids. Somewhere in the index of some textbook in 2092:

Salisbury, Jessica (b. 1993), p. 139: heroically sacrificed herself during the Second Alien Wars of 2037, posthumously canonized as saint and awarded Nobel Peace Prize

Now, it’s 2020. That world-changing event is now, and I’m sitting on my couch, watching YouTube videos, full from the shitty gas station pizza I decided to treat myself with. I’m talking one step above Kraft cheese on top of ketchup on top of cardboard, made only marginally more edible with the sprinkling of parmesan I added at home. This is quarantine cuisine, and when gas stations are just about the only thing still open, you work with what you’ve got.

My near-debilitating depression is the parmesan sprinkle on top of the looming fear of the apocalypse. My mental health has already been in a seriously dark place for a while, and all of this social isolation isn’t helping. I don’t have any motivation to do the things I’m passionate about anymore. I feel like my chances of ever making it in music have been dashed by this virus. My biological clock, for lack of a better word, has been ticking for a while. I already feel like an old maid in the music business, and who knows how long the world will be on hold. On top of that, in an industry that thrives on image, I’m not as young and cute as I used to be. I’m 80 pounds heavier than I was in high school and I have scars all over from picking at my own skin (thanks, anxiety). By the time this crisis blows over, I’ll undoubtedly be too old and not conventionally attractive enough to make it as a performer.

If anything, this past month has made me realize how unimportant I am in the grand scheme of things. Maybe I’ll never be a Nobel Prize winner or an iconic rock star, but I thought I’d be doing something important in the face of a global crisis like this. Maybe I’d be in Washington, advocating for the working class people who are struggling right now, or I’d be in a laboratory somewhere, slaving away day and night, searching for a cure. In reality? I’ve been depression-napping and tending to a fictional cartoon island (no shade towards Animal Crossing — I’m pretty sure that game is the only thing keeping a lot of people, including myself, sane right now). I feel helpless to stop any of the bad things happening in the world right now. I feel disposable.

I’m tearing up a little writing this, but I feel like this is something that needs to be written and put out there. Check on your friends during this pandemic, especially those who deal with things like depression and anxiety. Believe me, we need it right now.

AIOIF: Irrational Fear #1: The creepy headless guy I swore lived in my grandma’s furnace

I remember reading somewhere that the very first memory you can recall in your lifetime says a lot about the direction your life will take. My first memory was waking up from a nap on top of a giant pile of rugs in a sketchy flea market that no longer exists. I really don’t think says anything about me except that I have this uncanny ability to fall asleep in the weirdest places.

My second memory, however, was Furnace Man.

Furnace Man lived in my grandma’s old blue boiler furnace, hence the name. He was tallish, wore a plaid shirt, and had no head. Every now and then, he’d leave the furnace to stomp around my grandma’s house. I always imagined him dancing to a deep, booming beat, like some kind of creepy timpani. Also, he had a name, but whatever it was is now buried in the annals of my stupid brain. I think it might have been Ernie or Tim or something.

Needless to say, Furnace Man wasn’t real. There never was a flannel-wearing, headless being living in the furnace, but that didn’t stop him from being real to me. And keep in mind, I was like, two. Toddlers aren’t supposed to be scared of things. They’re supposed to be dumb and innocent and prone to questionable decisions like drawing on walls or eating Legos. They don’t stare blankly into the dark abyss of a utility room, expecting to see a decapitated hipster Slenderman crawling out of a furnace. I would avoid the room at all costs, or else freak out and cry, and I literally didn’t know the words to articulate what it was I was even afraid of.

I guess this is a good indicator that I was destined for a life of anxiety issues. Furnace Man never died. Not even when I found out years later that “Furnace Man” was just my dad getting stuck in a too-small shirt one Christmas Eve while trying it on in the utility room. My mind took the smallest, stupidest memory and twisted it into something horrifying. It’s almost like my head has this amazing ability to make monsters out of nothing. But isn’t that basically what anxiety is in the first place?

An Index of Irrational Fears – Preface

One evening at a particularly intense therapy session, I had an epiphany — I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t afraid of something.

That’s not to say I spent my entire life up until now cowering in the corner of a warm, safe library or something, hiding from the outside world (although that was a good portion of it). In fact, if I’m honest, I take a lot of pride in how stupidly brave I am. Like, heights don’t phase me. Take me to any old theme park and I’ll be the first to get in line for whatever ride everyone else is trying to avoid. I’m still the designated spider slayer at my job, and I’m the idiot who got two feet away from an alligator on vacation in Florida. The point is, all the stuff normal people are supposed to be afraid of are not even concerns of mine.

But that’s not to say I’m fearless.

In fact, in my feeble attempt to peel back the layers of the suck-onion that is my never-ending war on my own stupid brain, I made a list of the horrifically nonsensical fears I’ve dealt with at one point or another. This is not an exhaustive list, even though it definitely freaking looks like it. These are the fears that, for one reason or another, stand out in my memory.

So why am I going through the trouble of writing all of this down? See, this is more than some cathartic exercise. Mental illness is this big, stupid elephant in the room almost everyone notices but never really takes the time to fully understand. The world’s idea of life with anxiety is drastically different from actual life with anxiety. In fact, when I came out of the presumably well-organized OCD closet after learning my official diagnosis, I got a slew of “Oh, I’m going to bring you over to clean my house sometime!” (Pro tip: Do not ever say this to someone with OCD. I pinky-promise it will not end well.) The truth is, nobody actually likes being OCD. It’s not something you’re proud of. It’s not some cute, hipster-girl-with-Zooey-Deschanel-hair quirk that automatically turns you into the stereotypical manic pixie dream girl.

It’s not. It’s a living hell. One where sometimes death itself seems like the only way out.

That’s why I wanted to get my experiences in writing and let the soft, tender underbelly of my mind be exposed to the world. Because if even one person out there realizes they’re not alone in this, everything I’ve gone through will be worth it. Because if I realized I wasn’t alone in this years ago, I would have opened up and sought help sooner. Because you can’t fight this battle alone. Because nothing in this world has the power to destroy a life quite like mental illness.

This is the story of the lifelong love-hate relationship between me and my head.

Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night

Ever notice how sometimes God just completely airdrops the exact thing you need in the exact moment you need it? If you’re anything like me, a lot of the time, it’s a song. There’s something oddly therapeutic about hearing your own feelings echoed in music. I could go on and write an entire blog post about how music is the universal language and all that sentimental crap (which is absolutely true I should add), but it’s weird how you can rehear a song from years ago and have it take on a completely new meaning.

For me, that song was “Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night.”

“Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night” isn’t one of Bon Jovi’s most iconic songs, but it’s still somewhat of a fan favorite. Despite the fact that I was almost obsessively fascinated with all things Bon Jovi when I was little, the song didn’t really resonate with me. Growing up, it was one of the songs on my beloved Crush tour concert videotape I didn’t mind letting play through while I ran to the bathroom.

That changed on the way home from work today. There were a few songs I desperately wanted to listen to that were stuck in my head, and sifting through the small mountain of CDs in my passenger and back seats didn’t unearth any of the albums they were on. So I chose the first mildly interesting one I found, which was a Bon Jovi greatest hits release I rage-bought when I couldn’t locate any of their albums I had as a kid (and yes, I had every single one).

The song came on and this weird, overwhelming sense of peace came over me. I couldn’t explain it. Something in the lyrics pierced my soul like a needle right in the spot I needed. The verses are from the point of view three characters in the throes of hardship. The first, from what I can comprehend, is an unemployed homeless man, while the second is a teenage girl whose living situation forced her to turn to prostitution. It was the third narrator whose story especially resonated with me:

Now I can’t say my name or tell you where I am

Wanna blow myself away, don’t know if I can

I wish that I could be in some other time and place

With someone else’s soul, someone else’s face

Do you know how strangely comforting it is to know that you’re not alone in your struggles, to know that at one point, a rock star — your childhood hero — felt down enough to write those words? I guess it hit me hard that even Jon Bon Jovi has been there — and made it through. After this thought bounced around in my brain for a second, the bridge hit:

Someday I’ll be Saturday night

I’ll be back on my feet, I’ll be doing alright

It may not be tomorrow, baby, that’s okay

I ain’t going down, I’m gonna find a way

With those lines, what used to be just a feel-good anthemic Bon Jovi song (which is pretty much their schtick, come to think of it) became my own personal battle cry. My depression and anxiety will not take me down without a fight, and if — or rather, when — I make it through, I know God will use me to help others through as well.

Maybe I feel more like a Monday today, but someday I’ll be Saturday night, too.

90s Jon with a dog

Here, have a picture of ’90s-era Jon with a doggo. You’re welcome.

PANDAS VS. MY ENTIRE EXISTENCE

I recently saw this meme while scrolling through my Facebook feed:

Serotonin, ~~like whatever drug they put in the mystery meat in Lunchables,~~ is a substance that, in layman’s terms, makes one happy. It’s a naturally produced neurotransmitter (fancy schmancy brain chemical thing) that’s responsible for regulating mood.

And if you don’t have enough of it, it will frick you the frick up.

I’m talking clinical depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, all that fun stuff.

It recently hit me that I don’t think I’ve ever not been mentally ill. I wish I could remember those halcyon days of running wild and carefree with my biggest worries being missing Dragonball Z at 6:30 or whether or not my Charizard was strong enough to beat the Elite Four. But even my fondest childhood memories have a shadow of constant sadness and anxiousness looming over them.

And it’s all because of PANDAS.

(No, not that guy.)

PANDAS is a misleadingly adorable term for a really sucky problem. It’s the abbreviation for a scientific term I’m not going to bother writing out, mostly because it would take like five hours to type it. (If you’re curious, you can read more about it here.)

When I initially described my symptoms to my current psychiatrist, including how long I’ve dealt with them, the first thing she asked was the seemingly irrelevant question of if I’d ever had strep throat as a kid. I didn’t have strep throat; I freaking was strep throat. I have more memories of being sick with it than not, to the point that I couldn’t eat like a regular human and spent a solid portion of my childhood looking like the lost daughter of Skeletor.

Little did I know that my near-constant bout of strep was an underlying factor in the specific type of crazy I’ve wrestled with my entire life.

I’m not far enough into my psychology degree to be qualified to tell you exactly how it works, but somehow, having a strep infection when you’re very young can jack up some stuff in your brain and cause lovely things like OCD symptoms in children. And yep, it can be permanent.

After hearing about PANDAS from my doctor, everything started to make a lot more sense. Suddenly, my obsessive, intense fears and odd behaviors, which I clearly recall going back as far as age two, had a name. (Speaking of which, one of these days I’ll write about some of those weird early anxieties — there’s a couple of doozies. Like the headless guy I was convinced lived in my grandma’s furnace. That’s a fun one.)

I’m writing this as much for you, whoever is reading this, as I am for me. If you’re like me and can’t remember a time when you weren’t scared or sad, if you have that gray cloud of mental illness hanging over what should have been happy childhood memories, you’re not alone.

The Walking (Quarter) Dead

I haven’t been very active on here the past few days. Between work and my class and a handful of shows last weekend, writing time has been minimal, and of course my anxiety isn’t helping much. But thanks for sticking around, kind person who is reading this blog post!

Do you ever feel like the number of things you want to accomplish in life far outweigh the number of days you have to achieve them? Because I’ve been slowly realizing that’s one of the driving forces behind my feelings of discontent lately.

(This one’s not going to get too whiny, I promise.)

I recently came to the realization that I’ll probably never reach the level of success in music I used to dream about. In all honesty, I don’t think the Bon Jovi-like brand of jetset-around-the-world-and-be-on-the-cover-of-People-magazine rock stardom I fantasized about as a child exists anymore (barring Taylor Swift-tier artists), and even then, I would not be comfortable with that much attention. I’ve learned that my niche is behind the scenes, writing the songs or playing the instruments or even just mixing the sound.

You see, for the longest time, I felt this race against time to establish myself before I aged out of the “young and attractive” window and was no longer viable as a new artist. I remember when Carly Rae Jepsen came out with “Call Me Maybe” my freshman year of college and how everyone my age was freaking out when they found out how old she actually was — 26. I was only 18 at that time, and I already felt the pressure. It’s a relief, not having to stress about any of that stuff anymore.

But I still feel like the clock is ticking on my music career. And my writing career. And my entire freaking life.

I spent the entire evening binge-watching The Walking Dead. The thing is, usually, I try to avoid binge-watching anything, because of my fear of wasting precious time I could be using to do something productive. Lately, I’ve lost a lot of motivation to do much of anything of value, which in turn drags me down even further. It’s a vicious cycle, an ouroboros of suck.

It’s probably not healthy to push yourself to do “productive” things 24/7, but it’s a compulsion I can’t quite rid myself of. I can’t shake this nagging feeling that I’m careening toward an inevitable death daily and how one day I’m going to be this bitter old lady resentful of how few of the things I set out to do actually got done. The average person lives to be approximately 75-80, maybe 100 at best. When I look at it that way, I’m already a quarter dead.

And in all honesty, this isn’t a bad outlook to have in moderation. Life is a gift and we shouldn’t waste it on frivolous crap. But we also shouldn’t beat ourselves up for taking a breath every now and then and actually enjoying it.

So go ahead, take a break and watch The Walking Dead. Or play Mario Kart. Or just take a walk outside. Life’s too short to waste it all worrying.