Letter to 48-Year-Old Self HAWMC 6

 Write a letter to an older you (tell us what age you’re writing to!). What do you want to ask yourself? What lesson do you want to make sure you remember?

Dear 48-year-old Ela,

Are you still on earth? Do you still worry about being concise enough? Whatever the answer to either of those, it's the year of the Snake again, you just turned 48, which is closer to the decade mark as well as the Chinese-astrological dodecade. Next time around you'll be 60 and they'll coincide! You're thinking back on the previous twelve-year cycles. Back to now, when you/I just turned 36. Back to 24, 12. The glimpsed memories from before one year old. You're seeing patterns both of uplift and of downcast over the time and are learning not to judge either one so harshly; even beginning to discern patterns. By now you've had enough experiences on earth but as a disembodied entity to understand that checking out would not be the end, either of life or of negative issues Perhaps by now you've made peace with being embodied, have learned to balance the eccentricity, which literally means movement out from center, by having some sort of stable home base, physical or not, from which to set out and to which to return. I guess that's the aim of all religions, even. Religions including the shamanistic attention to plant teachers; don't doubt your own abilities in that area. I hope you have an herb garden and lots of wild plants in proximity. And of course the rock-salt teacher, the lithium--remember you're a "rock jockey" and what a good ride it is, keeping you on earth. Remember now, when you were still relatively new to what an opening influence it is, how much more you see with it.

Please remember to pay attention to your own (incredibly trustworthy) intuitions and not to push yourself into doing something because someone else seems to will it. On the other hand, don't have such high standards of perfection and integrity that you don't let yourself finish projects because they're not exactly how you think they ought to be. Get a clearer vision of what you actually want to create before even starting, and there will be less room for either self sabotage or getting pushed around. I hope you've learned those things by now; those are the lessons I'm thinking need noting at this iteration of the twelve-year cycle.

Be your best self, my self. Ela

HAWMC #2--Witch Diagnosis; Diagnoses Culturally Mediated

So. HAWMC Day Two. The beat goes on. However, I might be on my way to Israel and if so, I may not have sufficiently reliable internet access to keep the beat going every day I'm gone. And (should I be ashamed about this?) I haven't had/won't have time to prewrite all the posts I can't write on the day. I plead special circumstances.

Today’s Prompts: (I picked one)

• Introduce your condition(s) to other Health Activists. What are 5 things you want them to know about your condition/your activism?

I shared yesterday that I'm just coming into realization that using my writing for health activism is part of my life-responsibility. I also shared that the simple salt, Lithium Carbonate, has been a salvation for me. The fact that it's helped me so much suggests I have a condition for which it's a specific.

Sooo?

Five hundred years ago, I'd have been diagnosed as a witch, or else a saint. I'd have spun weird herbal spells, lived on weird broths of herbal twigs, flown on broomsticks, raved and then eaten worms and lurked in a cave far from humanity. Or I'd have borne self-inflicted stigmata, fallen down in faints and seen visions, receiving the voices of the divine, temptation of the devil, given food away away away to the poor but refused to eat anything besides Holy Communion. 

I'd have died young (as I expected to in this life), either burned for witchcraft or expired from malnourishment or disguised suicide through religious ecstasy.

Today, under the aegis of modern medicine, I'm diagnosed (with the full ceremonial title) Bipolar 1, Mixed Type, Psychotic Features, with the comorbidity Anorexia Nervosa. 

As a surgeon who stitched me up said, that's quite a moniker to have attached to someone.

Five things I want people to know (spread over two conditions):

(1) As shown above, diagnosis is predicated on the age in which we live. 

(2) However, today's medications can work. Example: today is the first time I've experienced a grandparent dying when I've been on lithium. (My grandmother was the last to go.) And my reaction has been very different this time. I feel how her death affects me and my mother. And my relationship with my mother. I feel how my other relatives are feeling, and her carer who lived with her the last few years. I'm happy she died suddenly and quickly, but I feel a huge sense of loss. With my other grandparents, I was glad for them and their peaceful departures, but even with my other grandmother, whose bed I was standing beside when she died, I didn't feel anything. 

I can't explain this in terms of maturity--when my other grandmother died, I was in my mid-twenties--nor in terms of closeness--my other grandmother lived next door to us for several years! In addition, the flavor of empathy I feel for myself and for my relatives is a certain connection I only became aware of after getting on lithium.

(3) Many anorectics don't care about their appearance at all but paradoxically desperately want/need to be thinner than everyone else, feel competitive with other anorectics. Even I, appearance-oblivious as I am, have sometimes had those feelings, and there are few things of which I'm more ashamed.

(4) I can't have kids. Sometimes I have a death wish that causes me to do dangerous things impulsively. I have almost died several times, and people whom I care about in many different places I've lived have been in stressful fear of my life many times. I haven't been able to finish or curate things I care about. I have a trail of personas, domiciles, vocations I've spun away from; the only thing persistent throughout has been way-with-words. On the other hand--I was in the top of my class at Oxford University, while playing classical music at a very high level.  I passed all my PhD exams first time at Berkeley, which hadn't been done in the department memory. Why I didn't complete (haven't yet completed) the doctorate is another question for another day. But I learn fast. Especially when words and language are involved, but versatility involves quick learning and just from looking at all the places I've lived you couldn't say I'm not versatile.
The good news: I have found ways to work meaningfully without having to be within the conventional framework, which I wouldn't be able to hold down.

(5) Despite (4), and especially with the help of meds and therapy, those of us with these conditions can learn to do better, be less crazy, less depressed, find a sustainable nutrition strategy. It's called condition management and it means things like making sure one gets regular and adequate sleep (like I haven't been doing), having good relationships, taking medications regularly, eating properly. It may include the odd hospitalization or ER visit, but please see that as part of the learning process. And I for one am not going to be offended if a friend of mine encourages me to manage my condition, whether by reminding me to get sleep or just by talking and listening. I find it harder to talk about food and eating, but I am trying to be more open to doing so.

HWAMC Day 1, Let's Go!

Happy April, and welcome to a month of posts prompted by Wego Health's HAWMC --Health Activist Writer's Month Challenge.
April is a challenging month, no doubt; it always seems slammed and flooded with work. And yet, for the second year in a row, here I am.
Today's kickoff prompts:

• Why you write – tell us a little bit about why you write about your health online and what got you started.
• Why HAWMC? This is our third year of the Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge – why did you get involved this year? Are you a newbie to #HAWMC or a veteran?

Yes, and there's the nub of it. "Why do I write about my health online" presumes I do write about it.
I have written about it with diffidence, saying I'm not sure I "should" write about it. I have not-written about it, declaring that I wished I were writing about it.
I have been urged not to write about it by friends fearing for my career prospects and the stigmas associated with my conditions.
I have been urged to write about it, to be a voice for others with the conditions, bringing my own special relationship with words to illuminate the experience and allow others to see what it is.
I have been urged to write about it for my own salvation, to save me from my prayer for oblivion.
I have been urged not to write about it because these conditions are part of the myth of the medical model and writing about them would be using my abilities to kow-tow to this model, like in Orwell's 1984, let alone taking the meds.
I have been urged not to write about it because writing about it confirms my identity under these labels when I should be moving away from all that and seeing myself a different way,

These last two urgings, ironically, may in fact be part of why I do write. Disbelief in the medical model and medications, and fear of identity-based-on-diagnosis informed my decisions for most of my life. At last, I'm here to testify that those things all have their place.
I feel a bit like an ex-vegan. I've come across a few of those on my travels, including an unbelievable number in Hawaii. All of them are eager to tell you chapter and verse on why it's so better not being vegan, even if you had never known them in their vegan days. Having abandoned a conviction they held so tenaciously, they are still justifying to themselves--and thus aloud in a high voice--the rightness of their apostacy.

I'm not an ex-vegan, and I didn't hold my disbelief in the medical model so passionately. I'm afraid I've never held passionately to any conviction, and I may be beginning to understand why. I don't speak much about my conversion, although I'm glad to tell all to anyone who wants to know. Readiness to tell anyone who wants to know, anyone afraid to accept care from this quarter, is one crucial reason I write, and should encourage me to write for a wider audience. Which may be precisely what I'm about to do with my MFA thesis. One thing I do mention here with some regularity, though, is the saving grace of a certain simple ionic salt compound. 

Rock (lithium), Earth (carbon), Air (-ate (=three oxygen molecules)). Not manufactured in a lab. 
I'll readily share how much it helps me because it truly opened my eyes. Opened my eyes to the concept that meds could help. Opened my eyes to a whole universe of human interaction I'd never been able to see before.
Final thought: the fact it helps so much suggests there is something to be helped. That can be so, whether or not one chooses to hang an identity on it.

How to Accomplish More Than You Think Possible in a Short Time

Especially for those of us in school, whether teaching or studying, or both, at this season temporal movement seems reversed: we take tiny steps, making scant forward progress, while the Holidays hurtle toward us, leaving ever less space while our string of tasks remains just as long, starts to overstretch the space remaining.

What do you do when your list, as whittled down to essentials as you can make it, still doesn't fit in the space? 
Either: You have to find a way to fold that string of tasks in half, or coil it up, squish it down, so that you're taking care of more than one thing at a time.
Or: You have to burn through the tasks at a higher rate, so that you do things one at a time, but faster than you ever had reason to believe yourself capable of.

With the "folding the string in half" method, you could take a blog post and turn it into an essay for your "packet" that's due on Christmas Eve, so that the single thought/observation fuels two separate pieces of writing. Or make up one huge base of chocolate from which to make several different goodies. Or, if you're really pushed for time, don't make the chocolate from scratch, and make simpler goodies!

With the "burning through at a higher rate," you're essentially speeding up time from your own end. The Holidays, or whatever deadline, are speeding toward you; you speed up to meet it. You're not defeated by time!
That's exactly what I recently did to meet my Ultimatum. And not because I was smart about it--I wasn't in a condition to be smart at that point. I was fading out. I overcame time out of necessity, because I'd left what I had to do until the last minute. I had around a week, and even with some fudging with clothes and food, I needed to gain more than a pound a day (2-3pounds per week is what's considered safe). I'd lost time, thinking the race was already lost. My biggest message? 
To overcome the inevitable, you have to go against everything you normally swear by.
I could write "weight loss tips" for the rest of my life, no doubt--without even thinking, those behaviors are what I do around food. So, for that week or so, I did the opposite of my usual self every possible time. Three cups of coconut cream a day no skimping. Full-calorie almond milk as well, chocolate flavored because you like that flavor better and it has more calories. In smoothies, with all the smoothie fixings in proper serving sizes, not the usual pinches. Rice cracker instead of carrot. Dip on cracker instead of naked carrot. Some substantial starch with the veggies, not veggies alone. With some sort of heavy sauce on top. Full? Eat some more. About to lose the whole lot? Back off, wait. Think you can hold some more down? Eat it. Drinking? Drink something caloric. Green powder in juice, not water. What are you doing putting stevia in your tea? Put something caloric, like honey. Oh yes you are going to eat dessert, and you're going to eat a brownie, not half a square of 90% cocoa chocolate that keeps you going all afternoon. Yes, you never eat at night. Well then, have a snack before you head up the ladder. Yes, you don't like an early breakfast. OK so drink mango juice that you never let yourself drink and don't dilute it and drink lots and then make breakfast. 
Big time-defeater: calories per bite. Yes, apples are healthier than gluten free cookies, and yes, a big apple is substantial. And yes, I prefer apples to gluten free cookies. But I can't deny that the latter are much easier to eat, for more calories per bite, and they don't keep me chewing for minutes so if I overcome my horror, I can eat far more of them at a sitting. Calories per bite, and frequency of ingestion of calorie dense items. 
Not just counter to my usual practice, but horrifying to my sensibilities. And once I'm out of my comfort zone, I can find unlikely allies.
Potato chips! Eww?! Usually I eat them once or twice a year, and regret it ferociously. The regret stems partly from my aesthetic attitude toward the chips (recrimination, self-flagellation), and largely from the fact that they always leave me with a stomach ache. At this point, though? I have a permanent stomach ache anyway, can't even lie flat at night. Bring 'em on! Loads of calories, take up very little stomach space, easy to each. And the oil and salt were actually somewhat stomach-calming. I showed up for Phil's birthday party already reflux-stuffed, wondering how I'd eat anything, afraid people would think I still wasn't eating. Getting into the potato chips in the appetizers enabled me to eat not only a bunch of the chips themselves but a proper meal, with dessert (in a bigger serving than I could comprehend), also. Potato chips became my friend. 
And now I know, too, that salty and oily food could help an upset stomach. Avocado and nori, anyone?
One thing I didn't do was eat anything I'm actually allergic to, like gluten, or highly intolerant of (and opposed to in principle) like dairy, as that would have undermined the effort. 
Finally, I left nothing to chance. I took the scale with me when I went to my appointment. It's a four hour drive to Anchorage at least, and I know long drives are dehydrating. Thank goodness I did.

So, I turned over on its head all my ordinary behaviors and ate as much as I could, as often as I could. I left nothing to chance, and I utilized some fudging to finesse and ensure success. 

(Edited to add one more important thing blown out of my head with the arrival of unexpected guests:) -- During that "push to exceed the possible" period, I did not keep my eye on the goal. It would have been fatal to do so--I was trying to accomplish something I thought was impossible! I stepped on the scale a couple days in, and my weight had gone down (hypermetabolism), obliterating some of the progress. There was temptation to give up right there, or to use this as a goad to try even harder. I had to drive from my head that this was Monday and my appointment was Friday and there was still so far to go. I had to rescale my map so that Friday didn't even fit on the screen, and look no farther than the next calorie-dense bite. I knew when the appointment was; my psyche was suffused with that consciousness. No need to keep breaking focus by looking at your watch.

As a writer? Instead of going out and out and out to get more experience, I should sit down alone in the loft all afternoon and write, without stimuli everywhere. Instead of catching snippets of my life work, stuffing them in my thought-pocket and hoping I'll remember them among the dust bunnies, I should grab my pen the instant those thoughts come, and get them down, and nudge them farther. Reverse old patterns. Know that I can get something done in far less time than I think. And when I'm writing for a deadline, sit there and write, and write, and write. Zoom in so close that the deadline doesn't even appear on my thought-horizon. I know when the deadline is; my psyche is suffused with that consciousness. No need to keep breaking focus by looking at your watch.

One last thought, before I go off to ponder further the metaphor of my eating sprint-a-thon as applied to writing: It was a sprint, and it was a reversal of the normal. As a result, it was unsustainable. Very quickly, I was drawn back to my old habits. Everything has too many calories again and I have no appetite. But if I go back down, we're straight back to where I was a mere few weeks ago, except possibly worse. So while it's unsustainable, the scenario that forced the sprint is fresh enough in my mind that I remember why I had to sprint. Maybe I can be better organized in other aspects of life too.

Meanwhile, I just hand-grated a whole pound of cacao butter to inaugurate my annual goodie-making extravaganza. Some things I really prefer to make from scratch.

But I have the powdered sugar and all that stuff ready too for those who prefer that!

Rock Jockey Gets to Keep Riding--Toward Where?

Yesterday was the other end of the ultimatum that's been causing me so much anxiety for the past month or so. I know I have the potential for leaving things to the last minute, but the combination of last minute-ness, physical and physiological effects of full-on masochistic foie gras action, and anxiety, was indescribable. 
Yesterday's drive to Anchorage was cold, but not freezingfreezing; the radiator was managing to put out at least a modicum of heat.
In my pocket, my most special of special rocks...

...in my cooler, wrapped in down pants, my scale: I couldn't bear the idea of losing this bid because of some
"nearly but not quite" owing to dehydration from a long, cold drive. As stupid and arbitrary and imprecise as I know scale numbers to be (especially in the afternoon with clothes on), I had to respect the "minimum" with the inflexibility of a Lubavitch rabbi or a Roman flamen (no disrespect to them).

I'm so glad I brought the scale. I was right about the dehydration: who knew you could lose three pounds driving less than three hundred miles? So, a big, hurried lunch. Anyone who knows me at all knows that "hurried" and "eating" cannot co-occur. I showed up to my appointment, head spinning; had my vitals taken...all very good. But then, let's say, my rabbit almost came out of the hat! I had to excuse myself from my appointment before it had even started. Not the start I would have hoped for. 

I was much better after that, and was able to offer my psychiatrist enough confidence that I had seen a full spectrum of reasons why it's worth it to me, even lithium aside, to stay physiologically stable, so she's willing to let me continue--but still under the same rabbinically strict stipulation.
Relief...

Rock Jockey keeps on riding!
Why "rock jockey?" -- Lithium means "made of rock." 
-- For as long as I've been taking medications to help stabilize my moods, whether naturopathic, homeopathic, or conventional, I've had a visceral perception of myself as riding the medication. Sometimes it's a better ride than others. Sometimes I'm just running alongside; sometimes the mount is bogged down and I'm running ahead. Sometimes I'm bogged down and the mount is out of sight.

This picture is as much about the rocks as it is about the persimmons.

Obviously, it would be ridiculous for me to imply that everyone who loves rocks has bipolar disorder or schizophrenia!

However, I'm working on an essay about water as an element. I'm writing a section on elements (earth, water, fire, air) as used to categorize people's natures and characters, including my own. Where I'm getting to (although I didn't know it when I started) is that I'm predominantly an "air" person, and greatly lacking in "earth." So I'm floating away on my helium (= of the sun, element #2) balloon, and am grounded by being tied to my lithium (made of rock, element #3).

Oh, and the "jockey" part reminds me not to put myself on a guilt trip for imagining anyone who doesn't have to live with me would be interested in my cliffhanger over enforced and significant weight gain, or in whether I got to stay on my meds. Jockeys have to put on or off weight all the time.

I have to go finish that essay. On Monday, I'll have written a post both about the "masochistic gratification" I keep going on about, and about what it means to have met the ultimatum--what scary places of growth it's hurled me into, what I was hiding from, how I hope to utilize and share the renewed positivity and energy. What am I riding for now?
A beautiful weekend to you!

"Writing" in my Head, "Reading" from Memory; the "Golden Nugget"

We're back from Anchorage--and the days are getting longer! Phil had a moment of genius and grabbed these very snazzy shades at the ophthalmologists'--turned out I really needed them to see to drive us home! As the evenings get longer, if the sun is out at all, it's right in your eyes and low in the sky for a significant part of the route home.

Having spent most of today preparing a practice midterm for my course (fighting the technology every step--it only forced me to redo about three of the longest questions two or three times apiece), having gotten through Valentines, Mardi Gras, two editing deadlines, and our Anchorage trip--oh, and two poetry performances over the weekend, I feel like I'm coming up for air this evening--knowing that I have the "real" midterm to prepare, as well as grading, preparing lectures, and more. Working a couple hours translating Greek dictionary entries has been a balm.

Within an overstretched week exacerbated by some poor self-management that caused the usual swings in my mercurial pendulum, I learned something to do with poetry, performing poetry, and its importance to me. This is the golden nugget that could be the salvation of my spun psyche and the justification for the quicksilveriness. And maybe the lithium, which simply means "made of rock," is the touchstone that will transform mercury to gold if I actually keep taking it!

In the midst of overwork, how have writerly and culinary creativity fared? The Valentine's day candies happened sort of betwixt and between as a "body" break (brain still engaged), as did a platter of beautiful goodies I made for our friends' son's Memorial on Sunday and didn't even remember to photograph! So much for the food creations--I'm still making them, but feeling little enthusiasm except for their reception.

What about my writing? I've been "writing" furiously in my head at all moments, but I haven't sat down to write as I need to for several days, especially with the disruption of the town trip. As I like to say, I begin to feel like an unmilked cow. This needs to change.

What an irony, too, that I say "I'm writing in my head," which isn't really writing at all, but is an allied cognitive/creative process, when so many people said how much they enjoyed my "reading" at the show on Saturday and at the Memorial on Sunday, when I wasn't actually "reading" at all: I performed from memory on both occasions!

"Out of the Woodwork" was a great show all round with so many rousing performances. It was a flashback to a past life for me, being surrounded by musician types, remembering the days when I'd be in rehearsals at least three or four nights every week. I felt honored to be part of the company. Also honored to share one other poem as well as the poem I wrote for our friends Tom and Jeanie on their son's death.

The experience, together with the response I received in feedback, was a reminder of how much I love to perform, and how important I think "poetry out loud" is as part of life. I'm a little wary of "thinking something's important" and then growing a sense of obligation toward it that stifles some of the sparkiness, but I also feel I'm at a stage in my life where "what's important" is what I need to focus on. I love to write. I love to make connections that are not always clear, and to do so in the most beautiful juxtapositions of words available to me. Despite--or perhaps because of--my nowhere girl accent, people like to hear me perform poetry. I love to perform and share words juxtaposed.

This is all true. Which means that truly, life is pretty good.

Turnagain Arm on the way home yesterday--this was before the shades came out!

What's your "golden nugget" this week?