immaculate confection.

My bad. My goal with this blog was to document, photo-wise, my experiences with anti-depressants. I wanted to do a photo-a-day-project for, ideally, a year—or however long I continue to be on medication. But, surprise, it has been difficult to keep up with. Writing, even blogging, is a luxury, saved for the brief moments when I’m together enough to sit upright and form sentences. I’m not sure where to go from here, now that I’ve missed two whole months. I could do a few photos a month? Blergh. Now I’m overwhelmed.

More than anything, I want a sad-ass-whiny-rant-blog to talk about my health problems that is distinctly separate from my slothra blog, which is primarily for pictures of naked flappers and Courtney Love and dogs and weird soundbytes/memories of the 1990s. (p.s. EVERYTHING in the previous sentence will tell you pretty much everything you need to know about me.)

Here are things that have happened:

•Started doing stand-up again. Continue to feel ambivalent about it; I am confident that I can get better, but not that it’s what I need to be putting my energy into right now. At the same time, the easier you start, the better. But I know my way around the scene now, and I’m a quick learner. If only I took my own advice, I’d be killin’ it. Instead, I don’t practice my material and fuck up on stage a lot and look like an idiot. A cute idiot. People tend to be alright with cute idiots when they appear to be biologically/physically female; I am not okay with that. Wait til those people find out that I IDENTIFY AS A CORGI. Suckers!

•I have a sweet band now (RVRND MRS.), that is a REAL THING, with my bff Hayley & my awesome friends Matt & Jon. Operation Scrappy Boy-Girl Punk Band is in OVERDRIVE MODE. We’ve been practicing since January, and we’re starting to sound real fucking solid. Soon, I will have actual links to actual music to show people, and I’ll spam you with invites to our shows.

•I am officially frustrated with the mediocrity of PSU. Fuck, brah. I’m paying out-of-state-tuition, because I’m a chump, for some pointedly dissatisfying classes. I was SO BORED this term. You’re boring me. Quit boring me.

In Sickness News:

My body continues to fall apart in marvelously unexpected ways! I have thrown my back out, completely, twice. Once was during sex! I don’t know if that’s the saddest or most metal thing I have ever done. Too much information? NOT ENOUGH INFORMATION.

To review: I have the energy levels of someone in their 50s-60s, approximately. In addition to fatigue and general achiness, I deal with: Raynaud’s (circulation disorder) dishydrotic eczema (bunch of bullshit on your hands, brah), keloid scarring, and, apparently, “moderate” scoliosis (curvature of the spine). Individually, most of these things aren’t that bad. All at once, ostensibly out of nowhere, when you’re 23 and trying to build a life for yourself and learn how to pay taxes/finish school/make a documentary/start your dream band/keep your family together (I’m like a hotter Michael Bluth)/battle depression, is a shitstorm beyond what I ever envisioned myself dealing with at this age.

I keep myself busy with entirely more activity/commitments than I can really handle because a. it keeps me busy and active, and from going crazy and b. because I spent an entire year in Chicago doing virtually nothing, and it ruined me, because that’s not who I am. I am supposed to constantly be doing a bunch of bizarre shit. I’m supposed to be an activist. I’m supposed to be an artist. I’m supposed to watch the news, and help others; I’m supposed to care. But right now, the most I can usually do is eat dinner and kinda go to school and write angry songs on a half-size guitar and take my rat on walks (don’t ask) and listen to Tori Amos and occasionally court young, unsuspecting gentlemen who haven’t yet been repelled by my leprous nature/hideous stench/taste in film/vagina dentata. Ha. Kidding! I always smell lovely.

GOOD NEWS: In the biggest step I have taken in quite some time, I finally made myself  find a new doctor. A female naturopath in NW Portland who isn’t into homeopathy. YES. She already made me feel more confident about finding answers and pursuing cures, which is a significantly different approach than the first/last naturopath I saw (whose approach included insisting I go on an extreme gluten-free diet in the middle of a severe depressive slump, and trying to sell me sugar pills. Thanks for the eating disorder, dude! That was a fun three months.) I’m sending in a self-test to check out my adrenal levels, and we’re going to pursue treatment based on that & what we can find out about that + my hormone levels. Too bad I learned more about body chemistry in a one-hour appt. with her than I did about ANYTHING ELSE in a term of school.

Science, mang. I’m looking forward to finding some answers. Phew.

Rollacoasta! Of trauma!

Overall, I guess I have a hard time coming to grips with re-entering the world of narcissistic, “arguably inappropriate self-disclosure” (to quote my friend Michael Stone.) If I were a sincerely self-conscious person, I don’t think it would be as instinctual or easy for me. But I’m a pretty big exhibitionist, and always have been.

The year I spent in art school didn’t make me hate my art, but all art; the idea of art. Art for profit, art for status, art for definition. Art for networking. Art for advertising, the most abhorrent of evils. Art for corporations, graffiti shows in Wicker Park galleries for fucking Burger King. The manufacturer-style process they taught us, the insultingly sycophantic, dumbed-down workshops we had to endure, and the end result of trying to find ways to make your “piece” into a “product” that was marketable. By the end of the year, I never wanted to fucking make anything again. And, for three years, I basically haven’t.

I’m at a crossroads creatively, which is better than where I was before (rolling around in a horizonless, deserted void). I can see where my next step is. And now, the music I’ve been writing for a year is becoming the most serious endeavor I’ve ever applied myself to. It could end there—I could have my songs, and enjoy them for what they are, and keep hanging out awkwardly playing metal basslines in my living room when my roommate gets home. The idea of sharing what I’ve created is always daunting and scary and makes me feel a little queasy. But in light of how dead I feel, I want that work to be a living, breathing thing, and I want it to see the light of day, and I want people to appreciate it, whatever that means. And that’s how I feel about my writing, too. So I guess that’s partly what this is. Pick up where I left off with LJ? (Except wiser and slightly less manic.)

That being said, I have a question for the last month of my life: what the fucking shit is UP?

Volatile, fucked-up trip home with my family, two pet deaths. Back in Portland, my psychotic ex bikes 4 miles in the rain to ruin my cousin’s Xmas eve with a hammer and threaten him. Come back home to spend New Years coaxing a close friend through an intense, jarring, very drunk nervous breakdown in the middle of a huge party. Missed my grandma’s memorial service by having to be here for school. A boy (emphasis on the boy) who I never should have made the mistake of psuedo-dating randomly screams “cunt” at me and my friends as we leave a comedy open mic. In the absolute epitome of my relationship with other Black women, a drunk girl slurs “don’t smile at me, bitch” at me on the bus on MLK Day. Yeah, make Martin proud, you dumb fucking twat.

I’ve missed two days of school this week because my periods are so heinous that my body feels like it’s fucking imploding, and nothing seems to help anymore, not even a reasonably balanced combination of weed/ibuprofen/vitamins/leftover oxy from my surgery. I slept in until 2:30 today, which I haven’t done in ages. My body just needed it. My fatigue is so bad on a “good” day that having a cold or a period knocks my system completely off track, and I just need to take whole days off from doing anything. And I get hypersensitive as all get out. I spilled part of a fruit cup today and almost sobbed.

And, tonight, after the first good/least-traumatic week of the month, I opened some mail that contained some pretty severely bad/scary health news. It really kicked me while I was already down. Bad news for people who already have enough reasons to hate themselves. Now I have a whole new illness to come to terms with, a new reason to be self-conscious about my body, a bunch of awful phone calls to make, and a future of being at even higher risk for cancer, which I’m already pretty much genetically guaranteed to get by the time I’m 40.

If January is any indication of how the rest of 2011 is gonna play out, I’m going back to sleep and never waking up.

Looking back, my painkiller addiction in high school wasn’t such a bad thing. At least I had a harmless way to deal that didn’t involve being as cut up/coked up as every other person in my grade. See? Every cloud, silver lining, yadayada. Jesus fuck, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I just made muffins. Will that make things better?

good morning, you’re dead

A year ago, I got prescribed and started taking Bupropion, (an NDRI anti-depressant and generic for Welbutrin), after seeing both a psychologist and psychiatrist regularly for several months. This was my first and only time ever taking a behavioral adjusting medication regularly, and it was by no means a decision I arrived at easily. I have struggled with/battled chronic depression since I was about 13—I am 23 now.

In accordance with the wave-forms depression assumes, some years have been better than others. But In Nov/Dec 2009, I experienced a severe, month-long anxious/nervous breakdown that was the scariest, most jarring psychological experience I have ever gone through. At the time, I was seeing a rather flippant naturopath whose advice only worsened my rampant hypochondria, and who did not recognize the severity of the mania I was going through. With the help of friends, family and my own, inexplicably tenacious volition, I crawled my way out of the wreckage that was 2009.

From 2007-2008, I attended SAIC, one of the top-rated art schools in the country; I fucking detested it. Art school was also one of the worst experiences I’ve ever been through, and resulted mostly in a severe identity crisis, a lot of self-loathing, and a three-year-long creative slump. I’ve been a writer, photographer and artist my whole life, so it was strange to lose connections with my all my primary means of expression at once. Since then, I’ve also been battling an extremely debilitating, mysterious fatigue condition that limits a lot of my functionality and makes it hard for me to do most of the things a healthy 23 year-old would do.

I spent 2010 in Doctors’ offices and hospitals, trying to figure out what the fuck is wrong with my body. I believe it to be a form of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (which, itself, is a process-of-elimination kind of conclusion that can also be a blanket term for lots of other issues), but at this point, I’ve almost given up on the hope that I will arrive at any sort of conclusive diagnosis. Right now, I’ve resolved to focus on taking each day as it comes, trying to stay positive, and not going on murderous rampages out of frustration at my non-existent god for afflicting me with the energy levels of a 70 year old cancer survivor.

I’ve always been very connected to art that is related to direct self-documentation (Sally Mann, On kawara, Cindy Sherman, etc.) . I come from a family of photographers (primarily my late grandfather Grauman Marks, a lawyer and noteworthy jazz/culture photographer), and a family obsessed with its own documentation, in its own nebbishy, Royal-Tennenbaumsy way.

I have incredibly ambivalent feelings about my own reliance on behavioral-adjusting medication. But I’ve also improved and become more stable and functional in the past year than I’ve been in a long time, and without any of the side effects or massive personality shifts I initially feared. I am still myself, but the moral ground on which I exist feels blurry to me. What does it mean to be medicated? How long will I continue this path of treatment? If I remain on my current dosage, and stick with it, that means I will consume 1,095 little purple pills this year; two thousand little circles. That’s a lot of chemicals, even for somebody who loves the shit out of drugs.

Everyone’s experiences with depression/anxiety/mental differences/recovery/trauma are different. I think more people around us are medicated than we realize, and the stigma around medication (and cognitive differences) is starting to shift.

I’ve been wanting to start this project since I first went on medication. But now, at the start of a new year, it seems to make more sense. I’m not sure how it will turn out, and I realize that the Internetz is a place of judgement, scrutiny, and uneasy vouyerism/exhibitionism…but I also know that tumblr has a large community of of supportive feminism and people dealing with various health concerns. It’s my hope that by sharing my experiences, I can, if nothing else, contribute to someone else feeling like they’re not so alone.

Not sure why I feel like starting a GPOY tumblr is my next rational step towards sanity, but, well, here we are. OH AND BTW HAPPY NEW YEAR.