The Novelist's Hubris

Moving On

Once, I dated a guy who wasn't so great. An example of his not-greatness is that if you Google his name, his Megan's Law sex offender profile is the third thing that comes up in the results (for more than one offense.) And that doesn't even count what he did to me, because I never reported.

It's been eight years since I've spoken to him or seen him, and in those eight years, I've done a lot of capital-P Processing. Like: running out of clubs crying, talking to therapists, writing truly terrible, thinly-veiled short stories about My Worst Ex. And for the most part, now, I don't think about him that much. At least, I don't think about him as much as I used to -- which was a lot.

Sometimes, though, like today, I dream about him, and I wake up with a feeling that lasts with me all day -- a deep, sad feeling, down to the skeleton.

And I think things like, He gave really great hugs. Not too tight. Very gentle. Embraces, really.

Oh, of course he had a temper, too. Obviously. But those hugs.

Well, I tell myself, don't dwell. It's been so many years. Both of you are such different people now. You're happy; he seems all right. But the sorrow is hard to ease out of, like a grimy skin that can't be shed.

Then I move on. I go to sleep. I dream about something else.

xo,

On Both Sides of the Episode, You Are Okay

I bought these Cosabella bras recently, and I can't imagine wearing anything else. They look like soft animals to me when they're all crumpled up. Animals curled up onto themselves.

I am fortunate in that I have always been, generally, all right on either side of an episode. (I'm not counting breakthrough symptoms, here, such as peripheral hallucinations -- which are annoying, but have no bearing on my ability to function.) When I'm doing well, it's easy to forget the bad stuff, and vice versa. I spoke about this in my post about phase blindness, and it's true of me right now.

The last few weeks have been tough, and I won't deny it. I'm taking the day off of work -- so far, I've severely depleted my winter holiday store of time off due to The Many Illnesses of 2011 -- but I'm trying to be kind to myself, and not feel guilty or beat myself up for the downturns of my body and brain. Because, for the most part, I am honestly not able to help these things until they happen.

These are the things I am doing today: drinking water, reading The Pale King, journaling, talking to my psychiatrist, taking all of my medications, stretching, making sure to eat, making Wellness Tea.

And that's all I have to say for today, beloved readers. I might also mention that in March, The Novelist's Hubris experienced its first birthday -- which I didn't celebrate, but which I am looking forward to celebrating belatedly with you.

xo,

4 Life Things I Learned During (Surgical) Recovery

My first real outing after being laid up on the couch for a month was to go to a flower arranging class with Francesca, which is where these pictures are from -- at Prairie Collective's Studio Choo, a gorgeous little co-operative shop full of beautiful things.

The following are four things that I learned during the recovery process, post-surgery, and I share them here because I think that they're helpful in more general ways as well.

1. Drink water. Really. It's not only hydrating and good for the body, as your loved ones, health magazines, and doctors will tell you, but drinking water is also truly excellent for the spirit. Dyana Valentine, instigator extraordinaire, is the one who tipped me off to this one. I started drinking big glasses of cold water as "restart" mechanisms: after long and difficult conversations, after writing a painful or challenging passage in my novel, or if I was feeling stressed out and worn out. I took to drinking large glasses of cold water, and it served me well. Try it. 

2. Be gentle with yourself. Sometimes, that looks like giving yourself time. I gained weight because abdominal/pelvic surgery does not allow for much post-surgical movement. I wanted to go for walks and do yoga. After a week or two, I started hankering for the gym. I still can't go to the gym yet, and I'm writing this from home because I went back to work today for the first time in over a month; halfway through the day I started having terrible pain. 

I'd almost gone back to work one or two weeks after the surgery. I felt guilty about staying at home -- really, really guilty. I kept saying I would come back "soon" or "hopefully on _____" -- until Dr. K wrote me a letter saying that I needed three more weeks to recover (which turned into four, due to an internal infection resulting from the surgery). Dr. K's letter gave me permission to take time to heal. I learned to be okay with not pouring my own milk out of a gallon jug or letting the laundry sit for weeks. I started ordering grocery delivery online, which actually turned out to be significantly cheaper than schlepping to the expensive specialty market nearby. People came and cleaned the house. 

I'm not saying that you need to do any of those things, but what I am saying is that sometimes your brain and body need tenderness, and you need to be the one to give it. Which is connected to 3.) --

3. Let your loved ones help you when you need help. In the final week of my recovery, Chris had to leave for a business trip. A dear friend flew out and stayed with me, and I'm ever so grateful for her help and love during that time. 

While I was recovering, people made me meals, took out the garbage for me, brought me my packages from work, helped me navigate the California Short-Term Disability system, and so much more. And I'm really, really grateful for that.

4. Productivity doesn't always look like "productivity." Sometimes taking a nap is productivity when you're tired.

 

My MacBook is at the shop right now; I feel like I sent it away to summer camp for the first time, and I'm a nervous mom. Because all of my photo editing software is on that laptop, I can't guarantee that I'll post everyday -- but we'll see. I'd like to.

And, finally, thank you to everyone who wished me well. It was truly kind of y'all, and I'm sure that it helped me. 

To Cultivate the Heart's Growth

Sweet readers, I am taking a break. I was at the clinic today for two hours, and I am on antibiotics for a post-surgical internal infection, which is prolonging my recovery time, as well as prolonging my pain. And I have decided to invest time into the act of cultivating my heart's growth. My tangled heart. I'm not thinking much about it. I'm sort of feeling my way through it.

The Vicodin, which I started taking after the Percocet ran out, was making me more depressed than I guessed at the time, and was distorting my perceptions in ways that I am only now realizing.

I am taking a week or two off of this blog to be gentle to myself. I am handwriting in my notebooks and reading Proust. I am keeping many lights on in the living room. I am lighting candles. I am not moving very much. I am napping. A dear friend is coming to stay with me for a little over a week, as well. 

Take care of yourself, and your loved ones. I'll be back before you know it. 

xo,

A Brief Note on Friendship

I wrote a post yesterday -- a long post -- that I meant to put up, but I was feeling insecure about whether or not it would hurt people's feelings. So I showed it to Chris, who said that it was a legitimate writing about friendship, and then I showed it to A, who said that I'd better sit on it for a while -- maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months. But at this point, I don't think I'm going to post it at all. It was by no means a vicious post, or even a passive-agressive one. It was about things that I've learned about friendship in the last 27 years of my life, and especially things that I'm attempting to internalize recently.

I will sum up by repeating something that A said to me this morning, which was: much as not everybody shows love in the same way, not everyone measures friendship in the same way, either.

 

I'm thrilled to report that my sample print and card from the company that prints for me arrived yesterday, and they are stunning in quality -- real photo quality, not printed-from-your-average-printer quality. I will take some photographs of them soon, so that you can see their loveliness for yourself. 

xo,

The Single Story

 

Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding. (from the TEDtalk website)

A short post today, because I'm tired and need to nap before I have some sickbed visitors. This TEDtalk is perhaps my favorite TEDtalk that I've seen -- more important, I think, than Elizabeth Gilbert's famous talk about "geniuses," more straight-to-my-heart than Dave Eggers' talk about education. This one gives me goosebumps every time I watch it, because it speaks about writing and stories (hence the title, "The Danger of a Single Story"), but also because it speaks about stories that we tell one another verbally. Here Chimamanda Adichie speaks directly about issues of national and racial stereotype, but the danger of the single story can be extended to so many more stories -- really, about anything that is more than one-dimensional. And that is, in fact, everything.

Big thanks to Jenny to sharing this with me, months ago. 

xo,

Patience or Emotional Suppression? & The Upside of Anger

I went back to the doctor again today. It was a last-minute thing, resulting from a week's worth of pain that didn't seem to be improving, and a low mood that was getting worse by the day. The visit itself was fine, even good -- my doctor, the surgeon who'd performed the operation, gave me the emotional relief of knowing that I needed another two or three weeks' worth of rest, and provided me with a doctor's note for work and a prescription for stronger painkillers.

There was a lot to do before I could call a cab and get back home. I had to get some more tests done, drop off and pick up a prescription for the aforementioned strong painkillers, and go to Member Services to talk to them about Short Term Disability forms. I'll spare you the la-di-da minutiae of each one and stick to the pharmacy, where it seemed like all 549 people in attendance of this particular clinic were all waiting for their Very Important Medications. (This is after I already went to drop off my prescription, when the pharmacist with the lip ring and knuckle tatts told me that there was no date on the prescription; after I went back up to the fifth floor and waited for my doctor to come and put the date on with her special blue pen; after I came back down and waited and finally got back to dropping off my prescription, which now also said 2/18/11 on it.)

I waited for forty-five minutes. My name didn't pop up on the screen. Had I missed it when I went to Member Services? I got in the line to talk to the Drop-Off Prescriptions guy, who had a shorter line. Behind me stood a woman; I'll call her Marge. She had a curtain of hair and a scowl of impatience. I almost wanted to give her my spot in line just so she wouldn't be so crabby.

"I've been waiting for forty-five minutes, and I was just wondering if my prescription was ready," I said to the bespectacled fellow behind the counter.

He scanned my card. "Yep. It's ready."

"Okay," I said.

"Get in the Pick-Up Line," he said. Which was a long line, I have to say. I got in the Pick-Up Line. So did Marge.

I was in pain. I'd been in pain for two weeks, the kind of pain that the amount of Vicodin prescribed for "severe pain" wasn't touching, the kind of pain that I was now being prescribed a heavier painkiller for. I was waiting in a long line. I felt myself growing irritable with everyone whom I perceived as taking too long at the counters. No one escaped my wrath. The elderly Asian couple - they were taking too long with their insipid questions. The woman who kept interrogating the pharmacist about nasal sprays -- couldn't she have looked that up somewhere before she showed up, instead of spending ten minutes asking the pharmacist, who could have been helping the line become shorter instead of longer? I turned and looked at Marge, who was huffing periodically in that way that people do when they're extremely irritated.

Marge looked at her watch. Huff.

Chill out, I told myself. (I didn't actually think that. I don't think I ever tell anyone to "chill out," not even myself. Maybe "calm down.") Then I said a prayer. It helped a little bit. I lingered over the last part of the Lord's Prayer, which is my favorite part -- "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." I used to say the ahmitofou (a Buddhist chant) in similar situations. I tried to imagine that the elderly Asian couple who were having a hard time with their English were my grandparents.

The guy who had rejected me from his line and told me to go to the Drop-Off Line started to take people from the Drop-Off Line in his line.

Be patient.

Huff.

 

When my grandfather had a stroke and started to lose brain function, he developed a lot of paranoias. He'd scream at my grandmother about how she was trying to poison him. He'd scream at her for small things, big things, medium things. He railed against the world. He railed against my grandmother.

Every time he screamed at her, my mom told me, and my grandmother thought about crying, she would just smile and sing quietly instead.

My mom does the same thing now. It's not that different from saying the Lord's Prayer in a pharmacy, in my opinion.

 

I express anger in two places. (I have only said "I hate you" to someone once in my entire life.)

1.) Dreams. I have dreams where I scream and throw things and let everything that's raging inside of me outside of me.

2.) To therapists. I don't yell. I become sullen, snarky, and sarcastic. I tell them what I think of them. I usually feel horrible over the smallest faux pas, but with therapists, I just let them have what I've got.

My therapists have always said that expressing anger is healthy. It's healthy for couples to fight. (Chris and I don't fight, for the most part. And we have never yelled at one another, which is not to say that we will never yell at one another, but which is to say that it hasn't happened.) I don't fight or get angry because it wasn't modeled for me. Every other kind of extreme emotion arose in my house, but not anger or fighting.

So when I'm being "patient" and "calm" and "compassionate" at the pharmacy, when my grandmother is singing instead of yelling back -- is that patience, or is that emotional suppression? Does it just mean that there's a ticking time bomb in there somewhere?

What's the upside of anger?

xo,

It's All About... Love: A Valentine's Day Post

Valentine's Day: love as gratitude.

For the doctor who finally said, "Go to the ER," and the doctors and nurses who joked with me and took that benign tumor out of my bulging ovary. Thank you. The nurse from New Orleans who gave me a blanket and pillow because it was seven in the morning on a chilly Friday morning in San Francisco and I was wearing a blush pink slip with a ballet wrap over it, sitting in a wheelchair, and I was too weak and tired to get my sweatshirt out of my bag. Thank you. My brother, who helped me to recount stories from our childhood, including the games of Space and Cavemen and School, and stayed up hours upon hours while we waited for my surgery to finally happen at 3 AM. Thank you.

The girl with the fantastically high-heeled shoes who said, "Go get 'em, girl," when I hobbled out of the waiting room, in some of the worst pain I've ever been in, like, an 8 on the pain scale from 1 to 10, crying silently because I didn't want to aggravate the excruciating pain in my belly. Thank you. Chris, who, after I got out of the hospital, made me breakfast, and brought me glasses of water, watermelon juice, coconut water, fetched my Levenger, got me a better pillow because I looked uncomfortable, and, when I was in the hospital, said the Memorare over the phone with me from Portland while I lay frightened in a pre-op bed in San Francisco. Thank you.

F., the Girl with the Long Blonde Hair, who visited me in the hospital and brought a pile of picture books as colorful as a wildflower meadow. I stopped being afraid when you were there. Thank you.

My parents, who called and checked in and called and checked in. Thank you.

My friends, who called and texted and checked in and called and texted and checked in. Thank you.

My bosses and supervisors at work, who are letting my internal and external wounds heal before I go back to work. Thank you.

 

What is your loving gratitude, today?

xo,

People in Pain: My Trip to the ER

On Thursday morning, the pain was getting worse. I felt nauseated, and I was sweating. Then the phone rang, and it was a doctor that I'd never spoken to before. (I'd been passed around to various nurse practioners and doctors over the week.) "I want you to go to the ER," she said.

"My partner just left for a business trip this morning," I said. I was picturing myself in a cab on the way to the ER, and the thought was depressing. It wasn't that I wasn't going to go -- I felt like hell -- but I was resistant. I was pretty sure that I was going to end up on the surgical table if I left the house, and I didn't want to be alone.

"You could lose your ovary if you don't go," she said, slowly and carefully. "Really, I think you should go. I'll call ahead and let them know you're coming."

I hung up. I chatted my younger brother, a 24-year-old working on the Peninsula, and waited half an hour for him to come while I tottered around the house, packing a blue bag full of things: my friend's story collection manuscript, a dress, two pairs of underwear.

 

I wound up having surgery at around 3 AM, but in the meantime I was sent up to post-op/pre-op twice. Post-op is a room of privacy curtains wrapped around people in a lot of pain. I lay on a gurney while I waited for them to bring me to the OR and listened to the man next to me cry out in what sounded like excruciating pain.

"You're in the hospital," the nurses kept saying to him. "You just had surgery. You're in the hospital."

If you're anything like me, your first reaction when you're on morphine and about to get a large benign tumor taken out of your right ovary, is that you want everyone in the room to just Shut Up. Because it's horrible to hear people in pain.

Then I caught myself.

People turn away from other people in pain all the time, whether it's ignoring a homeless woman begging for money to feed herself, or changing the channel when "another one of those" charity-bound commercials about starving kids in developing nations comes on the television. We're not heartless. It's just hard to see people in pain. We don't want to be reminded of pain like that.

I don't know if it was the morphine or what, but I said a prayer for the man in the curtained stall next to mine. Please, God, let that man be okay, and take away his suffering.

People turn away from their friends in pain. The roommate who's just experienced her first psychotic episode. The former best friend who gets into an abusive relationship.

When I got out of the OR and opened my eyes from the daze, I had no idea where I was or what had just happened. I said, with my throat sore from the intubation and my gut aching from the bloody incisions, "Where am I?"

"You're in the hospital," the nurse said, "and you just had surgery."

xo,

Thirteen Times: An Essay

 

I first wrote a version of this particular essay -- about childlessness and mental illness -- when I was in a creative nonfiction class in my MFA program; it has since grown limbs, wings, and claws. I'm quite happy to be sharing it here, with all of you, and do sincerely hope that if you find it to be something that you'd like to share with your friends, that you do so, or if you'd like to tweet about it or link to it, that you'll do that, too.

And, without further ado: "Thirteen Times."

xo,