Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 32

"I Don't Deserve to Feel Sad"

I remember going to a grief group once a few months after my daughter died, and I wanted so much to connect to the other women there who had all lost children in infancy or pregnancy. This was supposed to be my chance to really feel the support that I hadn’t felt at all in my church or my family about my loss.

But it wasn’t what happened at all. One woman talked about her son who had a terrible birth defect and her choice to deliver early, knowing that he would die, but also believing that he was in terrible pain. I thought she’d made the right choice, but I couldn’t see why she was still so upset about it.

Then there was another woman who had suffered multiple miscarriages and had these bizarre explanations for why they had happened, blaming various family members for thinking “bad” thoughts or for basically “jinxing” her pregnancies. She was very, very angry and I just thought she was basically crazy.

One of the rules of the grief group was that no one had to apologize that their loss wasn’t as significant as someone else’s. All our losses were to be treated equally, but I have to admit that I felt like they were all making too much out of what had happened. Why couldn’t they just move on with their lives?

It’s pretty ironic looking back on this reaction. My judgments against these women were the judgments I really had against myself and I couldn’t see that clearly. I didn’t think I “deserved” to feel sad about my loss. And honestly, I didn’t want to feel sad.

I was really upset when a few people around me tried to tell me the truth, that this would stay with me forever. I was so impatient to be done grieving. I did a long list of things that were supposed to help with grief, writing a grief journal, going to these sessions, counseling with my spiritual advisor, praying, and so on, in order to stop feeling the grief. And none of it worked. I didn’t want to be the person suffering. I wanted to be over it already.

It took a long time for me to give myself permission to be sad about what was going on. And I think this is true for many people who are depressed, particularly suicidally depressed. When we hear the message from others that we deserve to feel sad, that our loss is real, that the pet that died and devastated us, or the house that we lost to a flood, or the divorce or whatever it is that has changed out life forever isn’t something to be dismissed, there is a lot of healing in that.

I felt like there were very few people around me who were giving me that permission. And honestly, I wasn’t giving it to myself because I was so busy telling myself to get on with my life, to get through this, to move on. So, this is just to say that whatever your loss is, you deserve to feel sad. You deserve to grieve. You deserve to be angry and yell at people. You deserve to not be the good, kind person that you have been before.

And worst of all, I will say this to people who, like me, wanted to heal quick and wanted to believe they would be the same: you won’t ever be the same. I’m sorry about that. I really am. Some things about your new life may be better. You may be the kind of person who fights to make meaning out of crappy stuff. You may not be. Either one is fine.

You don’t have to learn a lesson. You don’t have to be a better person after you’ve been devastated. You can choose to make beauty out of loss. You can choose not to. And you may choose to make a different choice every day. And that’s all right. You’re human.

Your new life may never match the one that you had imagined you would have. That’s what the definition of grief is for me, this realization that what you expected to come didn’t come and you feel so keenly the dual timelines, two lives spinning out at the same time. I know some people call this denial, but I really think that’s a bad name for it. It’s a kind of deja vu, something like Sliding Doors.

It will be a long time before the life that you are, in fact, living feels real to you, and I can’t promise it will ever feel right or good. They say that grief fades, and I don’t know if that is true so much as the reality that it waxes and wanes. Sometimes you feel it just as sharply and sometimes it’s only a dull throb. Sometimes you will feel a piercing joy and then immediately afterward, you will feel guilty that you could ever be happy again.

I can’t make the journey to your future real life, easy. I can only say, welcome aboard. I’m on the journey with you, and it’s a difficult one. But it is the only one we’ve got.

Don't Work on Empty

I know that it’s a fad right now to exercise with either plain water or that fancy pretend sports drink that has no calories. This is pretty stupid most of the time. If you’re not planing to work out hard, OK. That’s fine. If I’m doing 45 minutes at a recovery pace, I don’t use a sports drink or gel. Otherwise, I always, always do. And it’s worth it because you will enjoy exercising more, you will keep at it longer, and you will do it harder, which will burn more calories while you are exercising, and when you are finished exercising. This myth that you work out in a an easy, “fat-burning” zone is silly, mostly because you burn fewer calories and less fat in that zone than if you work out harder and make your body stronger and your heart better than it was before.

Guess what? I’m going to use this as an analogy for writers. If you feel like the well is dry, it probably is. If you are doing NaNoWriMo and you have reached the halfway point and have a sinking sensation that you have nothing left to write, and that you might possibly never have anything to write for the rest of your life, you are running dry. You’re trying to work on empty, and while that might work if all you want to do is produce a few words for your kid’s sixth grade essay, it’s not going to work to help you produce the best work you are capable of producing.

You have to fill up.

Mostly, for writers, this means reading. Not watching TV. Not watching movies. Not listening to music. I think those can be helpful, but I think that nothing lets you see what words can do like other people using words.

So I’m going to tell you that if you want to write a lot, you need to read. A lot. If you’re frustrated by the number of words you write a day, you need to read more words a day. Divide your time for writing in half. Use half for reading, half for writing.

Read books that are in your genre.

Read books that aren’t in your genre.

Read classics.

Read books published in the last two years.

Read books by men. And women.

Read books by people of color.

Read books that have been on your list for a long time that someone recommended to you once.

Re-read book that you loved when you were younger.

Re-read some of your old favorites.

Read a book that you tried and hated before. See if you’ve changed.

I give you permission.

Writing time isn’t just about sitting at the computer and plunking out words. It’s about doing the things necessary to make the work go smoothly.

(Warning: this is not permission for hanging around on the internet, or doing mindless things. Turn off the noise, and open a book. I don’t care if it’s an ebook or a paper book. Read. Yes, you there, who think I don’t mean you. I mean you.)

I am always astonished at how many writers I know who say they don’t read, who don’t want to be “influenced” by other writers. Bullshit. You really believe that crap about anxiety of influence? Look, no one writes in a vacuum. And if they do, it’s crap because it’s not in a language the rest of us share. You’re writing about all the other writers who went before you. You’re writing to all the other authors who are writing right now. You’re stealing everything you write and you’re making is unrecognizable because you mash it all together in a completely new way. That’s what you do. That’s what a writer is. Someone who reads extremely frequently and extremely well. And then produces something in return, to be read.

So go read a book.

Invisible Depression

I remember when I was depressed, I kept taking these tests to see if I was depressed. The fact that I was suicidal, planning ways to kill myself, and spent nearly every waking minute of my life wishing I was dead so I could stop being in pain was apparently not enough in my head to go for help. But every test I took, I came up not depressed. Why?

Because I was functional. Meaning, I got up every morning, did a workout, made breakfast for the kids, did my work for the day, and was able to manage dinner and bedtime routines. I did what I was supposed to do. If I had responsibilities in my church, I did them. I had my little checklist of things I had to get done that day and I checked them off every day. This had nothing to do with how I felt inside. I was running on automatic, I guess you might call it. You might also say that I was so judgmental of myself that I wasn’t allowed to think about the ways I wanted to kill myself until my list was finished.

I know there are probably a lot more depressed people who look depressed in traditional ways, can’t get out of bed, aren’t functional, but for those of us who are functionally depressed, it isn’t either better or worse than the other kind. I did eventually find a doctor who dismissed immediately my thoughts that I didn’t count as depressed because of some checklist. He listened to me talk for about a minute and said, you’re depressed and tried to help me figure out what medications to try. (Sadly, I never was able to find one that didn’t make me really sick.) I did find a therapist I worked with and that helped.

One of the weird things about this depression to me was how truly invisible it was to almost every single person I knew. I think only my husband realized how sick I was. Every single other person I was successful at fooling. Why did I want to fool them? In part, I felt like I didn’t “deserve” to take up anyone’s time with my sad thoughts. They had their own busy lives. In part, it was because I had SO MANY negative experiences when I shared how I really felt with others. They just said things that hurt me more deeply, and I started to learn not to do that. I don’t know how much of the fault there lies with them and how much lies with me. My brain was too sick for me to trust my recollections of the events at the time.Even my kids really had no idea how depressed I was. I was functional, which is what most kids notice. I suspect they would just say I was “a little sad.”

My point here isn’t a pity party for me. I’m not depressed anymore. I’m good. I think I figured out the hard way what I needed to do not to get in that place again. But for those of you who know people who may be invisibly depressed—don’t let them get away with the facade of being fine. If someone has suffered a deep loss and you think they are dealing with it “amazingly well,” they aren’t. You just aren’t seeing the reality. Maybe you don’t want to see the reality. Maybe you are part of the problem. If that sounds harsh, sorry!

When people would say to me how I was such an inspiration or how they could never handle what I had handled as well as I had, I would say thanks and I suppose act in something of a normal fashion. But in my head, all I was thinking was that they were making it harder for me to tell anyone the truth. Because it seemed so clear to me no one wanted to listen. No one wanted to know that I wasn’t an inspiration at all. They didn’t see how they were contributing to the long period of time in which I operated as two different versions of myself, the one that everyone saw who was hyper competent and inspirational, and the real, smaller me hidden inside, so afraid to be seen that she had built this elaborate pretense/shell of a person to carry around everywhere with her.

It isn’t easy getting through a shell. It takes time. A long time. You can’t expect to be told the truth the first time you ask. Or the third. Or maybe even the twentieth. You have to prove first that you will stick around and keep asking, and that you don’t judge. Anyway, that’s my advice. Invisibly depressed people are the ones who kill themselves and everyone scratches their head, having no idea that they were suffering. We are the people who are smart enough to figure out how to do it right the first time, and not end up in a hospital with people crowded around ready to help. But I do think that we can be saved.

Try This Simple Exercise:

Give a compliment to every woman or girl you meet that has nothing to do with her appearance. No “nice hair,” “beautiful,” “pretty eyes,” “where did you buy that skirt?” “great shoes,” “I love that bag.”

I keep trying this and find that I end up saying nothing at all. When I am around little boys, I compliment a lot less. This isn't as much a part of male interaction socially. But it's very much a part of female interaction. I'm not sure if I like it or not. I've had people say to me before that it's not as superficial as it may seem, because fashion is often a choice of the mind. But how your body looks is largely genetic luck, isn't it? I know beauty can take a long time, but doesn't it have to start with something?

What if all our (we women) compliments to each other were on accomplishments or personality traits? What if we said instead:

You are a great mom.

Thanks for helping your sister.

I loved your comment.

You are so smart!

Great job!

Way to ask a good question.

I love your sense of humor.

I think it would change the world. I really do.

Beware the Dark Side . . .

Of Goals.

When I first started writing regularly, I had a page count goal. 10 pages every day. It took me about a year to realize that I kept ending every set of ten pages with a one liner at the top. Because that was easier then writing a whole tenth page.

So I started setting a word count goal. 2,000 words a day. And another year later, I realized that if I had the chance to write the same thought in a really long sentence or a shorter one, I would choose the longer one. Because it got me to my word count goal.

So I stopped counting words and started trying to put in 2 hours of writing a day. And you can guess where that went. I ended up "thinking" for a lot more of the time than I used to. And doing more "research on the internet."

And now here I am, trying to do chunks of a project each day, a couple of scenes in my head. Or doing an outline. Or finishing a section of an edit. I'm sure that there's a way for me to game this system, too. And I'll have to figure out how to make a new goal system instead.

The problem is that when you think in terms of a specific goal, you end up figuring out how to game that system. Students do this all the time when they are studying for standardized exams. The more you study and take them, the better you do. At least to a certain point.

Obviously, I don't have a solution to this problem, but I point it out to those of you who are working on NaNoWriMo so that you can watch yourselves and see if you are developing any bad habits in your quest to get in your word count.

NaNoWriMo is great for making people sit down and actually work on their project. Working on something is usually how you get it done. Except when it's not. Going off in the wrong direction when you have a sick feeling something is wrong is not going to help you finish your novel.

You may have to backtrack.

You may discover that you aren't a pantser and need to work on an outline. Or work on an outline several times in the process. And that might not count toward your word count.

You may need to do some character work.

You may need to read a few more books in your genre before you have a good idea of how to finish one.

There are lots of ways to get things done. Just don't get trapped in thinking there is only one.

Stop Apologizing

Women apologize about everything. We apologize for taking up time. We apologize for saying the wrong thing. We apologize for hurting someone’s feelings. We apologize for not knowing everything, not being able to do everything. We apologize for our very existence, it seems like.

I understand why we do this, but we’ve got to stop. We deserve to be where we are. We deserve the chance to do well. We deserve accolades and honors when we have, in fact, done well.

As women who are writers, we need to write without apology, as well. Query letters are not a place to apologize for yourself. Meeting with an agent or an editor is not a time to apologize, either. Don’t begin a conversation with an apology. Begin with a sense of purpose, if not entitlement. You write for a reason. You must believe in yourself.

Your books also need to be written without apology. Just because you are continuing on in the vein of another writer does not mean that you need to apologize. If your character is in part an homage to another character, you are not a worse writer for standing on the shoulders of others. If you are attempting something new and daring, do not apologize for this. This is a great thing. If someone has thought you failed before, you do not need to put that forward every time you mention your book.

If someone suggests you need to change something, or if many someones suggest you need to change many things, you do not have to please all of them. You cannot please all of them. Your book must please you first, and there is no need to apologize for that. Try to borrow a sense of confidence if you must, but if your book is the book you love the most in the world, then that is a great thing. Don’t change your book to be something that other people more worthy than you to have opinions will applaud.

Your voice matters. Your point of view matters. Your purpose matters.

I say this because I have spent too long apologizing myself, and I know the spiral. Once you start apologizing, you never stop.

Why Being Thick-Skinned Isn't Good for Artists

I get so tired of people telling writers (in particular, women writers) that they need to develop a “thick skin” about being rejected. You just have to stop feeling so bad about people hating your work, the idea is. You have to believe in yourself anyway. Well, it’s awfully hard to believe in yourself when you have no one around you who believes in you, and no support structure in place to help you keep going. It’s hard enough to be a writer when you know where your next meal is coming from and your parents are eager to read your next book. It’s another level of hard when you are working horrible hours and no one around you thinks you should be a writer.

When I was in grad school, the first semester I was there, I was engaged to my now-husband, who lived two thousand miles away. We would talk on the phone at all hours of the day and night, and in addition, I kept flying out to try to get arrangements for the wedding taken care of. It was a wonderful time in my life. It was also a very stressful time in my life. I had three long essays due in my three big classes at the end of my honeymoon. They were the sole basis of my grade. I wrote those papers and just gritted my teeth. They weren’t my best work, but I turned them in and when they came back to me with comments, I didn’t want to read them. So I didn’t. For four months, until my husband found them, saw that they were still unopened, and was horrified. He read the papers, calling out comments to me, and then I promptly took the papers and threw them into the incinerator. I hate criticism that much. And you know what? I still hate it.

I am still thin-skinned and I believe that makes me a good writer. A thick-skinned person is someone who stops listening to other people who truly challenge his assumptions. A thick-skinned person thinks he is right all the time. A thick-skinned person sticks around like-minded people. A thick-skinned person doesn’t read books that hurt deeply. A thick-skinned person isn’t someone who sees two points of view at the same time and can examine them and agree with both of them for different reasons.

If I can’t hear other voices, how can I write other voices other than me? If I don’t feel pain, how can I write about pain? If I don’t challenge assumptions, how can I write really ground-breaking work? I don’t believe that I can, and that is why I think being thick-skinned isn’t something I’m going to aim for.

It’s true that I have become used to rejection. I don’t seek it out. I am aware that there are bad reviews of my books out there. I try to stay away from them. I don’t tell everyone everything about myself because I don’t need to hear criticism of my most vulnerable self at all moments. But I think this is different than being thick-skinned.

Be thin-skinned. Don’t flay yourself, OK? But feel. Hurt. Write vulnerably. Share with people who do not always agree with you.

This post was in part inspired by the following quote from Malinda Lo:

"I don’t believe that creative individuals should have to grow thicker skins. I believe that if you’re out there creating art, you should make sure you’re as open and thin-skinned as possible, so that you can feel every damn thing that arises in you.”

http://the-toast.net/2013/11/12/second-female-author-talks-sexism-self-promotion/

Put the Joy Back On the Page

When I was a kid, I hated P.E. I was terrible at it, which didn’t help any. My parents didn’t care about it and I wasn’t on any teams away from home. When we picked sides for teams, I was always the last one picked. And the thing I hated most in the world was the mile run. We had to run it every year (just that once—no practicing allowed!) and that time was the only measure of our fitness the school every used.

When I was in high school, I did everything I could think of to avoid P.E. classes and it wasn’t until I was on a trip with a bunch of teens that something amazing happened. It had been raining this whole trip, and we were camping, but this one afternoon, there was this burst of sunshine and we all spontaneously decided to chase the adult chaperones in the group around and throw them into the river.

For the first time in my life, I enjoyed running. I had purpose, and no one was judging me, measuring me, comparing me. It was just me, my legs, and the soft sand. I remember that running better than any lousy game of dodgeball I played all through elementary school. It was glorious!

If you are a writer, please find moments when writing is like that for you. If NaNoWriMo makes you feel like writing is just about keeping score, don’t do it. If you’re working on a project you can’t seem to finish, considering working on a side project that brings joy back to your heart. I won’t say that writing done while bored or frustrated never works. It actually often works as well as anything else. But you—the person—won’t work as well.

You can run every day and get better and better at running, but you’ll give it up if you don’t find joy in the sensation of your body’s motion. Eventually, you will stop caring no matter how many outside factors are attached to you needing to care about your running or how much money you get paid to do it. The same is true of writing. You need joy in it. If it’s only the chocolate you’re eating while you type away, OK, that’s a decent first step. If it’s the sound of laughter when you make a writing partner read a great bit of dialog, even better.

As an adult, I started running a little bit in college, and then again in my 30s One of the things I discovered was that when other people weren’t pressuring me and I had the right gear and could do it at my own pace, I liked running again. Maybe you need to keep people away from your writing and measuring it. Maybe you need to find the right gear—a new computer program that helps you organize differently. Maybe you need a race (like NaNoWriMo) to get you smiling again.

Ask yourself, are you enjoying writing? And if not, then figure out how to change it so you do. Those sneakers are waiting for you to put them on again.

The Depressed Leading the Depressed

This weekend, I had a difficult time dealing with someone in my life who is suffering from depression. I wanted to be the person who held her and told her that she was good, that her sick brain was telling her that she was bad, that things would get better and that I loved her and so did many other people.

But I had just spent the day being depressed myself about my own life and I  had no patience with her pain. I wanted to tell her to go away and deal with things herself and be a grown up. And then, I also felt myself drifting into thoughts about what a horrible person I am, and how I am useless and everyone hates me. And really, why did I bother to try?

I started to make a list of all the things I was never going to do again. Because I wasn’t good enough at them and really, it was time to just give it up.

So I went out on a walk. (I usually go out for something a lot harder, but it’s off season and I’m supposed to be taking a break.) I found that after about 20 minutes of walking, the endorphins kicked in and suddenly I felt good again. All my anxieties disappeared and were replaced with some rational, balanced thoughts on what I needed to do with my life.

It was only then that I could go back and deal with the other person in my life who was depressed. It was such a useful lesson to me. Sometimes we just keep trying to give and give. But there is a point at which you really do need to stop and take care of yourself. I have hit this point more and more in my life as I get older. I don’t know if this is because I am more ill than I once was or if it is because I have more responsibility than I used to.

If you are dealing with a depressed person and find yourself sounding depressed, you need to get out of the situation. A walk is a great solution. Maybe a phone call with a friend. A visit to your favorite frozen yogurt place. Come back and deal with the really hard stuff when you are at 100% or as close as you can get.

I think that a lot of people end up thinking that the depression thoughts are “real” and that they have to keep listening to them. There’s a kind of indulgence in this, like picking at a scab. Telling yourself that you really are bad is a way of admitting you aren’t up to dealing with the problem. But a depressed person needs you to stop thinking this is about you. It’s not about you. It’s about a disease.

You aren’t good or bad because you can’t fix everything. You are good or bad if you care and you keep trying. When you are capable of it. Sitting there are allowing yourself to continue to feel bad isn’t helping and as much as it may seem selfish to get out and get yourself happy again, it isn’t. It’s the most unselfish thing you’ve ever done. And it may be the hardest, too.

Give your all, whatever that all may be

A few years ago, a professional Ironman athlete who had a recurring injury ended up walking almost the entire marathon of the World Championship course. He finished some three hours off his goal time, amongst the far less able group of amateurs in the race, who actually cheered him on as he went from aid station to aid station.

I have never heard of a professional triathlete do this before. Most pros throw in the towel as soon as they realize that they can’t do their best. On the bike with mechanical issues or on the run when they begin to slow. They might try one more time to run, but they certainly don’t walk a marathon. If you ask them why, I’m sure they have lots of good reasons for this. It’s a waste of energy. It may let down supporters. It’s embarrassing.

But you only have so many chances to do a World Championship Ironman race. Why not enjoy them? Why not give your all, even if your all on this particular day is not the all that you wish it was?

I think this applies to all parts of life, but particulary to writing. It is tempting to think about being embarrassed in the eyes of others, not writing enough words for your NaNoWriMo count, not writing well enough because you’re trying out a new thing, not living up to reader’s expectations from the last book, not being offered enough money for the new book.

Please, as a writer, don’t let yourself get talked into throwing in the towel before the race is over. If you are struggling with a project, by all means, take some time off from it. Give yourself some perspective. Ask for help from some beta readers or talk it out with friends. But don’t give it up before you’ve given it your all. Your creative work deserves that much. And so do you.

Maybe it isn’t good enough, as the voice in your head says. Maybe you should go back and do something else that people will actually value and pay you for. Like waitressing. Or cleaning toilets. Or working in a corporate world you hate.

But maybe your all is enough. It’s all you have, after all. And if people are passing you as they go by, let them pass you. If people tell you you need to be working harder, just nod to them. You know what the truth is. You know what your all is, every step of the way.