Sarah McCarry's Blog, page 8

Guillotine #6: For Love or Money

"We talk a lot about the need for a politics of pleasure, and once again I’m talking not just sexual pleasure but all sorts of pleasures. To be able to say that not only should people not worry about starving to death but that they should be able to eat healthy, fresh, good food that they like. And I think it’s important to point out that this is not greed, that the myth of the greedy poor person is a distraction from the real greed, the systemic greed that’s embedded in policy. This is our right to live lives that are enjoyable, not just to pursue happiness or whatever the damn cliché is."

I am immensely delighted to bring you the sixth issue of Guillotine, For Love or Money, a conversation between the inimitable and formidable Sarah Jaffe and Melissa Gira Grant on sex, love, power, work, and how feelings have no part in the revolution. Guillotine #6 ships in March 2013; preorder it here. Preorder the special edition, with a limited-edition broadside designed by Bryan Reedy and letterpress printed by me, here.

Melissa Gira Grant is a writer and freelance journalist covering sex, tech, and politics, in the streets and everywhere else. Her reporting and commentary appears in The Nation, Wired, The Atlantic, Glamour, The Guardian, In These Times, The Washington Post, Dissent, and Slate, among other publications. Her latest book is Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work (Verso, 2014). More at: www.melissagiragrant.com.

Sarah Jaffe is a writer, reporter, and rabblerouser. Her work on economic justice, labor, and social movements can be found at In These Times, Dissent, The Atlantic, The American Prospect, The Progressive, and many other publications. She is co-host of Dissent magazine’s Belabored podcast, and is working on a book about social movements and financial crisis. Find her at www.adifferentclass.com.

Working: Christine Hou

Can you talk a little about the ways in which your illness works as a barrier to writing? What are some of the specific challenges you deal with?

I think illness, like many word-concepts in this world exist on spectrum. I’m bipolar II, but I try not to identify myself with this term. I try not to live in it. In some ways I don’t even see myself as having an “illness.” But take away my meds, which I have done to myself several times in my life, and I’m a very different person. I don’t think my illness acts as a direct barrier to my writing insomuch as my perspective on life, which is where my writing comes from. If I am too excited (or in psychiatric terms, experiencing hypomania) I can’t write. I just want to talk, talk, talk, talk, and move around and talk some more, usually getting louder and moving from one subject to another faster and faster. But I also can’t write when I’m having a depressive episode, or what I call “spiraling.” Spiraling is when I can’t stop falling inside the hole of my own sadness. I’ll just lie in bed, sometimes crying, sometimes not, and stare into space, paralyzed by my own mental state. These ups and downs can consume my being if not controlled. My ups are generally brief, a few hours in the day, maybe a whole day, but my downs last much longer…and then the day is gone. And then the week is gone. And then the month is gone. And then when it’s really bad, that is, when I become the hole itself, which has not happened in a while, I will have suicidal thoughts and consider entering into a psychiatric treatment facility.

Sometimes I will try to control the illness, meaning I will judge myself for it. Controlling/judging is a form of dwelling in it. When I dwell I cannot move. Barrier as lack of movement.

That's been a big struggle for me, too. "If I was tougher I would be better at dealing with this," "If I worked harder I would be better at dealing with this." And of course as soon as you start to talk to people about it, the common thing is "I can't work when I'm sick," or "I have a much more difficult time working when I'm sick." Your ability to function when you're ill isn't related in any way to your work ethic or value or worth as a person.

Exactly! When I'm not in my depression hole it seems like it should be so easy. "You can just snap out of it," I tell myself. But when I'm in it, the idea of "snapping out of it" seems impossible. When I was a teenager, my mom would say to me: "Just focus on your school work." But that's not how my illness, nor any illness that I know of, works.

"Controlling is a form of dwelling in it" makes a lot of sense to me--when I let go of dwelling on how I'm failing, I get a lot better at getting better.

In a counterintuitive way, it can be very comforting to dwell in it. It feels safe. I will say things to myself like, "This is just who I am. There's no use trying to fight it or get out of it." I find this mode of thought to be very dangerous and counterproductive because then I won't want to get better. I have to acknowledge that it is a feeling. I have to let go.

What are some specific things you do to manage your illness that you find effective?

I practice yoga regularly, I make collages in my studio, and smoke weed. Yoga during the day and weed at night. Collages in between while listening to audio books. I don’t know if weed is particularly “effective,” but it helps when I get too excited, anxious, and/or depressed. It takes the edge off.

What is your relationship to more traditional models of managing illness, like therapy and/or medication? Do you find them effective? Is accessing them an issue for you?

I have been in and out therapy and on and off medication for 14 years. Currently, I’m not in therapy because it takes too much time out of my schedule. I find medication to be effective for me, although I often question who I am on it. Medication dulls my sense of self, or I guess the “extreme” versions of myself. This is helpful in that it limits my manic and depressive episodes, which ultimately allows me more time to write.

I am lucky that access to medication is not an issue for me right now. I am on Medicaid, so everything is pretty much free. However, in the past, I have made poor decisions to just stop taking my medication because I didn’t have insurance, and didn’t want to pay out pocket for the doctor visits and meds. This has always proven to be a bad idea! However, when I’m on them I’ll think I’m completely fine and want to get off of them. “I don’t need these pills,” I’ll say to myself. This desire to not be on meds comes from a deep fear of losing my sense of self, or “edge,” when I’m on them.

This fear can also act as a barrier to my writing.

Yes, I have just contradicted myself in these last two answers…sorry.

I feel like there are a lot of ongoing contradictions in being human and that's pretty much fine. But I tend, I think like most of us, to be a lot more forgiving of them in other people than I am in myself.

Me too! Forgiveness is also a process.

What kind of relationship do you have to your illness? Does how you think about it change the way you live with it?

Like I said before, I try not to identify myself with my illness. It is part of me, but I am not it. When I was first asked to do this interview, I looked at the questions and remember thinking to myself, “but I don’t have a mental illness…” and then I look at all my pills, reflect on past, and realize that I do, but that that’s OK.

Yes! How I think about it definitely changes the way I live with it. It’s all about perspective and acceptance. The latter being easier said than done.

What's most useful for you in terms of support from other people? Is outside support important for you?

My partner Austin, is my biggest support. I don’t know how I would do what I do without him.

I don’t usually seek support from friends or family outside due to fear of becoming a burden. Support from my family is very important to me, but unfortunately, mental illness is not publicly addressed in Chinese culture. In a way I’ve learned not expect support from my family, so I’ve learned to do without it. Talking about mental illness is frowned upon and viewed as shameful, which is unfortunate. I come from a family of tough love, where everything has a practical answer, and feelings are viewed as obstacles from getting things done. This was always hard for me growing up. As a teenager, I often felt that my feelings were “wrong.” This resulted in very self-destructive behavior. I want to make clear that I am not blaming my family for any of this. They raised me the only way they knew how (i.e. the way they were raised) and I love them and am grateful for the world they’ve given me. I can only move from here.

Christine Shan Shan Hou is a poet and artists living in Brooklyn, NY. Publications include the forthcoming chapbook Food Cuts Short Cuts (The New Megaphone 2014), C O N C R E T E S O U N D (2011) a collaborative artists' book with artist Audra Wolowiec, and Accumulations (Publication Studio 2010). Additional poems and/or artwork appear in Weekday, EOAGH, Bone Bouquet, Belladonna, Gwarlingo, ILK, LIT, The Atlas Review, tender, Two Serious Ladies, and Lemon Hound amongst others. More at christinehou.com.

More about the Working interview series here.

Previously: Mairead Case, s.e. smith, and Red Mills.

Working: Red Mills

Can you talk a little about the ways in which your illness works as a barrier to writing? What are some of the specific challenges you deal with?

Depression and anxiety are neat little beasts in that either one can ruin me entirely. The former because it's almost impossible to do anything, let alone write, when all I want to do is stay in bed and beg for death; the latter because it is impossible to do anything when my mind constantly races, revisiting and rethinking as many events as it can stand to remember.

Depression is the hardest, though, because the way the disease works on me is by hollowing me out and claiming everything I'd use to fuel my words. The world becomes muted and I feel as if my ability to be creative is trapped beneath an ocean of angry, grey waves.

To switch and abandon metaphors sharply: depression is a fog covering my mental landscape and anxiety is the endless echoes leading me astray through the diaphanous banks.

What are some specific things you do to manage your illness that you find effective?

Very basic and very easy means of relaxation. I'll drink a pot of coffee while reading, for example, and the world will seem a little easier to cope with. Or I'll shut down all of my social media and play video games for the rest of the day. I'm lucky in that I have a supportive environment that allows me to withdraw as much as necessary while I recharge or fight through bad days. I'd even go so far as saying I'm lucky to be unemployed, because that eliminates one of the largest sources of stress people living with mental illness have to deal with.

But then I remember I can't buy a cup of coffee without relying on someone's kindness and I rethink that last bit. Regardless, managing both my depression and anxiety relies on shutting off my head's constant running commentary for as long as I can, by whatever means I can.

What is your relationship to more traditional models of managing illness, like therapy and/or medication? Do you find them effective? Is accessing them an issue for you?

I feel like I should make a point, here: regular therapy and my antidepressants are among some of the few reasons why I'm still alive. Before I managed to pull up from the death spiral depression had me in, I was shaking myself apart every day, getting worse and worse as the disease tangled itself in the workings of my head. When I was capable of reaching out, the meds and my Doc were there to pull me out of the hole.

But I recognize that I'm extremely lucky in both of these cases – I managed to get a referral to a therapist who I've been seeing for three years now, and she referred me to a prescribing doctor who got my medication right in two shots. Getting to my appointments and keeping my prescription filled are challenging though, as I can't drive and I don't have any money. Thankfully I've got my mother to help with the former and state insurance to keep the latter flowing.

Again, my luck here can't possibly be overstated. Not many people I talk to who're in a similar boat have had this kind of success with the traditional model.

When do you struggle most with self-care? When do you find it easier?

Days ending in Y, mostly. I lived with clinical depression for five years before getting treatment (and only then because I'd hit rock bottom by way of a suicide attempt) and during that time, the illness succeeded in destroying what little self-worth I'd had as a child of divorce/perpetual social outsider. Hell, the illness used the dissolution of my first relationship as its catalyst, which meant it had plentiful ammo with regards to convincing me that I truly was a useless, terrible monster. So there's a bunch of scar tissue that makes it hard to go about the average machinations of life without tripping up and hating myself for a few hours.

It's easy when I can (and please excuse the phrasing, it's just trapped inside of me thanks to my therapist using it every time we meet) “honor the moment,” so to speak. When my head's constant chatter is at a level I can ignore and I can focus on the tasks at hand, be it reading or using Twitter for weird fiction or goofing off on my 3DS.

What kind of relationship do you have to your illness? Does how you think about it change the way you live with it?

I've always thought of it as war, 'cause I can't stop comparing the bad days to artillery bombardments in which all I can do to keep myself safe is huddle up in the foxhole or trench and wait for the explosions to stop. Even when there's no thumping against the fortress walls, so to speak, I view the depression and anxiety as invaders to be burned out. I think the roots of this come from the fact that when it got really, really bad, the only emotion I felt with any regularity was anger – anger over my life falling apart, anger over losing control over my own head, anger over being near powerless to stop the downward slide.

And yes, thinking of it in terms of a battle makes it a littler easier to function in the day to day reality, because while depression makes me unimaginably tired, I can still muster the energy to fight . But on the flip side, it allows for times where I can't do anything but hate, so much, because of how much time the creeping tangle of illness has stolen from me.

What's most useful for you in terms of support from other people? Is outside support important for you?

The most useful thing I've ever gotten has been a safe place to self-destruct and rebuild. Mental illness hit me when I was young and vulnerable, which is deadly when you're an American teenager a year away from graduating high school. At that age we're told that we need to make decisions that'll affect our lives for years to come and combining that sort of pressure with the slow sinking miasma of depression is a recipe for churning out walking wounded people.

So, that said, I had two things going for me: the first was a few friends who, no matter how many times I kept shaking myself apart, were always around to help talk me through the process of piecing things back together. In the end, it wasn't enough, but I survived some terrible days because of their support. Second, and perhaps most importantly, I had a home where I could do the aforementioned piecing together. My mother – Jesus, my mother's why I lived to see therapy and medication work. She didn't kick me out, she didn't pressure me to find help, she didn't do anything but let me exist as I tried to work through the depression by myself.

And for her child that's most like her in stubborn temperament, that was the best thing she could've done. All that said, outside support was and is incredibly important to me.

How do you negotiate the balance between self-care and work for money and writing for love?

Honestly? I don't. Only recently have I gotten paid for my writing and even then, it was only one job. I'm experimenting with Patreon, but that's still in nascent stages. Writing for love is what I've always done, though most of the time it feels more like a compulsion than it does a passion. I get itchy if I don't make some sort of effort to be creative, which is how my Twitter account happened (and pitching to The Toast, and launching a Patreon project, and answering the call for an interview like this, etc., etc., etc.)

My recovery has been organic, in that over the years I've slowly started to reclaim my ability to live in a piecemeal fashion. So there's no real balance to speak of, only routines and territories I'm taking back from the tangle in my head and trying to integrate into the main body of my life.

What kinds of things help you with establishing those routines and learning to stick with them? (I am asking for selfish reasons, because this is one of the things I am really trying to get better at.)

Repetition. Constant repetition. Since the early days of my illness I've always tried to at least force a basic structure onto my life, i.e. wake up, take my meds, shower, get dressed, drink coffee and read bad fiction for a few hours, etc, etc. I'll have bad days and missteps, times where I forget to take my antidepressants until five in the evening or where I'll stay in bed past noon while staring at the ceiling, but backslides happen. They're a sign you've been making progress, that all of the fighting hasn't been wasted effort.

More directly, it's a matter of forgetting that you didn't follow through on all of your routines yesterday and remember that you've got another attempt in front of you. I do this very easily because my memory may as well be Swiss cheese for all of the consistency of form it has. But regardless, you try, over and over again, and be kind to yourself if you spend those hours in bed.

The entire thing reminds me of something my therapist and I talk about, which is there's a difference between knowing something and believing it. Which is to say, I know I'm not actually a horrific monster, but to believe that is worlds apart. It takes time and effort and constant repetition to internalize both habits and beliefs. So give yourself that time. I know that in my case, after years of living under the guillotine of depression, it's finally my time to give.

Does being a trans woman intersect with living with depression and anxiety for you? In what ways?

Oh, God, yes. First of all, the dysphoria I feel with regards to my body is regularly magnified by both. I'll be having an okay day, then start hyper focusing and worrying over a part of my overall features, and then it's three hours of a black hole later. Coming to terms with being trans was both a huge weight off of my shoulders and an additional war to wage, because my uneasy feelings regarding my gender suddenly found a focal point, i.e. “well no wonder you never felt comfortable presenting as a man, you're a woman” which then gets shifted to “fuck, you're terrible at presenting as a woman.”

Second, just existing is once again a task of tremendous effort. Whereas before I was just worried with getting through the day without wanting to die, now I fret over the rapid growth of my beard, how terrible I feel in all of my clothes that are made for a man's body, consternation with how short my hair currently is, etc., etc. It's very much another front in the battle of recovering my self-worth after the illnesses stole it from me. And even that's not the end of it, because while getting my house in order is all well and good, I still have to leave it and confront a world where women like me are seen as oddities at best, y'know?

That said, it's remarkably freeing to finally see a pretty girl in the mirror and feel happy because of it.

Aw, geez, that made me really happy, too.

Red Mills (@redfivetwo) is a writer from New England who spends time sending dispatches concerning life at odd angles from the frozen wastes of her home. Her work is entirely internet based and can be found by poking at her Twitter account (or by poking her on Twitter, whatever's clever.)

More about the Working interview series here.

Previously: Mairead Case and s.e. smith.

Working: s.e. smith

Can you talk a little about the ways in which your illness works as a barrier to writing? What are some of the specific challenges you deal with?

When I'm extremely depressed, it's difficult to do anything, let alone write, let alone write well. I'm usually not bothering to eat, or clean myself, or other basic things, and thus having to sit down and force myself to work goes poorly. Everything I do takes forever, and everything I turn out is crap, and I feel awkward turning it in to editors, but it's all I have--and that in turn feeds depression. On the flip side, when I'm manic, writing isn't really a problem, but I get so urgent and flaily that it's hard to write thoughtful, well-considered, articulate pieces. In both cases, getting any work done on private projects is just not going to happen, although I have dozens of half-started novel ideas developed in manic phases and later set aside as the absolute garbage they are. As for petty things like fact checking? Pffft.

And, of course, constant anxiety runs under everything--it's not so much a barrier to writing as it is a barrier to putting my work out there, to being assertive, to interacting with editors and other publishing and journalism professionals. Plus, being on submission like I am right now with a fiction project means the anxiety is at a fever pitch, and I spend way too much time alone with really ridiculous thoughts, convincing myself my book is terrible and every editor who rejects it hates it (not, you know, rejects it because she has a huge list and has to be selective and thus has to turn down great stuff sometimes, or because it's not quite a fit with her, or because she's already publishing something similar).

What are some specific things you do to manage your illness that you find effective?

I have really benefited from the use of medication to address some of the chemical imbalances in my brain that literally make me crazy. (Haha.) In the past, therapy has been really helpful. Also doing things like scheduling my time effectively and setting goals for the week, so I have a finite set of activities and I have clear boundaries on working hours (in the past, I've gotten into really unhealthy dynamics where I just work all the time). Being more open to friends about my mental illness and things they should be aware of when interacting with me--which doesn't mean asking for a freebie pass to be a jerk, but does mean openly discussing that sometimes there are things they can do to help me that will be really appreciated. Setting up some basic self-care parameters in terms of what I read and how I interact online has really helped too, because I had an extremely unhealthy relationship with the Internet for many years.

Managing my time carefully is theoretically effective for me as well, but I have a really difficult time with it even when I'm feeling well. Are there specific things you do that help you stay on a schedule?

So, I actually find Evernote really useful for this. I set up a checklist at the start of every week with a detailed day-by-day breakdown of what I need to do and in what order, and I also use my calendar to manage larger things. I try not to beat myself up over things--like today, I slept in until ten, had a hard time getting out of bed, and didn't start work until noon. Does that mean I have to work a little late? Yes, but I'm not going to be mad at myself for sleeping because my body obviously needed it. If my schedule does need to change, I'm careful to build in the change (although I admit that I tend to get really anxious and upset when it's shifted on me mid-week, especially by the demands of other people).

What is your relationship to more traditional models of managing illness, like therapy and/or medication? Do you find them effective? Is accessing them an issue for you?

I find both therapy and medication effective in my case, although I know that mileage with these treatment options is highly variable. I dislike a culture that simultaneously pressures mentally ill people to use these treatments and then shames them for doing it--everyone needs to find the treatment modalities that work for them, and that can take weeks, months, or even years. In terms of access, I had a nightmare trying to get onto medication; I had to fight for six months to even get an appointment at the community clinic with a medications management nurse who could work with me. This is a documented issue in Mendocino County, where many people seeking care are denied and unless you have the determination (and mental status) to fight for it, you won't get it. This is also, of course, the county that experienced a shooting incident followed by a month-long manhunt that ended in law enforcement shooting a mentally ill man in the back, and seriously considered enacting Laura's Law (one of several compulsory medication laws in the US) as a result--because obviously forcing people to take medication is totally logical instead of improving access to mental health services so people never get to that point. Ahem. I am digressing.

In terms of therapy, the real barrier to access is cost. Therapy is extremely expensive and many therapists refuse to take insurance/aren't covered by insurance. (Not that I have insurance…in fact, even though I'm trying my hardest to comply with the Obamacare mandate, thanks to Covered California's delays, I still don't have insurance!) Theoretically mental health parity laws are supposed to improve insurance coverage, but that doesn't mean therapists are going to jump to start processing insurance.

Right, this is such a challenging piece--because managing medications is an ongoing process that's unbelievably expensive out-of-pocket. (Which is not a question, just a frustration.)

Frustration, shared. I got really lucky because my meds manager gave me a government discount card even though I'm not really eligible, and my meds are still expensive. It can be really frustrating if you have to try a bunch of different medications to find the ones that work, because it starts to feel like money down the drain as your bathroom cabinet begins to look like a small pharmacy. Sometimes you can get compassionate use or samples, and I wish that was more heavily emphasised and also made available for people just getting onto meds. (Of course, there's also the danger of abruptly going off--one of my meds will cause seizures if I stop taking it suddenly, which means that I HAVE to make sure my prescription is filled at all costs.)

When do you struggle most with self-care? When do you find it easier?

When I'm stressed out with too much work on my plate, when I'm fatigued, when I'm on a tight deadline, it's really hard to remember even the most basic of self-care (DON'T CLICK THAT LINK, S.E.). In other words, usually at the times I most critically need it. And, of course, it's easiest when I'm healthy, because I can keep focusing on making healthy decisions for myself.

What kind of relationship do you have to your illness? Does how you think about it change the way you live with it?

My illness is an inextricable part of me. It doesn't define me, but it's part of my definition; I wouldn't be the person I am without it. And it's not a blessing or some sort of magical things, as many people seem to think with mental illness and creative people--my mental illness doesn't make me any more creative than eating lentils for dinner does. It's just a thing that I live with, and something I manage to make sure it doesn't eat me alive, which it often very much wants to do--I've compared it to a monster inside me, but it's also like a tiger in my living room. Content to sit around not doing much of anything, until it decides to do something, and you can't predict when that's going to happen. Living in a culture where having a tiger in your living room is something to be ashamed of, I've been forced to deal with a lot of internalised stigma and self-hate about being mentally ill, to come to terms with that and to be able to comfortably say 'I'm mentally ill. It's a thing. I deal with it.'

Sometimes I get very frustrated and feel as though I need to constantly double-check emotions and reactions, asking myself if this is The Crazy talking, or a completely valid response. I jokingly call this process the sanity check (thanks, mathematicians, really), and what started out as a tool for questioning my motivations has become a great tool for self-reflection, thinking before I speak, and owning my emotions. A friend of mine carelessly commented the other day that crazy people shouldn't be hired by the CIA because we'd be terrible with impulse control and state secrets (there was a lead up to this, I promise), and I thought it was just the opposite--because we've spent so long learning how to evaluate emotions and situations to maintain control, we're about the safest people in the world.

It sounds like how you think about your illness has evolved quite a bit over time. Would you say that's accurate? What spurred that evolution?

Very accurate! A big part of what spurred that shift was getting into disability politics and the mental health movement, where I found fellow disabled people and those resisting dominant paradigms. It was very eye-opening for me to discover that there were a lot more of us than I realised, that we were here, we were crazy, and people were just going to have to get used to it. I owe, literally, my life to the disability rights movement, not just for all the great things it's done for disabled people, but for how much it touched me personally.

What's most useful for you in terms of support from other people? Is outside support important for you?

Sometimes I just need people to leave me alone. Sometimes I need people to come hang out and play Scrabble with me, and to not embroil me in conversations about work--I love my work and love what I do, but being a journalist who focuses on social justice and cultural issues doesn't mean I want to talk about these things all the time. Sometimes I just want to play Cards Against Humanity. I have a fantastic network of friends who are wonderful and amazing when I need to rant about something--which I think is an emotion common to all of us, not just us crazies. These people will feed me when I'm being shite at self care, if I'm collected enough to ask them, and some of them do it without even having to be asked (the best, I love you, M!). Just affirming that I'm a human being with value is sometimes so important.

The one thing I don't need from my friends and loved ones is therapy, which is something many of them seem to think they should be providing. While I definitely have conversations about feelings and emotions with friends, those are about specific things: like, say, an emotional issue I want to address. I prefer working with a therapist on larger issues because of the barrier of professionalism, the fact that the therapist is trained, the fact that therapy is intended to get deep and messy and vulnerable but it takes place in an atmosphere of trust. I want to be able to work through my issues with someone I'm not going to be tickling on a couch later, you know?

Did it take you a long time to find a therapist with whom you could have that kind of relationship?

Actually, no! I was forced into therapy as a child (please don't do this, people, forced therapy is no more effective than forced meds) and it went poorly, as one might expect, but when I sought out a therapist on my own, I found the right one on the first try. I realise this is practically unheard of, and I'm really glad it worked out the way it did. Sadly, Steve isn't going to be covered by my as-yet hypothetical insurance, so I'll have to find a new therapist with [Insurer], and I'm a bit curious to see how that goes. And by curious I mean 'dreading.'

You're also a freelancer--how do you negotiate the balance between self-care and writing for love and writing for work? Is there a particular aspect of that balance that's most challenging for you, and how do you navigate it?

Aaaagh story of my life. It's a constant juggling act and in recent months writing for work has definitely been winning. For me, I budget energy and time to paid work first, since obviously I need money to survive, but also because I take a pride in always turning work in polished and on time--I have yet to miss a deadline, and I want to keep it that way. I want a reputation for being reliable and easygoing, because that gets me more work, but it's also just a personal thing--missteps, for me, tend to lead to falls. (I also confess that a part of me wants to make a point about mental illness and employment--that along with other disabled people, we are perfectly capable of working and being good at what we do.) And sometimes work ends up eating everything, and thus I barely have any time to write for love. (I've been sneakily including writing for love on my personal website over the years, but things like long form fiction aren't suited to that platform--luckily, when I do sit down to do that, I bang out a draft pretty fast.)

Unfortunately, I'm still not very good at integrating self-care into this whole process. If getting work done means staying on the computer later than I'm supposed to, or forgetting lunch and then wondering why I am dizzy and nauseated, I will--and I need to come up with a more functional way to address that. Much like larger questions of managing mental illness, there is no magic solution, and everyone's best approach varies. Clearly, I need to look harder for mine.

photo: Brendan McGuigan

s.e. smith is a writer, agitator, and commentator based in Northern California, with a journalistic focus on social issues, particularly gender, prison reform, disability rights, environmental justice, queerness, class, and the intersections thereof, with a special interest in rural subjects. International publication credits include work for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, and AlterNet, among many other news outlets and magazines. Assisted by cats Loki and Leila, smith lives in Fort Bragg, California.

Working: Mairead Case

This interview project came out of an ongoing conversation with my friend, the writer Mairead Case, and so it feels particularly appropriate to open it with my interview with her. More about the Working project here.

Can you talk a little about the ways in which your illness works as a barrier to writing? What are some of the specific challenges you deal with?

My friend was having a hard time finishing his first book, so to help he started thinking about finishing the manuscript like fixing the sink. When you are fixing the sink you do not say oop, this is so hard! I'll come back in a year. Or geez wait, is this actually a washing machine? Have I been doing dishes in the washing machine? Nope, you just work until the sink is fixed, possibly with a sandwich break or something, and then you move on. You do not dwell.

My illness (I usually say "my depression") either makes me clean obsessively around the sink until I run out of time to fix it right, or it makes me turn off all the lights and cover my face and go to bed. To be clear: yes, I have doubt and anxiety, and sure I've been traumatized and heartbroken, but these are different than my illness, my depression, which just takes all the color.

I can't write when I'm sick, which is how I know it's a sickness because I am a writer. For me it's more complicated than a boundary or a gate, it's a vortex--but does it feel like a barrier to you?

Yeah, like a literal barrier. Sometimes I'm just sad and that's a really different thing for me than being sick. Like, I'm the person who stays up late reading blog posts about human rights violations and polar bears going extinct and crying, but I can still work when I'm sad like that, when I'm heartbroken by the world. When I'm sick there's a wall between me and the world and I know things are better outside it but I stop caring and I stop working. I'm still learning how to be patient with it and patient with myself.

Yup, I hear that.

What are some specific things you do to manage your illness that you find effective?

The most helpful thing is framing it as a chronic illness with flare-ups, which it is. It's real. So I don't put myself at risk--I don't miss my meds, I don't work at a desk without light and color, I don't sacrifice sleep or food if I'm in transition--and if I do find myself presenting symptoms there is a list of things to do. (I made an actual diagram, it looks like a use of force continuum with more hearts.)

Another thing I do is try to get in the back door. One component of my depression is obsessive compulsion, which of course can be totally paralyzing if it gets out of hand. I live in a city and I work in public spaces, so I can't let myself get freaky about cleanliness, or complicated daily routines. As if I could anyway. On the flipside, my compulsion makes me a really good teacher, and legal observer, and editor--it's helpful to think of it as a power to be used for good or for evil. Also I journal almost every day, which serves as a sound check, among other things. How do you manage yours? Do you journal too?

Yeah, I do. There are a lot of specific things that are very helpful to me, actually--exercising, cooking healthy food for myself, not drinking, getting enough sleep. All of those things are usually the first to go out the window when the wall goes up. But more recently I've been framing that in my head as a set of choices that I'm making that I have agency over, like "Right now I feel shitty, and I'm gonna do this thing that makes me feel shittier, and it's what I need to do to get through this, but making a different choice is a nice goal for next time." If that makes sense. Instead of "I can't take care of myself because I am a GIANT FUCKUP," "I am choosing not to take care of myself, but I've done better in the past, and I will do better in the future." Which has been weirdly helpful. Do you feel like your relationship to your depression is evolving as you get older?

That does make sense. I've made that choice too sometimes, for friends or work, and especially now that I trust myself on the "I will do better in the future" part, and so I do---I do my job and it's cool, and then I build my reserves back up and everybody's cool, and let's go on. But I never ever skimp on appointments or meds, if only because I know I want my friends to keep any routines that keep them healthy, and I need to practice what I preach. That's my baseline. It's different for different folks.

Thing is though, I think this is being a person who is responsible to the world and who loves her friends and her work--not a fuckup who consistently redeems herself just in the nick of time. This too is a point where I've learned to communicate especially well, in my journal and with close friends. Otherwise they are like "Dude, you've been sitting in your sparkling clean office eating sandwiches for a while now, are you OK? Is it me?" Agency is a really good word for all of this, you're right. When I was younger I wanted to do it all myself, no communication no meds. But no middle ground is generally exhausting, and I can't argue with health. My mom always said, “Listen to your body,” and I’m much better at that now that I’m older.

What is your relationship to more traditional models of managing illness, like therapy and/or medication? Do you find them effective? Is accessing them an issue for you?

When I started puberty I got so sick. I really just stopped wanting to be. I went ghost. I lost way too much weight and my face went blank, and my handwriting got pin-sized, and then my family (myself included, plus two of my high school teachers) saved my life. One day some people brought me to a ward and we had a healthy talk together and I decided that I--and of course I am not everybody, but personally speaking I would not get better if I lived there even for a bit. I would feel so lonely. And so I said no to that kind of therapy. But I do take medication, and I do see a therapist. My family’s care, and the agency I had in that situation despite being so sick—I needed both of those to get better. Fifteen-year-story short, yes I do have issues with the health care system in this country, but rejecting it at the cost of my health would be nuts.

Today, thanks to experience and my therapist, I take medicine that works really well for me. It can take a while to figure it out, for example at first my medication felt like there was a blanket inside my head, it made me not want to have sex, and also it stopped me from dreaming, and crying at movies. So: nope. That's not life anymore than ghosting was, for me. (It's funny--one of the tics I have as a reviewer is saying "this made me cry" instead of "this part was powerful because of XYZ," and really what I'm saying is "this book is so good it made me feel at home in my body.")

After puberty I did go off medication once, to see if maybe this wasn't a chronic illness, and eventually I felt myself getting sick again. So I went back to my diagram, which I made with the help of my therapist when I was sixteen, and eventually, I went back on medication. My point is that depression is manageable for me, but just like anything else you have to be present. I'd imagine I'll stay on medication for the rest of my life, paying careful attention if I'm pregnant, and when I go through menopause.

I am a daily runner and I consider that part of my management routine too, kind of like how Chris Mullin went gym rat to overcome his alcohol abuse. (Obvious differences being I just run forty-five minutes along the railroad tracks in a band shirt, and I am not an alcoholic. But it helps me check in and stay up in similar ways.) I get acupuncture when I can afford it because it makes me feel like I swallowed six buckets of light. If I need a Rocky moment before leaving the apartment I listen Daft Punk's "Make Love," or Brian Eno's "The True Wheel," or New Order. I know you are a music person too… is there any music you especially do or don't listen to, to stay up?

New Order! Totally New Order. Stuff with sad lyrics and lots of dancing. I like LCD Soundsystem for that too. And yeah, acupuncture is so good. When I lived in Portland you could get it at this community place for ten dollars, which is probably the only thing I miss about Portland.

LCD Soundsystem, yes those albums are perfect for those times. For making-soup times too. Oh and Cookie Mueller! Ask Dr. Mueller counts as pop songs.

When do you struggle most with self-care? When do you find it easier?

I struggle in the average ways--like, let's say I'm a mountain climber and ten years ago I broke my leg and had to have a plate and pins put into it. I worked hard in PT and got it strong again. Most of the time it's good as new, and I remember to stretch and so I don't even think about my injury. But sometimes, if I'm climbing an especially tall mountain or it's really freaking cold or I'm worried about my friend instead, I don't stretch like I should and it starts to throb. That's when I struggle, because I'd rather just be climbing the mountain like I know I can… what I mean is, when I am neck-deep in work self-care can be frustrating because I'd rather be writing, or in the classroom or my community, but that doesn't mean I don't do it. I do it--like Phranc I'm sticking around.

What kind of relationship do you have to your illness? Does how you think about it change the way you live with it?

A good one, today and forwards from here. If it was anything short of that I personally would not talk about it on the Internet! We all have bad days but I'm done with the ghost-ones. The nice thing about those is you can see them coming from a long ways away.

That's really interesting to me, because the opposite is true for me--I get sick around the same times each year, usually, but otherwise it comes out of nowhere. But I've heard other people describe it as a thing they can actually see or smell or hear from a distance.

That makes sense to me too. We should make you some clappers, so you can scare it off seasonally like when Vicky Robinson went camping in The Parent Trap and was worried about cougars. (Only yours would actually work!)

Oh man, that sounds good. You’re supposed to blow a whistle, too. My friend actually did get followed by a cougar in the woods once, and it turned out okay, but I don’t know if there’s a metaphor there. What's most useful for you in terms of support from other people? Is outside support important for you?

Well, sure. When I feel like E.T. I phone home. My sister saved my life times two, once because of her advice and love and twice because I love her too. I want to take care of her too. So specific outside support is important from her, and from a few close dears, but beyond that circle not really--unless I'm being a friend or an ally, and in that case I listen a lot too. Or, unless I'm journaling, or re-reading old journals, which absolutely feels like outside support as well. Reading is outside support too, especially your own words.

I like thinking about the first letter in Dodie Bellamy and Sam D'Allesandro's (heartbreaking!) book Real: The Letters of Mina Harker and Sam D'Allesandro. Mina says she wants her words to "sparkle but it's difficult when living in a body that's contemplating the Void. Everything is gnarled--gargoyles poke from the armrests of my antique sofa." She feels like she's turning into a baby so asks her partner Kevin if he'll take care of her. He says no, he's not capable of that "but I could move in with him and he would see me every day and night until I grew up again." Mina says that's true love. I don't relate to feeling like a baby but yes, especially when you're sick you do need someone to see you regularly. That is part of love for sure. Holding the physical space.

Has anybody (friends, books, songs--anybody) ever said anything to you that really stood out as good self-care advice? Or is outside support not helpful to you these days?

You, actually. Describing it as a chronic illness, with flare-ups--I mean, it's really obvious once you look at it that way, but that was a little lightbulb for me. I used to think of it as a shitty roommate. But a roommate you can still kick out, technically, and getting sick is more like—we don’t beat ourselves up for not being able to work when we have the flu, right? So thinking of it as being sick is more helpful for me now.

And Kate Bornstein's book Hello, Cruel World, which we have talked about. The whole idea that as long as you're not being a shit to other people, what matters most is keeping yourself alive, and whatever you need to do to stay there is okay. I'm not great at talking to people but I do have a lot of amazing people in my life and knowing they're there helps. And I'm good at talking to myself. I've been living with this for twenty years now and I get exhausted by it, for sure, but I can still tell myself, "You did this the last time. You can do it now." I have a little inner therapist who used to be a total bitch but she's getting better at her job the older I get. Do you do that, too?

Awesome, I’m glad. I felt the same when my sister said it to me. About the inner therapist slash wise neighbor (who kind of reminds me of Raoul in your book!): yes, same, and I like her as well. She first piped up when I was young and had someone tell me it will always be like this, which I mean... geez. If it was always like that then I would not be here now. But then she spoke up and said "Yes, but it won't always FEEL like this," and that was incredibly helpful. Lately I am excited to get older and keep doing what I'm doing, which is rad and lucky.

One thing you said that's helped me is being no-bones about how time alone is important. I spend a lot of time alone too, and sometimes I forget not to feel guilty about it, because so much of my life is in community (as is yours), or that being alone doesn't mean being lonely. I would've felt alone on that ward but not here, drinking coffee at my bright red desk.

You're also a freelancer--how do you negotiate the balance between self-care and writing for love and writing for work?

I always write for love, there's no other way. I operate on a strict budget, I know when my money comes and goes. Even when I wrote ad copy for green socks, that was money I needed for a roof, meals, and meds so it was for love too.

Caption

Mairead Case (@maireadcase) is a writer, editor, and teacher. An MFA-W candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and graduate of the 2013 Summer Writing Program at Naropa, Mairead is Youth Services Assistant at the Poetry Foundation Library; a manuscript editor; and a columnist at Bookslut.

Working: An Interview Project

I've been talking for a while now to a friend of mine about living with depression, and how to live with it a little better, and the more I thought about it the more I thought, Here's a conversation, a big one. An important one. Many of my friends are writers and nearly all of us struggle with depression and/or other kinds of mental illness--chronic, ongoing, and for many of us debilitating. There's the myth, right, of the Tortured Artist, and then there's the reality, which is most often exhausting and difficult and not at all glamorous.

For most of us there is no getting well, no fix, no switch to flip in our heads so that we walk out into the world all bright-eyed and stripped clean of the weights that threaten to carry us back to the bottom. There's only learning to live with illness, and live with it as well as we can, and learning to love ourselves and take care of ourselves and get our work done--the real work, the work of living and breathing and making art and loving people and running around in the world, flawed, messy, human, real. Most importantly, alive. All of us live with illness in different ways, but I hope that by talking about it, by making space for a dialogue that is honest and hard and sometimes even hopeful, about what we do to manage and what we do when we can't manage, about how we're going to keep telling our stories for the rest of our long and glorious lives, we can learn more about what does and doesn't work for each of us, and that we can feel a little less alone.

And so I'm compiling an ongoing and open-ended interview series focused on writers who identify as living/struggling with depression and mental illness. While recognizing that illness affects us all in different ways, and that works for one person is not necessarily going to work for another, I'm hoping to open up an honest and practical conversation about being a working writer (by which I mean "anyone who works on writing"); living with, working with, and managing depression and illness; and finding a balance between the work we have to do, the work we want to do, and taking care of ourselves.

I'm deeply grateful to everyone who's volunteered time and energy and honesty and courage to participate in this project thus far, and I hope these conversations are as useful to you as they have been to me. The first interview will go up on Monday and I'll post future interviews as they're finished, in between my usual sporadically-updated book reviews and Deep Thoughts About Myself.

I'm particularly interested in talking to women of color and/or queer and trans* writers, freelancers/adjuncts/frantic hustlers, people without insurance, and/or other folks who may have economic barriers to accessing traditional models of care. If you're a writer and would like to participate, please contact me at mccarry.sarah[at]gmail.com.

In love, and in solidarity--
xo
sarah

Dirty Wings Has A Cover

Dirty Wings has a cover! I have been referring to it as the Empire Strikes Back of the trilogy for reasons that will become obvious upon reading. The third book has a happy ending, swear to God. Dirty Wings comes out July 15. Preorder it at Indiebound here; preorder it at WORD bookstore here.

Maia is a teenage piano prodigy and dutiful daughter, imprisoned in the oppressive silence of her adoptive parents' house like a princess in an ivory tower. Cass is a street rat, witch, and runaway, scraping by with her wits and her knack for a five-fingered discount. When a chance encounter brings the two girls together, an unlikely friendship blossoms that will soon change the course of both their lives. Cass springs Maia from the jail of the only world she's ever known, and Maia's only too happy to make a break for it. But Cass didn't reckon on Jason, the hypnotic blue-eyed rocker who'd capture Maia's heart as soon as Cass set her free--and Cass isn't the only one who's noticed Maia's extraordinary gifts. Is Cass strong enough to battle the ancient evil she's unwittingly awakened--or has she walked into a trap that will destroy everything she cares about?In this time, like in any time, love is a dangerous game.

Books I Have Been Reading Lately

Donna Tartt




The Goldfinch



784pp. Little Brown. 9780316055437

Like you need me to tell you to read this or like anyone who has been reading this blog and its ongoing semi-obsessive TSH fandom for more than five minutes will be surprised that I loved it, but even I was surprised by just how much I loved it--like, falling so deeply into this gorgeous, fully-realized world that I barely looked up from it for forty-eight hours until I turned the last page (my friend, coming over to make dinner, walking in on me as I wept over the last ten pages, saying, "I'm sorry, I can't talk to you until I'm done with this.") I haven't read a book that way since I was a kid--totally immersed, breath held, hours falling away without my noticing. But for those few philistines among you (ha! that's a joke, books about pretentious drunk lunatic rich white kids are not for everyone, I know, totally fair) who did not love The Secret History, I cannot tell you enough to give this one a try anyway--it's so much more human, more real, more glorious, and more compassionate; it's funny as hell; and it is, ultimately, about the power of very great art to transform us in its own image until we become a little greater ourselves, and who doesn't love that. (And if you did love The Secret History you will be delighted as I was to catch out her various sly references to it, including but not limited to a delicious cameo from Francis.) And you know, the mental image of Donna Tartt meticulously sourcing and consuming a variety of pharmaceutical opiates "for research" is pretty glorious. Also, SHE MAKES FUN OF THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. IDK, basically Donna Tartt is the only living writer I can think of who can make me care about 800 pages of white dude, so. There you go.

Ann Marie Wirth Cauchon




Nothing



178pp. Two Dollar Radio. 9781937512118

Nothing is dense and sinister and often gorgeous and always dirty, mean, messy, full of sharp edges. Set against a backdrop of massive wildfires raging across Montana, it's the story of Ruth, who's living a dead-end existence in Missoula with only her best friend Bridget for anything like company; but their friendship is more ugly than freeing, full of jealousy, spite, and complicated longings. Anne Marie Wirth Cauchon isn't afraid of anything as a writer, and she certainly isn't afraid to lay bare the complexities and dark side of female friendships. When drifter James hitchhikes into town, looking for clues to his father's decades-old disappearance, he sets in motion a chain of events that will bring all three main characters to a ruthless and unforgiving place. But there's a deep beauty to the novel, too; Wirth Cauchon has an effortlessly cool style that balances out the story's darkness and breathes air into its sometimes-claustrophobic corners. Two Dollar Radio is a small press that keeps putting out great, boundary-pushing work by women--Grace Krilanovich's The Orange Eats Creeps, Karolina Waclawiak's How To Get Into the Twin Palms--and Nothing is an worthy addition to that very excellent roster.

Simone Schwarz-Bart




The Bridge of Beyond



272pp. NYRB Classics. 9781590176801

I wrote about The Bridge of Beyond for the Book Smugglers but I'm telling you about it extra because it's one of the most extraordinary books you'll ever read--unbelievably gorgeous, alive, and capable of single-handedly remaking the way you think about books. I swear, it's that good.

Amina Cain




Creature



144pp. Dorothy. 0984469383

Danielle Dutton has the best taste, hands down--I haven't read a single thing from Dorothy, A Publishing Project that wasn't brilliant, and Amina Cain's Creature is no exception. These stories are icy little gems, each a fully-realized world of its own--single lines hint at whole lifetimes of love, loss, disappointment, regret. Cain has that rare and glorious knack of the perfect last line--one after another, her drily funny, mysterious, and beautiful stories end with a knife straight to the heart.

Other stuff I'm reading: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah, which is every bit as good as everybody says it is; Neil Shubin's lovely, erudite The Universe Within; David Markson's Wittgenstein's Mistress, which I am rather startled to find myself enjoying; and I just finished Veronica Roth's Divergent, about which I had a Great Many Thoughts, which will likely appear here at some point. I have a little more free time now, which I am defending with my life.

where i've been

It wasn't a hard year but it's been a hard couple of months and sometimes when it's hard you forget all the times that came before, when all the world was light and love and everyone around you was the people you wanted, arms open.

I found out a few days ago an old friend I haven't talked to in years is dying and I could say all the things you are supposed to say about it: remember to be grateful, remember how lucky you are, remember what it is to be alive and healthy on the corner of sixty-fifth and second thinking about the grocery store on the way home from your new temp job and whether you will go there for dinner or take the train an extra stop on the way home and walk the three blocks back to your apartment from the grocery store you know best. But I don't actually know what to say. I don't want my friend to die and she shouldn't and nobody should, that I love, nobody should that anybody loves, until it's their time. Whatever that means. Until they had all the chances they needed to live the life that they wanted. Just writing that feels stupid.

I've been lucky; death has not been around much, in my living, and so all of this is new to me. Facebook posts saying goodbye to her sandwiched between buzzfeed kitten listicles. It's been a long time since someone I love has left me behind. The last two days I've gone to work at my new temp job, a job I am hoping half-heartedly will become a real job, because it's been ten years since I went to the doctor, since I knew for sure I'd have the rent this month and next month and the month after that, and I'm tired, and I'm not as young as I used to be, but also: the overhead lights in those places, the way they suck the life from your skin, the way you put on clothes you wouldn't wear every morning, to pretend you are someone you're not, fooling no one. I couldn't tell anyone at my temp job that my friend was dying so I went into the bathroom at fifteen-minute intervals and locked myself in a stall and cried instead, and hoped no one noticed that the wacky temp was disintegrating visibly at her post, despite liberal applications of the forty-dollar concealer she drunk-dialed off Sephora a couple of weeks previous. We just keep going, I guess. It's easier when everyone else pretends you're okay.

Usually in December I try to be virtuous, try to practice all the good choices I am planning for the year ahead, but this month I am letting myself get through it. In the little windows of free time I have it's all whiskey and binge-watched episodes of the Vampire Diaries and I'm just gonna keep my head above water and remind myself that sometimes surviving is enough. Sometimes that's all you can manage; being human is messy and not everyone is good at doing yoga all the time. You are stronger than this is hard is a thing I learned to say this year, to other people, and this month I am going to say it to myself. We get through it because it's the best choice to make, and because we remember that some months the light is clear and cold and lovely and the corner of sixty-fifth and second reminds us of the glory of being home in the world, in our bodies, surrounded by love; because sometimes tomorrow is as hard as today but sometimes tomorrow is a gift, and we never know until we get there which one it's going to be.

Guillotine #5: [Censorship & Homophobia], by Eve Kosofksy Sedgwick

“It is speech and visibility that legitimate us. It is speech and visibility that give us any political power that we have”: A richly personal and incisive essay from one of the most important critical theorists of the twentieth century on free speech, homophobia, and violence. As relevant now as it was the year it was written.

It is, without a doubt, one of the greatest honors of my life to bring to you this previously unpublished 1990 essay from a writer whose work has altered and enriched the way so many people look at the world. Funny, fierce, hugely brilliant, it's one hell of a piece of writing. I'm deeply grateful to Eve's husband Hal Sedgwick for permission to publish it, to the New York City Anti-Violence Project for access to their archives, which were invaluable in footnoting the essay, and to all of you for reading, and for your ongoing support of Guillotine. This one is really special.

The chapbook will ship in December 2013; you can preorder it here.

Preorder the special edition, which ships with a limited-run broadside print, here.

And more exciting things are in store for Guillotine in 2014: subscriptions! an unbelievable lineup of writers! a brand-spanking-new website! Sign up for the mailing list here to receive extremely infrequent and highly pertinent updates, special discount codes, and the first crack at new chapbooks.