Kimberly McCreight's Blog, page 103
November 19, 2015
Happiness Isn’t Just An Outside Thing
HAPPINESS ISN’T JUST AN OUTSIDE THING
Disclaimer: Below
is a post detailing my existing struggle with suicidal thoughts and doesn’t
hold back. If you worry this may trigger any buried suicidal feelings of your
own instead of providing comfort or insight to my personal experience, then
please play it safe and skip this. If you’re currently struggling with the idea
of suicide and need to reach out to someone please go see someone you trust
and/or hit up the Suicide Prevention Lifeline and stay on the line until you
can trust yourself to not act on these feelings. If one operator isn’t making
you feel better, hang up and call again until you speak to someone who helps
you find the value in yourself. The number is 1-800-273-8255.If you’ve met me before or follow me online your takeaway is
probably along the lines of how happy I am and not how suicidal I am. I’ve
struggled with suicidal feelings for many years now and this is the first year
I’ve been speaking more openly about this. When I was twenty-one I stood on the
roof of my first apartment building and a call with MIRACULOUS timing from my
best friend got me to step down, a fact I’m pretty sure he wasn’t aware of
until this year. In January 2014, one month after getting my first book deal, I
was ready to kill myself again, and just like the first time, a call from my
other best friend in a different time zone saved my life. About two weeks ago I
was ready to commit suicide and this time around it took a gang of best friends
scattered across the map, my incredible publishing team, and two calls to the
Suicide Prevention Lifeline to save my life.I have a tattoo on my collarbone: HGO, which stands for
Happiness Goes On. I was on an afternoon date a few years ago and immediately
lost interest in the guy so I lied about having a tattoo appointment so I wouldn’t
have to stay out too long. But then I felt bad about lying and had time to
spare before a birthday party so I got a tattoo. I wanted this tattoo to serve
as a reminder that twice in my life I was ready to quit, and even though it
took many months and even years to get over the pain and worthlessness, I
endured, survived, and happiness came again. And I’m not bullshitting you here,
but that tattoo was pretty invisible during the scariest week of my life. I don’t
remember seeing it once and I don’t remember believing in what it represented
at that time.This post may surprise people because, on paper, I’ve had a
good year. Next year is looking good, too. 2017 is shaping up to be even
better. And things are falling into place for 2018. But these good things are
only the measurements in the book arena of my life. Trust me that it is
100,000% unhealthy for anyone to measure their worth by sales and starred
reviews and author tours and national marketing campaigns. I’m reducing my time
on all social media because these things have all added to my recent anxiety
and panic attacks, which exist independently from all dark thoughts. There’s a
history of mental illness on my father’s side of the family—schizophrenia, dissociative
disorder, and yes, uncles who’ve committed suicide.—so I want to note that I
also suffer from pretty bad OCD. The combination of anxiety and OCD have
resulted in my fingerprints all over every rung of my career—possibly more so
than other authors—until things are RIGHT in my eyes and CLICK in my head, and
I’ll spare you all the details on what I mean by this. The point is that it’s
taken this really bad week for me to finally relinquish control on things that
were only stressing me out further to create a healthier headspace for myself
and so I can focus on my personal life, both appreciating and extending it.My best friend Luis said many life-saving things to me that
week, and onwards, and one of my favorites is when he recognized my need to become
“Adam Silvera, human who writes, and not writer who humans.” Publishing a book
has always been my dream, but once that dream came true it didn’t arrive with
the infinite happiness I swore it would; I wasn’t untouchable to unhappiness. I
don’t blame publishing, by the way. I just hate my warped perspective on
publishing and hope that I can correct this moving forward so I can truly
appreciate all the victories, big and small.When it comes to talking to others about my problems it
might be hard for them to take me seriously because I will VERY RARELY speak to
anyone when I’m knee-deep in my latest funk. Instead I wait until I’m in
somewhat better spirits, have had enough time to review why I’m feeling a
certain way, and will then express it in a joking ha-ha manner that no one
could possibly be at fault for dismissing entirely. I’m guessing I’ve done this
subconsciously because I don’t value my own issues enough to believe anyone
could possibly care about this. In the very recent past I made an unforgivable
joke where I said “Ugh, life is too long.” It’s pretty disgusting because I’m
fully aware how many people wish they were privileged with another day or
better health and here I am wishing my time away. (If I ever made this joke
around you and you were too kind to tell me to shut the fuck up please know I’m
really sorry and wish I wasn’t such an inconsiderate idiot.) Even though it’s
my worst insensitive joke ever I do have to confess the sentiment is genuine.
Two days after hitting the New York Times
bestseller list, one of the book’s biggest wins ON PAPER, I was chilling with
authors in Chicago and we were talking about upcoming projects in 2017 and I
sank. David Arnold, one of my best buddies who’s very familiar with my suicidal
history, noticed my drop in energy, but I played it off because I didn’t want
to talk about how the thought of being around in 2017 exhausted and depressed
me. I called my best friend when I got to my hotel room that night and
expressed this to him because talking about these feelings has proven to be a
way better outlet than absorbing all the pain by myself. It sucks though that
talking about our problems isn’t like a surefire magical spell that cleanses us
of all our depression and pain, but instead actually only relieves us temporarily
and leaves behind smudges everywhere.It’s not uncommon for me to sink when good things are
happening in my life, and I’m sure others experience this as well. It’s a high
and you’re only left wanting more and then “More” doesn’t show up for work and
you’re left super disappointed. Maybe that’s just me, but dozens of these
moments eventually avalanched and left me feeling worthless and hopeless and
crushed and alone despite having some of the greatest friends ever.This is where it gets maybe a little too dark, but for a
couple of weeks before this crash I’d been planning a solo trip where I was
basically going to figure out how I would kill myself because I was tired of
the worthlessness and hopelessness and loneliness I’d been feeling tenfold. I
knew—or, if we’re being brutally honest, half-believed—deep down I didn’t want
this for myself but because the thought kept returning I immediately messaged
some of my best friends (my #1 homie Luis, Corey Whaley, David Arnold, Becky
Albertalli, Jasmine Warga) so they would understand why I was taking a break
from social media and to basically keep an eye on me as I felt things
worsening.That same night I was coming apart. I had no appetite, I
couldn’t sleep, my chest was very tight, and my heart was pounding so hard
around 2:00AM that I thought I was having a heart attack, and the force of it
didn’t go away until 6PM the next day. The next morning I hit up my agent
Brooks and caught him up on everything and asked him to pass along all of this
info to my publisher Soho, and I was dropped from all our email interactions to
reduce my anxiety and focus on myself. I emailed mentor/friend Lauren Oliver
about all this too and she came back with the toughest love that finally got me
to reach out to a Suicide Prevention Lifeline for the first time in my life.I can remember my first suicidal thought when I was sixteen
so it really struck me that at age twenty-five I was finally adding the Suicide
Prevention Lifeline into my phone’s contacts list. It took me hours to finally
work up the nerve to call and I didn’t feel very justified because I wasn’t in
immediate danger to myself. But as Lauren told me, I was still indeed at risk during
these very charged days and it was important that I start building relationships
and having conversations with professionals instead of carrying this around by
myself. I also didn’t want to call because I felt as if my reasons—which I’ll
keep to myself—were stupid and would earn me several eye-rolls, but I really
hope anyone reading this understands that if your “stupid” reason is eating you
alive then it’s far from stupid and I hope we can all be smarter about this in
the future.I went for a walk when I made the call. I played a cheery song
(playing depressing songs while depressed wasn’t making me less depressed) and
when the song ended, I forced myself to call the lifeline. My chest is
tightening thinking about how fucking bizarre that all was. When the operator
picked up (she was the loveliest, seriously) I didn’t even know what to say
initially, but within forty minutes I told her so much: how I’ve cried in the
shower with my face planted on the cold tiles of the wall; how I appreciated my
trusted friends checking in on me, and how I hated that I was this broken thing
they needed to check in on; how uncomfortable it made me that everyone was
learning how to recalibrate their conversations with me, like I needed to be
handled with kiddie gloves; how interrupting everyone’s (seemingly) happy lives
with my own unhappiness only made me regret sharing all this with them in the
first place; how becoming an author has changed my life, but how it hasn’t
magically healed all wounds or spread its happiness into the other arenas of my
life; how I’m apartment hunting in a city I’m not sure I want to stay in; how
everything felt lose-lose, and so much more. She never rushed me off the phone
once and when I was ready to hang up, she gave me multiple resources that could
better assist me locally and reminded me that I could still call this number
anytime.That evening led to more talks with friends and I was so
drained by the entire thing that I didn’t call any of the resource centers the
next day. After a night with four long back-to-back talks I needed some
distance from all this. But two days after the first call to the Suicide
Prevention Lifeline, my best friend took me up to Bear Mountain where we
climbed to the very top and drank fresh water from this spring and just had an
overall dope day, and when we got back to city that night I crashed even harder
than the first time that week. I was really convinced this was going to be the
night where I committed suicide and I felt ready, and I felt terrified. I cried
in the shower, I cried in the streets, I cried on the steps of a church, and I
cried in the streets some more. When I considered throwing myself into a street
as a car approached and was about to research painless ways to commit suicide,
I got my shit together and called the Suicide Prevention Lifeline again.This operator wasn’t as great as the first and I even
considered hanging up on her to find someone else to talk to, and that’s something
I absolutely suggest if you speak to someone you’re not connecting with. But
she said something that made me call the resource centers I’d been avoiding. I
can’t tell you what she said because I don’t remember and it also doesn’t
necessarily matter anymore because it got me to finally make that call to the
place with the weird waiting music that had me on hold for a while because “all
counselors were currently assisting other callers.” But I was okay and I was
trying to live so I waited. I spoke with a lovely woman and she gave me numbers
for local psychiatrists and therapists, and then I went back to my friend’s
house.I told him how everything flipped and how exhausted I was
and I broke down so hard I learned the sound of my cry—not the little sobs from
the shower that I thought was crying, but instead an agonized cry with
stuttered breaths and howling as if I lost all my favorite people in the
universe. I have a tattoo that’s a secret code for words of wisdom I’ve tried
to live my life by, and only my mom knew the meaning just in case something
ever happened to me, but that night I wrote them down for my best friend too
just in case things continued diving south. That move alone made me feel like I
still have one foot hovering over the edge, no matter how much I calmed down
hours later.By comparison, things have been easier since this nightmare.
I now better understand the power of my depression—its strength will make me
feel lonely even when I’m being hugged, and it’s a sneaky motherfucker that
will drag me down when I’m sure it’s gone. I’m working on making therapy a
major part of my life, and am looking into medication. I’ve made so many calls
already to try and lock down sessions and it’s been really frustrating, but I’m
not going to pretend I don’t need it, even if I’m able to trust myself again
currently. It sucks, but I know the time will come again where I’ll feel like
this, or God forbid worse, and I’ll want psychiatric help available to me.I’m taking more time for myself to live beyond my art that’s
now become my career, and I’m getting better at removing myself from situations
that make me uncomfortable to avoid more panic attacks and ugly thoughts. My
outlook on the future is already improving and I can talk about next week
without freaking out. I’m getting better at appreciating what I DO have,
including the book community, because even though my shitty perspective on
publishing added to my distress I wouldn’t have been exposed to the incredible
human beings who were there for me during a surprising, dark week.Writing has been my outlet since I was eleven or twelve. Whether
I was exploring an idea or seeking therapy it’s what I’ve always done—and will
likely continue to do—whenever I needed to relieve myself of whatever is
weighing me down. But this time it’s also a lengthy status update of how I’m
still very much a work-in-progress when it comes to dealing with all this. I
don’t have all the answers because I haven’t fully emerged from the other side
just yet. But the process of rebirth is just as important as the finish line where
you’re reborn. No matter how young or old we are we’re all constantly
reinventing ourselves. New trials appear we have to learn how to overcome, and
we also wise up to old ways no longer benefitting us and have to discover what
does.I’ve maybe only mentioned this to one or two people before,
but for years I’ve thought that if I were to ever commit suicide it shouldn’t
be a surprise to anyone. But as I’ve confessed a lot of these thoughts very
recently to my mom and childhood friends to learn they were surprised I was
ever hurting in the first place, I’ve realized everyone would be surprised
because on the outside I’m happy. I only show you all a very happy Adam
Silvera. Online and in-person I share the parts of my life where I’m winning
and where I’m laughing, but I’m not nearly open enough about how hard happiness
has always been, and continues to be, in my life; I know it’s the same for
countless others, too. I’m often happy for others and deeply unhappy for myself.
But I’m hoping to turn this around and to surprise MYSELF now by living, and by
finding the strength to do whatever it takes to be happy with the happiness I’m
pretty damn sure exists deep within me.SUICIDE PREVENTION
LIFELINE: 1-800-273-8255.
Amazing.
November 16, 2015
"There is no process that will spare you the pain of writing a draft."
-
Leigh Bardugo, New York Times best-selling author of The Grisha series and the newest book in that world, SIX OF CROWS.
Listen to the full interview here, or download it on iTunes or Stitcher.
(via firstdraftwithsarahenni)
Too true.
maggie-stiefvater:
I have OCD. It doesn’t rule my life, but it used to. Knowing that I have the...
I have OCD.
It doesn’t rule my life, but it used to. Knowing that I have the capacity for that kind of thought is exactly why it doesn’t rule my life like it used to. I’m perfectly aware that I’m going to have that capacity forever, as studies have shown that Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is genetic (if you have a parent with OCD, as I do, you have a fifty-fifty chance) and is caused by abnormal brain circuitry, which means you’re stuck with it. And I am okay with that. I’ll survive. Recently, readers have asked me a lot how I learned to control it, so this is my story.*
*with the obvious warning that I am not a therapist and you are not me and I am not you and this is just my story your mileage may vary.
I was an anxious child. OCD and anxiety play very well together, and back then, I didn’t really know what was happening. I was a twitchy creature of secret rituals.
[image error]The first thing that helped me was when I realized that my obsessions weren’t normal. Not everyone felt this way. And not all thoughts had to feel this way, either.
The second thing that helped me was realizing that OCD didn’t really look the way it looked on television. Obsession could be about germs or cracks in the sidewalk, but really, it turns out that I can obsess about all kinds of things.
[image error]The third thing that helped me was figuring out that my compulsions weren’t always straightforward. Sometimes they were directly related to the obsession:
Tags in shirts —–> change clothing eleven times a day
tweets —–> refresh the screen every twelve seconds
Dying before making a mark —-> replacing all other activities like eating and sleeping with research, acquisition, and practicing of a new musical instrument
Datsuns —-> i don’t even know how i ended up with a datsun but i resent that entire chapter of my life
When my OCD was in control of me, it changed the way I looked at the world. Example. Here is life:
[image error]Life is always full of both bad and good things. Also trees. There will always be disasters and miracles happening in tandem. Mental illness changes the way you see it, though. For instance, a depressed person:
[image error]A content person:
[image error]The good or bad things don’t go away. You just point your gaze in a different direction. You are able to minimize some things and expand on others. When I got obsessive thoughts, they shifted my gaze onto something and held it there. It didn’t have to be something huge. It could have been about if my hair was dirty, or if I had said a prayer correctly, or if I had the precise same amount of air in each of my car’s tires.
[image error]In my head, the thought, whatever it was, became all encompassing.
[image error]It didn’t matter what else I tried to do, my mind would return to it. It became everything, my whole world, looped again and again and again.
[image error]I don’t even know if those are what lady bugs look like. I guess that’s okay. It’s a metaphor. They are only what I imagine ladybugs to look like, and my obsessive thoughts are not real thoughts, either. They aren’t really me. They are something my brain does to process stress and uncertainty and decision-making.***
***this took me a long time to figure out. More in a bit.
My personal breakthrough came when I decided that I would give myself rules. I was a champion with rules. I was a champion with rituals. I was a champion with things that involved numbers and counting and generally being compulsive. So my rule was that if I caught myself thinking about something obsessively, the timer began.
[image error]I would tell myself I could obsess for a certain number of minutes, and then I had to do something else until a designated time when I was allowed to obsess over it again. I could obsess for ten minutes. Then I had to put it down completely for thirty minutes. Then I could have another ten minutes. Then I had to put it down for two hours. Then I could have another ten minutes. I wasn’t allowed to act on any of the thoughts, either.
I told myself a rule was a rule. I couldn’t cheat on the time. And when I put it down, I had to really mean that I was putting it down. Did I want to be free or not?
And it began to work. I began to be able to reward myself with less and less obsessing time.
[image error]And then the really amazing thing happened, the thing that changed my life. Once I had spent enough time discipling my obsessive thoughts, I realized … they weren’t really my thoughts. They were markedly different in character from my ordinary thoughts. The further I got from them, the more I realized that they were mental illness, not me, and moreover, that I could be free of them if I wanted to be. All I had to do was identify a thought as obsessive when it first appeared:
[image error]And then give it the time it deserved:
[image error]And I got better and better at it. I still sometimes have to give myself three minutes, especially when under stress. I still have to sometimes remove myself from a physical location to give myself those three minutes. And sometimes I still end up with a Datsun. But mostly, I just live my life, and it’s invisible.
So much of it is knowing that it’s the place your brain goes to under stress. Knowing that you can be out from under it. Knowing that ladybugs don’t really look like that. I just googled them and it turns out they have an entire additional segment in front of that black bit where the head goes which means I just drew an entire flock of headless ladybugs.
Well, all the better reason to avoid them.
This is so very wise.
November 12, 2015
(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg9hN...) Just when I...
maureenjohnsonbooks:
shitroughdrafts:
Happy 90th Birthday to...
Happy 90th Birthday to the Great Gatsby! That dumb idiot! I don’t even really like this book!
GUESS WHO JUST BOUGHT A TIME MACHINE.
buzzfeedbooks:
Your protagonist is mortally wounded and needs...
Your protagonist is mortally wounded and needs to get out alive. How? (more)
@neil-gaiman came in and gave us some writing prompts. Get writin’!
The Sandman: Overture Deluxe Edition is in stores now.
November 11, 2015
Hello! I'm an aspiring author, one who would need a guardian/parent's I.D. to renew her library card, and I'm wondering: how do I know my agent is doing me right/wrong? I worry my naivete on the whole ordeal could and might be taken advantage of. Help?
Try querytracker.net or google “preditors and editors” to read up on each agent’s track record. There are a lot of horror stories circulating about predatory agents, but most authors will tell you they are largely untrue. With the internet it’s very easy to read up on any agent’s reputation and even look up which major titles they’ve represented. Your biggest concern should just be to query the agent most likely to be interested in your genre. ;)
November 10, 2015
Win an Advance Copy of The Outliers!!
Want to win an advance copy of The Outliers? I’ll be giving one away next week!
Automatically enter by signing up for my newsletter on my website. www.kimberlymccreight.com. There’s a box at the bottom of each page (except for the home screen). And don’t worry, I won’t be flooding your inbox. My newsletter only goes out once every three or four months–and it contains a Q & A, special photos, a recipe and lots of other exclusive content.
So get your name on that list before it goes out next week. Don’t miss out on your chance to be among the first to read The Outliers!
November 6, 2015
The paperback cover of WHERE THEY FOUND HER is here! I think...
The paperback cover of WHERE THEY FOUND HER is here! I think I’m in love.
