S.P. Wayne's Blog: STUFF IS HAPPENING, page 6

Explanations and things

To be clear, you can totally skip the link in this post and just hang around for the book announcement that's about to drop.

But if you'd like to know the why and how of my recent absence, here you go.

let's talk about mental health

So let's talk about mental health!

Hahaha NO LET’S NOT. I’m regretting this already. But for real, here we go. I’m shaking a little.

2014 was a hell of a year.

I don’t even mean hell as in pure endless torment. I mean “hell of a year” like, “whoa, that was a lot of year.”

The eventual tl;dr here, the actual lesson, if you’d like to skip all the bullshit, is this:

TAKE YOUR MEDS, KIDS.

My undergrad degree is in psych and lit. For a while there, I really thought I was going to go into research. I am a passionate believer in destigmatizing mental illness.

I hang out on a lot of fairly progressive spaces on the internet, some of which are pretty lady-centric. I can talk about my eating disorder very easily and casually. I have made peace with the fact that this is a part of me, that it’s something I have to always watch out for. Restrictive eating is tragically relatable because it’s really fucking common, and most of the time, I feel no shame. This is a thing. Shame and panic will do nothing to help.

So the ED, right. Pretty good on that front. I’m also an adult ADHD diagnosis, which is awesome. All my life I’ve been a twitchy motherfucker. It was great to finally have an explanation why. I don’t even really think of this as a bad or harmful thing. I’m big on neurodiversity, and I definitely feel like there are situations where my ADHD is an asset. I can talk about it all day long and it’s easy. Whatever, I’m awesome! I’m on meds for this now and I’m EVEN MORE AWESOME!

But here’s what I don’t talk about, the part of my mental make up that I feel really fucking bad about, the part of me that makes me angry and ashamed and that I want to hide forever.

For a particular section of the year, I am going to be depressed. Not “haha oh I’m kinda sad” depressed. Clinical diagnosis depressed. Spending at least half the day in bed depressed. The thing is, it’s roughly the same part of every year. Winter makes me depressed. What I have is called Seasonal Affective Disorder, and it hilariously acronyms out to SAD. Because it makes you sad! Get it?

I would much rather this didn’t happen. I have spent many years pretending it doesn’t happen. I tell myself, every year, that it ISN’T going to happen this time. That if I have enough will power, if I have a good enough attitude, I’m not going to waste two months of my life crying for no discernible reason.

I’ve gotten better. THIS YEAR, I was extra sure I finally totally had it. And indeed, this year was better in many ways. But this year was worse in that I mistimed something really badly.

You see, usually, the month I lose entirely to SAD is February. The winter starts to take a visible toll on me in January, and I can do progressively fewer and fewer things, and then sometime in March, because I live in Florida, the sun comes out and it’s 80 degrees F every day again and HEEEY ALL OF A SUDDEN I’M FINE!

This is part of the reason I feel like I don’t have a “right” to talk about this, you see. Because if I make it to March? I’m fine. That’s not bravado. I can do nothing to treat my depression, and I will still be fine in March. March is awesome. Sunlight is awesome.

But most people with depression don’t have that nice little built in bail out. Depression is a real disease, and it ends lives. I have nothing but respect and sympathy for depressives. I admire people who can write about their struggle, who speak out in a culture of silence.

So like, why not be part of that?

And the answer is because…I kind of feel like my problem is…not legit? Because hey, March!

There are two thought processes here. Both are problematic in somewhat contradictory ways.

1. CLEARLY I DON’T HAVE A REAL PROBLEM, BECAUSE IT RESOLVES ITSELF, so I should not seek treatment, I am a perfectly normal human worm baby, but also

2. OMG I HAVE A PROBLEM but not AS MUCH of a problem as people with potentially year round depression so I don’t want to appropriate their experience and I don’t deserve patience or treatment or to have my voice heard.

Once you say those out loud it sounds stupid, right?

But we all have a right to share our experiences, to have our voice heard. And pretending that I’m fine doesn’t make me fine, and it doesn’t make most other people fine, either.

But so anyway, this year. This year was special.

You see, after a decade of adulthood where you lose part of January and all of February, you do learn to plan around it.

I had every intention of having my third book out by November. There was still a couple of months shy from my original August/September plan, but hey, my best friend died in July so I gave myself some slack, especially since I did a pretty hefty rewrite after the first round with my editor.

October was weirdly…kind of difficult. But okay! I got this! WE’RE TOTALLY COOL, GUYS.

But then November was…unexpectedly hard.

This November was my usual January. This December was my February. There were days where I did nothing but wake up, cry a bit, and lay down in bed staring at the ceiling while bombed off my face on existential despair. I don’t get suicidal depressed. I get “we’re all gonna die; why make special effort” depressed.

So why did this happen?

Some of you are probably sympathetic at this point. Perhaps you, too, suffer from depression, or maybe you have loved ones who do. Maybe you just are a decent human being with a working empathy center.

I’m about to lose all of you guys, okay? Okay.

So why did this happen?

This happened because I decided to stop taking my meds.

In the fall.

Which is, let me remind you, right before the winter.

Some sicknesses seem particularly cruel, like how the final stage of hypothermia involves taking all your clothes off so you can die faster of exposure, because you feel like you’re burning up.

And like, I get that. Sure. DID I MENTION I HAVE A DEGREE IN PSYCHOLOGY? I mean, an undergrad degree. But still.

With FULL KNOWLEDGE of the fact that the seasons fuck me up, I stopped taking my meds right before the usual turning point.

Did I tell someone? Did I tell someone so that I could have a reality checker to get me back on track before things turned bad?

HAHA NO OF COURSE NOT, WHY WOULD I DO THAT, THAT MAKES SENSE. WHY WOULD I TELL THE MAN I’VE SHARED MY LIFE WITH FOR LIKE A DECADE WHAT I WAS DOING?

Even now, in this post meant to be raw and real and honest, I considered not saying that. Better to be a victim of forces beyond your comprehension than to be a fucking idiot.

All the events of the past year fed into each other. My dead best friend was also my personal trainer. So dead best friend, that’s obviously sad inherently. The resulting gap in your social life? Pretty intuitive how that’s bad. Dead personal trainer, however, is less immediately tragic for most people.

But for me, going to the gym consistently to weight train is amazing. On a basic level, it just gets me out of the house. It keeps me from sinking into the depression spiral because yo, people are expecting me and I got shit to do. I am actually pretty <i>good</i> at the gym; I have good genetics for building muscle and cardiovascular endurance. I have a good headspace for working out hard, once I’m here. It’s an easy sense of accomplishment. Furthermore, the exertion is just straight up good for my ADHD. I feel mentally settled after a good gym session. I am more productive outside of the gym for going to the gym. Most of all, though, regular workouts impose a SCHEDULE on my chronically disorganized ass.

Boom: collapse of cohesive schedule, decreased physical activity, reduced social support network. Combined with the personal tragedy, that’s a recipe for disaster. In retrospect, I’m not terribly surprised I decided to stop taking my meds. It was still really fucking dumb, though, and spectacularly ill timed.

So anyway, now that I’ve destroyed all shreds of sympathy the audience may have had for me, let’s get on with the story.

Eventually it occurred to me that I should, like, take my meds, maybe that would help, and start using my sunlamp again. Also maybe actually go in to see my psych doc? Yeah.

So I did.

January was crazy fucking productive. February is looking good. My third book IS coming out before Valentine’s Day.

So that’s cool. I survived my own idiocy. Awesome!

But I have dozens of unanswered e mails from really wonderful, supportive people. And I don’t even mean from family or old friends. I have all these e mails in my author account, from people who I met through my writing and then became friends with, or people who don’t know me but have read my work and reached out to say nice things or ask questions, and I just

Did not answer any of them.

Well, no. I answered one or two with forced chipperness to prove that GUYS HEY EVERYTHING IS OKAY I SWEAR HAHAH SEE HOW OKAY I AM.

I managed to do an awesome interview in early October. That was a great opportunity and I had a lot of fun, and I’d like to thank Prism Book Alliance again for doing that with me.

But mostly, like, I just sort of sucked at life the past few months. That’s especially bad to do at an early point in your career as a writing internet person. Everyone, everyone everywhere says that the key to success is to produce consistently. And when your reaction to personal crisis is to freeze up and do nothing out of overwhelming anxiety/general hopelessness because the sun will one day explode anyway…that is bad.

Like, have you heard of Allie Brosh? She is the hysterically funny and talented person behind Hyperbole and a Half. She is absurdly good, absurdly internet popular, and very well loved.

She also disappeared from the internet for like a year because of depression. Incidentally, she’s also an ADHD person, and I find her description of what it’s like to be spot fucking on, so there you go.

Allie also wrote two great comics about depression:

Adventures In Depression

Depression Part Two

Look, I’m no Allie Brosh. She is WAAAAY better known than I am, and she can draw adorable comics, and I think she’s also a runner while I am a person who flat out refuses to do cardio, so, like. She’s cooler than me. I am not going for a comparison here.

I know this all sounds really stupid. If you can’t handle something as basic as posting consistently on the goddamn internet, how are you going to DO anything with your life ever, you delicate flower?

But, like, have you seen the internet?! I have friends who write full time on the internet and the anonymous masses are TOTAL FUCKING COCKS to them, about everything. Absolutely everything. Your work, your weight, how your tits are too big, how your tits are too small, how your misuse of slang is offensive, how your font choices are obviously subpar, how your paragraph breaks are poor artistic choices—it’s all fair game on the internet.

Which: cool. There’s actually a lot of good that comes from the unstoppable forward charge of the internet machine, so some dickery is well worth it.

But ALSO, if you’re in an already delicate state of mind, being yourself on the internet is fucking terrifying.

There are people who social media more in times of emotional distress. I am not one of them. My instinct is not to joke and reach out and josh along to fool everyone into thinking I’m okay. There’s actually probably a lot of value in doing it that way because at least it keeps you engaged, but my first instinct is to run away and hide under a rock. DON’T LOOK AT ME WHILE I’M LIKE THIS.

Surprisingly, in my normal every day life, if I am not crying all day long, I am very much an extrovert. I love people! People are energizing! So therefore, when I need them most, I deny myself access to them.

So my point is, Allie Brosh.

Most people were actually really nice to Allie Brosh when she briefly reappeared on the internet. Her audience had not forgotten her, and they were kind.

Now, again—I ain’t no Allie Brosh.

But seeing that gave me pause, and thinking about it gave me hope, and eventually I got my shit together enough that doing things and plowing forward was no longer dependent on external factors, because internally, I was good.

You own your actions but not the consequences of your actions.

When I’m coming out of a sadness I read the Bhagavad Gita.

So, hey, internet. Here I am. Here I am to stay.

What’s up?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MEEEEE!I’ve been...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MEEEEE!

I’ve been sick as a particularly phlegm-y dog—like, probably a backyard breeder dog, some poor thing forever prone to upper respiratory infections—for over three weeks. Today, New Year’s Eve—which is also the eve of my birthday—was the first day I didn’t wake up spraying mucous everywhere. Today I felt good! Tomorrow I will finally be able to do useful things! Finally!

In conclusion: I am not dead, though I was very much out of action for a while. Wish me happy birthday. LOOK AT THE WOLF EATING A CAKE. the end.

MERRY CHRISTMAS and other assorted things; i swear I’m not...

MERRY CHRISTMAS and other assorted things; i swear I’m not dead and exciting things are on the very precipice of happening.

mrbadhairday:Just read “City Wolf” by S.P. Wayne…All my feels ;____;:D :D

mrbadhairday:

Just read “City Wolf” by S.P. Wayne…All my feels ;____;

:D :D

http://www.xojane.com/healthy/why-i-t...

http://www.xojane.com/healthy/why-i-think-representation-is-important-in-comics-and-cosplay:

http://www.xojane.com/healthy/why-i-think-representation-is-important-in-comics-and-cosplay

oh, hey, internet! xoj let me write YET ANOTHER POST ON AMERICA CHAVEZ, this time with more about representation and intersectionality in comics and cosplay. 

my oeuvre, dudes. my oeuvre. also, my xoj editor is the bestest.

Kieron Gillen reblogged my America Chavez jacket tutorial. This is one of the coolest days ever in...

Kieron Gillen reblogged my America Chavez jacket tutorial. This is one of the coolest days ever in all my days on the internet.

http://www.prismbookalliance.com/2014...

http://www.prismbookalliance.com/2014/10/s-p-wayne-talks-winter-wolf-and-city-wolf-interview/:

Prism Book Alliance did an interview with me where they very kindly let me talk forever about what medieval Brenton poetry has to do with Axton, why Leander has to be an Action Hero, and all kinds of stuff. Lirtle was amazing to talk with and, not gonna lie, this was one of the coolest things I’ve ever gotten to do on the internet.

Vote me for most pretentious m/m romance author 2015, plz. Surely I get a little plaque or something if I win, right?

How to make the best American flag jacket ever, and why America Chavez rules

How to make the best American flag jacket ever, and why America Chavez rules:

http://www.xojane.com/diy/how-to-make-the-best-america-chavez-american-flag-jacket-ever

I wrote a thing! It went up as scheduled! It’s painfully detailed! Also there’s a couple of paragraphs about something something diversity and representation in comic books and why America Chavez is awesome, because that’s how I do. 

AMMMMEEERRRRIIIICA.

That said, I am totally taking applications for a Kate Bishop in my life, so, you know, get on that, internet.

so by Friday I meant Saturday

Both places totally let me know the date was October 25; I just somehow…DIDN’T NOTICE THAT WAS A SATURDAY.

i swear to god, I am actually getting better at this kind of thing, overall.

mostly.