Tag: queer

What it says on the tin.

And it was, honestly, probably the most emo thing to ever happen to me.

Let me back up and elaborate.

I didn’t impulsively and abruptly go off the med (though the occasional flush all of it! urge is strong). What happened was this:

When I started Seroquel about a year ago (the only psychiatric med I’ve been on in years), I was prescribed 100mg, one pill at night. It worked like a charm for several months, but then I started getting the token grogginess in the mornings. At the advice of my psychiatrist, I went down to 75mg. Except that they don’t make Seroquel in 75mg tablets, so I actually took three 25mg pills at night. Okay, so that was fine. Grogginess gone, but sleep was still good, along with mood, psychosis, etc. I was told that if need be, I could go back up to 100mg and give her a call for a new prescription. 

During a week about two months ago where I was having trouble sleeping due to other factors, I went back up to 100mg, taking four of the 25mg pills. I kind of meant to go back down after that week or so, but the 100mg was working well and the grogginess hadn’t returned, so I stayed, and was given a new prescription to go back to 100mg.

Now, I was back to the one, 100mg pill, again free to go down if it was too much. This pill still seemed to hit me differently than the four 25mg ones, and I felt the grogginess return. I wasn’t sure if this was again other factors or the meds, so I tried cutting the 100mg (half, then cutting one of those halves in half again) and taking 75mg. (Bear with me through the numbers for a minute.) 

I did eventually attribute the extra grogginess to probably external factors, but I also didn’t feel any worse for taking the 75mg, and my psychiatrist had emphasized again and again taking the lowest effective dose, especially since you can develop a tolerance to Seroquel over time. So I took the 75mg for a few weeks. I felt stressed a lot, but attributed it to having a lot to do. I was still writing like crazy, and mostly keeping up.

Then I got curious, and went down to just taking the half (50mg). I again noticed no difference. In hindsight, my mood, focus, and energy had really begun to drop, but nothing crazy. There was no difference in my sleep. I fell asleep promptly enough, slept relatively soundly, dreamt (for better or worse), and woke with as much ease as ever. Now, I’d never been on only 50mg before and I didn’t, at the time, notice a difference. 

Thinking that odd, I kept going and went down to 25mg (a quarter of the pill, being all out of the former prescription). I did that for a few days and felt terrible but didn’t attribute it to the meds. I was depressed and irritable as hell, but had attributed this to another problem. (I did have… something during that time frame I’m still not sure of. Stomach flu? My wife got a version too, whatever it was. That definitely wasn’t the med’s fault, but it was a separate set of symptoms.) I again didn’t notice anything different in my sleep, the thing I felt so sure I was going to notice a change in if the meds were doing anything useful. When I went on the Seroquel at first, it was the sleep I noticed instantly. I still had some energy, and although I thought it was too hot for my usual walks most of the time, I still enjoyed long swings on the swingset in the yard, this week to the soundtrack of a newly discovered old song by Evanescence I was really enjoying. 

Finally, I said, To hell with it, and one night skipped the med altogether. And I lay there. And lay there. Sleep wasn’t coming. Even sleepiness wasn’t coming. I was irritable, depressed, mildly panicked, and incredibly restless. My head was pounding to the beat of that Evanescence song and it was stuck in my head playing on full blast, drowning out other thoughts. Sensory overload coming from inside my brain. But it felt mostly just like having a song really stuck in my head, which for me I know always works a little more like hallucination than it does for other people. (You ever tried describing having a song stuck in your head to a hypothetical someone who has no idea what that means? Now there’s a thought exercise about sanity.) 

But I realized something was up, caved, and took the full 100mg, the last dose that I knew I had felt good on, and had only started going down from because of grogginess I now attributed to something else. Within fifteen minutes or so, I was calm, half asleep, and the volume of the Evanescence song had gone from 99 to 5. It was like someone just whoop turned the volume dial down in my brain. Still there, all the same qualities, but at about five percent of the volume. I could hear other thoughts. 

Oh. So that explained a lot.

So, I’m back at 100mg. I’m open to going back down to 75mg depending on if the grogginess seems to return, and if my mood changes if I do go back to 75mg. But for now, back at square one. 

I think it was a worthwhile experiment even if it didn’t go super well—and even if it took me a while to realize it hadn’t gone super well. No tragic consequences; it wasn’t really done recklessly, and I do believe in finding the lowest effective dose and not mindlessly settling on the current med regimen, even if it’s just proving where you’re already at; it also gave me some more confidence in the meds do important things for when I get those med flushing urges. Today, I’m thinking, God bless Seroquel, but I’m sure that urge will come back at some point.

Besides, I went off my medication and hallucinated Evanescence should really earn me my official Emo Kid Card. Rock on. 

I’ve been working on my fiction novel, Contrivance, since 2011. Numerous drafts, huge changes, shifts of universes, new plots, evolving characters, and total do overs.

My goal here is this: trace those changes along with my mental health state at the time.

(Note: this post was updated to go through the current month, after the original post.)

December 2011

Contrivance is born of a massive Hunger Games fan fiction project. I’m now creating the characters who will ultimately become the main characters of Contrivance, though, at the time, they’re simply original characters to play a background role in the fan fiction, the Gamemakers, who create the titular Death Game, the Hunger Games.

It’s the holiday season, and I’m running around town, shopping with my dad. I lean a back to school sale composition notebook on the back of our shopping cart and start on basic character profiles. Pull names from a list I’ve kept of ideas. Write interactions to test how these characters go together by the fire and Christmas tree at home. Lavender, my eventual main character, currently the Head Gamemaker, already technically exists, but not in any recognizable form. 

It’s Christmas break of eighth grade. Days before school let out, I had my first panic attack while working on another part this series in free time during Algebra I. Rushed to the nurse’s office and then the ER, I went home early that day, took a day or two off, and went back for the last day before break.

These characters catch my interest quickly. By New Year’s, I’m on chapter three of the companion story to the series I’m writing that introduces them, distracted from all of life’s new questions.

July 2012

I’ve begun therapy and medication for anxiety. I’m working on a different companion story to that big series. This one introduces Justice as a character (which we won’t come back to for a while).

I write an original short story, “Contrivance”, using “the Gamemakers”, for a summer program for gifted kids, where I basically take a semester of Creative Writing in three weeks at the local university. 

The universe concept is that in a world where everyone is assigned a job by lottery, promising young people get a chance at the best jobs by proving themselves in a VR simulation called Contrivance, which also matches them to the field where they’ll do best, personalized testing based on analysis of their dreams, which can be recorded. The short story basically tracks one run of Contrivance the game, taking a few weeks.

A few names and appearances shift with the universe change, suited to something that’s not the Hunger Games’ stylized Capitol. Some don’t stick, but the ones I feel the need to change here eventually settle out to something new, among other minor changes. I have to submit two short stories for review over the course of the class. The instructor tells me that the other is good, but “Contrivance” is clearly where my heart is. And maybe it’s more than a short story. 

April 2013

In January, I had my first psychotic episode, terrifying demonic hallucinations. The episodes keep coming, hallucinations paired with paranoid delusion or catatonia, tears or panic. 

I begin writing a novel draft of Contrivance for Camp NaNoWriMo, a challenge to write 50,000 words of fiction in one month. I end up writing over 77,000 words that month. It goes from Lavender’s job interview for Lead Deviser (the “Head Gamemaker” equivalent) to the completion of the first time she leads Contrivance, about a year later.

I’m permanently stressed and sleep deprived by the magnet school I’m at. In late March, after receiving a poor grade from a spiteful instructor for a special project that halts all normal classes, I panic, knowing it’ll be incorporated into my English grade. I ask my English teacher if I can submit a novel I’m writing next month for extra credit. He’s a little baffled, but says yes.

In this draft, Lavender inherits my psychosis. It fades in and out in a few more drafts, but mostly doesn’t last. 

April 2014

I do NaNo two more times in the middle. In July, I write over 93,000 words, a sequel to Contrivance titled Trial, named after a feature of the in universe game. In this one, the Contrivance test takers are kidnapped by rebels, though Lavender teams up with the usually evil Contrivance Director (who oversees the more administrative and financial side of Contrivance) to rescue them. To discourage revolution, Contrivance is toned down a bit. 

I’ve started frequently pairing Lavender and Francisco, one of the Devisers, off at the end, though it’s always strangely sudden, and sometimes even in the epilogue, they split up again. It’s not quite working.

By April 2014, I’m ready for another draft of Contrivance itself.

A lot of the characters are taking very recognizable shape by now. Not so much a contradiction of what they were before as a solidification. Lavender and Malka still have a long way to go, but their relationship is starting to take on the more formal mentor/apprentice turn. Malka is the former Lead Deviser (the leader of the Devisers, who create Contrivance) and has a lot of advice for her replacement as she steps down, as always. In this draft, there’s a formal office mentoring program for new employees; Kaye, hired at the same time as Lavender, is involved as well, though from even the short story, Lavender seems to unofficially look out for her. Here, Lavender and Malka (and Kaye) don’t meet before Lavender’s job interview, though it’s clear Malka’s had her eye on Lavender for the role for quite some time as she went through training. (The formal office mentoring program is interesting and sticks around for years, but doesn’t make the final cut.)

Meanwhile, my psychosis is getting out of hand, and I leave school, too agoraphobic to leave the house.

July 2014

My parents have gotten a divorce. I’m planning to homeschool in the fall. To overcome my agoraphobia, I’ve started going to the weekly NaNoWriMo meetups.

In this July’s NaNoWriMo, Lavender’s hostile relationship with the Contrivance Director (who in previous drafts frequently would do things like use torture just to send a message) comes to a head when the Contrivance Director tortures and plans to kill Kaye, nearby but outside of Contrivance Headquarters, which at this time was an isolated complex in the middle of nowhere. (That setting lasted for quite some time, later shifting to New York for a notable minute, before settling in Washington, DC.)

Lavender and the other Devisers thwart this plan, ending in Lavender killing the Contrivance Director. Realizing that the people inside the complex are not on their side, they flee into the wilderness, hoping to make it to the actual Contrivance Testing Complex to get a hold of the right government officials.

Once they do, Lavender is on trial for voluntary manslaughter, though sentencing gets reduced to probation and fines. Contrivance’s staffing gets an overhaul to prevent people like the Contrivance Director from getting in, and the Deviers safely return to Contrivance Headquarters, though Lavender is suspicious of the new, innocent Contrivance Director and doesn’t seem to fully recover from all the events, developing severe PTSD. 

This turns into a nervous breakdown and she ends up in a psych ward for part of the novel later. Malka is effectively the interim Lead Deviser again, as Lavender’s supposed to focus on recovery and not her job (something she struggles with, though she starts to grasp the importance of it).

There were a lot of issues with this draft (see the gaping plot holes), but it got into some interesting themes. We really start to question the Devisers’ morality outside of even Contrivance, see mixed factions within the government, and explore a lot more mental health themes. 

November 2014

I’m still trying to get the above kind of outline to work, but failing. Most of the plot is eventually scrapped, along with most things to do with the Contrivance Director. I don’t finish NaNo. Mostly non verbal for nearly a month due to a mix of dissociation, disorganized thoughts, and distracting hallucinations, I myself almost end up in a psychiatric ward, though in the end I simply commit to sorting out my meds.

February 2015

Writing continues, heavily focused on Lavender and Kaye’s friendship. I’m starting to realize that I care more about the Devisers’ relationships than about any world or plot issues, but I’m not sure what to do about it.

I develop a self-harm problem. Interestingly, self harm and suicidal ideation are the key mental health issues that plague Kaye. In many early drafts, she commits suicide near the end of the novel/series. (Rissa, another Deviser, frequently does, too. This was in drafts where Malka usually died first of fairly natural causes, resulting in emotional chaos for the Devisers. Rapidly killing off half of the main characters for non plot related reasons was becoming an issue, though.) 

September 2015

I’ve started community college classes, but it’s not going well. I attempt suicide, an ultimate low point, though it actually turns out to be a key turning point. I swear off self harm and with only a a few relapses in the next several years, quit entirely. I’m also around this time diagnosed with autism, schizophrenia, and anxiety. I’m working on new Contrivance ideas. 

November 2015

I finish NaNo again despite a hectic month of family medical issues, though my own are improving, working on Contrivance, but exploring new ideas and writing in random orders, not going for a full draft. I’ve scrapped the job lottery/ability testing idea for worldbuilding issues, and go for general unethical experimentation instead.

Somewhere in here, I know Malka’s aged moved up a little, about sixty to about seventy. 

In the past year or so, Malka and Lavender’s relationship has become increasingly hostile in every draft. Malka seems to no longer be there with just perhaps unnecessarily high standards, but seems to exist to criticize and cause problems. Rather than trying to follow Malka’s advice out of respect for her abilities, Lavender seems to be just trying to tread water. Malka especially interferes in Lavender’s connection with Kaye. 

By the end of the month, I’ve done my first official experimentation with the idea that there’s more history between them than meeting at Lavender’s job interview, starting to really roll with the childhood apprentice idea I formerly only entertained as an alternate history.

January 2016

Still in a bit of a low spot, I try a collaboration in which the Devisers go on a quest for the government by travelling between universes to meet with my co-creator’s characters, powerful magician sorts working for a military in the other world. The Devisers will bring them modern war technology and strategy in exchange for magical training. It’s short lived, but kind of comes back later… 

I’ve started experimenting with the idea that Kaye is autistic, and she occasionally comes into Lavender’s new backstory with Malka, though I can’t seem to make her stay there. I think this is around the time Malka either developed a military backstory or it really became relevant. 

The next month or so, I relapse once on the self harm. 

March 2016

I’m improving mentally, but still stuck on what the plot for Contrivance actually is, so I take a break from it as a serious original fiction project and throw the characters back into something like fan fiction. I’m wrapping up the fan fiction universe the “Gamemakers”/”Devisers” still do exist in, in their original form, so I try something new. 

It’s still kind of original fiction. The Devisers, doing experiments for the United States government, conduct their most questionable one yet, based on a now old dystopian novel: The Hunger Games. Could such a thing really happen? What were the effects on society? How did people just let it be? 

I called it Contrivance Chronicles. There were actually several more playful, lighter touches here. Justice joins this cast for the first time, though she’s not a Deviser. In the fan fiction universe, due to character deaths, two new Gamemakers had joined the panel, Zeely and Laya (who’s the sister of one of the Devisers, Thespian, sometimes seen previously as an intern). They both appear in Contrivance Chronicles as well, though neither lasted long as Devisers in most original drafts of Contrivance. Laya, prominent as Thespian’s sister in some drafts, is cut not long before the final version. Another new Deviser named Jorah sometimes appears briefly, though in about two scenes ever written. A very changed version of them later appears in my non Contrivance short story, “What Happened Last Storm”.

Justice is a secret revolutionary against Contrivance in this draft, though she’s conflicted as she volunteers at a community theater, working on putting on the musical Annie, staring all actual talented orphans. Thespian is her co director, a Deviser who volunteers on his off time. They bond unexpectedly, and Justice even subtly warns him of an upcoming attack, telling him to keep the Devisers away from that location the day of. Contrivance Headquarters is now set in NYC. Justice keeps some of her revolutionary friends from her original universe, but most of them are starting to fade in importance. I want her more entwined with the Devisers, but I’m not sure how.

Meanwhile, Malka pressures Lavender to adopt/apprentice one of the children from the show. Lavender likes the child, but doesn’t feel ready to be something like a parent. (We’ll come back to Lavender taking on an apprentice—with the tables turning a bit.)

The project didn’t get terribly far. There was a lot of silliness here, though some important things start to crop up. 

January 2017

I’m still in a rut on, “What is the plot of Contrivance?” For the first time in a long time, I start some new original fiction projects that actually get somewhere that aren’t Contrivance, though Contrivance is still what mostly seems to play in my thoughts. I believe Malka’s name started to change (to Malka) around here or a bit later.

My mental health is mostly improving, and I’m making plans to go to college. 

October 2017

I’ve attempted to go to college in Boston, and things aren’t going so well, and I’m in a psych ward.  

I pretty much have my notebook for company, and I start trying out a new idea, combining Contrivance with one of the projects I started around January, which ends up looking a lot like the collaboration: traveling across universes. Even Justice finds a place as someone who had left the dark magical group and was now forced to return as part of the deal with the modern US government. I never actually write much of this, but the ideas were interesting in my head.

I leave Boston in early November and go home. Eight days later, I meet the love of my life.

April 2018

I moved in with my girlfriend in January, and I’ve even gone off meds. Everything is looking up, except for a set of mysterious physical health issues no one can diagnose. I barely write; I’m exploring a few new projects, but almost nothing goes on paper. I’m thinking I’ll stop the weird experiments and try to get back to the core of what Contrivance is. 

August 2018

Ah. So the house I moved into is full of toxic black mold, and I have a pre-existing respiratory condition. This gets remediated, though even more time passes as I fully recover. I stop going to NaNoWriMo events locally, though I still want to write for the challenge, despite a slow few months. I’m eager to start sorting ideas out again. 

July 2019

Writing is still slow as I deal with lingering health issues. I got surgery in April for the respiratory issues. I recommend my dad (who I got the nose from) to my ENT. My ENT looks at my dad’s general medical file and says, “I’m surprised you’re not seeing ghosts.” 

My father abruptly dies at home a few weeks later. 

But all I know is he’s not answering his phone, and now my mom says mail is piling up in front of his obviously unopened front door. Grandma says he didn’t put the trash bins down on trash pickup day. Something’s not right.

I use my spare key to get into his house when he doesn’t answer my knocks.

Yeah, something’s not right: he’s been dead for ten days.

August 2019

Coming back from a trip, a long car ride, I start trying to figure out some details for Contrivance again. I’ve figured out how to get Justice involved, as a former Deviser who left for the revolution and returned, much as she’d left the magicians in that one draft. Her primary Deviser relationship is not her friendship with Thespian (as it was in Contrivance Chronicles; Thespian appears much closer to another Deviser, Trace, here). Instead, Justice is focused on her romantic relationships with Rissa and Ritter (Rissa’s husband), a possibility I’ve imagined for a long time. Her age shifts slightly as needed. The revolution is becoming an important theme again. 

I start to sort out Lavender and Francisco’s relationship. While he pines, she just doesn’t feel that way about anyone, but she’s aware of his feelings, lending a strange edge to their otherwise close friendship. At least I’m not just throwing them at each other in the epilogue. 

I’ve spent the last several months handling my father’s estate amongst the new trauma. I’m busy, but I’m creating again. 

November 2019

I finally have tenants move into Dad’s house as a rental on the first of this month. Things are slowing down. I can work on other things now.

It’s NaNo again, and I haven’t finished it in four years at this point. But it’s not like I sleep at night anymore, so I may as well write.

The first few days are slow. I go for miscellaneous Contrivance pieces, which is what I did the last time I finished. Some interesting ideas are coming out, but nothing of real substance. 

My girlfriend, her friend/coworker, and I go to California on a business trip. In the car on the way there, I blare Evanescence through my headphones, stare out the window, and will myself to come up with something. 

I’m exploring Malka and Lavender’s relationship a lot again. It’s… less hostile. It’s still deeply screwed up for sure, but there’s a norm of a superficial layer of civility at least, and there’s obviously a lot of love somewhere in the messy mix.

So I try writing down ideas for things that could’ve happened in backstory.

One concept jumps out at me.

I do little but sit in the room and write the whole trip. My hands barely leave the keyboard. I don’t sleep, I eat only something in the morning and then whatever I made for dinner for my girlfriend and her friend, and I’m distracted whenever I’m not writing. 

This was when the practice interrogation was born.

It’s a gripping idea. An especially dark take on the world the Devisers live in, the very real threat of a revolution. People out there want the Devisers hurt or dead. That’s pretty much always been true, but more of an emotional factor than a logistic threat.

But in this draft, I say, So what do they do about it?

Of course, they have government security, all of those good things. But backstory for Lavender, at least, starts to include combat training and practicalities. I kind of skim over these things while I’m gripped by the interrogation idea, but I come back to the full depths of those later.

So I add into backstory that Malka prepared Lavender for a capture scenario. Gave her some data to keep a secret and spent sixty hours trying to get it out of her. In various eventual drafts, there was a little bit more preparation before this, or the idea that this was supposed to be more of the start, not the end, of this curriculum. In the end, it’s a bit of both.

As I finish that up, along with a lot of the fallout, the next thing to explore is, of course, the payoff of this.

So I start a new document called “The Devisers Are Captured”. Later, this becomes the opening scene of Contrivance. The Devisers are thrown into a hostage situation, this time in Contrivance Headquarters as set in Washington, DC. Offered the sadistic choice of picking who will get interrogated for information first, Lavender steps up. The others refuse to quietly agree, many claiming they should go, and Lavender says they should vote. Everyone votes for themselves, except for Malka, who votes for Lavender. 

Lavender quickly gets separated from the group while the Devisers round on Malka for answers. Malka reveals the practice. A book of emotional chaos ensues.

December 2019

Needing worldbuilding that adds up, I change what Contrivance is again, this time opting to go back to the Death Game genre origins I never truly escaped, an annual televised simulation of a social collapse scenario, participant households chosen at random, and one surviving, while keeping it original fiction. I have an awful cold a lot of the month, and so lie around and write a lot. I sleep from about 10PM to 12AM, and 4AM to 10AM. In the middle, after the nightmares, I write.

February 2020

Just starting to see the PTSD calm down for a bit, I keep rolling with my current Contrivance train of ideas. Eventually, I run into a wild take on the fallout of their capture, which is, What if they did the practice again? 

But it’s different this time. Lavender, paranoid that, while their capture and rescue did not result in any leaked information, it would be easy to get information out of her in the future if only their captors tried to play the Devisers against each other, hurting someone she loved and asking her the questions, asks Malka for a new curriculum: resisting the other Devisers being in pain, though without letting any of them know this is happening. They’re still furious over finding out about the original practice, and none of them would agree to help. Besides, Lavender doesn’t want to expose them to it. 

Lavender definitely is more than just a victim here, a direction she’s been heading in for a while, much more of an active participant and instigator in the questionable activities her and Malka engage in. 

All kinds of subplots come out of this, and of course, the question: how does this one pay off? 

May 2020

There’s a pandemic. The world seems to be ending. Talk about my novel now being timely. My grandmother passes shortly after the beginning of quarantine. I get engaged.

Meanwhile, I start posting Contrivance pieces on a website of my own, snippets that are out of order, presented as a bit of a puzzle. A lot of it doesn’t go neatly together yet.

July 2020

My mental health declines. The PTSD at the one year anniversary. Grandma’s death. The psychosis. I go back on meds, though I stop attending therapy (now on Zoom) a few months later as I improve. I’m still working on multiple projects and producing a lot of words, mostly focused on the I’ll Give You series as a break.

December 2020

My wife and I got married last month. I’m doing well, really. I published my first book, a non Contrivance “side project” that got out of hand and is now a popular series of its own. I’ve taken down the Contrivance website and start to post Contrivance online chapter by chapter as I did the other project, now officially starting for basically the first time since the fan fiction universe somewhere other than Lavender’s job interview: with “The Devisers Are Captured”. This ages Lavender up a little. I try to make it mostly linear, sensical for new readers, and kill my darlings a bit. Here we go. 

I also post the first companion, “How Justice and Rissa Fell in Love Again”, because there’s too much content for it not to.

February 2021

I publish my second book, still not Contrivance. That “side project” really got out of hand. I’ve started teaching webinars, I’ve started going to butler school. There’s a lot going on.

Still, I love the Devisers. Focusing on them more again feels like coming home to old friends. Friends you’ve known too well, too long to think they’re perfect, but that feel easy, like home anyway.

May 2021

I take a little staycation, a few day writing retreat alone at a nearby hotel, using rewards points that we got to keep through the pandemic. It doesn’t go well. I don’t take care of myself, lost in my words, around Chapter 9 of Contrivance, and my mental state spirals, and I self harm for the first time in many years, the first since Boston. My wife takes me home early.

July 2021

I’m now running a local alternative sexuality group, and I publish Service Slave Secrets (Volume One), the first years of my blog on the subject, to a nice reception. The I’ll Give You series flows.

I try going off my meds briefly, gradually cutting down with the thought that I’ll stop when it starts to affect my sleep, as that’s the easiest way to measure the minimum dosage. However, my sleep doesn’t really suffer, but I abruptly realize, five minutes overdue for the first dose I’ve totally skipped, that I’ve been absolutely miserable, and can’t hear my own thoughts over the music hallucinations I mistook for a song stuck in my head, among others. I go back to the full dosage that night. 

We go on our first vacation since before the pandemic, and I get road trip time to think.

There are still some details about the ending of Contrivance this time around that I’m figuring out. I need it to be… relevant. But it’s coming together.

Soon, I post another companion focusing on the other Devisers (not Lavender or Malka), “Francisco’s Guide to Insomnia.”

November 2021

NaNoWriMo isn’t going so well, but I publish Book Two of the main I’ll Give You trilogy and post a Contrivance backstory companion, “We Are All That We Have Lost”.

Several months into the “health kick” that’s taken an especially dark spiral recently—purging and fasting and overexercising—I accept that I have an eating disorder—all of the symptoms of anorexia, not quite underweight—and start the cycle of on again off again commitment to recovery. I don’t need to weight restore, but this cycle has got to stop. I start to talk about it with the people close to me.

March 2022

Oh my God. It’s done.

Just as suddenly as it sounds, I publish Contrivance, in the same week as The Second IGY Companion.

It’s surreal. Finishing any of my books was surreal, but this one especially.

It’s certainly an interesting month. I’m still bouncing back and forth on the eating habits, now with my wife’s help supervising three meals a day for a while, starting to sort out my disordered thoughts around food, focusing on the fact that skinny seems to represent productive for me, and that I’m actually more productive—like publishing two books in a week, productive—if I just suck it up and eat. I’m also finally learning how to drive.

I keep my heart open to more of Contrivance, but for now, I think I might actually be done.

August 2022

I can’t help myself. There’s a sequel.

But I love what’s coming in Book Two. I love the addition to the main cast who actually works, I love that this isn’t a plotline I’ve done to death before, I love that it feels true to the sentiment of Contrivance.

All right. One more book.

In the last few months, I’ve also started donating plasma, started a Little Free Library, have been working on my newest blog, A Productive Hannah, and published Service Slave Secrets: Volume Two.

August is a hard month for me, though. I’d like to blame it on hormonal, non psychiatric med changes, but I’m not sure. Right on the heels of some major anniversaries involving my father’s birth and death, symptoms, especially the eating issues, flare, and burnout threatens.

I spend a week on vacation in Boston, and vow to take September off from events.

October 2022

I post another companion story as well, a Justice centric piece that’s been in my head for a long time.

Book Two is flowing. A lot of it in my head, some of it on paper, and a second chapter actually gets posted.

I’m back to events, but we’ve gotten into camping, a welcome reprieve from most of the world. I’m trying to find balance, and overall, my events and writings are going really well. I’m trying to clear my plate a little, to publish The Schizophrenia Diaries, to be able to focus on fiction more.

We’ll see what the future holds.

She’s here again, so I’m not having as okay of a day as I thought.

The backyard is mostly dark, but she’s there in the shadows of the bushes, darting or teleporting around. Compared to what I usually see in dark shadows when my mind turns on me? I’ll take the puppy.

“Hi, Farrah,” I deadpan from the swingset in the AA tone. It has been a long day, I guess, and I no longer care if the neighbors can hear me. Still, I take out one headphone, still blaring Hamilton, like it matters.

Farrah smiles at me in this way that real dogs don’t really smile, wags her tail and bounds over, under where I swing. Back through. Again and again. Like she’s trying to get me to kick her at full speed. She’s worse than the little kids at the park. I sigh and, properly distracted, stop swinging.

My darling hallucination races in circles around my feet. A lot of energy for the evening. What? I ask her mentally. You’re not a herding dog. But she wants me inside, much the way the real cats start herding me to the bedroom around this time.

But it doesn’t seem to be sleep she wants. I’m determined to sit in the living room and write down an idea I had on the swing before I do anything else. When I do, Farrah settles down. I can feel this weird sense of relief on her, like I feel it as my own when I get the idea safely on paper before my mind gives up completely.

I look at my notebook. This was what she wanted? 

I look back up. She’s gone.

All right. I’ve accepted that Farrah’s basically a mirror of my own emotions most of the time, and if everything about her says, “Write now now now,” then I guess now is the time.

… 

Writing the schizophrenia fiction piece I’m working on is hard at times. There’s a lot of me in it, even more than in most of my fiction, and in a trippy, intimate way. There’s a lot of Farrah in it, too—even more literally. I give her the same role in the schizophrenic main character’s life as she has in mine. So now she’s not only my schizophrenia tamagotchi, but one of my characters.

And my characters, like Farrah, have minds of their own to an extent. Many authors think of it like that, but for me it’s even a little more true, I think. My characters jump ahead of me both in plot outlining and in daydreams that slip away from me. I fade into a somewhat omniscient position in their world and often find it hard to come back whether I want to or not. When I do, it’s often disorienting, especially if I totally lost track of the real world and snap back abruptly due to the doorbell ringing or dissociation suddenly clearing or such. My world, the real world, goes away entirely, and here I am in theirs, less and less in control the longer I stay in and the emotionally deeper I dive. 

It’s kind of like Ahtohallan in Frozen 2. You can go deeper and deeper into this world of sensations and memories that are not your own. To a point, you can get back out, though the journey back gets longer and longer. After a point, well: 

“Dive down deep into her sound

But not too far, or you’ll be drowned” 

So what does it mean now that Farrah—originally, and, still, a recurring hallucination—is now a character in one of those worlds my mind vanishes to? Does she get to play a double role in my psychosis, not only entering my world—which my characters generally don’t—but finding me trapped in one of hers? Is that why she beckoned me to the notebook—like asking me to come home? 

…

Usually, when I write, it’s taking something only I can see—the story in my head—and turning it into something other people can read. It’s creating—Real from Not Real, in a way. Completely imaginary concepts floating through my brain turn into hundreds of pages I can hold in my hand. It’s not making the story Real, but making that dreamscape in my head widely accessible, like handing out a key, a map—in the form of a book.  

But if I take something as deeply Not Real as Farrah, and give her that quasi Real form… does she become any More Real? What if other people can know Farrah, too—by the power of words on a page? Does that make her less just a quirk of my brain chemicals? Someone saying that they hallucinated Harry Potter, for instance, would be much easier to communicate with than someone hallucinating some boy with round glasses and a lightning shaped scar who could do magic, with seven books’ worth of story that only they could see. At that point, we might not share the exact vision of Harry—but I sure have a clue what they’re talking about, and the seven years of magic seems a lot saner. 

When I write and get feedback, people tell me their thoughts on my characters. They might have a different opinion than me about their moral stances, or a slightly different picture of what they look like. They might even go off and have them in their own daydreams, their own versions of them that don’t just follow the script, but are based on their identity more than their role in a plot. People tell me about gasping when my characters are surprised, holding their breath when they’re afraid, crying when they’re upset, developing crushes on their love interests. 

These characters aren’t just concepts in my head at that point. They’re out there in the world and I can talk about them with other people the way I talk about people I know in real life, or about Harry Potter. It’s not uncommon for my wife to walk into a conversation I’m having with my writer best friend and ask, “Wait, are we talking about real people?” (The answer is usually no.) 

So what about Farrah? If I make her just as accessible as any character—if others can talk about her like someone they know, or like any known fictional figure—is seeing her saner now? Is her identity something like a socially acceptable shared delusion, when we can both hold the key to her world in our hands?

If she got as popular as Harry Potter? Probably.