Words I used to Describe my Body last month

Every month I make a pact, that I will stop the negative self-loathing and hate talk.

Every month I think: maybe this month should be different. Maybe once and for all after 20 years of body hatred,  eating disorders and body dysmorphia I will break the cycle.

Every month.

Every month I take a tally of what themes I embroidered in hatred the month before.

January ---post-Christmas with its cold nights and bevvy of work, pale skin, dry elbows and lumps and bumps best hidden under coddly sweaters--- is a usual time of skipped meals and counted carrots.  Of calories looming like a devil. Of over-exercise and water retention and copious amounts of tea and loathing.

Loathing and fear.

Is this the year I will finally let myself go?  Have I let myself go?


These are January's words:

you are stupid
you are lazy
Fat
How could you?
How dare you?
Remember how thin your thighs used to be?  No! Don't remember how you hated them then, remember how far you've come!
But I always hated my legs, my hips, my arms. I always...

And yet... look at you:  obese and pathetic.

Words I've used:

large
stupid
unloveable
undesirable
pudgy
marshmallow
lazy
unrefined
unladylike
Why does anyone want to be your friend?  Why would anyone want to hang out with you? You better stay in.  You better not go out. Don't got on a date. Don't talk to anyone. They don't want to see you like this.

These are January's words and I would leave them in the past--  I would desperately try to leave them in the past.

But the words are a cycle and they rear their heads.  No matter how many log-ins to a counting site, gym sessions, meals skipped and loathing self-talk.

They come back: magnet words whose pull pervades, magnet words that eclipse any positive strides forward, any success, any brilliant moments.

You may be a writer Rachel, you may have a few neat projects on the go ... but you don't deserve it.

You don't deserve it because you should be thinner and fitter and you should

you should

you should....


Take your medicine, practice your self-talk, stake a pole of champion. think! think of all the wonderful things.... compare.. look around you....



February words: I will try. I will try to reclaim you...

But words are hard

and I know a lot of them

and I cut myself with them over and over again.....

I don't need you to tell me I'm pretty....

So I have been fairly open (if intermittently  ) about my battle with Anxiety and OCD on the blog here.

One of the sub-categories, as such, of my struggle with mental illness is a hint of body dysmorphic disorder and an obsession with my appearance and weight.  This has gotten a LOT better in the past year or so and I have found a healthy way to exercise and eat without obsessing over every detail.  

As someone who suffered from both bulimia and the propensity to starve myself or come up with fad, controlled diets in my teens and twenties, my thirties have started off with a bang.

I believe, as does my amazing doctor, that no woman will ever truly be satisfied with their appearance. There will always  be something I harp on. Or stress about. I am used to that and I think, for most, this is a “normal” part of life. The fact that I can pose for pictures and not throw up when I see myself on camera ( my camera phobia was always bad ) is just, well, amazing. I even do a fun little video series on my facebook now and then and can just press “publish” and go about my merry way without criticizing everything about myself.  I share this information not to brag; but to revel in the fact that I have found balance and control and it is achievable (even though it took me, well, well over a decade and some professional help).

My blog post today is me (as promised ) being open as much as I can.  

I try to do 4 days of intense physical activity a week ( hiking, the gym, running steps, etc., ). We OCD people love our routines and even though I am controlled now and in a much better mental state  ( you can never completely cure mental disorders) , there are little moments that pop up: little nudges and imps that worm their way into my brain.

Today is a gym day for me. I brought my bag to work, I have my workout gear, I am ready to go after work; but today I am just not feeling great. Not ill—but not great.  I feel sluggish, tired, thirsty and hungry.

This is the way my brain works at moments:

I think: I'm Hungry? You don’t deserve to be hungry.  You even had a cookie at the meeting yesterday. You never eat treats at meetings.  You slacker. You are slacking off. You are falling down.  Look in the mirror. You can see it happening. All your hard work. You ruined it. ßI punish myself. I berate myself. I use food as a means to determine deservedness.

I think: I just don’t feel like going to the gym tonight. I don’t think I have the energy. It’s 36 degrees out with the humidex and I am just feeling weary and worn.  I hiked at least 20 K on the weekend and I think I’ve been overdoing it. My body is tired. I don’t feel like going. Do I have to go?   This is when my brain starts to register Rachel in gold-hued tones. I remember ( or seem to remember) weeks where I have been propelled into action even when I didn’t feel like going.  I remember ( or seem to remember, honest I think I make this stuff up ) the times when I saw more muscle definition, when I wasn’t ever too tired for a weekly gym run, when I would push myself out.  Then, again, I punish ß You are useless. Can’t you even get to the gym?  Can’t you even make the effort? If you do this once, who is to stop you from doing it again and again until all you do is sit at home.  You’re going to never fit into your clothes. You are going to look horrible in the pics at your friend’s wedding in the summer. You don’t deserve a night off.

I HATE WHEN MY MIND GETS THIS WAY  and years of hard work and mental assistance have trained me to combat these moments by rationalization.

What is the worst that can happen? What, logically, is the ramification of a day missed at the gym by a very active person?  Answer: nothing.

There are days that are better than others.  Fortunately, the ratio of these is 7:1 as opposed to the 2:1 I used to suffer from. 

I cannot speak for the male experience; but I kill myself over the way I look.  How I think I look. How I think people want me to look.  And I fail my own words. I’m a walking contradiction, folks.  I even wrote this piece for Her Spacious Soul: knowing that I was addressing issues I struggle with but not owning up to the fact that I need first to fix myself .

This blog post isn't fishing for “but you’re so pretty.”

I don’t need people to tell me I'm pretty. I don’t need that type of validation.  By societal standards, I know I am not unfortunate looking.  What I need is to believe it myself.  It won’t mean ANYTHING if I hear it from a reader or a colleague or a guy who wolf-whistles on the subway, I am determined---as I step forward and forward --- on this ever-challenging journey to get to the place where these moments, this degrading self-talk, this harmful and hopeless and insane way I view myself ---- is evened out.

"Bending the Willow: Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes" by David Stuart Davies

You guys. This book.

 You think it is about the making of the Granada SherlockHolmes. More still, the making of Jeremy Brett as the definitive Sherlock Holmes (many Holmesians believe this, including myself, though he is now closely rivaled by Benedict Cumberbatch). What it truly is, at its center, is an exposition of Jeremy’s strong battle with manic depression and his bravery and courage in trying to eradicate the stigma involved as a sort of involuntary advocate. Because the book is largely couched in incidents involving the Granada series: its conception and its development and subsequent airing, it is not a biography of Jeremy Brett the actor; rather an exploration of how Jeremy Brett the manic-depressive actor was able to use the slight eccentricities synonymous with his illness to craft a brilliant Sherlock Holmes.

For those fans of the Granada series, like myself, who have sat with the Canon open on your lap while you compare it to the action on the screen, the “behind the scenes” information given here is delightful.  One of my favourite parts of this facet of the book was the exploration of the relationship between Jeremy Brett and his first “Watson”, David Burke, then, secondly his second “Watson”, Edward Hardwicke.  The latter became more Watson-like than ever in his support of his ill friend who, often under the influence of drugs (lithium to quell the manic-depression) was in ill-health and high and low spirits.  

The author, whose own work was optioned for presentation by Granada when the Conan Doyle stories were wearing thin and they were exploring the realm of pastiche, has a remarkable passion for the material ( both the source material and its adaptation) and a wealth of conversational transcripts from all involved in the making of the series: including Jeremy Brett, David Burke and Edward Hardwicke.   I especially enjoyed the moments surrounding a play mounted starring Brett and Hardwicke which strained their relationship and Brett’s health while he tried to dig deeper still into the canyons of his fictional obsession.

You cannot really call this book a biography because it does not give a thorough account of Jeremy’s life and, though it is centered on his years as Holmes, speaks more to his portrayal and how is illness influenced this portrayal for better or worse.  It’s more an homage to a great idea excavated and enacted by a  brilliant man who was at times tortured by the creation he assimilated to and at other times soared on the wings of the narcissistic and manic creativity of Conan Doyle’s icon. 

Sherlockians will love the information provided on the careful re-tellings of the works by Granada and its producers.  For example, Brett and his colleagues worked painstakingly to create a sort of “bible” of canonical references: everything that Sherlock and Watson were referenced to be eating, wearing, thinking and doing within the 56 short stories and 4 novels.  This, and other careful attentions to historical detail, are largely why the series is so highly regarded by Sherlockians and academics alike. 

What struck me most about this story, however, was ( as mentioned) the true nature of manic depression and the absolutely horrific symptoms torturing its sufferers.  Many are well aware of how Jeremy Brett experienced hefty weight gain during the filming of some of the Sherlock installments.  This was a result of the lithium side-effect of water retention and often he (this is sounding crass) had to be drained of the excess fluid while still not getting down to his normal size.  For a vain actor playing a sinewy and lanky icon, this was more than disparaging. At points in the series, Brett’s heart had swelled to twice its size, again a ramification of the medication he was on. He was so unwell that he had to sit in a wheelchair between scenes.  But, more severe than the physical symptoms was the mental repression and depression.  Davies recounts numerous conversations where Jeremy was obviously experiencing an episode of illness and how is acute mental faculties (not unlike those of the character he famously played) were plagued and distilled and frenzied by his mental incapacities.   Further still, that it so wholly tortured a man who was but 61 upon his death.

 Mental illness is a trying and horrible and isolating thing.  It is made more so here as it ravages the talent of someone so well-suited to play an iconic literary hero. It saddens me that someone who, to my knowledge, understood Sherlock Holmes in a way few of us do was so wrought with tragedy during his portrayal of him.   To say Jeremy Brett is a brilliant actor is an understatement when you, like me, grew up seeing him absolutely embody the role and encompass all that made Holmes so unique.  What is interesting further and what Davies explores in a winning and intellectual (and often funny and touching way) is how Jeremy Brett’s illness provided an almost ironic edge to his ability to play Sherlock Holmes.  Holmes, to many, is one who suffers from some kind of illness: Cumberbatch’s Holmes is mentioned as being a “high-functioning sociopath” where other critics have mentioned Asperger’s when studying him, to say nothing of the universal belief that he was plagued with some sort of social compulsion or disorder. Having a mentally-tortured soul whose illness caused him to see-saw from great moods of high-energy and mental exultation to low, lethargic moments of depression and drug-abuse ( in Brett’s case, the abuse was prescribed by medical professionals and caused numerous allergic reactions) play a character who exemplifies the same mental traits is a good, if sorrowful match.  Those who have immersed themselves in the canon for lengths of time know how difficult it is to be engulfed by Holmes and his remarkable mood swings.  He will be high and happy and floating on air, his brain capacity filled with deductive reasoning and logic; only to be brought down, inflated, to the ground: surrounded by pillows, drawing long breaths on his pipe, the cocaine syringe not far from his reach: ostracizing Watson and the world around him.

There is a true marriage of geniuses here plagued by mental instability. 

As a sufferer of mental illness ( I speak to my anxiety disorder and OCD on the blog here sometimes), I am always moved and challenged by the plights of fellow sufferers who, though not perhaps diagnosed with same illness, are plagued by some of the over-arching and over-lapping symptoms and consequences.   I was loaned a book called A First-Rate Madness which delves into the links between mental illness, leadership and art.  Indeed, artists and leaders and gloriously eccentric personages are more likely to be sufferers (diagnosed or not) of some facet of mental illness.  I think we can safely assume that Holmes was one of these sufferers, if fictional, whereas Jeremy Brett certainly was.

Later, when I can handle revisiting this book, which moved me far more than expected and cast a bit of a shadow over the past few days: so distressed was I at reading of such suffering on a fellow human (egads! Jeremy Brett or not, this is to try the water works, friends!), I will have a post just involving my favourite quotes of the book.  There are great conversations and quotes herein and wonderful anecdotes.  I found myself highlighting something every few pages!  While the general populous will be bored out of their tree, my fellow Sherlockians will clap and gasp and “ooo!” and “ahhh!”

For a long while, Bending the Willow was incredibly hard to find and the Amazon used marketplace sellers listed it at over 1000.00.  Now, it is available on kindle. 

A Spiritual History in Sung Liturgy: How Hymns are largely responsible for my ongoing Christian walk

I have never been without church music.  I don't remember a time when I didn't know the workings of a hymnal and many, many hymns, to me, are as familiar as breathing.

For all I know, I always knew all the words and the melodies and different musical settings. To this day, I am amazed at my brain's capacity to elastically hold and unfold the hundreds of hymns I recollect from my childhood.   While the Pentecostal Church ( the church in which I grew up ) has largely depleted its greatest musical resource and, in turn, replaced many hymnals with the trendy wave of outreach found in worship choruses, I still recall my earliest memories. I still feel that part of my strong attachment to the written word and the fact that I was always a strong reader is testament to my running my eyes weekly along the verses of the hymnal and slowly piecing out the words and memorizing them, recognizing them, due to their marriage with the music.



My dad is a retired Pentecostal minister and from the time I was born until the time I left home for university, I never knew a world that did not include the Evangelical church.   To say that being a minister's kid is easy is a horrid falsehood. It was difficult. The restrictions in our traditional home seeming even more so because we acted as unofficial emblems of the morality and regulations my father preached from the pulpit. Don't get me wrong---there are very few ways of doing it otherwise.    In fact, from the Bronte sisters to L.M. Montgomery (a minister's wife), you'll rarely hear of those involved in a minister's family without hearing of the consequences of the appointed role.

It also leaves little room to decide what measure religion will play in your life.  Evangelical Christianity was ingrained in my being from birth and I never knew a world without it.  As well as attending church two times on Sunday ( Sunday school before; then morning and evening service... when I grew older .... orchestra rehearsal BEFORE Sunday school), Wednesday Bible Study, Friday night Youth Group alongside a bevy of other tasks and showers, weddings, receptions, hymn nights, plays, Church dramas, ministries, conventions, etc.,


As an adult raised in an environment so overtly Christian as mine it became ( as it is for many ) difficult in my early adult years to reconcile any personal convictions I might have had against a background so steeped in one form of Christianity.   Now, while I maintain my Christian faith and solidly continue to rely on it; I cannot say that I haven't struggled with how the sect of Christianity which informed my upbringing, my moral compass and fibre, my life lessons and the rigidity of regulations I placed on myself can act at a discord with the beliefs I currently harbour.  A lot of the issues so proudly pronounced on Evangelical stages have, after years of ruminating, reading, and sculpting my own personal belief system while still taking the most potent constructs of my childhood in stride, disconnect with my personal viewpoints.  Simplistically, I try to be the Atticus Finch type of Christian: one who replaces judgment and condemnation with a willingness to embrace moral certainty and servitude against a conflicted world.  (I'm serious about the Atticus Finch thing.  If you want to know my definition of Christianity, look to a book like To Kill a Mockingbird or re-visit Joe Gargery, the gracious blacksmith in Great Expectations).



From the age of 5, music became an even more important part of my religious life because I began singing publicly in church.  This would continue and I credit my interest and voracious study in music ---alongside the fact that my post-secondary career saw me certain that I would pursue musical performance. I always sang in church and I always loved it. The confidence and joy that I conveyed in my musical competence  inspired my parents and I to invest in vocal training.  I began at age 12  in a largely classical way and continued in my first year University (as my area of study) and, when I transferred schools and programs to the niche of English Literature-- my other, and somewhat synonymous passion,  I continued study at the Royal Conservatory of Music here in Toronto---also in classical study. Since then, I have had intermittent classical training---all of which I credit to my upbringing singing in the church and the music I loved.

Funnily, in festivals and competitions as a kid, my favourite area of performance was always the Religious or Sacred category: it allowed me to blatantly explore my love of traditional and gospel music on stage.


As my older self struggled (as all those raised in a conservative Christian home) to create my own identity and as I reached that crucial moment where I had to decide ultimately if I believed in my faith because it was my faith; or whether it was the ramification of my having known nothing else my entire life, I thought largely to the music of the church.  It married the two things in the world I love most: music and the written word.  From a young age, I began taking note of the composers and lyricists noted in the hymnal and the dates of their birth and death bracketed beside their name.  I began to pay close attention to where one stanza ended and where the next began: recognizing the lyrics as separate poetry and not something merely recited and sung because it was as familiar as breath.


In any moment of struggle or disdain I have felt with the church as an organization (I have never felt disdain toward the Gospel message of Christianity; rather only how its executed and practiced by fallible humans and victim sometimes to the organization and politics of Churches), I would take myself to the purest part of the religious experience: the hymns.   No matter what sermon I heard, no matter what book I signed out of the library or convention experience I had with my youth group or doubt that I belonged more with the traditional Anglicans than the charismatic Pentecostals ( a thought I had as early as 10 years old), I knew that the beauty of the Church rested largely in its musical history.  The perfect music: often commissioned from the most talented composers of the age or settings borrowed from the repertoire of history to fit the words of the most powerful songs with the perfect Poetry.  The hymns I loved most, and the Christmas Carols I loved most ( for Christmas music remains some of my favourite music of all: not the secular jingle stuff; but the real, traditional CAROLS) were those which had lyrics bespeaking the entire gospel message.  As a kid and teenager I loved this.  As I found my voracious reading and rather liberal and equalist ideals beginning to show kernels of clash against the conservative and rather right philosophy of my community, I found the purist spiritual experience in hymns.

I loved them. They were God's way of speaking just to me. Sometimes I felt, while sitting with a hymnal open in hand or playing the notes of the hymnal with my flute ( when I wasn't leading worship, as I grew older, I played flute in our church orchestra), that God was nodding directly at me: knowing that I would get ridiculously excited if I saw a playlist boasting one of my favourite hymns.

As I began singing at other churches in solo roles or at different events which required me to perform a religious song: weddings, funerals, anniversaries, the like...  I relied on my love for the traditional.
In an era where the Evangelical church seemed to be replacing hymnals with over-head projectors and, progressively, powerpoint presentations flouncing the words of the catchy worship choruses, I would take my personal passion with me.

Hymns were constructed (especially those I prefer: those written in the 18th through early 20th Centuries) to provide the entire Gospel message to an illiterate population.  To secure understanding of those who would ramble in off of the street.  To ensure that the easy repetition that would follow when words are sung to music and thus conscripted to memory would remind all congregants and seekers of the most important tenets of faith.

As I've evolved in my Christianity, so modern Evangelism has devastatingly turned from its history and origin and, in some instances, instead of providing a hybrid of both traditional (perhaps explored in an innovative modern way, for example -- as I have heard successfully performed) and contemporary services, it has developed a generation or two with little to no knowledge of the music that precedes it.
In short, the hymns and carols that so supplemented my Christianity and the services of believers hundreds upon hundreds of years before me lies restless while replaced by worship largely (generalized statement here) reliant on the experience of worship in musical form: rather than the sole conviction of the words to relay the Gospel message in a rudimentary and stern way.

I could go on and on and on and on about this subject ( a personal conviction of mine since a young age and, because of its intensity, I feel part of my Higher conviction and personal walk); but this long tangent  is supplemental to my revisiting my favourite Christmas carols and hymns on a near daily basis.

With the illness (see anxiety portion of the blog) I am being treated for, a lot of the past has had to be exhumed and I have had to, once more, craft and carve my personal belief system while remembering, diffusing and processing my serious and deep integration with Evangelical Christianity--- it has not been a smooth ride. Never, again, as a direct result of my disbelief in the Gospel or the Bible (I have intensively studied it and its varying translations in personal and academic spheres---much as I have the history of religious music); but as it pertained to the more rocky facets of my childhood experience in a Pentecostal Church AS a Pentecostal minister's kid.

Rocky, yes, self-reflecting, yes...

This process, coupled with my current nervous state in crowds and confined spaces, has made Church attendance near-impossible in the past few months. While I haven't attended a Pentecostal Church regularly since my early 20s (I am 30 now), my parents still attend and it is still in near periphery.  Something about the propensity and potency of remembrance and my complete immersion in the more political and organized facets of Church have caused it to bring an immediate wealth of emotion---especially with the music I love...

 I cannot escape this music. In fact, in those severe moments we have when parts of our brain defy even our most deeply rooted faith and cause it to slightly tremble or waver with the ease of casting off-- I have admitted to myself ( as I had in previous occasion remarking on the work of Catherine Marshall, Lynn Austin or D.L. Sayers), that I will never be able to abandon Christianity partly because I will never be able to admit that the Carols and Hymns that so defined me were not inspired by Divine presence.

For me, the proof of a Supernatural Higher Power and the evidence of His great love through his Son's (see, I've got all the "good and important" stuff in line, don't I?) interposition of human sin, is often relayed at its most glorious when penned and composed by vessels used as inference of Higher Power in human worship.   It's a very Biblical thing and a very sacred thing...  The moment a Church congregation links itself in history (through music, the written word, narrative) to its forebears and recognizes the link threading every generation of believers, the more it is able to appreciate the contextuality which strings it in a fermented and solid way. What better way for history to invade modern liturgy but through song?

How Gus and Shawn saved Christmas (so far): This Post includes an odd 'To Kill a Mockingbird" reference.

Jem and Scout hate their nearby neighbour, Mrs. Dubose, in To Kill A Mockingbird. She's crotchety and rocks on her porch flinging mean-spirited insults to the children. It takes their father, Atticus, and his southern gentlemanly ways to restrain their contempt. At one particularly sensitive moment in the novel, Jem has it at her award-winning hydrangeas.  As punishment, he is forced to return to her house every day after school and read to her as she sits in bed, white-haired and scowling as a mysterious time piece ticks every painful moment he and his sister impatiently sit near.

It is soon revealed that Mrs. Dubose is dying and in a lot of pain. Proud, she is, though, and through her pain she struggles to remove herself of her morphine addiction before her final breath.  Every time Jem reads to her, she focuses on the clock and not on his voice, slowly weaning herself off of her doses of medication.  Every second combatted is a small obstacle overcome.

I cannot say that I have the same experience with excruciating pain (thank heavens); but slowly, the zombie medication that had provided a tricky yet safe cloud of numbness and blurred security has been pulled from me.   My  "bridging" medications: those with the highest doses and numbing-action--the ones that allow me to nap and stop the tremor and the stutter and the panic were only meant to see me through the most intense ramifications of my heightened anxiety and bridge me, as it were, to a more stable medication that I will continue to use and become accustomed to. A medication that will stable my moods and anxiety in the long-term and become a regular part of my make-up.

The transition has been stupid and hard and weird and emotional.  I can no longer rely on the heavy doses that I initially felt.  The drowsiness and comfort of having a little bottle that you could count on should you need an extra dose or to see you through long nights.  So much of the treatment for anxiety and depression relies on you working hard: personally, mentally, physically.  It is the marriage of cognitive therapy and medication which will have the most positive effects in the long-term.  Unfortunately, the cognitive therapy is the hardest.  The self-talk and homework and exposures which, beyond medication, help you plant your feet on solid and untrembling ground are the ideal solutions....

But the changing and lessening of medication, to me, has been keenly felt.

I remember the first time I took one of the bridging meds. I slept through the night. Peacefully. Not waking once. It was magic.  I couldn't believe that the person who had woken up every-hour-on-the-hour in the throes of irrational fears and mental trajectories winding down a dark path (made darker by the hour) could actually rest peacefully. I was used to waking and silently, catatonically watching (watching is a strong word for staring while your mind races afraid of everything from tornadoes to homework you may not have submitted in high school ) late night movies before I would thankfully wake up. 

Medication was a sure-fire remedy.

Now, I am heaps better than when I started this journey two months ago and I trust my doctor and my path so deeply that I am slowly starting the rocky road to settling into my reformed self.

Unfortunately, with the Christmas crying ( see previous post this week) and the adjustment in medication, my sleep-patterns have been off.  Not to mention ( as also referenced) I returned to my hometown which is steeped full of nostalgia and heart-breakingly wonderful moments and memories that flood on overload.  The past two weeks have been difficult and I feel them most acutely when alone. Not to mention, waking up again automatically makes me sad: I think back to worse times.  Of course, the racing thoughts no longer steer to irrational fears and yet to Christmas and family and work ---- and how I am away from all of those things: mentally and physically.   Disembodied, as it were. 

Luckily, I have had a reprieve.   On my parent's couch last weekend, laptop on coffee table, earphones in,tea-in-hand, and through those awful wakeful moments, I have watched a heap-load of Psych. Often, I'll watch the same episode more than once if my mind is not completely with the plot.  And it makes me giggle. Really giggle. Jubilantly giggle. Because it is ridiculous.  But, on  another note, it is slowly re-instilling my creative recesses of energy and thought and imaginative-illumination.  For the past few months concentrating on anything of artistic depth was difficult.  I mentioned a fair number of sitcoms I watched. Reading has been especially hard ----partly because reading makes me want to write and edit and work on my own projects---something in (not-so-distant) periphery.  But Psych bounces vocabulary and alliteration and slight character deepening and twists in a fun and colourful way.... in a safe and pronounced way that doesn't require my full mental faculties: yet exercises and awakens some kernel of my literately fun self.

[Shawn and Gus really DO save Christmas]

In a way, and as cheesy as this sounds, Gus and Shawn have taken the place of medication.  I rely on them as stimulant. I know that I can re-visit them and count on a daily dosage.  I know that I can repeat-as-needed and maybe even take less in a day than needed if I am having a particularly strong day.  If I need to let me mind drift and just spend 43 minutes watching for the appearance of a pineapple (as hyper-intensively ridiculous as this sounds), it is enough to keep me going.   I have no previous connection with them and they don't remind me of anything.  There is no link in the show that will start a stream of consciousness to the past.  It is a strange and magnetic world that, blessedly, doesn't remind me of ...anything. I am not lost in the past and the maze of unknitted thought when visiting. Foreign to most; but very important to me.  Disassociation. 

Part of my homework is to be as open as possible and to expose as much as I possibly can in hopes of explaining some odd behaviours; but also, possibly, silently throwing a rope.   I don't enjoy talking in long epistles about how television (for a bookworm! SHOCKS! EGADS! ) has proven helpful; but it can be wonderful escapism and temporary medication.

Bridges are strange and scary--- medicinally and otherwise--- for those (like me) terrified of heights, they pose a strange and sudden sensation of impending doom --- or they can be calm and beautiful as you lean over them and stare into the water below--- or they can be long and seemingly endless (I'm thinking of you, Confederation Bridge to PEI) where just a small strip of land becomes larger and larger as you make out its red rim while driving from New Brunswick...

Sometimes bridges undergo construction. 

Sometimes they act as a metaphor as you band one part of your life to another.  I am bridge in this imagery and, luckily, things step in to help shove me over...

So, Shawn and Gus save Christmas.  I look forward to their Christmas episodes, I look forward to dissecting what nonsense and rhetorical goodness will seep from its insanity and pin-prick the goofy and vulnerable and giggly side of me that was temporarily on mute.

Triggers that You Don't Think Are Triggers...

...Christmas is proving very problematic in my anxiety-induced world. It is not unusual to find me downtown Toronto holding onto the side of a building, shaking and crying, because the decorations and the music have hit me in a nostalgic place that I cannot crawl out of ...

A popular term in the treatment that I am undergoing and that will be familiar with many of you who have undergone cognitive therapy treatment for either anxiety or depression is "trigger": like your index finger itching on a gun---the seemingly pointless, harmless, ridiculous can explode ...

Today:

a message from a co-worker
the sound of Hark!, the Herald Angels Sing wafting from the ornately decorated window frames of Holt's at Bloor and Yonge
the guy flirting with me as I upgraded to a blackberry (the blackberry has been fun)
finding that dial 'm' for murder was TCM's feature this evening ----notably Grace Kelly's red dress....


All of these things trigger a reaction and all at once I am jittery or nostalgic or numb or catatonic and I fade into myself like the world is buzzing into framed blur

Clarity is as fleeting as a sip of tea or the whirr of a new message on my new phone...

....then I retreat.


Christmas is a beautiful, magical, wonderful, amazing time of kaleidoscope wonderment: but it is a trickster, too. It is a veritable bottomless tickle trunk of loss, of preservation, of winking lights that spotlight melancholy.

It does a lot to those prey to instances of emotion and panic.


The crowds were enough before to start my shudders of hand tremor; to glare my eyes and wobble my voice...

Christmas brings them in droves.

I want to visit my book people.  My book friends. A gent on the subway today was reading Martha Grimes and a part of my heart cried to curl back into a well-remembered book.   But, it just starts the tear ducts flowing.   Three times this evening I have made my way to the well-visited shelf wherein perches my collection of Horatio Lyle: but he evades me, too.

I guess one of the hardest things is recognizing that all seemingly familiar is now strange and uneven.

Last week's trip home, usually a time of solace and exploration of my favourite local, small-town haunts in the place I grew up in, had me fleeing to find a new place, to remain completely invincible.

Here, in Toronto, I revel in anonymity while recognizing myself a stranger.

Reinvention was never easy for anything or anyone.


So my Cylon selves are out in the world: sometimes bearing traces of what I was before; sometimes signalling that which is to come; sometimes staring weirdly at an angle in the mirror and studying without profundity.

It's all a profuse trigger, an explosion of colour that renders itself, somehow and most ironically, in splashes of grey---not even the concrete safety of black and white.

the hardest part of being me...

my memory.

it's a blessing and a curse

i remember everything in precise detail

smells, colour, sounds

a chord of music will transplant me

a word transpose me

a moment will render completely coloured deja vu

it makes me a perfect patient as i step the slow steps to my doctor's office and slink into his chair

it makes me a perfect patient as he slowly pulls every last inkling of imaginative, kaleidoscope thought from the recesses of my vortex-mind

he excavates and, like an archaeologist, knows just where to scrape the scantily wisped dirt to find the golden treasure beneath

i wish i could turn my brain off without medicinal help


i wish that the memories wouldn't flood altogether in a jumble of colour, scent and smell and sound

i wish that an opening chord wouldn't haunt up a pile of unwanted fragments

that my eyes would keep from watering

that my darkly lit apartment, with its sole-burning candle flame wouldn't strip back to a decade ago


i wish that i could put it all on hold with some slightest trick of mind ---instead of medicinal numbness

instead, thoughts crowd and flash and bend and round and erect themselves until my hand shakes and my cheeks burn....

all at once they scrape across my mind's eye and feel like the streetlamp does when its shadow first mellowly hits the slackened,  spanse of rain-soaked pavement

i don't want illumination

i want to turn it off

instead, in repeat-mode, it finds its way....

Anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in the Media

As someone diagnosed as OCD with elements of Anxiety and Panic disorder, I find it helpful when I can identify with characters in the media who exemplify some of the same symptoms.

Two shows do very well in exposing these diseases in a sensitive, provocative and well-researched manner: doing well to raise awareness about mental illness in our society.

Currently, the CBC is using actor Matt Watts' personal Social Anxiety Disorders and the tenets and phobias therein as the weekly premises for the show Michael: Tuesdays and Thursdays. This show, created by Bob Martin ( Canadian Comedian and writer/star of Broadway's The Drowsy Chaperone) does well in introducing cognitive behavioural therapy when wed with medicinal therapy to help Michael with his anxieties and phobias.

Michael has tendencies of agoraphobia and his weekly "homework" can see him doing everything from attending a crowded movie theatre, to returning to spaces housing painful memories, having candid conversations and even asking a stranger for the time.

What impresses me about this show is not the continuing plot points; yet the exposition of the ongoing (15 years) relationship between a psychiatrist and his patient: proving that anxiety disorders can be treated; but not completely cured.  Having Matt Watts'  express his vulnerability and struggles and having the credits mention that the show utilizes Watts' personal phobias and anxieties makes a great step toward awareness of mental illness in a funny, sombre and often touching way.

I don't recommend the show for the other aspects of each story arch (I find the writing to be oddly-paced); but I do find this aspect of the show extremely well-written.

Matt Watts speaks to his Anxiety Disorder here and to an open panic attack here.

As someone who suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder ( though diagnosed as having an Obsessive Compulsive Social Disorder and not the severity of compulsion and repetition as physically expressed here), I have always had a soft spot for Adrian Monk: the detective whose OCD makes it difficult for him to perform even the slightest tasks: despite the brilliance of his brain and his impenetrable dedication to solving his wife's murder. (Note: if you watch Monk, which I did religiously during its long run---even going so far as to own my favourite seasons on DVD for revisitation, your heart will be broken. Tony Shalhoub deserved the many awards and accolades he won for his mind-boggling portrayal of Adrian Monk).

Monk does well at presenting OCD in a humorous way; but with a lot of heart.  Monk's phobias are ever present; but he is a character whom the entire police force respects.  His disorder, his disease, never get in the way of his mental capabilities.

Actor Tony Shalhoub has said he suffers from elements of OCD and comprehends its debilitating nature and how it can cause embarrassment and distress for patients suffering from it.  He speaks to the importance of his character and the show's pre-occupation with raising awareness here and here.




I find that both of these television shows do well at presenting mental illness in a real and very exposed way; while still maintaining a lot of heart.  As such, they raise awareness.  You'll notice that both clips feature the patient in cognitive talk therapy: emphasizing the importance of this relationship while exposing the vulnerable and seemingly irrational fears and phobias of the patients.

1 in 10  Canadians suffers from an Anxiety Disorder; yet the stigma behind mental disorders remains prevalent, pervasive and acute.   As a society, we need to openly discuss these diseases as they are---diseases--- while their treatment can sometimes require elements which evade other diseases, i.e., a hybrid of cognitive talk therapy AND medication; rather than just medication and while these diseases are not so much curable as treatable, they are still valid and, more likely than not, you or someone you know suffers from a facet of anxiety, depression or compulsion.

I have an anxiety disorder--- how the heck will i deck those friggin' halls.....

The other day I was in a good mood. It's the point of November where a chill nips the air, the sun sets earlier settling on the lights of Toronto's mellow skyline and Christmas music floats from the retail outlets.

I had hiked up to Yonge and Eglinton to visit the David's Tea shop there and while there, I ducked inside Future Shop for new earbuds.

Upon hearing It Came Upon The Midnight Clear on the speakers in the store, I immediately broke down.  Crying and hyperventilating, I had to take refuge by finding something to grab hold to.

If you read my Advent Tour post from last year, you know that Christmas music is a major part of my life; it speeds through my veins, is much a part of my fibre.... as is all of hymnody and church and sacred music history.

I have never been able to get through Silent Night with a dry eye ( and have had to leave church before because of the overwhelming emotions it elicits); but It Came Upon The Midnight Clear?

In an attempt to dissect my panic attacks and public and private breakdowns after-the-fact, and to have something to report to my psychiatrist in our ongoing discussions and treatment, I will wait until the episode has passed, collect myself ( often ashamedly: in this case having assured two kind shoppers that I was alright--- just emotional over the Holidays--- you can get away with being vague at Christmas: it is such a cornucopia of conflicting nostalgia) and sit for a moment to connect my mental dots.

Christmas music will always hit  me and speak to me as most religious music does--- it is partly because I have an ingrained passion (which I mentioned) and partly because no matter how betrayed or disillusioned I am with the more flawed aspects of the religion I grew up with and practice, it remains a pure intercession which metes out grace, poetry and a sense of history that melds hundreds of years of followers together.... it binds.


But, what I am realizing, and what I attribute to the Disease is its waterfall effect.    I have a bit of a freaky memory which remains a blessing and a curse. I remember, in detail, vivid and resonating smells, sounds, conversations and moments like photographic snapshots on constant slideshow in my brain.

As I try hard to piece together the fragments of myself now jumbled, muted, spread out like shattered shards of pictures unmoving and forcedly symbolic,  I am overwhelmed by memory.

Music has always linked my brain to the past and to specific moments.  I have experienced 30 Christmases (well, lets say 25 or 26 lucidly) and with the strains of a familiar song,  all of the memories, at once, good and bad: those which formed my psyche, those which perturbed or suggested unending loss all crowded with the chords of a song and the pressure, the weight on my shoulders was intrusive.

It's more than a moment where you softly recall the low-tinted and framed moments of happy memories of a childhood past.    In the moment in Future Shop, holding on to a rack of video games, hundreds of pictures crammed my brain while the part of myself who cannot fathom what Christmas will look like now that I have been changed (am changing)  and the part of myself that cannot reconcile public events--- even to the point of having panic just thinking of standing in the doorjamb of a church at my favourite time of year: where snow falls softly and the organic chords of my favourite carols waft from within, it left me bereft and broken.


While I slowly become more lucid, while the days of effort seem to, in ways, pay off in leaps and bounds and honesty drips from my tongue and my keyboard, I begin to recognize the price paid, the veneer that left me in ignorant bliss, the band-aid ripped off which forces me, productively yet cruelly, to confront that that always bathed in glorious light has somehow become exposed.... that holidays once jolly and merry and full of warmth are now being seen with a sense of perturbedly quaked and shaken awe---- What will Christmas look like? What can it look like?  If it is mid-november and I am avoiding retail outlets after my Future Shop outburst, how will I make it through the next month and a half?

Must the entire world be privy to what I am privately experiencing?  No wonder so many sufferers of panic disorder become, as I recoil to admit I suffer from, agoraphobia.


But, I keep forcing myself out, stripping everything bare and trying to turn the scrutiny of the world off...


Because I never could get through Silent Night without crying---- I can bank on my emotions to overflow attuned to melodies that string me in a consciously spiritual, nostalgic, insensitively invasive way....

Sometimes people will see it and wonder..... but I'll breathe deeply, stutter, shake my hand at lightning speed and keep walking.... because Christmas has always been my favourite thing and Christmas music my favourite sector of the Holiday.


So I will be bloody damned if it will tackle and break me in the end.

There will be moments. I  will be vulnerable and exposed---- but I will keep walking through it and I will keep assuming that the Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men vibes that sprinkle my city's streets and force wide-eyed gazers to stop outside the candy-coloured toy trains in the Bay windows at Queen will reconcile my somewhat odd public spectacles with a click of a tongue and perhaps a remembrance of a loss that they experienced.... something that snaps at them during the holidays....


Except mine is not a loss, per se, it is a re-opening, a re-programming, a reformation....

My religion underwent it several times ( In fact, the King James Version of the Bible just celebrated its 400th Anniversary, as a semi-related factoid) and so shall I....

If you want something ethereal, listen to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing one of the most hallowed and harrowing pieces of music ever composed.... this take very much captures the rare simplicity of one of the most everlasting Christmas Carols

In Which We Speak to the Disease

Hello Bloggosphere,

I have been sporadic here of late; have completely drifted from finishing projects started (namely RIP Challenge, a Study in Sherlock, Great Adaptations) which I have every intention of someday finishing.

NO STARBIES in my STARBIES mug

My absence however, has been brought on by a certifiable illness: I have a severe anxiety disorder which includes a dash of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, Panic Induced Agoraphobia, Panic Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder and a wee bit of depression.

I am getting the help and treatment I need for this VALID illness and am on MEDICAL LEAVE from work (I have been off work since October 1st and will probably return in Feb: thank God for an amazing company which allows me to take disability/medical leave with full pay) ; but a lot of things in my life have changed ---including my presence on this blog.

I have a wonderful doctor and therapeutic appointments and homework which blends medicative therapy with experimental cognitive therapy; but it has also come at some costs.

1.) READING: The drugs make it VERY hard for me to read. In fact,  where I used to read ALL THE TIME, I read at a much slower pace.  This is a temporary thing; but frustrating. So frustrating that I was sick of having something I truly loved "stolen" from me ---so I bought a pile of Archie Comics, reverted  to my 8 year old self and got to task.

With this slow and painful return to having my mental faculties (exhausted from meds and the small seemingly insignificant exercises which work toward allowing me to reintegrate myself back into society), I have been able to still fulfill some blog tour work and, what is proving a rewarding challenge, read through the INSPYs books  I have been assigned as a Romance Judge. It just takes longer than previously and some days cannot happen at all.

2.) COFFEE: my favourite thing in the world other than books has been taken from me.  No Starbucks. Decaf Only....so I have been drowning my sorrows in literal gallons of David's Tea ---God Bless their amazing selection

3.) A SOCIAL LIFE:   My illness has become so advanced that I have had to (doctor ordered) miss my sister's phd convocation, a close friend's wedding weekend, birthday parties, housewarmings, Hallowe'en: all because seeing more than one or two people at a time is impossible right now. Church is out. Crowds are out.

4.) HAND TREMOR AND STUTTER: I started having a consistent hand tremor mid-September at work during our busiest and most stressful time of year. I would hide my hand in my pocket (wearing dress pants and skirts with pockets?  I sometimes wore jackets so I wasn't hoisting out the less attractive wear in my closet)  which advanced once I left work and was finally allowed to show my symptoms (meaning my brain was on autopilot: function,function,hide,function as I went through the motions).  My anxiety has also led way to a temporary speech impediment: I stutter. This is not forever; but part of me thinks that the tremor and stutter are my brain's way of saying: we have kept you a Rachel-bot for so long; we need sometime to let our true colours show.  Also, my way of sub-sub-consciously allowing the world to visibly know that I am sick: so that expectations are kept ( as they should be) at a minimum

ABOUT ALL I CAN READ RIGHT NOW: face it, sorta fun!

I know that Anxiety Disorders plague  many people on the bloggosphere in many ways and one of the hardest things for me to come to terms with was allowing myself to recognize that it is an illness "worthy" of medical leave from work; or life.

We do not look at someone with diabetes, say, or cancer and say: you are taking time off of work for treatment, pshaw!   But, there remains a stigma with mental illness that even I, a sufferer of,  bought into.

It's time to stop that.

I am being completely honest about the illness because I know other people suffer from it in varying degrees.

I know I am not the only person with recurring panic attacks, who hyperventilates, who cannot handle the pressure of being in crowds.


Funny thing is, kids, that I  was the most social person people had ever met. I  have literally dozens of friends, was always the social leader, work in a very people-driven facet of the publishing world and can mingle as well as the rest of them.


When I was told that I was a Conditioned Extrovert, I was not surprised. My real self is most comfortable at a pub with a friend or two; or hiding away in my apartment with tea and candles and a book or two.....

My own stigma and my own rallying against my own disease was shameful. I didn't believe I was "worthy" of time off of work, I didn't believe that I had an illness with a severity that dictated all of the medication and treatment.  My amazing doctor had to continually pull textbooks off of his shelf and point to how legitimate my illness is.


In fact, my accepting it as legitimate, makes his work legitimate. My treatment at a large research hospital in Toronto proves that Anxiety Disorders are so prevalent and so wracking and so real that they must be spoken to in an entire department in psychiatry: that research and articles must be given to a world who still cannot quite grasp what they cannot understand.


I thought that Scott Lynch, author of the Lies of Locke Lamora and the other Gentleman Bastards'  sequence titles I adore to death, was strong and wonderful for opening up about his anxiety and how, as an author, it had kept him from attending events, from writing, from feeling like himself.

I thought I would share it here


A doctor once told me that the reason he almost went into psychiatry is because he feels, in ways, it is the worst of all diseases as it keeps the sufferer from feeling like themselves....

My lack of presence on this blog, the time it is taking me to post on novels that publishers have been kind enough to send to me, the fact  that I have not yet tackled LYNN AUSTIN'S NEW BOOK: are all ramifications of a real, live disease.


I will be speaking to this blog hopefully more frequently in the coming weeks: and certainly as we inch closer to the INSPYs which, as mentioned, I am honoured to be judging.

But I also breathe a sigh of relief: because now all of YOU know what's going on and stigma is often hidden in shame and secrecy.

There is nothing to be ashamed of.  I would never walk up to someone with pneumonia and say "did you have a nervous breakdown?"

The same should keep  us from pre-judging those with disorders which start mentally and show physical symptoms.