Blogging again from the bed.

It's the holidays. If you're depressed, you're not alone. For context, below is an old post about my depression. Please know, there is hope.

But first, you need to watch Gary Gulman's HBO special, "The Great Depresh." It's the best thing I've ever seen on depression, and it's also very funny. Here's the trailer. And no, I don't know how to fix the formatting.

Get yourself a 7-day HBO trial subscription so you can watch the whole thing. It's well worth it. 

And now, my old post:

At this moment, I am blogging on the bed. Next to me are two used cups; four cereal bowls with spoons, all licked clean by the dog; two empty yogurt containers, also licked clean; an almost-empty bottle of club soda from a couple days ago; my purse; a couple of used paper towels; and crumbs. Quite a lot of crumbs, in fact, both in and on the bed.

I’ve been living on my bed for the past three months. Eating on the bed. Playing cellphone games on the bed. Listening to NPR on the bed. Watching movies on the bed. This, even though I have a perfectly good living room and dining room and office. My day is spent traversing well-worn paths, and every damned one of them leads to my bed. Which, by the way, is on the floor because I've never put the frame together -- because I won't let anyone in my house to help me.

Depression. I've had it since I was about twelve, although back then I didn't know it had a name. You can see when it happened in the family photos: the light went out of my eyes. There was no there there. Alcohol brought the light back, until it didn't anymore. Later, sobriety brought relief. But even now depression is a frequent visitor. Thank goodness for meds that take the edge off.

Like addiction, depression is cunning, baffling, and powerful. It's just as patient, too, and as subtle.  It intrigues me, seduces me into unlit, unsafe places. Sometimes it breaks the door down with some big calamity like a death in the family. More often, though, it wafts in through the cracks by way of a small mistake, or a brief lapse in integrity, or a familiar sound that reminds me of failure. Sometimes I summon it myself by listening to really dark songs again, and again, and again. The buzz I crave.

Once depression gets a toehold, it takes on a life of its own. It convinces me that I'm just fine, while it reprograms my mind and my heart like malware running silently in the background. Before I know it, I'm in its caress, warm and thick and downy, sequestered from the world like a fetus in the womb – but also cut off from anyone who would help me find my way out. And honestly, at that point, I don’t always care if I find my way out or not.

Despair, with an isolation chaser.

I may not even know depression has taken hold until someone asks the right questions. Ask me how I am, and I'll tell you, "I'm fine. Now let's talk about you."
 
But ask me about my actions: Did you get the mail today? Did you open it? When’s the last time you changed your sheets?  Are there dishes in your bedroom? Have you been listening to sad music? When's the last time you showered? Have you been ignoring phone calls? How many meetings have you made in the last seven days?

By writing this post, I know I’m making the decision to stop. Frankly, I’m not thrilled. But if I waited until I felt like doing the right stuff, I’d rarely accomplish anything of value.
 
That's as far as I got with this post. Writing about it was all the action I could muster. It was just enough. 

It's not the sunshine I miss
but the summer storm
So seductive in its wrath,
so gentle in its caress
of the mountain behind me.
The smell of rain mingling
with earth, so crisp -
so inviting.
The eerie copper gleam of Sun's reflection
on wet pavement:
it is always evening when the rain comes.
I breathe deeply, and more deeply,
drawing in the fresh moist air,
perhaps one last raindrop
dancing on my face.
The storm is over but I linger on
in the arms of fading thunder
while a cool breeze bathes me
as if I were its child.

On God, or whatever.

I don't believe in Bible God.

There, I've said it. I don't believe that there is a personal, conscious god who grants wishes commensurate with the fervor of my genuflecting.

I admit the Universe does seem to conspire in my favor when I do the next right thing, and sometimes in a weird way.  I still believe the Universe is mere energy devoid of consciousness.

But I think maybe that's only part of it.

See, here's the thing. I sank into adolescent depression after my parents split, and I muddled through. I battled an undiagnosed eating disorder for decades, and I lurched from one diet to another, and I muddled through. I got married, got drunk a lot, got sober, graduated from college, somehow got through law school, practiced law for a few years. had a daughter, moved to the Navajo Nation, got divorced, discovered I was gay, got to be a law professor for a while, got a gig as a lobbyist and somehow successfully faked that for a few years, got a master's degree, entered and exited two destructive relationships, lost everything, rebuilt my credit, moved to Santa Fe not knowing anyone, ran a state court library, bought a house and a car, had a sleeve gastrectomy and lost 100 pounds, lost my job, and found another job across the country where I could reboot my career.

And so at age 61 I rented an apartment sight unseen, packed my car with two dogs and a cat and all the sundry stuff I could jam inside and on top, drove 1,900 miles by myself, carried everything up a bitch of a dark flight of stairs, and set up housekeeping, sort of, in a town completely foreign to me in the land of Oz. And I'm still sober.

That's a lot for anyone.  For me it's a freaking miracle. I mean, how did I manage all of that?

I did it with help. A whole lot of help. A shitload of help! Financial help. Logistical help. Truck-loading help. Cleaning help. Lots and lots of emotional and spiritual help. Help across the years, from many people, to whom I am very, very grateful.

But that's not God.

Meanwhile, we live in an ordered, unsentient universe constructed from the mystery and beauty of mathematics. Also not God.

I've always considered these two entities -- the help I've gotten over the years, and the matter and energy in the universe -- as unrelated. There are the people who help me, and then there's mathematics, and while both are exquisite, neither is supernatural.

The separateness is what I'm rethinking. Maybe they aren't so separate.

There is a lot about the universe we just don't understand. Light can be either a wave or a particle. A cat can be both alive and dead. A quantum particle in one part of the universe can act on another particle a billion light years away.

The Big Book says that god is either everything, or it is nothing. I disagree. I think it can be everything and nothing. Energy alone is essentially nothing. It's simply a force that holds atoms together. God is a noun, without much meaning or relevance, at least to me.

But maybe when that energy merges with the consciousness of the people in my life, God becomes a verb. It envelopes me, becoming everything. Maybe, somehow, the combination allows a collective consciousness to work actively in my life to help me get through each day.

To put it another way, maybe God is the Singularity without the computers.

Okay, so I'm willing to entertain the idea that when the universe and people combine, they somehow synthesize something new and conscious and even helpful. A kind of alchemy.  I suppose if it works, what do I care if it's true?

All my life I've felt like i was in a small boat in a hostile sea, and all my energy went toward just hanging on for dear life with one hand while I desperately tried to row against the waves with the other. Maybe instead my boat was being towed all along, and my oars were never of any use anyway.

Singularity. Huh. That could work.

But whatever it is, God or not-God, I am so grateful to all the people - all of you - who have been towing my little boat steadily along. Words simply can't suffice.

More, revealed.

I am a cornucopia of comorbidities. I thought it was just me, but turns out it’s all related to autism. Who’d a thunk? 

There’s dyspraxia. Dyspraxia used to go by the charming name of “Clumsy Child Syndrome,” and it’s common in autistics. I’ve been regularly tripping on my own feet since kindergarten. Sometimes I have trouble coordinating a knife and fork. And if you’re trying to give me directions, please don’t tell me “left” or “right.” Just point, okay?

And then there’s dyscalculia, which I won’t attempt to pronounce. Also common in Autistics.

If I go out to lunch with a group, don’t ask me to figure out what I owe if you want to leave before the waiter goes home. Just tell me. If it sounds even halfway fair, I’m not gonna argue.  

Add to that face blindness, or prosopagnosia, which I also won’t attempt to pronounce. Translation: You know that well-dressed guy in the gray suit that’s always hanging around campus? We met six times before I was finally able to recognize him. He’s the university provost. Spelled B-O-S-S. 

Not to mention my terrible short-term memory. Your fifth step is safe with me, honey, because I probably won’t remember about two-thirds of what you tell me. And it’s not that I wasn’t listening, either. I drank in every word, I really did, and it mattered to me. 

And so, when I talk to you, if it seems like it's all autism, all the time, that's because it is. Every aspect of my life has been steeped in autism and its comorbidities, and I’m only just now finding out. It has always been there, it's never going away, and I’m good with that, but it’s taking some getting used to.

My life, in context.

Bill Maher's Shiny Tin Foil Hat

I watch Real Time with Bill Maher even though I suspect that he’s sort of a jerk in real life and I find some of his positions offensive. But I agree with him about most things, and I appreciate that he invites conservatives onto his show, so it’s not a complete echo chamber. And, well, he makes me laugh.

Anyway, the point is, I watch Bill Maher, and I watch him religiously (see what I did there?). 

But a couple of weeks ago, Maher added something new to his wardrobe that I didn't expect: a shiny tin foil hat. And it wasn't at all becoming. 

Maher's opening guest on Friday was pediatrician Jay Gordon, who is a vaccine skeptic. And inexplicably, it was a softball interview. Their united message was this: we can't be absolutely sure that vaccines don't cause autism.  And while neither man was telling the audience to avoid vaccinations, the clear message was that it's perfectly okay if you do, because doctors don't really know what the fuck they're doing anyway. 

Nowhere in the discussion was it mentioned that correlation does not equal causation. Neither Maher nor Gordon brought up policy implications or the concept of herd immunity. You would think those would be worthy of a casual mention at the very least, but no. Maher did offer this bit of unimpeachable evidence, though:  one time when he got a flu shot, he got the flu right away. 

So Maher and Gordon want you to know that there is a one-in-a-million chance that your kid could get autism from a vaccine. 

This, as you already know, is not only ridiculous, but dangerous The study that linked autism to the MMR vaccine has been roundly debunked. Indeed, the researcher was such a bad actor that he lost his medical license over the study. The recent measles outbreaks are effective reminders of the impact anti-vaxxers have on public health.

Autistic self-advocates find the anti-vaxx movement highly offensive for another reason as well: When an anti-vaxxer decides not to vaccinate their child, they are really saying that they would rather have their kid die from a terrible disease than to be autistic. 

Autistics aren't so okay with that sentiment.

As most Autistic self-advocates see it, autism is a feature, not a defect, and while most Autistics need support -- and some need a whole lot of support -- that doesn't mean they all want to be cured (although this isn’t universal). Many of them -- of us -- see autism as an essential part of who we are. What we want is not a cure, but accommodations.

The perception many people have of autism -- a terrifying fate worse than death and a destroyer of families -- is the result of a well-funded, 15-year fear campaign led by Autism Speaks, the most well-known association related to autism. The organization has justly earned a great deal of criticism by most Autistic self-advocates for its scare tactics and dogged efforts to eliminate autism at all costs. Indeed, it is considered downright villainous by some. Autism Speaks has cleaned up its act somewhat, but it has a long way to go. I’ll talk more about that another time.

The point is, Bill Maher is a moron when it comes to this subject. So get your ass vaccinated, and vaccinate your kids, for Christ sake. Because even if vaccines did increase the risk of autism -- and they don't -- autism is not a fate worse than death. And frankly, we're not inclined to be eliminated.

The Upside of Getting Older

Lake Ontario's waves are glittering in the sun like dancing stars, and the warm breeze is gently teasing my face. I contemplate the steaming plate of poutine in front of me — my new favorite comfort food -- while an impatient gull eyes me from the next picnic table. This is not the life I anticipated.  

It's been thirty years since I graduated from law school. Thirty years! Now I'm in college again, working on a second bachelor's in creative writing. I don’t expect to finish it — I just want the discipline that comes with due dates. 

Backing my Subaru out of the gravel parking lot, I coast back to the library, passing dozens of students walking to their next classes. Someday they'll be accountants, drug dealers, grocery store clerks, hedge fund investors, homemakers, white collar criminals, lawyers, construction workers. 

But today, right now, they’re just kids. Kids with furry slippers, plaid pajama bottoms, and cat ears. Kids with green hair and bow ties. Kids carrying beat-up backpacks and kids pulling their books behind them on designer wheels. Kids of every body type, every color, every opinion, every gender. Just kids, in all their glorious diversity.

As I stop to let a couple of them cross the road, it occurs to me that they have no idea what lies ahead. They don’t know if they’ll live until they’re 93 or die at 25.  Whether they’ll ever be homeless. Whether they’ll be loved or reviled. They don't know how much joy or pain they can endure. They don't even know if they'll graduate.

And then it hits me: I don't have to figure out my life, because it has been laid out for me. I already know how it most of it will turn out:

There will be marriage, and a beautiful, wonderful daughter.

I'll get drunk a lot and end up clean and sober, at least for a while. I'll break a few bones, but recover easily. I’ll graduate squarely and honorably in the middle of my class at Harvard Law. 

I'll lose jobs unjustly, and I’ll get jobs I don't deserve. I'll be a lawyer and a librarian and a lobbyist and a professor. I'll screw that up and be a barista for a while, and that is where I'll find redemption. 

I will write over a thousand resumes.

I’ll live on the Navajo Nation, and in Santa Fe, and in Georgia, of all places.

I will have amazing friends and wonder what they see in me. I'll write a little play and get to see it produced, and I'll sing on stage. I will help Tibetan monks release a mandala into the Great Lakes.

Some of it is going to be really rough. There will be a divorce, followed by a lot of terrible decisions. I'll live without electricity or hot water. The sensation of fleas on my scalp will become almost routine, and I’ll sleep on a chewed-up mattress marinated in urine. Worst of all, my devastatingly poor judgment will weigh heavily on my daughter, and I will know that this shit show was completely of my own making. I’ll spend the rest of my life seeking forgiveness, mostly from myself.

Still, in the middle of this wreckage I'll haul two newborn foals from Kentucky to Georgia in the back of a rented cargo van, and that part will be miraculous and incredible and absurd.

I will survive every single one of these things, and I will live for at least 62 years. So I already know it’s going to be okay, and I am filled with relief and gratitude. 

Someday these kids will have their answers, too.