Neurotic Nation

I was not a Prozac Nation college student, but the "culture of silence" described here is SPOT-on. Pressure on students now begins as early as preschool in our ever-more-competitive society.

This has many gains, but I think it's garnering more problems as well. If we have the ability to have the best of everything because of competition, but are too stressed and anxious to enjoy it (because of competition), do the two cancel each other out?

I'd almost prefer not knowing there's lead in the paint!

The thing is, there were times in college (and after college, and last year, and so on) that it might have been a good idea for me to be taking some sort of anti-anxiety medication or at least an anti-depressant. But due to this crushing (really) pressure that I impose upon myself, I never gave it much thought. It was a possibility that got tossed around in my head. But there was never a moment when I thought, "Yes. I need to pull the trigger here because I REALLY need help, and I don't think I should have to suffer."


It's not only the self-denial/independent streak in me that won't/wouldn't accept help, it's the thought too, that because everyone I know has a perfect life, and I am pretending to have a perfect life (those things can't be related), that I a) have no concrete example of what it means to be "sick enough" to need to get help and b) don't want to give up the illusion (to myself more than anyone, I think) that I am ok.


Now, this was designed to be a blog about reading and writing. And we'll get back to that (I have PLENTY more books to talk about!). But I believe that the more good content you consume, the better informed you are. And when articles like this strike a chord in me, I'm going to share. Because as long as this article is (I knowww), it's worth reading if you have had an inkling that hey, all this talking in my head that I do? All this self-doubt? All those days when I honestly didn't think I could get out of bed and wasn't sure why? That time I cried myself to sleep because I dropped my books down the stairs? One of those might be your warning indicator that you "qualify," that you are "allowed" to get yourself help. There's no reason to suffer.


In the article, another reference is made. "Julia Lurie described her college as a place in which emotional problems were both ubiquitous and unmentionable. She wrote of working hard to make herself resemble the Yale ideal, someone academically top-notch but also popular, socially engaged, worldly, ambitious, involved in unique extracurriculars—and most important of all, appearing to fill these roles without effort. Outwardly, she had succeeded. But how surprised her classmates would be, she wrote, if they could see her private self, the girl who "takes her Zoloft and a sleeping pill" each night, then "writhes in hot, silent tears, white-knuckled, feeling like she could scream." 


This is a real thing. This is something of importance, that even though we are a highly-functioning society, full of people who will claw their own eyes out to get ahead, we are also an extremely neurotic society. And we hide it. We hide it very, very well. Anything less than perfectly stable mental health is seen as a stigma, something to be hidden from friends, family, employers, and strangers on the street. What if we treated cancer this way? What if we treated migraines and the flu, and food poisoning, and every other random-ass sickness as something to be shameful of and hidden?


Competition. It's great. But I think it's driving us insane.

Smashed and Loose

So Day 5 of the Book Challenge asks me to share a non-fiction book that I "actually enjoyed." Don't make me laugh, challenge. After graduation, I read almost exclusively memoirs, all but one of which I enjoyed immensely. Most of them were grit, based on things that are not usually nice to talk about. Similar to the reason I love Chuck Palahniuk, things that seem dark, disgusting, or irreputable take on a different sheen and cast when spoken of well. The right words shine light on the bits of motivation and intention on things that seem unimaginable and incomprehensible.

The kick-off to these memoirs for me was one written by a very favorite professor of mine, but he will have his own post and his own day. But after having him as a professor, and then reading his book, I finally understood the notion of the author reading to me- I could hear him telling me his stories. Memoirs took on a new fascination for me when I realized that if I was an attentive enough reader, I could pick out the voices of any author from the pages of what I was reading. I just had to try very hard, or stop trying too hard, and sink into the words.

The memoirs I read right after graduating college negate what I said about happy childhoods. They were mostly about girls who had an addiction or disorder: anorexia; alcoholism; the choices were endless. Some were screwed up by their parents, while others did it all on their own. All of them had one thing in common- they pulled themselves up to overcome, or at least battle what ailed them, and in doing so found strength enough to write about it. I admired these girls, these women. I admired them for being bold enough to write the deepest secrets of their hearts, something I played at in college, but never truly touched.

One such memoir for me was Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood. This book is incredible. The voice is compelling. The story is heartbreaking. Is there more that needs to be said?

Another favorite was Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity. Are you getting the picture? These books,these stories of girls completely out of control gave me some sort of control over my own life, which felt like it was in turmoil. I wanted to be out of control; I was afraid I was out of control. I discovered that in comparison, of course, I was not. I still don't know if that was a disappointment. I haven't had the heart to do the soul-searching required to discover that.

These stories can be seen as toeing a thin line between exploitation and self-truth. Because, as we know, nothing draws an audience like a trainwreck. These are our tabloids, our 72-hour celebrity marriages and our realistic zombie apocalypse theories.  The rubber-neckers of the literary world are dying to read these stories. But does that give them less merit? We love to watch other people fall apart, because it means we in comparison are living safe, sane lives. We have self-control because we aren't out binge-drinking every night of the week and showing up at work hammered, if we show up at all. We aren't living lives of quiet desperation because we have 401ks or 403bs or IRAs that we put money into so we don't end up homeless living in our cars. We would never do something as stupid and foolish as these girls did, because we aren't anything alike.

But one thing always hits home with me when I read these memoirs. I identify with them. Sometimes almost completely.I understand their vulnerabilities and their fears because I have them, too. One wrote such an amazing description of a panic attack that I almost burst into tears because that's exactly what my senior  year of college felt like. I've felt like them. And therein is the crux. I have been these girls to a lesser extent. I have been almost as out of control, as neurotic, as jealous, as scared, as anxious, as bat-shit crazy. But I haven't run my own life as perilously close to running off the rails. Yet. So is it just a waiting game?

Memoirs have power over me, because if I read patiently and carefully enough, if I wait and let the words all sink into my soul one by one like pasta softening in boiling water, I can immerse myself into the story. And escape. And see the warning signs. And laugh because otherwise I'd cry.

So read a memoir. Learn something new about yourself by looking into that literary funhouse mirror.

Book Challenge: Day 4

A book that reminds me of home? That is really, really hard. The small town I come from is fairly conservative, and a combination of town kids and wilderness kids. But no one every cared about that. My friends came from all walks of life even then. We'd either set a bunch of wooden pallets on fire (which boys would inevitably try to walk on- oh, high school), or get coffee at the mall, depending on who I chose to spend my weekend with.


BUT. I do remember a book from my childhood (amazon says 1998) about a girl who was so shy that she retreated into the walls of her family home and lived there, reading and sewing, distancing herself from the outside world.

The premise was always VERY appealing to me, and I remember thinking of ways to slip behind the walls of the century home I grew up in as a child, finding a squishy armchair and a lamp to make a little hidey-hole for me to sit and read and write in peace.

Instead I had a little brother and a VERY hands-on mom, so we crafted, and baked things that tasted SO good, and got glitter on everything sometimes if we weren't careful, and climbed trees outside, and built snowmen, and played dress-up, and caught fireflies, and dug holes in the backyard where Dad said we could, and made friends with the neighbors, and forgot to close the gate in the backyard if we were in a hurry, and played the "don't touch the floor because it's lava" game in the living room, and used our imaginations that way. Until bedtime, when I could read some more.


I had a magical childhood.


My first friends were my neighbors. I was incredibly fortunate to grow up sandwiched between two houses who had girls exactly my age, and a boy across the backyard and down the street a ways as well. The two girls who were my "backyard neighbors" were older, but were part of that circle. And the girls and boy my age had siblings, too. Older and younger. So there were boys and girls for me to look up to, built in best friends, and younger children to mentor (torment).


Most magical of all (to tell it now, anyway- then it was second nature and unremarkable), was the tiny creek that ran through my backyard right at the property line. We had a gate that latched, and separated my yard from my backyard neighbors' yard. Jewel weed grew back there, which we would rub on mosquito bites (although the jury is still our if it worked), along with mint leaves (spearmint?) that my mother showed me how to steep to make tea. But instead of crossing the creek, if you turned left after going through the gate, and walked along the bank of the creek for three or four houses, you came to a bridge. 


This is not even Terabithia nonsense (no harm meant, it was a great YA book. Bu this bridge was very real, and existed long before I knew of such places as Terabithia and Narnia). The bridge crossed the creek, and led to a neighbor's house. The boy was my age, with a younger sister and an older brother (who would later become a football star every girl in my grade idolized in high school), and if we weren't playing in my yard on a summer day, we were playing in theirs.


Baseball ("Mom!" my younger brother would announce upon coming home, "They let me be all-time catcher!"), football, all kinds of tag and hide and go seek. The yard was huge, with a red barn-like shed (red with white trim in a small X across the door) to hide behind and long-needled pine trees in the side yard to breathe in deeply when you wanted to think, and chives growing in the garden next to the flowers (once my neighbor's mother showed me you could eat them, my breath was never fresh again). In my own backyard, we'd play tagging bases (which I couldn't explain to you now if you wanted me to), more baseball, simple catch, and versions of Red Light, Green Light (something to do with a Mr. Fox, a game called Easter Eggs which seemed to have no object but to make my brother lose, other number-and-color-based games) in the front yard with the rough stone porch steps as "home base."


Often times, truly great writers have troubled childhoods: broken homes; adversity at school or in the community; illicit love affairs; sexual or emotional abuse as a small child. My childhood was magical, untouched by trouble beyond the fact that one of my neighbor friends wasn't allowed out to play, or the time someone's grandmother made us drink the ENTIRE glasses of chocolate milk that we had mixed ourselves, greedy with the sneaky freedom to use as much Nesquik (or maybe Ovaltine?) as we wished with no parents present (believe me... it was gross. Well beyond the saturation point of extra-chocolately chocolate milk).


My first friends occupy a very treasured and until now, secret, place in my heart. We truly had halcyon days of love and laughter, which I think is so rare, and a kind of magic. We recently had a meet-up to watch one of the older boy's bands perform locally. He is an immensely talented guitar player (which I do not say very often given my college experience), and the band is SO CLOSE to really making it big. It's another reason I have a lot of hometown pride (and boy, do I have a lot of reasons). But one thing I noticed, as we watched him perform, one of my first big brothers, was that we all acted reverently toward one another. It was immensely touching. 


My very first best friend, who grew up next door, whose mother made us matching outfits, who my mother used to babysit, whose brother was killing it onstage with his guitar and his band, moved to New Mexico after college. I hadn't seen her in probably six years. We saw each other across the room. We waved hello. We met halfway and hugged. Then, as I stepped back, I paused, to drink in everything about her physical appearance and spirit. It sounds so silly, but for a prolonged moment, we just stared at each other with silly grins on our faces. She was like my sister from the time we were toddlers, and something from that upbringing keeps the stuff we are made of similar enough that I believe we are always connected. It was much the same with the rest of the "kids from the block." 


I believe writers can come from all backgrounds, and that happy childhoods can make for good stories.