One of the other Municipal Liaisons said that it was a good idea to recap your National Novel Writing Month at the end of every November. So forgive me for just a minute as I do so here, because: this year's NaNoWriMo began last year, as I dragged my incredibly mentally ill and disordered friend across the finish line, nearly at the expense of my own novel. Clearly I got some stuff to work through.
For the uninitiated: National Novel Writing Month is exactly what it sounds like. Every November, people get together and write novels. It proves to you that you really can do anything if you put your mind to it, at least anything as simple as regular writing. This most current year was my 15th year doing it, and my third year being a non-profit leader in my home city. It's my volunteer job to inspire others to write their books, which I normally do fantastically with all of my extra energy (admit it, you know I got it).
I already knew it was going to be crazy this year, because I am also applying to grad school and that can take a lot out of a person. I was not anticipating how much of me would not be showing up to November this year, or the fact that I would have to take most of the month and recover from something I still can't even put a name to.
I've been in a manipulative relationship before. I usually at this point know all of the telltale signs. I know how to call people out on their crap, and I know how to separate myself from them and not speak to them again if I know they're only after drama. Too often I will sympathize with someone who has a really bad personality disorder who refuses to get help because of anosognosia. (This is a newer word I have learned, and it basically means, if you're THAT far gone mentally, the illness just looks like reality and you have no clue you're sick. No matter how many times we tell you the sky is blue, your brain processes it as red with yellow polka dots.) But I do okay with realizing when someone needs help, and putting in the distance because that's about all that I can personally do.
At the beginning of last year's NaNo I met a new transplant to my city who wanted to be an author, but who ran into some major life issues. They lost their home, so Mikkun volunteered the back room in his house for a couple of weeks while they sorted out their business. Those "couple of weeks" turned into literally almost a year. In the interim, we became friends and we would write together. Then, as this person found out more and more about me, it felt like quicksand. Like I couldn't escape, for some reason. They put it the best like this: because of their complex mind issues, they can't survive without drama. If there is no drama, they must CREATE drama, or their brain won't actually work. Mikkun and I like things peaceful, so I would get home and want to relax and all of a sudden, this new person would be having a life-ending nightmare of a time or money situation on their hands. And because I was conveniently around, I would have to deal with it, either sacrificing my time or my money (or both) to help.
And before you ask, "well, why didn't they just fix their own problems?" I couldn't tell at the time, but they were too far gone, too ill to help themselves. Whenever this new person started drama, it would then trigger this person so hard that they would just sit there and stop functioning. The list of self-made problems that I have had to save this person from is so long, I could write a book. But I won't. I'm not even sure how much of it I should talk about on here, save for just giving a basic overview of what I've been dealing with.
And of course they were still my friend. I just ended up having to take them everywhere with me because they would stop functioning if I wasn't around. I did get them into long term treatment, but things went south again when that ended.
I have a really bad trigger from my own abusive, manipulative romantic relationship that I was once in. The person in question had borderline personality disorder, and I was either "the greatest person in the world" or "I was awful and I should die." There was no middle ground because this person I loved could not process any middle ground. They were too sick to. During those moments when I didn't want to be with them, they would threaten to hurt themselves, saying it would be "all my fault" if something totally catastrophic happened to them. There was a lot of manipulation that happened there, and for the most part I had worked hard with my therapist and gotten over it before this new person came back into my life.
But I was suddenly back at square one. If I wasn't with this new person all the time, God knows if they would have remembered to eat, to get out of bed, to actually function as a human being. And when I did take this person with me, at any time they would conjure up some sort of drama that I would then have to solve because they were suddenly incapable of doing so. As you can see, this is not something that anybody should be dealing with, but I did. It got so bad that I stopped thinking for myself. I would never get a second to relax. I stopped sleeping, and I would cry alone in the mornings when I was alone. I got such a brain fog that I would forget things all the time. I dropped all of my hobbies. I still practiced piano because I was paying for lessons, and my friend would make me practice, but there was always some caveat. I could not win. I wanted to quit everything.
And then I randomly picked a cat up off the street. I've ALWAYS wanted a cat, and I've always wanted to find a cat like that, a cat who "chose" me. My mental health was so bad that my brain started screaming at me that I was horrible for doing this, that this cat was not mine, that I didn't deserve it. That was the moment I 120% knew something was really wrong. Not long after that, I came across a mixtape that changed my life, and I told my friend they needed to move out. They did more than that: I have no clue where they have moved or what program they are now in, but they will probably be in a ward for the rest of their life simply because I'm not here to babysit them.
Their departure coincided RIGHT with the beginning of NaNoWriMo 2019, bringing my point back around. I have never been so happy for a NaNoWriMo to start, because for once in a very long time, something felt normal. I look forward to NaNoWriMo every year, and with it became something regular I could latch onto. And I realized very quickly during Week 1 that I had turned into something that was not me. I had stopped functioning at regular cognitive level, because no matter where I went or did, there would be suddenly drama! that I would have to take care of, at all times. My entire life was like walking into a cave full of Zubats (Pokemon reference), or like I was just used to driving on a road filled with potholes, changing out tires and being eternally late to work because the Department of Transportation won't get their act together. My brain wasn't acting right. Nothing was certain. I had planned a book, but with my grad school applications, I knew it wouldn't get done. I just wanted to write enough to get across the goal, then quit and take a nap. (Naps had become my new best friend.)
I didn't know then on November 4th that this month would be so exhausting as I recovered from this insanity. My work schedule had changed so drastically that I found it hard to plan events -- but on top of that, my brain literally wasn't working enough to plan events. I went to as many as I could personally make, and as a trade off, I took over monitoring our Discord chat. I made friends with people and moderated from afar when I could, since I literally did not have the energy to do anything other than go to work and back (and even then!). I was tired all of the time. My doctor ran blood tests like crazy but also recommended I take some time for myself. I really was recovering from someone who took and took and could not give in return. Things like that take time.
I ended up working on two separate projects during NaNo. The first was my original idea; the second was a new one I got. Now that writing has become more of a hobby and an escape, I hope that I can actually keep writing into the new decade. Both projects were interesting enough to get me across the finish line, thank God.
When I didn't have energy to write, I would rely heavily on my old region. During my years in New York City, I had built up a heavy reputation for being a lightning-quick writer. They called me the Flash because I was so fast. They would regularly hold sprints on their Discord, and I would pop in, do a sprint, get my words for the day in 15 minutes when I had the spoons to, and disappear. If it weren't for that I don't know how I would have made it through.
And honestly? I got no freaking clue how I made it across NYC in two days when I visited during the middle of the month. Not a clue. Poor Mikkun got to listen to me complain for hours after the end of every day, because my legs ached so bad and I would just lay in bed and catch my own breath and not do anything. (Thank God there was a bodega downstairs.) But my favorite moment of the month happened when I went to one of NYC's write-ins. I sat apart from someone I did not know as we did a ten minute word sprint. When we were done, everybody announced their word counts. Usually people get 150-200 words in about ten minutes, if they're lucky.
One of my old friends glared at me. "1023," I announced, nonchalant. And without missing a SINGLE beat, the person across from me yelled, "OH MY GOD, YOU'RE (my user name) !!!" This person had no clue who I was at ALL and ONLY identified me by the number of words I could write in 10 minutes. It felt really good to know my reputation still preceded me. And because I had a reputation to keep, I still wrote this year, I still showed NYC what I could, I still held down my region "okayish," and I made it across 50K a bit early. I then focused on my applications, which are almost done.
Today, when I went to the TGIO party for my region, I got there and I somehow felt the most clearheaded I've felt since February. I could actually participate in discussions. My communication was still a little off, and I'd start rambling again about nothing or how horrible things were going, but at least this time I would attempt to stop myself. I wasn't worried about cleaning up more messes. My new anxiety meds were working with me. All I wanted to do was go home and write some more. I wasn't scared that my old friend was gonna pop out of nowhere with a wrecked car or a new bill due. I could finally start trusting my world again.
And I know it won't automatically be fixed overnight. But every day I go forward is a greater and better day, and a return to normalcy that I haven't seen in so long. I'm like Stella, I feel like I've got my groove back, and just in time as well. And honestly, NaNoWriMo couldn't have come at a better time in the process. While it wasn't the NaNo I really wanted, it got me through recovering from all of this. I'm sorry if this just sounds like an info-dump, but next year, I want to look back on this entry and see how far I've come...and how far I've hopefully traveled.
Thank you all for your patience.
For the uninitiated: National Novel Writing Month is exactly what it sounds like. Every November, people get together and write novels. It proves to you that you really can do anything if you put your mind to it, at least anything as simple as regular writing. This most current year was my 15th year doing it, and my third year being a non-profit leader in my home city. It's my volunteer job to inspire others to write their books, which I normally do fantastically with all of my extra energy (admit it, you know I got it).
I already knew it was going to be crazy this year, because I am also applying to grad school and that can take a lot out of a person. I was not anticipating how much of me would not be showing up to November this year, or the fact that I would have to take most of the month and recover from something I still can't even put a name to.
I've been in a manipulative relationship before. I usually at this point know all of the telltale signs. I know how to call people out on their crap, and I know how to separate myself from them and not speak to them again if I know they're only after drama. Too often I will sympathize with someone who has a really bad personality disorder who refuses to get help because of anosognosia. (This is a newer word I have learned, and it basically means, if you're THAT far gone mentally, the illness just looks like reality and you have no clue you're sick. No matter how many times we tell you the sky is blue, your brain processes it as red with yellow polka dots.) But I do okay with realizing when someone needs help, and putting in the distance because that's about all that I can personally do.
At the beginning of last year's NaNo I met a new transplant to my city who wanted to be an author, but who ran into some major life issues. They lost their home, so Mikkun volunteered the back room in his house for a couple of weeks while they sorted out their business. Those "couple of weeks" turned into literally almost a year. In the interim, we became friends and we would write together. Then, as this person found out more and more about me, it felt like quicksand. Like I couldn't escape, for some reason. They put it the best like this: because of their complex mind issues, they can't survive without drama. If there is no drama, they must CREATE drama, or their brain won't actually work. Mikkun and I like things peaceful, so I would get home and want to relax and all of a sudden, this new person would be having a life-ending nightmare of a time or money situation on their hands. And because I was conveniently around, I would have to deal with it, either sacrificing my time or my money (or both) to help.
And before you ask, "well, why didn't they just fix their own problems?" I couldn't tell at the time, but they were too far gone, too ill to help themselves. Whenever this new person started drama, it would then trigger this person so hard that they would just sit there and stop functioning. The list of self-made problems that I have had to save this person from is so long, I could write a book. But I won't. I'm not even sure how much of it I should talk about on here, save for just giving a basic overview of what I've been dealing with.
And of course they were still my friend. I just ended up having to take them everywhere with me because they would stop functioning if I wasn't around. I did get them into long term treatment, but things went south again when that ended.
I have a really bad trigger from my own abusive, manipulative romantic relationship that I was once in. The person in question had borderline personality disorder, and I was either "the greatest person in the world" or "I was awful and I should die." There was no middle ground because this person I loved could not process any middle ground. They were too sick to. During those moments when I didn't want to be with them, they would threaten to hurt themselves, saying it would be "all my fault" if something totally catastrophic happened to them. There was a lot of manipulation that happened there, and for the most part I had worked hard with my therapist and gotten over it before this new person came back into my life.
But I was suddenly back at square one. If I wasn't with this new person all the time, God knows if they would have remembered to eat, to get out of bed, to actually function as a human being. And when I did take this person with me, at any time they would conjure up some sort of drama that I would then have to solve because they were suddenly incapable of doing so. As you can see, this is not something that anybody should be dealing with, but I did. It got so bad that I stopped thinking for myself. I would never get a second to relax. I stopped sleeping, and I would cry alone in the mornings when I was alone. I got such a brain fog that I would forget things all the time. I dropped all of my hobbies. I still practiced piano because I was paying for lessons, and my friend would make me practice, but there was always some caveat. I could not win. I wanted to quit everything.
And then I randomly picked a cat up off the street. I've ALWAYS wanted a cat, and I've always wanted to find a cat like that, a cat who "chose" me. My mental health was so bad that my brain started screaming at me that I was horrible for doing this, that this cat was not mine, that I didn't deserve it. That was the moment I 120% knew something was really wrong. Not long after that, I came across a mixtape that changed my life, and I told my friend they needed to move out. They did more than that: I have no clue where they have moved or what program they are now in, but they will probably be in a ward for the rest of their life simply because I'm not here to babysit them.
Their departure coincided RIGHT with the beginning of NaNoWriMo 2019, bringing my point back around. I have never been so happy for a NaNoWriMo to start, because for once in a very long time, something felt normal. I look forward to NaNoWriMo every year, and with it became something regular I could latch onto. And I realized very quickly during Week 1 that I had turned into something that was not me. I had stopped functioning at regular cognitive level, because no matter where I went or did, there would be suddenly drama! that I would have to take care of, at all times. My entire life was like walking into a cave full of Zubats (Pokemon reference), or like I was just used to driving on a road filled with potholes, changing out tires and being eternally late to work because the Department of Transportation won't get their act together. My brain wasn't acting right. Nothing was certain. I had planned a book, but with my grad school applications, I knew it wouldn't get done. I just wanted to write enough to get across the goal, then quit and take a nap. (Naps had become my new best friend.)
I didn't know then on November 4th that this month would be so exhausting as I recovered from this insanity. My work schedule had changed so drastically that I found it hard to plan events -- but on top of that, my brain literally wasn't working enough to plan events. I went to as many as I could personally make, and as a trade off, I took over monitoring our Discord chat. I made friends with people and moderated from afar when I could, since I literally did not have the energy to do anything other than go to work and back (and even then!). I was tired all of the time. My doctor ran blood tests like crazy but also recommended I take some time for myself. I really was recovering from someone who took and took and could not give in return. Things like that take time.
I ended up working on two separate projects during NaNo. The first was my original idea; the second was a new one I got. Now that writing has become more of a hobby and an escape, I hope that I can actually keep writing into the new decade. Both projects were interesting enough to get me across the finish line, thank God.
When I didn't have energy to write, I would rely heavily on my old region. During my years in New York City, I had built up a heavy reputation for being a lightning-quick writer. They called me the Flash because I was so fast. They would regularly hold sprints on their Discord, and I would pop in, do a sprint, get my words for the day in 15 minutes when I had the spoons to, and disappear. If it weren't for that I don't know how I would have made it through.
And honestly? I got no freaking clue how I made it across NYC in two days when I visited during the middle of the month. Not a clue. Poor Mikkun got to listen to me complain for hours after the end of every day, because my legs ached so bad and I would just lay in bed and catch my own breath and not do anything. (Thank God there was a bodega downstairs.) But my favorite moment of the month happened when I went to one of NYC's write-ins. I sat apart from someone I did not know as we did a ten minute word sprint. When we were done, everybody announced their word counts. Usually people get 150-200 words in about ten minutes, if they're lucky.
One of my old friends glared at me. "1023," I announced, nonchalant. And without missing a SINGLE beat, the person across from me yelled, "OH MY GOD, YOU'RE (my user name) !!!" This person had no clue who I was at ALL and ONLY identified me by the number of words I could write in 10 minutes. It felt really good to know my reputation still preceded me. And because I had a reputation to keep, I still wrote this year, I still showed NYC what I could, I still held down my region "okayish," and I made it across 50K a bit early. I then focused on my applications, which are almost done.
Today, when I went to the TGIO party for my region, I got there and I somehow felt the most clearheaded I've felt since February. I could actually participate in discussions. My communication was still a little off, and I'd start rambling again about nothing or how horrible things were going, but at least this time I would attempt to stop myself. I wasn't worried about cleaning up more messes. My new anxiety meds were working with me. All I wanted to do was go home and write some more. I wasn't scared that my old friend was gonna pop out of nowhere with a wrecked car or a new bill due. I could finally start trusting my world again.
And I know it won't automatically be fixed overnight. But every day I go forward is a greater and better day, and a return to normalcy that I haven't seen in so long. I'm like Stella, I feel like I've got my groove back, and just in time as well. And honestly, NaNoWriMo couldn't have come at a better time in the process. While it wasn't the NaNo I really wanted, it got me through recovering from all of this. I'm sorry if this just sounds like an info-dump, but next year, I want to look back on this entry and see how far I've come...and how far I've hopefully traveled.
Thank you all for your patience.
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