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Hi, I'm Sue. I'm actually Suzanne, but I prefer you call me Sue rather than fucking up Suzanne and calling me Susan.
This is what I think I look like:
(...and I did, 13 years ago.)
And this is what I actually look like:
I'm 50, a Gen-Xer, a long time geek and fandom chick, queer (the kids would call me pan), married for almost 30 years, a mom, a writer, an extrovert, and a lost soul dealing with anxiety/depression. How did we get here? Well, it's taken 50 years.
Picture it: Riverside, California, April 1970. The first Earth Day was celebrated, The Kinks released my all time favorite song "Lola," and my parents said, "Welcome to the O.C., bitch!" And then promptly moved me to Oklahoma.
(The reason I want to beta all of your Walker fics.)
My early childhood was great, despite the Oklahoma of it all. We lived on what was my grandparents' small farm in Muskogee County. It wasn't really a working farm anymore, but my dad (Oklahoma born and raised) kept a few cows, pigs, and chickens, and a few years later attempted to raise racehorses. My paternal grandmother (Granny) lived with us until I was 5. She looked just like Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies, was born in 1904, and gardened, canned, cooked on a wood stove, quilted, and made all of my doll clothes by hand. I adored her. I had a younger brother, whom I will call Boo-Boo (because that's what I called him), who was born 18 months after me.
It was a childhood of snowball fights, Siamese kittens, Collie dogs, picking daffodils, Sunday suppers with the whole family, and feeling deeply loved.
(1975. I know. I was a wee fairy child.)
And then the 80s happened. My parents moved from our little farm house to a big ranch style up near Lake Eufaula (Oklahoma's Gentle Giant). My dad, who had always been one "Hey, you look like a smart feller," from falling for a get-rich-scheme, changed from my charming cowboy to a heavy-drinking, usually angry, money squandering jackass. My brother and I? Oh, we consoled each other with dubious but I swear platonic Biblical cosplay.
(Samson and Delilah. I would go on to wear that same shade of lipstick for the next 40 years.)
It was around 1983 or so that I realized that my parents might not have the Family Ties type relationship I had assumed (in the way one ignores their parents' love life) but that there might be, instead, some sort of Dallas shenanigans going on.
My mom was born in the late '30s, a child of divorce in 1950s Tennessee when that was just not done, and had worked hard to get office training, eventually working her way up to Executive Officer Manager for Sears Roebuck Corporate (that was huge for a woman in the late 50s, early 60s). She was attractive but not flashy, very bright, very independent, very forthright and honest.
My dad was also born in the late '30s (9 months younger than my mother), a child of a dissolute drunk and itinerant farmer and his hardworking wife (my beloved Granny). My dad was an electrician and a very hard worker, but he was also riddled with self-esteem issues, very handsome, a big drinker, and charmer and a liar, and he had massive anger issues on top of that.
My parents ran one of the few businesses in my little town with my Dad's charm and my Mother's business acumen making it very successful for several years. Unfortunately, Oklahoma's oil, coal and gas bust coincided with my Dad investing in numerous dumb business schemes (as my mother begged him to buckle down and ride it out).
Thus began my adolescence, with my dad drunker and angrier and my mother depressed and despairing. Yay! It was also the '80s when teenage body image was not today's influencer-driven "You just need to completely re-contour your face with $80 bronzer AND have plastic surgery," but Seventeen-driven "If you want to look like Cindy Crawford, all you need to do is cleanse with Seabreeze, go biking, and use ONLY Aussie Mega products! And if you still don't look like Cindy, you're not trying hard enough!"
Adolescence was okay, probably because 1) I had no baseline for what 'normal' might be, 2) I lived in a town of 600 who all adored fishing, hunting, rodeoing, and softball, and I hated ALL of that shit and it wouldn't have mattered if I HAD looked like Cindy Crawford, and 3) I am currently bright for a middle-aged college educated woman. In the 80s in a class of 25 in rural Oklahoma? I was Alan Fucking Turing.
(Senior Year -- check out that femme mullet.)
I had started my period at 11 and it was extremely irregular and involved severe nausea and The Shining level flow, and then facial hair, a tiny build at 5'1" that involved wee arms and legs, big boobs, and round belly, and absolutely no hips whatsoever, but I didn't know what that meant yet.
I went off to college on mucho scholarships, and first two years were busy making friends I still have today and being the world's happiest, least-talented theater geek. I didn't date yet, but I think that had less to do with what I looked like, and more to do with the fact that I acted like an supervised 5th grader with an excellent vocabulary.
My next two years of college, I met my future husband, lost my virginity two weeks before my 21st birthday, changed my major four or five times, wrote lots of 90s feature stories about The Real World and gays in the military, and then decided to get married at 21 because the lease was up on our shared apartment and his parents wouldn't help with a down payment unless we got married.
NOW. This, of ALL the things I have mentioned above, had the greatest potential to fuck my life up massively...but it didn't. As my Mom used to say "The good Lord looks after children and fools," and in this case, she was right.
(1992 -- marrying my Eddie.)
I can't say that marrying my Cunning Linguist (he's a Spanish and Latin American Humanities professor, it's funny to me) was the smartest thing I've ever done, because I didn't put a bit of thought into it. I liked him, maybe loved him? And he was the antithesis of my Dad: Well-educated, moral, loyal, honest, forgiving, and responsible. The only thing he and my Dad had in common was that they were both hardworking. Plus, Eddie and I both loved TV.
(2005 - still hilarious to me)
But when in my early 20s I tried to get pregnant, and I discovered I had PCOS (Poly-Cycstic Ovary Syndrome: a hormonal disorder. Women with PCOS may have infrequent or prolonged menstrual periods or excess male hormone levels. The ovaries may develop numerous small collections of follicles and fail to regularly release eggs.) In other words, it can cause acne, facial hair, stomach-area weight gain, irritability, irregular periods, and infertility. Oh, and DEPRESSION.
PCOS was not the common nerd-girl affliction it is now (why does it get us? We're not all chubby! Do we read too much????) back when I was in my Cobain years. It was fairly unheard of Oklahoma, and the first OBGYN to diagnose me with didn't even TELL ME that's what it was because she didn't want to confuse me. (The 90s had some great music and better makeup, but I guess being riot grrrls didn't extend to understanding prolactin levels).
I struggled emotionally with the ovulation meds I was prescribed because they made me feel like I was PMSing all the time. I'd never even had PMS before! It was my first experience with mental illness, and it was scary af. I had a miscarriage at 8 weeks and was devastated. I decided to take a break from fertility measures (we couldn't afford IVF and I'd only been trying a couple of years, anyway) to see if I could feel more emotionally and mentally centered and...my mom died unexpectedly.
And the wheels came off the fucking bus. My mom was only 57, I was 25, and I was in The Bell Jar for years afterward. My weight climbed from a size 8 to a size 18 in a few months. I'm 5 feet one inch tall. It was a lot of weight on a little frame. My childhood family shattered, because my Dad and brother didn't want to get together for events if Mom wasn't there. I fell into a depression I can barely remember now. I know I functioned: I worked, I went to school, I socialized. But my life stagnated. I felt like I was untethered: I had lost my birth family, and now I couldn't make children of my own. For someone as Suzy Sunshine as I was, it was a gut punch. But. I always had my Eddie.
(1999)
2000-2004 was a WEIRD time in my life. One, when I turned 30 in 2000, I lost my Granny (she was 99, so it wasn't a shocker, but still ouch), realized I was not going to be a wunderkind who revolutionized first person narrative (David Sedaris kind of had that wrapped up), and I decided to try again to get pregnant since we were more financially stable and settled. And wouldn't you know it -- not only did I have PCOS, which caused me not to ovulate regularly, I also had a severely damaged Fallopian tube. Since fertilization occurs in the Fallopian tube(s), on the off chance that I did ovulate on a given cycle, I would not be able to conceive if ovary with the mature ovum that month corresponded with the damaged tube.
And I completely lost the plot at that point.
If I couldn't have kids...and I didn't have a mom...then I could whatever I wanted, right? No real accountability.
Say. Did you guys know that depression isn't always characterized by deep sadness, lack of interest, and desire for solitude? Did you know that impulse control is also a MAJOR symptom of depression? Yeah, I wish I had known that in my early 30s.
(Drunker than shit at Pride 2006. Look, I've got Jared dimples!)
I have never been a big drinker -- I'm the child of an alcoholic. With the exception of weed I hate drugs (full disclosure: I've never tried drugs other than weed and one time 'shrooms I don't think worked) but I grew up in rural Oklahoma. You don't need to DARE me to stay off drugs. I've seen things.
But you know what I do love, more than fried chicken and peach cobbler: ATTENTION. I wish I remembered how to make that scroll with HTML.
Not "Oh, you're sexy!" attention. Not, "My Daddy was a drunk and I need you to be my Daddy" attention. No. I needed "You're the best friend ever!" "You're SO smart!" "I wish I could write like you!" But that attention wouldn't come around until 2004, so in 2001, I had to make due with what I had, which were some bi-curious girl friends.
I'd always known that I was attracted to very few people (Spock, Lynda-Carter-as-Wonder-Woman, Rick Springfield, Kate Winslet, Regina King, most of the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Colin Firth, Alexander Skärgård, and Jared Padalecki), I had no idea what demi-sexual was (I didn't have a Tumblr during the Bush administration), but I'd always known I had to like someone to find them attractive.
And I'd been married for several years to a man I adored and who was a Viking in the sack.
But I decided to spend 2001-2003 mostly wasted on weekends and hooking with my girlfriends. Because it didn't fucking matter, did it? I was in my 30s, lived in Oklahoma, had 0 options of working for any kind of liberal entity, was never really going to be a writer, and would never be able to have kids and go to PTA meetings and bake cookies and be Room Mom -- all of which I would totally rock at -- so who fucking cared if drank Dos Equis like water and went down on my best friend in a pasture? My life was never going anywhere, anyway.
Caveat: This isn't some sort of fucked up-Joss Whedon "Natasha was a monster because she couldn't have kids" thing. Kids don't make you a person or a success or a woman. I know tons of men and women who are happily childfree and living their best life. But I wanted to be just two things in my life: a writer and a mother. I am the only thing standing in the way of the first, and my biology was the only thing standing in the way of the second.
The weird thing about the protracted adolescence of my early 30s is that it really didn't have much in the way of consequences. And I'll be honest with you, as a white, middle class, not-unattractive person who is bright and out-going and lives in a state where white middle-aged women are deified, I've rarely faced consequences for my actions (other than of the calorific variety). And that is a rant and a post for another day.
A series of unrelated events and sound effects occurred and I stopped going out with my girl friends every weekend. I told my understanding (and also bi-curious) husband of my adventures, and my drinking went back to its typical 'couple of Harry Potters in the winter, couple of Cape Cods in the summer levels. Despite my age and demeanor, I am not a wine mom.
I discovered fandom via Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Live Journal, and group of (mostly) women who were (mostly) around my age. That's where the real attention high kicked in. I wrote two fics of any note in Buffy fandom: a Season 5 canon-hewing Spike/Xander that examined grief after Buffy's death in The Gift full of prose, insight, and smut; and a Xander/Angel Human AU ficlet set at the International Gay Rodeo Semi-Finals in Oklahoma City. Full of smut. I managed to coast on that among one of the last BNFs of Live Journal Buffy fandom and it was sweet.
Then Buffy fandom kind of went kerflooey 2 years post-canon and everyone went to different fandoms and I was kind of at a loss. EXCEPT. I had made one of the best friends of my life in Buffy fandom. She's nottheribbons in SPN fandom, but I've always called her Vinnie.
We started out in BtVS together, but we sauntered into SPN fandom in Season 2, picking things up and putting them down, talking amongst ourselves, buffing our nails. I mean, we weren't sure, you know? Buffy had incredible dialogue and great writing, incredibly adroit meta written by actual priests and rabbis and wiccans and college professors, and Supernatural just had a great car, nostalgic music...and Sam and Dean.
(OKC Gay Rodeo Finals 2007. I'm in orange. I sweet talked some of my fandom friends into flying to OKC for the Gay Rodeo and pretending it was a con for my fic "Rodeo." What? I baked.)
(Buffy-Sing-a-Long, Tulsa, OK 2007)
(A little show I like to call SPN.)
(Chicago Con, 2007)
Vinnie's platonic love sustained me through the end of Buffy fandom and into our Supernatural foray. We had suspicions, okay? I mean, she was from Texas and I'd watched Days. I'm just saying. BUT. By the time we went to the first con to feature both Jensen and Jared, and by the time they were mocking each other's baby faces and telling the eyelash story and "Bugs" for the first time, I was hooked. Plus I got to pet a dog with Jared with no security around. For those of you who found the show via Netflix or within the past few years, I really wish I could take you back to that Misha-less, moderator-less, shipping-questions-less, only $300 for a Silver Package Chicago day in November of 2007.
As many of you have heard (because I told you), when I got to Jared in the autos line, he complimented my dragon-embroidered hoodie, and then we both fumbled trying to hand the autographed picture back, and our hands met, and there was a static electricity shock (my boots, hotel carpet) and we giggled like tweens. Then I walked two feet and Jensen just stared at me with those verdant orbs. Verdant orbs should never be used in decent fic UNLESS you're talking about Jensen Ross Ackles.
I flew home to OKC in a great mood -- I was down to a size 6, my hair looked amazing, I'd gotten lost with Vinnie in the stupidest mall in America, I'd touched Jared Padalecki and felt sparks, Jensen Ackles had stared into my soul, and I had finished the semester and now had a few months to figure out what was going to happen next in my life.
(Chicago, November 2007)
Bell Jar, 2.0
I came home from Chicago, showed Eddie my autograph and SPN tee and then fell on the couch where I remained for the next 2 months, moving only to a) welcome Vinnie and another friend for New Years where I felt too crappy to drink and we all cried over the "Gilmore Girls" finale, b) watch "A Very Supernatural Christmas" for the first and then multiple times, c) and get the Netflix envelopes out of the mailbox (it was waning 2007) to cry over Dawson's Creek. "Oh, Pacey, you idiot! Can't you see she doesn't love you?!"
After sleeping, crying, and shipping Pacey/Jen for a couple of months, it dawned on me what might be wrong. It just seemed too insane to be true. But, as insane as it seemed:
Jared Padalecki Fixed My Ovaries
The first couple of months of my mystical pregnancy were terrifying: depression, all-day nausea, dizziness, night terrors. I knew something was wrong, but I was afraid of cancer of some type. That's how fucked up long-term infertility is and how much PCOS messes with healthy bodily functions: the idea that I was dying made more sense than being pregnant.
But I adored being pregnant, and the next several months were great. My kidlet was born without much fuss in August 2008, he was healthy and happy (and still is) and I totally missed out on having Post-Partum Depression, which I had dreaded since finding out PCOS was often a factor. I was on an oxytocin high that can never be duplicated, though.
The first few years of my son's life were great. I loved being a mom, I loved being a stay-at-home mom, and my chocolate chip cookies were the best. All of my old fears that the reason I hadn't been able to conceive was because I would make a terrible mom faded away, because I can say without a doubt that I was a great mom. I also had an easy kid and a supportive spouse and the economic security to work at home.
Plus the older my kid got, the more he looked like Jensen and the more I liked to sing Ryan Adam's "Dear Chicago" to my husband.
Those were really, really wonderful years. I was a little lonely for adult conversation (Vinnie owns my soul for being that single childfree friend who put up with a lot of kid info during our weekly phone calls), but otherwise ecstatic.
When my son was 5, I went back to work full-time at the college where my husband worked and where I had worked before. And those were also good years. Eddie and I fell in love all over again as parents (one kid is great. I'm just saying). We traveled a lot with two incomes, we geeked out over a lot of TV, and I read almost every Harry Potter fan fic ever written.
And then my Dad passed in 2012.
(My brother, Dad, and me, February 2012.)
My depression popped up, but this time, when I was 42 years old and healthier, happier (and hotter) than I had ever been, Depression decided we should have a threesome with Anxiety.
It's true: I didn't develop Anxiety until I was in my early 40s. But it showed up with a BANG: night terrors, insomnia, intrusive thoughts, and PANIC ATTACKS. I called an ambulance THREE times between the ages of 43-48 convinced I was having a heart attack. I was not. Thank God ambulance service is part of our water bill in Oklahoma City.
The more the grief hit, the more I was convinced I was going to die young like my mom, or have multiple heart attacks like my Dad. Ironically, that fear caused me to binge eat, increasing my weight and blood pressure and making it MORE likely I would die young of heart disease.
I slowly recovered from that, and the stress cardiomyopathy I had in November 2019 actually jump-started me into feeling better than I had in years. Until February 2020. I think you know where I'm going with this. The early months of the pandemic were actually not bad from me. Baking bread, Tiger King: I worked at home from mid-March until the third week of July. It was actually really nice -- we landscaped our backyard and had a lovely summer.
After I returned to work in August 2020, though, I started experiencing peri-menopausal symptoms: hot flashes, insomnia, sensitivity to sound, irritability, and RAGE. I'm not an angry person: I'm a people pleaser who deflects with humor, blows up once in a blue moon, and feels really bad about it. And yet.
I started missing work because I couldn't get out of bed. My son was back in school (7th grader now), my husband was teaching at home, and I was just reeling. It felt like puberty and early pregnancy hormones whipped up in a blender, mixed with Cocaine, and shot up my ass.
I stared avoiding people (easy during a pandemic). I lost interest in everything and saved all of my energy for being there for my husband and son. My sense of humor faded. My natural friendliness receded. And I was angry all the time.
I saw my internist and my OBGYN and they both said it was early days (I had just turned 50 last April) and not to worry.
November 19, 2020
I had been so disenchanted with Season 14 of SPN that I left Season 15 in my DVR unwatched. I knew it was the final season, but the very few people I knew in fandom (Vinnie, Eileen, Kristy, Becky & Kelios) were not loving early 15, so I figured I was safe.
The night of the finale, I became obsessed with watching it so that I wouldn't get spoiled, and so I started early that evening and stayed up all night, watching Season 15 (I liked "The Gamblers"?) and of course FF through anything Feathery. I finally got to "Carry On" and "It's always been you...and me" and fell in love all over again.
I got on Twitter for the first time in months to cry and squee along with all of my Sam Girls, Dean Girls, and Wincest brethren. SIM posted "The Otherside" and I sobbed. I hadn't written fic since 2009, but I sat down and wrote Vinnie a 35k word J2 fic based on our favorite film Steel Magnolias, and I wrote it in 2 weeks. I can't write a letter in less than 2 weeks. I write well, but I write slowly.
I've written 2 fics since then, and I've signed up to write a Big Bang fic for the first time. I've made playlists. I've made recs posts. I've friended tons of Vinnie's SPN mutuals, and then random SPNers who said something funny or poignant. I've jumped in the middle threads by people I don't know to squee or laugh. I've rec'd my own fic to strangers. I've stopped people in Twitter hallways to tell them they write well or that I love their screencaps.
And while all of that is shiny and new and fantastic and who doesn't love Jared Tiffany Padalecki and Jensen Roslyn Ackles (I stole those from Vinnie, sorry), I realized halfway through making 15 Supernatural playlists (20 songs each!) that I was manic.
I've never been manic before. I've been enthused. I've been over-extended. I've been curt like Curt Jurgens in The Enemy Below. But I've never been manic.
I've been faking normal online for more years than I can count, although I've always been open about my mental health issues. I've had a lot to be grateful for. I lucked out in my marriage and he's forgiven more than he should have to. I have a beautiful and healthy 12 year old son who makes straight A's and has a Padalecki-lite 6-pack from jumping on a trampoline every day for the past 7 years. I have 6 best friends and tons associated friends, here in the city, around the world, and online. I'm a good writer, fairly bright, and emotionally and mentally instable at times.
When I finally got to the point that I was spending most of my time at work either on Twitter or making yet another list about Supernatural on my work computer, I turned in my notice to my boss. She's 70, in fantastic shape, and from the generation where if you're struggling to do something, "You're just not trying hard enough." She talked me out of quitting, and I dug in deeper and tried to feel "normal."
But every day I'm hot, and dizzy, and angry. I've had instrusive thoughts, ideation, and mild hallucinations. I finally realized that my current mood stabilizer is NOT working and made appointments with both my regular doc and my OBGYN. My OBGYN wants me to have follow-up work to rule out Menopausal Psychosis.
Psychosis is a scary fucking word, even if you known people with psychosis and they're totally fine with treatment.
So I quit my job, for real, on Monday. And here we are thousands of words in, after I've shared the worst of my sins and the most painful of my breakdowns, wanting to tell you all that I'm fine. And right now, at this very second, I'm fine. Here's a zinger about hellers, please read my J2 fan fic, "Hey, have you met me, I'm Vinnie's RL BFF, let's be SPN friends!" fine.
But I'm not.
At the very least, the onset of menopause has exacerbated my anxiety/depression. At the worst? Mental illness worse than I've faced thus far. I'm scared, and I'm grateful I'm still here, and I'm fighting for me so that my son doesn't lose his mom, and I'm afraid that I'm overreacting and I'm terrified of what might happen.
As my Twitter handle says, "It's a treacherous road / With a desolated view."
But today is also March 3. Today is the 6th anniversary of Jared Padalecki's campaign ALWAYS KEEP FIGHTING, today is day I made it through without feeling lost, and today is another day to remember I have everything:
(Christmas 2019)
"Everyone is given a candle that burns just for them. When your flame flickers and you fear it will go out, know not even the strongest wind lasts forever; and there are other lights to guide you even in the Darkness…And when your candle burns bright, you can ignite the hearts of others and hope will spread like wildfire…Always Keep Fighting, and you'll never fight alone."
This is what I think I look like:
(...and I did, 13 years ago.)
And this is what I actually look like:
I'm 50, a Gen-Xer, a long time geek and fandom chick, queer (the kids would call me pan), married for almost 30 years, a mom, a writer, an extrovert, and a lost soul dealing with anxiety/depression. How did we get here? Well, it's taken 50 years.
Picture it: Riverside, California, April 1970. The first Earth Day was celebrated, The Kinks released my all time favorite song "Lola," and my parents said, "Welcome to the O.C., bitch!" And then promptly moved me to Oklahoma.
(The reason I want to beta all of your Walker fics.)
My early childhood was great, despite the Oklahoma of it all. We lived on what was my grandparents' small farm in Muskogee County. It wasn't really a working farm anymore, but my dad (Oklahoma born and raised) kept a few cows, pigs, and chickens, and a few years later attempted to raise racehorses. My paternal grandmother (Granny) lived with us until I was 5. She looked just like Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies, was born in 1904, and gardened, canned, cooked on a wood stove, quilted, and made all of my doll clothes by hand. I adored her. I had a younger brother, whom I will call Boo-Boo (because that's what I called him), who was born 18 months after me.
It was a childhood of snowball fights, Siamese kittens, Collie dogs, picking daffodils, Sunday suppers with the whole family, and feeling deeply loved.
(1975. I know. I was a wee fairy child.)
And then the 80s happened. My parents moved from our little farm house to a big ranch style up near Lake Eufaula (Oklahoma's Gentle Giant). My dad, who had always been one "Hey, you look like a smart feller," from falling for a get-rich-scheme, changed from my charming cowboy to a heavy-drinking, usually angry, money squandering jackass. My brother and I? Oh, we consoled each other with dubious but I swear platonic Biblical cosplay.
(Samson and Delilah. I would go on to wear that same shade of lipstick for the next 40 years.)
It was around 1983 or so that I realized that my parents might not have the Family Ties type relationship I had assumed (in the way one ignores their parents' love life) but that there might be, instead, some sort of Dallas shenanigans going on.
My mom was born in the late '30s, a child of divorce in 1950s Tennessee when that was just not done, and had worked hard to get office training, eventually working her way up to Executive Officer Manager for Sears Roebuck Corporate (that was huge for a woman in the late 50s, early 60s). She was attractive but not flashy, very bright, very independent, very forthright and honest.
My dad was also born in the late '30s (9 months younger than my mother), a child of a dissolute drunk and itinerant farmer and his hardworking wife (my beloved Granny). My dad was an electrician and a very hard worker, but he was also riddled with self-esteem issues, very handsome, a big drinker, and charmer and a liar, and he had massive anger issues on top of that.
My parents ran one of the few businesses in my little town with my Dad's charm and my Mother's business acumen making it very successful for several years. Unfortunately, Oklahoma's oil, coal and gas bust coincided with my Dad investing in numerous dumb business schemes (as my mother begged him to buckle down and ride it out).
Thus began my adolescence, with my dad drunker and angrier and my mother depressed and despairing. Yay! It was also the '80s when teenage body image was not today's influencer-driven "You just need to completely re-contour your face with $80 bronzer AND have plastic surgery," but Seventeen-driven "If you want to look like Cindy Crawford, all you need to do is cleanse with Seabreeze, go biking, and use ONLY Aussie Mega products! And if you still don't look like Cindy, you're not trying hard enough!"
Adolescence was okay, probably because 1) I had no baseline for what 'normal' might be, 2) I lived in a town of 600 who all adored fishing, hunting, rodeoing, and softball, and I hated ALL of that shit and it wouldn't have mattered if I HAD looked like Cindy Crawford, and 3) I am currently bright for a middle-aged college educated woman. In the 80s in a class of 25 in rural Oklahoma? I was Alan Fucking Turing.
(Senior Year -- check out that femme mullet.)
I had started my period at 11 and it was extremely irregular and involved severe nausea and The Shining level flow, and then facial hair, a tiny build at 5'1" that involved wee arms and legs, big boobs, and round belly, and absolutely no hips whatsoever, but I didn't know what that meant yet.
I went off to college on mucho scholarships, and first two years were busy making friends I still have today and being the world's happiest, least-talented theater geek. I didn't date yet, but I think that had less to do with what I looked like, and more to do with the fact that I acted like an supervised 5th grader with an excellent vocabulary.
My next two years of college, I met my future husband, lost my virginity two weeks before my 21st birthday, changed my major four or five times, wrote lots of 90s feature stories about The Real World and gays in the military, and then decided to get married at 21 because the lease was up on our shared apartment and his parents wouldn't help with a down payment unless we got married.
NOW. This, of ALL the things I have mentioned above, had the greatest potential to fuck my life up massively...but it didn't. As my Mom used to say "The good Lord looks after children and fools," and in this case, she was right.
(1992 -- marrying my Eddie.)
I can't say that marrying my Cunning Linguist (he's a Spanish and Latin American Humanities professor, it's funny to me) was the smartest thing I've ever done, because I didn't put a bit of thought into it. I liked him, maybe loved him? And he was the antithesis of my Dad: Well-educated, moral, loyal, honest, forgiving, and responsible. The only thing he and my Dad had in common was that they were both hardworking. Plus, Eddie and I both loved TV.
(2005 - still hilarious to me)
But when in my early 20s I tried to get pregnant, and I discovered I had PCOS (Poly-Cycstic Ovary Syndrome: a hormonal disorder. Women with PCOS may have infrequent or prolonged menstrual periods or excess male hormone levels. The ovaries may develop numerous small collections of follicles and fail to regularly release eggs.) In other words, it can cause acne, facial hair, stomach-area weight gain, irritability, irregular periods, and infertility. Oh, and DEPRESSION.
PCOS was not the common nerd-girl affliction it is now (why does it get us? We're not all chubby! Do we read too much????) back when I was in my Cobain years. It was fairly unheard of Oklahoma, and the first OBGYN to diagnose me with didn't even TELL ME that's what it was because she didn't want to confuse me. (The 90s had some great music and better makeup, but I guess being riot grrrls didn't extend to understanding prolactin levels).
I struggled emotionally with the ovulation meds I was prescribed because they made me feel like I was PMSing all the time. I'd never even had PMS before! It was my first experience with mental illness, and it was scary af. I had a miscarriage at 8 weeks and was devastated. I decided to take a break from fertility measures (we couldn't afford IVF and I'd only been trying a couple of years, anyway) to see if I could feel more emotionally and mentally centered and...my mom died unexpectedly.
And the wheels came off the fucking bus. My mom was only 57, I was 25, and I was in The Bell Jar for years afterward. My weight climbed from a size 8 to a size 18 in a few months. I'm 5 feet one inch tall. It was a lot of weight on a little frame. My childhood family shattered, because my Dad and brother didn't want to get together for events if Mom wasn't there. I fell into a depression I can barely remember now. I know I functioned: I worked, I went to school, I socialized. But my life stagnated. I felt like I was untethered: I had lost my birth family, and now I couldn't make children of my own. For someone as Suzy Sunshine as I was, it was a gut punch. But. I always had my Eddie.
(1999)
2000-2004 was a WEIRD time in my life. One, when I turned 30 in 2000, I lost my Granny (she was 99, so it wasn't a shocker, but still ouch), realized I was not going to be a wunderkind who revolutionized first person narrative (David Sedaris kind of had that wrapped up), and I decided to try again to get pregnant since we were more financially stable and settled. And wouldn't you know it -- not only did I have PCOS, which caused me not to ovulate regularly, I also had a severely damaged Fallopian tube. Since fertilization occurs in the Fallopian tube(s), on the off chance that I did ovulate on a given cycle, I would not be able to conceive if ovary with the mature ovum that month corresponded with the damaged tube.
And I completely lost the plot at that point.
If I couldn't have kids...and I didn't have a mom...then I could whatever I wanted, right? No real accountability.
Say. Did you guys know that depression isn't always characterized by deep sadness, lack of interest, and desire for solitude? Did you know that impulse control is also a MAJOR symptom of depression? Yeah, I wish I had known that in my early 30s.
(Drunker than shit at Pride 2006. Look, I've got Jared dimples!)
I have never been a big drinker -- I'm the child of an alcoholic. With the exception of weed I hate drugs (full disclosure: I've never tried drugs other than weed and one time 'shrooms I don't think worked) but I grew up in rural Oklahoma. You don't need to DARE me to stay off drugs. I've seen things.
But you know what I do love, more than fried chicken and peach cobbler: ATTENTION. I wish I remembered how to make that scroll with HTML.
Not "Oh, you're sexy!" attention. Not, "My Daddy was a drunk and I need you to be my Daddy" attention. No. I needed "You're the best friend ever!" "You're SO smart!" "I wish I could write like you!" But that attention wouldn't come around until 2004, so in 2001, I had to make due with what I had, which were some bi-curious girl friends.
I'd always known that I was attracted to very few people (Spock, Lynda-Carter-as-Wonder-Woman, Rick Springfield, Kate Winslet, Regina King, most of the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Colin Firth, Alexander Skärgård, and Jared Padalecki), I had no idea what demi-sexual was (I didn't have a Tumblr during the Bush administration), but I'd always known I had to like someone to find them attractive.
And I'd been married for several years to a man I adored and who was a Viking in the sack.
But I decided to spend 2001-2003 mostly wasted on weekends and hooking with my girlfriends. Because it didn't fucking matter, did it? I was in my 30s, lived in Oklahoma, had 0 options of working for any kind of liberal entity, was never really going to be a writer, and would never be able to have kids and go to PTA meetings and bake cookies and be Room Mom -- all of which I would totally rock at -- so who fucking cared if drank Dos Equis like water and went down on my best friend in a pasture? My life was never going anywhere, anyway.
Caveat: This isn't some sort of fucked up-Joss Whedon "Natasha was a monster because she couldn't have kids" thing. Kids don't make you a person or a success or a woman. I know tons of men and women who are happily childfree and living their best life. But I wanted to be just two things in my life: a writer and a mother. I am the only thing standing in the way of the first, and my biology was the only thing standing in the way of the second.
The weird thing about the protracted adolescence of my early 30s is that it really didn't have much in the way of consequences. And I'll be honest with you, as a white, middle class, not-unattractive person who is bright and out-going and lives in a state where white middle-aged women are deified, I've rarely faced consequences for my actions (other than of the calorific variety). And that is a rant and a post for another day.
A series of unrelated events and sound effects occurred and I stopped going out with my girl friends every weekend. I told my understanding (and also bi-curious) husband of my adventures, and my drinking went back to its typical 'couple of Harry Potters in the winter, couple of Cape Cods in the summer levels. Despite my age and demeanor, I am not a wine mom.
I discovered fandom via Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Live Journal, and group of (mostly) women who were (mostly) around my age. That's where the real attention high kicked in. I wrote two fics of any note in Buffy fandom: a Season 5 canon-hewing Spike/Xander that examined grief after Buffy's death in The Gift full of prose, insight, and smut; and a Xander/Angel Human AU ficlet set at the International Gay Rodeo Semi-Finals in Oklahoma City. Full of smut. I managed to coast on that among one of the last BNFs of Live Journal Buffy fandom and it was sweet.
Then Buffy fandom kind of went kerflooey 2 years post-canon and everyone went to different fandoms and I was kind of at a loss. EXCEPT. I had made one of the best friends of my life in Buffy fandom. She's nottheribbons in SPN fandom, but I've always called her Vinnie.
We started out in BtVS together, but we sauntered into SPN fandom in Season 2, picking things up and putting them down, talking amongst ourselves, buffing our nails. I mean, we weren't sure, you know? Buffy had incredible dialogue and great writing, incredibly adroit meta written by actual priests and rabbis and wiccans and college professors, and Supernatural just had a great car, nostalgic music...and Sam and Dean.
(OKC Gay Rodeo Finals 2007. I'm in orange. I sweet talked some of my fandom friends into flying to OKC for the Gay Rodeo and pretending it was a con for my fic "Rodeo." What? I baked.)
(Buffy-Sing-a-Long, Tulsa, OK 2007)
(A little show I like to call SPN.)
(Chicago Con, 2007)
Vinnie's platonic love sustained me through the end of Buffy fandom and into our Supernatural foray. We had suspicions, okay? I mean, she was from Texas and I'd watched Days. I'm just saying. BUT. By the time we went to the first con to feature both Jensen and Jared, and by the time they were mocking each other's baby faces and telling the eyelash story and "Bugs" for the first time, I was hooked. Plus I got to pet a dog with Jared with no security around. For those of you who found the show via Netflix or within the past few years, I really wish I could take you back to that Misha-less, moderator-less, shipping-questions-less, only $300 for a Silver Package Chicago day in November of 2007.
As many of you have heard (because I told you), when I got to Jared in the autos line, he complimented my dragon-embroidered hoodie, and then we both fumbled trying to hand the autographed picture back, and our hands met, and there was a static electricity shock (my boots, hotel carpet) and we giggled like tweens. Then I walked two feet and Jensen just stared at me with those verdant orbs. Verdant orbs should never be used in decent fic UNLESS you're talking about Jensen Ross Ackles.
I flew home to OKC in a great mood -- I was down to a size 6, my hair looked amazing, I'd gotten lost with Vinnie in the stupidest mall in America, I'd touched Jared Padalecki and felt sparks, Jensen Ackles had stared into my soul, and I had finished the semester and now had a few months to figure out what was going to happen next in my life.
(Chicago, November 2007)
Bell Jar, 2.0
I came home from Chicago, showed Eddie my autograph and SPN tee and then fell on the couch where I remained for the next 2 months, moving only to a) welcome Vinnie and another friend for New Years where I felt too crappy to drink and we all cried over the "Gilmore Girls" finale, b) watch "A Very Supernatural Christmas" for the first and then multiple times, c) and get the Netflix envelopes out of the mailbox (it was waning 2007) to cry over Dawson's Creek. "Oh, Pacey, you idiot! Can't you see she doesn't love you?!"
After sleeping, crying, and shipping Pacey/Jen for a couple of months, it dawned on me what might be wrong. It just seemed too insane to be true. But, as insane as it seemed:
Jared Padalecki Fixed My Ovaries
The first couple of months of my mystical pregnancy were terrifying: depression, all-day nausea, dizziness, night terrors. I knew something was wrong, but I was afraid of cancer of some type. That's how fucked up long-term infertility is and how much PCOS messes with healthy bodily functions: the idea that I was dying made more sense than being pregnant.
But I adored being pregnant, and the next several months were great. My kidlet was born without much fuss in August 2008, he was healthy and happy (and still is) and I totally missed out on having Post-Partum Depression, which I had dreaded since finding out PCOS was often a factor. I was on an oxytocin high that can never be duplicated, though.
The first few years of my son's life were great. I loved being a mom, I loved being a stay-at-home mom, and my chocolate chip cookies were the best. All of my old fears that the reason I hadn't been able to conceive was because I would make a terrible mom faded away, because I can say without a doubt that I was a great mom. I also had an easy kid and a supportive spouse and the economic security to work at home.
Plus the older my kid got, the more he looked like Jensen and the more I liked to sing Ryan Adam's "Dear Chicago" to my husband.
Those were really, really wonderful years. I was a little lonely for adult conversation (Vinnie owns my soul for being that single childfree friend who put up with a lot of kid info during our weekly phone calls), but otherwise ecstatic.
When my son was 5, I went back to work full-time at the college where my husband worked and where I had worked before. And those were also good years. Eddie and I fell in love all over again as parents (one kid is great. I'm just saying). We traveled a lot with two incomes, we geeked out over a lot of TV, and I read almost every Harry Potter fan fic ever written.
And then my Dad passed in 2012.
(My brother, Dad, and me, February 2012.)
My depression popped up, but this time, when I was 42 years old and healthier, happier (and hotter) than I had ever been, Depression decided we should have a threesome with Anxiety.
It's true: I didn't develop Anxiety until I was in my early 40s. But it showed up with a BANG: night terrors, insomnia, intrusive thoughts, and PANIC ATTACKS. I called an ambulance THREE times between the ages of 43-48 convinced I was having a heart attack. I was not. Thank God ambulance service is part of our water bill in Oklahoma City.
The more the grief hit, the more I was convinced I was going to die young like my mom, or have multiple heart attacks like my Dad. Ironically, that fear caused me to binge eat, increasing my weight and blood pressure and making it MORE likely I would die young of heart disease.
I slowly recovered from that, and the stress cardiomyopathy I had in November 2019 actually jump-started me into feeling better than I had in years. Until February 2020. I think you know where I'm going with this. The early months of the pandemic were actually not bad from me. Baking bread, Tiger King: I worked at home from mid-March until the third week of July. It was actually really nice -- we landscaped our backyard and had a lovely summer.
After I returned to work in August 2020, though, I started experiencing peri-menopausal symptoms: hot flashes, insomnia, sensitivity to sound, irritability, and RAGE. I'm not an angry person: I'm a people pleaser who deflects with humor, blows up once in a blue moon, and feels really bad about it. And yet.
I started missing work because I couldn't get out of bed. My son was back in school (7th grader now), my husband was teaching at home, and I was just reeling. It felt like puberty and early pregnancy hormones whipped up in a blender, mixed with Cocaine, and shot up my ass.
I stared avoiding people (easy during a pandemic). I lost interest in everything and saved all of my energy for being there for my husband and son. My sense of humor faded. My natural friendliness receded. And I was angry all the time.
I saw my internist and my OBGYN and they both said it was early days (I had just turned 50 last April) and not to worry.
November 19, 2020
I had been so disenchanted with Season 14 of SPN that I left Season 15 in my DVR unwatched. I knew it was the final season, but the very few people I knew in fandom (Vinnie, Eileen, Kristy, Becky & Kelios) were not loving early 15, so I figured I was safe.
The night of the finale, I became obsessed with watching it so that I wouldn't get spoiled, and so I started early that evening and stayed up all night, watching Season 15 (I liked "The Gamblers"?) and of course FF through anything Feathery. I finally got to "Carry On" and "It's always been you...and me" and fell in love all over again.
I got on Twitter for the first time in months to cry and squee along with all of my Sam Girls, Dean Girls, and Wincest brethren. SIM posted "The Otherside" and I sobbed. I hadn't written fic since 2009, but I sat down and wrote Vinnie a 35k word J2 fic based on our favorite film Steel Magnolias, and I wrote it in 2 weeks. I can't write a letter in less than 2 weeks. I write well, but I write slowly.
I've written 2 fics since then, and I've signed up to write a Big Bang fic for the first time. I've made playlists. I've made recs posts. I've friended tons of Vinnie's SPN mutuals, and then random SPNers who said something funny or poignant. I've jumped in the middle threads by people I don't know to squee or laugh. I've rec'd my own fic to strangers. I've stopped people in Twitter hallways to tell them they write well or that I love their screencaps.
And while all of that is shiny and new and fantastic and who doesn't love Jared Tiffany Padalecki and Jensen Roslyn Ackles (I stole those from Vinnie, sorry), I realized halfway through making 15 Supernatural playlists (20 songs each!) that I was manic.
I've never been manic before. I've been enthused. I've been over-extended. I've been curt like Curt Jurgens in The Enemy Below. But I've never been manic.
I've been faking normal online for more years than I can count, although I've always been open about my mental health issues. I've had a lot to be grateful for. I lucked out in my marriage and he's forgiven more than he should have to. I have a beautiful and healthy 12 year old son who makes straight A's and has a Padalecki-lite 6-pack from jumping on a trampoline every day for the past 7 years. I have 6 best friends and tons associated friends, here in the city, around the world, and online. I'm a good writer, fairly bright, and emotionally and mentally instable at times.
When I finally got to the point that I was spending most of my time at work either on Twitter or making yet another list about Supernatural on my work computer, I turned in my notice to my boss. She's 70, in fantastic shape, and from the generation where if you're struggling to do something, "You're just not trying hard enough." She talked me out of quitting, and I dug in deeper and tried to feel "normal."
But every day I'm hot, and dizzy, and angry. I've had instrusive thoughts, ideation, and mild hallucinations. I finally realized that my current mood stabilizer is NOT working and made appointments with both my regular doc and my OBGYN. My OBGYN wants me to have follow-up work to rule out Menopausal Psychosis.
Psychosis is a scary fucking word, even if you known people with psychosis and they're totally fine with treatment.
So I quit my job, for real, on Monday. And here we are thousands of words in, after I've shared the worst of my sins and the most painful of my breakdowns, wanting to tell you all that I'm fine. And right now, at this very second, I'm fine. Here's a zinger about hellers, please read my J2 fan fic, "Hey, have you met me, I'm Vinnie's RL BFF, let's be SPN friends!" fine.
But I'm not.
At the very least, the onset of menopause has exacerbated my anxiety/depression. At the worst? Mental illness worse than I've faced thus far. I'm scared, and I'm grateful I'm still here, and I'm fighting for me so that my son doesn't lose his mom, and I'm afraid that I'm overreacting and I'm terrified of what might happen.
As my Twitter handle says, "It's a treacherous road / With a desolated view."
But today is also March 3. Today is the 6th anniversary of Jared Padalecki's campaign ALWAYS KEEP FIGHTING, today is day I made it through without feeling lost, and today is another day to remember I have everything:
(Christmas 2019)
