I Think I'm Getting Better

and I'd like to use this blog to share the things that have helped me get here.

I think I'm getting better.

By even saying this, I want to knock on wood, throw salt over my shoulder, turn around three times, and beg the waning sunlight of October to forgive my hubris.

Still, I feel compelled to say it: I think I'm getting better. Maybe it's that I want to brag. Maybe it's that I want to start peeling back all the layers of trying and trying and trying and failing and trying to share what has and has not helped, what has and has not worked, with others who might be like me.

You might be like me if you're tired. Anxious. Depressed. Queer. If you have ADHD. If you wonder if you have autism sometimes, but don't see the point in getting a formal diagnosis.

You might be like me if you're a creative who aspired for most of their life to write some great novel, some great poem, to create some great something. You might be like me if you burnt out on the coals of your own perceived failures, most of which you made up. You might be like me if you create often, but you feel terrified to share what you make. You might be like me if you bemoan the difficulty of being a human, a worker, and an artist, yet when you scroll through social media you find that plenty of people seem to manage it just fine. So you wonder: what is wrong with you.

That's what it all comes down to: you have an inexplicable feeling that there is something irredeemably wrong with you. This feeling has been with you for as long as you can remember, like a scar from a childhood injury you maybe can, or can't, remember. This feeling compelled you to love people who validated that feeling - whether those were people who actively treated you like there was something wrong with you, or people whose affection did not come easy, who did not love you like it was a given, therefore making their love seem more affirming. If it's not easy to receive, but you managed to receive it, then that felt like success, like maybe you were okay. Until the love receded again.

You might be like me if you've tried a variety of meds, each time with the hope that this med will be The One that makes everything right, that makes you right and normal and able to do right and normal human things.

You might be like me if you've been in therapy for over a decade, and those therapy sessions have mostly consisted of trying to navigate the various interpersonal dramas you inadvertently created for yourself through your aforementioned need to fight, tooth and nail, for the love of people who do not necessarily know how to love you.

You might be like me if you've poured over hundreds of books, articles, Youtube videos, and Tiktoks that promised some solution: for your depression, seasonal affective disorder, executive dysfunction, hypersexuality, anxiety, ADHD paralysis, disordered eating. You might be like me if you've Googled the words "why sad all the time" like a well-meaning giant trying to make sense of their adversarial brain.

You might be like me if you have found that periods of "getting better" over the last few years, amid pandemic, political turmoil, and present and ever-looming ecological crisis, have been few and far between, and that those moments all too often are pulled out from under you just as you started to think maybe a way forward was possible.

You might be like me if you think you might be getting better, or at the very least, you want to get better, but you're disillusioned with people telling you to just "go on walks" or "do yoga" and whenever people suggest it you want to shake them and scream "GETTING OUT OF BED FEELS IMPOSSIBLE AND YOU WANT ME TO DO YOGA AND CONTEND WITH THE SHAME OF BEING UNABLE TO TOUCH MY TOES???"

You might be like me if, amid a moment of Doing-Okay-Enough-To-Cope-A-Little, you did try going on walks and doing yoga or journaling or sitting on a particularly good rock, and you were dismayed to find that it did actually make you feel a bit better.

Me, sitting on a particularly good rock, dismayed to find that it did make me feel a bit better.

You might be like me if you want to find a way to share these things that make you feel a little better, but with a little less of the holier-than-thou neurotypical granola-ass attitude that has often accompanied these suggestions.

I am currently reading Austin Kleon's book "Show Your Work," to try and address my fear of what I am doing now: speaking to you, through this little electric box.

I recently heard of the concept of Internet as Serendipity Vehicle, whether it’s through social media pages, blogs, forums. The idea being, you put your work out there, and you increase the possibility of serendipity to enter your life. By showing your work and your process, you increase the possibility of connection.

I am afraid of people, and therefore, connection , but I am trying to believe something new: that the world, and the people in it, are not here to try and interpret me in the worst possible way, and instead, have an inherent desire to connect, to be seen, to help others, to be helped.

In thinking about my work, a big part of it as been trying to get better. Through poetry, through creativity, through performing, through taking the big feelings and trying to make them even bigger and then small and then big again through the process of writing, editing, and performing them to an audience at a Poetry Slam.

I don't perform as much anymore. My work feels much quieter. Much more private. My work feels like sorting type in my studio, taking voice-notes on long car drives, writing in my Obsidian notebook (that I debate making public and really leaning into Showing My Work for anyone who might like to read it). My work feels like conversations over coffee with friends. My work feels like sitting on the dock of the lake by my house and thinking. My work feels like conversations with my partner in bed as she, always so kindly, listens to my newest theory on How I Am Getting Better and What I Might Try Next to Get More Better.

A photo from sitting on the dock the other day, once again dismayed to find that it did make me feel better.

As I said, I watched a lot of videos and read a lot of books, all from people speaking on the topic of How To Get Better. Usually, what would happen is that I would employ their tactics and recommendations for a week, maybe two, and then revert back to whatever the hell I was doing previously, which usually consisted of being anxious about the people around me, and then using dissociative coping mechanisms to find some relief from that anxiety: smoking weed, playing video games, scrolling through Tiktok, all while berating myself for not being productive, for not making art, for letting all that goddamned potential I was promised at my Gifted-and-Talented middle school slip away, all while the voice in my head kept screaming: Look! Look! Something is wrong with you!

But I think I'm getting better. This doesn't necessarily always equate to feeling better - some days are still hard. But I've found myself in an unfamiliar place, one in which I feel less disregulated by interpersonal conflict, one in which I am able to pull myself out of bed for a walk with more consistency than before, one in which I am creating, sometimes slowly, but still consistently (though the sharing of that could still use some work). Also, I think I'm getting better because I feel bored sometimes, but the boredom is a welcome friend in contrast to drama, anxiety, fear. My feelings feel less big, less scary to speak to. I feel able to ask "What do you need right now?" and if the answer is "A walk," then we go on a walk, and if the answer is "I need to lay in bed and pretend I don't exist" then we can do that, knowing that won't become a way of being that spans months.

A photo from a moment of me creating very slowly as I made my first project on my new printing press.

Better snuck up on me. It's like I woke up one day, rolled over in bed, and realized it had been there, sleeping beside me. I got used to it before I even realized it was there.

While I may just be joining the throng of online creatives trying to promote their view of what the path to better might be, all for people to try out their tips and tricks for a week before returning back to whatever the hell they were doing previously, I still want to share what's been working, and what hasn't worked, for this reason:

I was not always able to absorb and practice what was recommended to me by therapists, doctors, or authors immediately.

I think that certain thoughts and ideas are like seeds. It's not always enough to have someone tell us what to do, and for us to then go do what they say. Not all seeds start to grow the second you plant them. Some require seasons of cold, some require intense temperatures, some require just the right amount of moisture, the perfect rainy season. Years could pass, until one day, you start to see all that underground work start to pop up, to reach toward the sun.

This blog is my attempt to help plant some seeds with people like me. Through this little serendipity vehicle, this little connection conduit, I'll share the usual: poems, process, etc. But I also want to share little snapshots into the things that make me go "Maybe people are okay, and the world is okay, and I am okay."

I am speaking from the middle of the journey. I am sharing saplings rather than established trees. I know that there might be storms, that all of these little coping mechanisms might not survive what hits them. But I also know that more seeds are waiting in the ground that can take their place. Everything, coping mechanisms included, has a season.

If you're still reading this, thanks for joining on this journey with me. I know I haven’t shared much yet about the actual things that helped me get better. Those are posts to come, and if any of it resonates, feel free to plant that seed. No pressure if it doesn't grow right away.

I think that, one day, we’ll wake up and be amazed at the ecosystems we’ve created for ourselves.