All the cool kids seem to be making year-in-review posts right about now.
I guess that means it’s time for mine.
I am thinking about 2014. You may have noticed a relative dearth of posting in the second half of this year. I did not publish much, especially compared to the epic publishing year which was 2013. A lot of other stuff happened. A lot of things changed in my life this year, some good, some stressful, many both. I appeared at a convention as a panelist for the first time, which was really wonderful. I learned a lot. I did interesting research at school. I picked up a really addictive LARP habit and made wonderful, geeky LARP friends. I let go of some personal connections that had been hurting me for a long time, began to repair holes in others, and learned to embrace some new ones.
And then.
Some of you know that I have been on a low dose of an atypical antipsychotic since I was 14. I was not psychotic when I was 14, but someone with a degree in psychiatry decided this was a good idea anyway. I know there is a lot of controversy about antipsychotics and other drugs as a remedy for autism symptoms. I don’t want to rehash that controversy here. Let’s just say I’ve been on the drugs for a long time and felt ambivalent about them for a long time. I’d talked to doctors before about methods of being weaned off of them (there was a brief false alarm several years ago when we thought I would have to do this under supervision for physical reasons) and had successfully reduced my own dosage in the past without large problems.
So, in June this year, I did one of the stupidest things I have ever done. Without informing a doctor, I tried to go off of them entirely.
Advice to everyone who is reading: DO NOT DO THIS. DO NOT. FUCKING. DO. THIS. Not even if you truly believe that you shouldn’t be on them, and are being “careful” and “intelligent” and weaning yourself off of them slowly in the way that the doctors have always recommended. I do not have enough caps lock to express this. DON’T. Antipsychotic withdrawal is horrifying. It can be worse than the thing they originally put you on the medicine for. This is well-documented.
I was psychotic for about a week before I figured out what was going on, had a headdesk of truly violent proportions, went back on the medicine, and called a doctor.
I do not say this in order to worry anybody or elicit pity or plead for help. This was June. It is December now. I am more or less okay and am caring for myself, and I have been more or less okay for quite some time. I have good health insurance (remember this is Canada) and a very friendly health team at school who are quietly and unobtrusively making sure that I continue to be okay.
I was psychotic for only a week, but it took me two months to feel like I was back in something resembling my usual brain, and three before I could get anything even remotely useful out of it. If not for my partner’s assistance and the support of my amazing supervisors at school during that time, I do not know where I would be.
This blog is supposed to be about writing, but for some reason, my writing is that one last thing that’s still hurt, and still refusing to be the way it was. I am getting a little bit out of it, but only very intermittently, and for a thing that I loved and defined myself by less than a year ago, it is confusing to see it become so elusive and difficult.
(Though I finally did finish the novel draft that I ought to have finished a year ago. I probably have another year’s worth of editing and research to do before I can even consider doing anything with it, but it’s there.)
And that was my year, and that was why most of you haven’t seen much of me. Also it’s why I may not be doing a list of my work, or of what I thought were the best works from other people this year, in the usual manner. I will probably be making some form of list but it will be perfunctory at best. I feel that I aged a year, but lived only half of one. I definitely was not keeping up with things professionally and I have officially released myself from any feeling of obligation to do so.
I am not completely sure why I am posting this, except that it happened, and it had an impact on things that the people who read this care about, and I am not sure what is the point, exactly, of keeping it a secret any longer. Stigma? But this blog is all about mental ableism anyway. I know that there exist things in the world that are too dangerous or personal to talk about for whatever reason, and that the decision of what goes and doesn’t go on that list is an extremely personal one. But for me, at this stage, I really don’t feel that this is one of those things.
And if I wanted to talk all about my autism, but failed to admit to this, what a hypocrite I would be!
I love all of you who have continued reading even while I wasn’t really here, and I am full of hope for 2015. Thank you for your support.