As the flowers find their names

In the summer heat it feels as though my brain is cooked in cough syrup. Like it is just soaking in there and the thoughts can’t come through to the top. Like the haze of the Canadian wildfires, it fills the sky and dissipates, only to come back again casting a strange glow upon the water. Something in me is shifting, yet it persists.

I am sitting inside of Flexible Office : Writer’s Retreat (we just got started today and have four mornings left if you care to join us) and am grateful to begin by writing my newsletter, my strongest creative muscle. The place where I have a cadence that flows naturally through me from finger to page. While I began with a judgement that I should be jumping right into the book proposal I have been noodling with, I knew this was the place that would set me up for typing beyond my weekly capacity. My fear is that the cadence of the essay keeps me trapped in a length I can’t break free from. This week I aim to shift that.

The skill of writing long form requires an ability, or rather a willingness, to zoom in and to zoom out over and over again. To see the whole picture of the project from a bird’s eye view, and then to be a little beetle crawling beneath each sentence to see if it makes any sense. To be willing to dive bomb into whole sections to get the worm, or scurry under words and devour and spread them out as fuel for the next piece of truth that spills out.

While writing as an art form can be taught and crafted, I believe the zooming in and out can only be perfected by practice. It is a dance of moving closer to ourselves and then backing away. To go all the way in and trust that you can come back out again.

I am finding that to do anything even remotely difficult or that I have been avoiding I have to body double.1 This is something I used to resist at all costs, taking my will back from god and saying - of course I can do this by myself. I don’t think needing help in times of true despair makes one weak, but to need help or support doing “every day tasks” that other people seem to do by themselves just fine was something I was unwilling to accept. And yet, it works for me without fail. The judgement of self remains, although much less with the proof of its abundant outcome.

While I have always self diagnosed as a tornado person, getting official diagnoses for my Bipolar and ADHD changed a lot of the ways I was willing to accept my shortcomings. I don’t say shortcomings like faults as much as when the comings gets shortened. When the length of a task in a neurotypical world is simply too long and you run up short to meet it. I found myself fueled with a desire to lengthen my time of focus, attention, and art making.

On my podcast I have named these two things and in my newsletter I write a lot about attention and mania, but have made a clear choice to not publicly name my Bipolar or ADHD in this space. Being in this group of 44 other writers today, staring at their computers or notebooks, shows me that it works to gather. Gathering works for our brains. Gathering lets us be free of the pain of trying to do something alone yet again and coming up short.

I was hesitant to name publicly what I am still getting acquainted with privately because I want people to find relatability with my work and who I am outside of these diagnoses, not because I “have something”. The thing is I already had those whether you knew or not, and how they weave into everything I do is inextricable. As is my queerness, my alcoholism, my gender, my vigor and hope for a life filled with creative efforts and magic. As with everything I am and will be, there is nothing to apologize for. These things both explain so much of the pain I have felt in my life and my relationships, as well as the sparkle that comes through in everything I do.

One of the meds I’ve been trying is what I think turned my brain to cough syrup. It halted some of my manic spending, hypomanic talking, and other features of my Bipolar but it also took away some of the ideas that I seem to be running out of. It has been a wild dance to find the things that keep me of this Earth, but also let me be free to make my little messes along the way that are part of who I am and don’t want undone.

When my psychiatrist told me that I had Bipolar Disorder I said “I know”. It was almost always clear to me and other practitioners had suggested it in the past. And ex partners. And some of my closest friends. And other people with Bipolar. And every google search. But when she told me I had ADHD I asked “Can I not have that one?”. She said “It doesn’t really work like that.” I felt willing to accept the stigma of Bipolar but couldn't swallow having the thing I thought everyone seemed to suddenly have. It reminded me of my internalized homophobia that formed after being made fun of for liking girls in high school. I almost had this laughable essence when I thought of lesbians, all while deep inside me I yearned to be able to access that part of me. It feels the same here, the brushing off of the ADHD qualities in others as a form of ableism, only to take a closer to look and see what was there in me the whole time.

In the past year and a half I have seen myself shed certain labels that used to bring me a sense of self. I have seen a new spaciousness in my queerness and my gender. My definitions of my own sobriety. How I float through the world with five planets in Gemini all the while finding my footing on the ground. I find both a safety and comfort in naming what I am, and also a desire to be in the great nothingness.

I am still in the part of acceptance where I feel afraid that naming it to others I will seem different now, unreliable, like if you know this secret about me you might be scared. A feeling many alcoholics have about their addiction or sobriety that I didn’t seem to inherit. I know I will actually seem the same as I ever was, now with more tools on the tool belt. When I came out as non binary so many other out non binary and trans people were like - we know sweetie, welcome. Whenever I come in to myself there are always people waiting with the net to say, we’ve been waiting to catch you.

I’ve always been here as I am, as flowers find their names, I find mine too.