depression

soul searching.

/ author life, depression, pictures, ronni, sick, when the stars lead to you, writing

Hey friends, how’s it going?

Life is.. weird over here. If you’ve been following my socials, you know, but just in case you haven’t…

Here’s what’s good:

-one-

I GOT ARCs! ARCs are Advance Review Copies; uncorrected proofs that will be sent out to trader reviewers, bookstores, book bloggers, and other authors for potential blurbs. I have a copy of my book that I can HOLD IN MY HANDS and I’m just… wow.

IT’S GETTING CLOSER AND CLOSER TO BEING A REAL BOOK!

With that, my pre-order links have gone up, so if you want a copy of my book, you can get it from any of these fine retailers:

amazon • b&n • indiebound • chapters

-two-

People have been ordering my book! I know this because amazon tosses up orange ribbons from time to time. I try not to stalk my book too much, but sometimes my friends will show me!

I mean… what??!!??

-three-

I got to moderate a panel at C2E2, a comics and entertainment convention that takes place in Chicago every year. This was my first time attending, and it is the COOLEST. Maybe my favorite con of all time. So, I got to be a moderator, and it was at a cool con, and it was an official author type thing, and I loved it so, so, so much. More of this in my life, please.

I mean, I got to be a guest and have a page on the website and everything. Wow!!

-four-

I started an author newsletter. You can sign up here! I’ve sent out 3 issues, which you can see here if you’d like. I think they’re a good time, but I might be biased!!

So yeah, some good things for sure. I’m hanging in there, I am. Spring is here. Well, it’s “technically” here. Weather wise… well, winter isn’t giving up without a fight. Which is normal for Chicago.

Where I’ve lived for 11 years now. WTF.

Here’s what’s weird:

First thing: my hair is super thin now and will not hold any curl. At all. And that’s depressing. I’ve ruined it and I’m either going to cut it all off and start over or get extensions. OK, who am I kidding? I’m not going to do anything.

I miss my curls, though.

Second thing: I’m gaining weight and I don’t like it. Mainly because I don’t feel like buying new clothes.

Third thing: shortly after I posted my last post, I came down with a migraine that felt like stabbing knives and ice picks through my brain. Then the week after that, I was blessed with the worst panic attack I’d had in at least 12 years. That happened while I was at my desk at work and IT WAS NOT FUN.

Have you ever had a panic attack? It had been so long that I’d forgotten what it felt like. I wanted to literally rip my skin off, then crawl under my desk and burst into tears. My stomach was messed up, I didn’t feel like myself, and I hated every second of it. My dear friend Wanda helped me hold it together through texts. I made it through the day and pretty much collapsed when I finally got home. Adam brought me McDonald’s.

I still don’t know what happened. 🙁

A week later, as I was walking across the bridge to the shuttle on my way to work, I fell and couldn’t get up. I had to ride in an ambulance (a first), and I got an X-ray. This X-ray, in fact:

You’ll know when you see it.

I had to have surgery the next day, and I haven’t been back to work since.

That was 3 and a half weeks ago. The knee is healing (although it’s still warm and swollen which I don’t like). I’m in physical therapy 3 days a week, and I have to do exercises every day. I’m slowly getting better. I use crutches to get around for the most part. I’m trying not to overdo it, but the world doesn’t slow down for a broken knee. I have painkillers for the bad nights, which, luckily, are few and far between anymore.

I didn’t know an injury like this messed with one mentally and emotionally as well as physically. It hasn’t been easy. But I’m managing. And trying to focus on the good.

  1. I didn’t break any teeth
  2. I’m expected to make a full recovery
  3. The cost of the surgery sucked up my 2019 deductible and out-of-pocket maximum, so yay for that
  4. No commuting for now!

Now….

Soul searching. Trying to figure out what’s next. I really don’t fancy getting back into the rat race of commuting and having to be “on” for 12 hours a day. But I need to make money. Steady money. Good money. Because I have at least $8K in medical bills coming and I need to figure out how to pay for that along with my other bills. Which means work-life balance is about to fly out the window … as I will need to work, work work.

And I need to write, which is not good money (yet). I’m also scared to write. I don’t know if I’ll even have time to write, since I’ll have to take on as much freelance as I can for the foreseeable future.

But that doesn’t stop me from wanting other stuff. I want to travel. I’m still healing. I have debt. My apartment is a mess. There’s always a million things to do and organize and sort out, and it’s so hard to get motivated. Or I get motivated at the wrong damn times (like when I should be sleeping, hence the insomnia yay). I have too much stuff (especially clothes and books) and I need to get rid of a lot of it. I want to play the Sims and watch Netflix. I want to sleep.

I know other stuff I want, but I’m scared to get it. And then my mind goes round and round and I get all tense and freaking out in my brain and even though I’m exhausted, I can’t sleep at night and my appetite is super weird and I’m TIRED.

So yeah. Soul searching. But I don’t think I’m doing it right.

Told ya things were weird over here.

4 Comments

and forward.

/ depression, ronni, spring


March, please be good to me

My last entry was a bit big downer. I’m owning it. I’d love to be sunshine and rainbows all the time, but alas. I’m only human, and my humanness sometimes comes with gloom and pettiness and big old blahs.

All that stuff from my last entry, plus stuff I won’t disclose, has worn me OUT. My bones feel heavy and achy (which better not be the flu coming back), and my brain is like “muh?” Emotional, physical, and energetic exhaustion, and it’s only two months into 2018.

So.

D O N E .

…but even when I’m tired, even when I think I’m D O N E, sometimes a little flame, a touch of spunk, rears its little head.

It’s March 1! A new month. A chance to wipe the slate clean {again}. It’s a month of renewal, of change, of new possibilities. Am I brave enough to embrace it? To dream, to hope?

There are things to look forward to. It’s my best friend’s birthday month (yay Rena!). It’s Charlotte’s birthday month. The Spring Equinox. LOVE, SIMON and A WRINKLE IN TIME hit cinemas.

The weather will start warming up (in theory). It’ll be my ten year anniversary of moving to Chicago. Aidan’s spring break comes at the end of the month.

🌷 SPRING!!!!!! 🌷

February and January were challenging, but I’m still here. I’m STILL HERE.

It’s time to make March my bitch.

5 Comments

real talk.

/ depression, life, ronni, sad, wtf

IMG_2499

Look. I try to be positive and upbeat despite… well, you know. Everything, really. The country is a trash fire, I’m scared all the time someone’s going to whip out a gun and shoot us all up (this is probably why I rarely leave the house anymore), I hate the cold, and I’m weary in my bones.

BUT

I try to live in this perpetual attitude of gratitude, because there is a lot to be thankful for. Black Panther is mind blowing. I still love my mini office. I get to drink tea every day. Electric blankets and “My Heat” space heaters are amazing. I have incredible, patient, lovely best friends. My agent is awesome. People make outstanding custom content for The Sims.

Maybe I’m grasping at straws right now. Sometimes I get desperate like that.

The fact is, so far, 2018 has been…not great. These are the main reasons why.

• My sweet, sweet kitty Fi passed away
• I lost my driver’s license. It was a pain to go through the hoops to get a duplicate. In Illinois, you don’t get your license the same day anymore. You get a temp, and they mail the real to you at some point. The post office RETURNED my license instead of delivering it to me. So I get to go through all those hoops again, and hope they don’t return it this time.

The Chicago USPS is awful.

• Depression/anxiety are trying their best to get me, and some most days it’s easier to let them win.
• I’ve already been sick twice, and anxiety makes me feel nauseated almost all day every day anymore.
• I’m not sleeping well due to various factors, such as the aforementioned depression/anxiety, noise, and stress.
• I’m not eating very well, because my appetite has been weird since I’ve been sick. Also, see anxiety/depression.
• My health insurance premium went up. Along with that, I have new copays and other copays that are more expensive.
• My expenses keep going up. Which sucks because…
• I get to go job hunting sometime in the spring.
• The universe decided it would be a really fun time to have a recruiter try to recruit me for the job I’m losing in April. Because I love it being rubbed in my face that I might be stressed out and worried about money in several months time because of weird rules and things I don’t understand. I’m so scared it’s going to be 2006–2007 all over again and I’m freaking out about it.

That’s just some of them. I didn’t even touch the biggest things.

I mean, I get it. I know my problems aren’t super huge. There is a lot worse happening in the world all the time. And the guilt of my frustration and sadness compounds the anxiety and depression…no wonder I can barely eat. Or sleep.

I’m looking at the first two months of 2018 like:

I was so excited to start the year. Now I’m scared of what’s waiting for me.

I’m really praying things get better.

2 Comments

real or not real.

/ depression, ronni, sad, surgery

Grounds at Cawdor Castle

Dealing with a lot right now. Not only physically, although that’s quite enough. With my incision burning, my finicky appetite, random nausea, and general fatigue. At my post op appointment, my doctor told me all the stuff that went down. There was the endometriosis. But also endometrioma, which are ovarian cysts filled with blood from endometrial tissue. One of the ovaries was pretty much taken over by it. In addition, the endo had started burrowing into the muscle in my uterine wall. It was everywhere.

By the end of the year, I was exhausted and in pain almost all the time. But it felt manageable (with lots of ibuprofen) until moon time, when it got unbearable. I’m glad all that’s behind me. Even with feeling icky with recovery stuff, I am better than I was then.

Right now I feel run down and sore. I think I overdid it Friday; I sat up a long time playing video games. I spent all day Saturday in bed but I don’t know if that was enough. I’m still not feeling great. But that’s OK and expected. One step forward two steps back they say. It’s the mental and emotional stuff that’s really messing me up. This was something I’d read about happening, but I didn’t think it would affect me for the following reasons:

1. I’d been done having kids for a long time, so I’m not mourning the fact that I can no longer have children.
2. I was more than ready for the surgery. Years of painful, heavy periods and migraines made sure of that.

What I didn’t anticipate was the following:
1. Getting thrown off my antidepressant schedule because of my erratic sleeping. (I’m working on fixing that now.)
2. Feeling randomly emotional anyway. Constantly on the brink of tears the past few days.
3. The publishing journey hitting a lot harder than it should be, making me—once again—question if I have the strength to endure all the stuff that comes with it. And wondering if all the waiting and torment and self-doubt and work, work, work will ever be worth it.
3a. Here’s the thing about writing. I can’t just turn it off. It’s a part of me and I have to do it. I have to create. But the thought of teen girls like me never getting to see themselves represented because I worry I will never be good enough to get published for them? It hurts. Maybe it’s arrogant of me to think this way, but it’s there. And it leads to #4:
4. Feeling an overwhelming sense of failure. Feeling like I’m letting people down with my shitty writing. Feeling like I’ve wasted more than a year doing a bunch of work for nothing. If I keep going but it ends up being proven that I suck, then that’s a failure of my storytelling and skills. but if I quit, then an even bigger failure, right?
5. And switching gears: mourning the loss of some of the organs that were taken out during surgery, even though they caused me torment and pain for the last several years.

I don’t know which of these things are real or not. Which are legit emotions and concerns, or which are because of the flux in my hormones, my body doing its thing to repair and recover, all the drugs, my appetite being all weird, the state of the country and the world. I feel overwhelmed and I want to escape but I can’t exactly escape myself and my own brain right?

I’m trying not to think too much, trying to focus on recovery, but to be honest, I have a lot of downtime, which means my brain has a lot of time to turn against me. So that’s what it’s doing.

It sucks.

So yeah. That’s me right now. Just keeping it real, I guess.

1 Comment

stabilizing.

/ depression, life, pictures

Morton Arboretum 2013

When I last posted, I was feeling rather down. So much was coming at me, so much of it out of my control, that I couldn’t get a grip. Plus starting therapy, my body and brain readjusting to taking my medication properly, and the scope of my contract. And worrying about how I’m going to make it through the next few weeks. Right now, I am very overwhelmed with work and really should be working instead of posting this, but I felt like a follow up was needed to my last entry.

I feel better now. I think my medicine is finally stabilizing. The therapy and journaling homework seem to be helping me process things and figure out why the hell I think the way I do and why I am the way I am. I suspect I’ve only scratched the tiniest bit of surface, but it’s a start.

I’m still rather tired, but that has to do with me not making good choices over the weekend, a BOATLOAD of client work, DayJob™, and many events and social engagements and appointments. And it’s only just beginning. I think I may treat myself to a day at an expensive, fancy spa downtown when I’ve made it through this month. I’m talking one of those places where you get naked and walk around in a robe all day. Massage, facial, mani-pedi, the works. A place with a zen room and fountains and pitchers of water with cucumbers floating in it. Sounds like heaven.

But for now, back to work.

Ronni

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