Bitter and Bold Beginnings

Chop wood, carry water

The Sunday Letter #27

I’ve always been the most productive when I’m avoiding something.

The first time I remember having a panic attack, I was 13 years old and procrastinating on an art assignment. It was due the next morning, and I hadn’t yet started. I cried and cried to my mom, and she told me, “some days are just like taking a shit. It might hurt doing it, but you’ll be glad when it’s over.” Sorry, mom, for sharing that one, but I shit you not, it’s been a guiding principle in my life ever since; the foul-mouthed woman’s version of “this too shall pass.”

After calming down, I stayed awake late into the night to finish the assignment, creating an intricate digital PhotoShop creation that my teacher praised and displayed to the whole class. I learned entirely the wrong lesson that day: that I could get away with working on important projects at the very last second, and still pull off high grades (as long as it didn’t involve Math or Science…). Believe it or not, it wasn’t until I had already left grad school that a healthcare professional finally stopped me and said, “I think you might want to get tested for ADHD.”

I hadn’t yet realized it, but my executive dysfunction was causing pretty rough burnout. I’d already been diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder a few years prior, a diagnosis which made sense given the struggles I was having with intrusive thoughts. But I never thought to consider whether I would need a diagnosis for my struggles with attention and motivation, when my grades were otherwise fine. I was the delight to have in class, the one whose work was often used as an example to others. Who would have thought something could be amiss?

My childhood had been loud, and I recall seeking solace alone, especially when I finally moved into my own private bedroom at age 13. The only understanding of ADHD that I had as a child was the image of the hyperactive boy unable to remain in his seat, not that of a quiet, precocious young girl with perfect report cards. I realized much later on that I’d simply been adapting: my mom told me that I would come home on the school bus and immediately hit the couch to nap for hours, drained.

When we first started discussing the possibility of my having ADHD, my therapist explained that ADHD, autism, and OCD form a Venn diagram, with executive dysfunction the core holding the three together. Regardless of which disorder is the root cause, my symptoms are often the same: intrusive thoughts, panic attacks, compulsions, extreme sensitivity to rejection, reassurance-seeking, and a frequent low-level stomach ache.

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah…

Likely as a result of the disorder, I tend to thrive creatively when I’m the most dysfunctional executively. In the middle of July, as I was writing this letter about the stress of trying to become homeowners, I messaged a few friends with the idea for

paloma magazine

:

i’m throwing this non-committal idea out to you two, but how fun would it be to start a casual substack magazine? where smart folks can occasionally relaxedly contribute no-pressure pieces … i had this thought 2 minutes ago but had to share lol

Like I said, I’m most productive when I’m avoiding something, and the feeling I’ve been avoiding the most lately is this lingering insecurity I have about writing. But lately, these wonderful, creative, smart friends keep ending up in my life, and I feel challenged and inspired to create in new ways that I haven’t felt in years. To allow yourself time and space to learn and to fail is the kindest gift, regardless of what anyone may think, least of all ourselves.

This is mainly a reminder for myself—after a long day of procrastinating on this letter, with all my excuses—the point is to do the things you spend the rest of your time daydreaming about doing. To be able to make something, or to observe a piece of work made by someone else, and understand its inner parts, to know what makes it tick just by looking at it… That’s the skill developed only by time, patience, and practice. There’s no end in sight, you just get to *do it.* Not just waiting to get there, but being there already. Even if you’re scared, even if it’s hard. Chop wood, carry water, as the saying goes.

*

The other night we had friends over for drinks and charcuterie in our new place. It was our first time hosting together in the month since we’d moved in, and we spent the day finally arranging the last of my bookshelves and putting away the moving boxes clogging our entryway. It’s actually feeling like quite a little home.

Over drinks outside, the topic of exploding head syndrome came up while discussing my husband’s recent bout with sinusitis. Apparently, exploding head syndrome is an auditory hallucination that occurs while falling asleep that sounds like an explosive going off in the brain. And the even more bizarre fact is that one of the supposed cures for EHS is to actually learn about EHS. According to Wikipedia, “Studies suggest that education and reassurance can reduce the frequency of EHS episodes.” My husband swears this is true: he’d experienced the ‘explosion’ before, but never knew that it was an actual medical syndrome until he stumbled across a podcast about it. He told us that after learning about the phenomenon, he never experienced it again. Now I’m fascinated by the idea that there might be other syndromes out there with the same kind of elusive, disappearing effect; I continue to be a little haunted by the endless, impossible mysteries of the human brain.

And I know that this is probably scientifically inaccurate, but I’ve definitely felt different since my therapist first suggested I get tested for ADHD. It was like a flicker of sense went off in my brain which has allowed me to unleash endless grace on myself. I still get anxious, and I still have the same bad habit of doing everything at the last minute, but I’ve learned to be a lot more patient with myself as it happens, to work around the contours of it rather than allow it to seep into the pores of my everyday life. I recognize when I’m hitting a wall, which is what executive dysfunction feels like to me, and I’ve gotten better at filling the space in the in-between—usually with a snack or copious amounts of social media scrolling. And for the first time, I’m allowing myself the grace to explore the previously unexplored parts of my life, to try and get better at something, to learn a trade or two, to fill the space in the in-between. Chop wood, carry water.

I think I’m getting there.

This week’s recommendations

My pal

Tia

eulogizes Riverdale and asks: was it camp? “Susan Sontag, you would have loved Riverdale.”

Haley Nahman

’s gorgeous eulogy for her sweet Bug:

Sobbing and laughing cause a similar movement, produce a similar sound. Physiologically speaking, this seemed promising. Worst case, I was passing my sadness onto the baby. Best case, the baby thought something incredibly funny had happened. That I’d been laughing about it for days.

mixed feelings

on psychoanalyzing friends, and what it means to be “toxic.”

This week in Annie Ernaux news: “Often I have made love to force myself to write.”

Sarah Hagi argues we should stop caring about screen time.

Wendy Syfret

on the trauma of the pressure to have a “perfect” birth.

In The New York Times, 16 people share their favourite ‘bad’ habits. My favourite response was from author Megan Nolan:

I sleep with my friends, and I befriend the people I sleep with. As a result, my social life mostly consists of a sort of merry traveling band of fellows with whom I have happily porous and shifting relationships. This is what we all used to do when we were young and then grew out of when we moved into the serious part of life. Except I just didn’t.

*

Some good old Alabama Shakes came up on shuffle the other day, and it felt perfectly apt for today’s letter: “I wanna touch a human being / I wanna go back to sleep.”

PS. Your fave casual new art + literature magazine just dropped!

paloma magazine

was such a labour of love and I’m so happy with how it turned out. Highly suggest giving it a read, preferably with a cocktail/mocktail in hand. Thanks again to all of our talented contributors!

001. Sweet & Sour.