On this day in 1999, Jason and I stood before a judge and said, “I do.” The last seventeen years have had their ups and downs like any marriage. We’ve worked our butts off and sobbed our hearts out at times. We’ve also laughed and played and shared inside jokes and cared for one another when we’ve been sick.
Today, I am grateful for my marriage and my family and the complicated, twisting history of memories we carry with us. Happy anniversary, Jason.
My brain is obviously not working too well these days. I’ve had a lot of biochemical changes over the last three years. I went from a place of a healthy weight and great blood stats, to suddenly rising insulin and brain chemistry that went completely crazy. Some if it was situational, of course, but the situational stuff fundamentally changed the way my body and brain worked. Other physical things also affected my body: several surgeries, changes in dietary habits (like starting to drink coffee). I’m sure the moving has also affected me, given the extreme changes like weather, pollens I’m exposed to, etc.
My body and brain need a major reset. They were both failing. By the end of November, I was hardly functioning. When my brain is so foggy that I can’t even focus on TV, something is wrong! When my anxiety is so bad that I can’t even walk out my front door, something has to change.
All I could think was home home home home. I stared at pictures of my old house, the one we sold in 2014 before moving to Boston. I cried when I discovered that the house next door was currently up for sale, and fervently wished I could buy it. I had dreams that I sold enough of my books to offer excellent money to the current owners so I could get my old house back. The longing was irrational – not just desiring my old house, but tied in with my life before we sold that house – and I knew that. Knowing logically doesn’t change emotions, though, and I could not move my brain to a safer, better place.
So after my therapist appointment was canceled again (for the fourth time), I gave up on that side of things and went to a physician. I flat-out didn’t have time to wait until I could get a regular therapist (February at the very earliest). On December 1st, I walked out of the clinic with a prescription for Zoloft, and within a week, I started to feel about a thousand times better. Not perfect, but much, much better.
Zoloft worries me. The last time I was on Zoloft (most of 2015), it did a great job with my depression and anxiety, but it also caused extreme weight gain. My doctor and I discussed this at length, because I have a history of reacting badly to anti-depressants, and I really can’t afford to gain more weight right now. Things are different now, though. I’m on a medication that’s supposed to help control my insulin, and I rarely binge-eat or binge-drink these days. We decided to give it a try, since it was so effective on my mental health, and go a different route if I started gaining.
So far, things have been fine for my weight (whew!) at a very low dose, and I’ll see my doctor again at the end of the month to check where to go from here. Mostly likely the dose will increase, given that I can feel the effectiveness of the super low dose waning now, and I suppose we’ll see what happens with my weight and such after that. I hope it continues to work out, though, because I really have felt much better than before. I can drive again, and leave the house, and focus. I’m not obsessed with home any longer, and have more positive thoughts about the future. It’s really crazy how much the right medication can help.
Subtitled: My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elite
In 2011, a journalist named Suki Kim posed as a missionary posing as a teacher. Using this layered disguise, she got a position at a school in Pyongyang, North Korea. The school, PUST, catered to the sons of North Korea’s elite. This book details Kim’s experiences of the school, the boys, and the limited view of North Korea that she was permitted to see.
I first heard of this book sometime this summer. I read an interview with the author, who talked about her surprise that the book was being marketed as a memoir rather than a journalistic piece. Because I’m not fond of memoirs, I wouldn’t have looked at this book without that interview, and so I’m really glad I came across the article! The book, while containing a few bits of memoirish pieces, was far more sociological in nature, and a very in-depth look at a microsection of a hidden culture.
Let me state up front: I know just about nothing when it comes to North Korea, and almost as little about east Asian history and culture. It’s an area of knowledge where I’m woefully ignorant. Probably partly because of that ignorance, this immersion into North Korea was equally fascinating and horrifying. I was reminded in many ways of my first readings on the Middle East and central Asia, books like Reading Lolita in Tehran, Kabul Beauty School, and In the Land of Invisible Women. Those books not only taught me a lot, they exposed me to new worlds, and piqued my interest in cultures, religions, history, and lifestyles far from what I’d known. In reading Without You, There Is No Us, I feel the same emerging interest in a new section cultures, religions, history, and lifestyles, previously left unexplored in my reading and study.
I’m not going to say much about the specific content of the book. Kim’s experiences are already once-removed – from lived to words – and to add a second layer of remove would only decrease the words’ power. The book is a remarkable study, an attempt to understand and show this hidden world fairly and completely. (Having read some “journalistic” books where the author exploits a culture to push preconceived biases, I’m very appreciative of nonfiction that reports with as little bias as possible.) Kim doesn’t hide the horrors of North Korea, but she doesn’t paint the people of North Korea as two-dimensional monsters, either. The book is fair, balanced, and insightful, and I highly recommend it.
Performance: Janet Song reads the audiobook, and she did a wonderful job. I was especially impressed (and relieved) by the way she handled the students’ broken English, without caricaturing it in any way. The narrative (both written and spoken) flowed nicely, making the book an engaging and quick listen.
It’s that time of year – time to look back on the year’s goals and look forward toward the new year’s goals. It’s the time of year I think of as being represented by the Judgement card in tarot: a time of looking back, evaluating your situation and the ways you’ve grown (or not). A time for reflection, not judging, despite the name of the year. And for me, reflection looks back not just on 2016, but the last few years.
December 2013, I was in a negative place, but still had the strength and energy to push toward better. By the following year, while I’d done some good for myself in 2014, I ended up in the worst place I’ve ever been that December. My cousin – who was herself in a terrible place at the time – and I both agreed that by the end of 2015, things had to be better. And they were, though honestly they still weren’t great, and I didn’t have the energy to improve like in 2013. I went into 2016 with no set goals, instead with a path I wanted to move along. A path toward healing.
(Judgement)
Healing was my one-word for 2016, the thing I meant to strive through all during 2016. And I tried, I really did. I went to doctors and therapists. I meditated and medicated and moved my body and tried for positivity and did everything I could to heal. I got no where. Physically, I’ve gained weight, made little improvement in my disordered eating habits, and have worse blood-stats (like cholesterol) than when I started the year. My ankle is still just as crapped up despite dozens of doctors, treatments, xrays, etc.
Mentally, I’ve gone no where, and perhaps even backwards since I’ve been unable to find a therapist in this rural part of Wisconsin who can treat me. I’m more negative toward myself and my body. I haven’t written any fiction since April. I’ve grown into a hermit, and have no idea how to fix that because I made the stupid decision to move across the country AGAIN and now know just about no one here. I had a whole list of possible actions that might help me to heal in 2016. Of them, I either failed to do the tasks, or the tasks I completed failed to help me. It’s been…a really rotten year, the sort of rotten that isn’t panic-inducing like 2014, but the kind of soft depression that just blankets you and suffocates you slowly.
On a more positive note, things have started to improve in the last two weeks, mostly due to getting back on an antidepressant (more on that in a few days). Additionally, my bookish goals of 2016 were far more successful than my non-bookish ones! I succeeded at most of them, except where circumstances made them impossible. I feel much better about the book and blog balances I achieved this year, and so in the upcoming year, I’ll focus my concrete goals on other parts of my life.
Speaking of which, I’m not going to focus on 2017 goals in this post. I’m still stewing them over in my mind, finding the right balance between pushing myself enough but not pushing too hard. I do want to say one thing though: despite all the negativity (in my life, in my recent blog posts), I actually have a feeling that 2017 is going to be a much better year than I’ve had in the recent past. There’s no real concrete reason for me to say that. Still, every year, I tend to look forward at a year and sort of sense the shape of it. I can’t say what it is that makes me think a year is going to be good, bad, neutral, volatile, etc, but 2017 feels like a year of improvement. Maybe not wonderful, but getting better. I certainly hope so, as the last few have been…yeah.
A year ago, I was in a place where I struggled between wanting to focus on weight loss and wanting to learn body positivity at my current size. Trying to do both was very difficult for me, and I ended up spending more time on the latter goal. I wrote a whole series of posts on the subject, and I bought some clothes that were more my-style and less going-for-invisibility. Early this year, though, I switched back into invisible, and more than that, I began a new struggle.
I didn’t want to buy new clothes at this size. It felt like acquiescence and a waste all at once. If I bought clothes at this size, the logic went, then 1) I’d feel guilty if I lost weight because I’d spent the money on them, and 2) I’d be more comfortable in my clothes and would therefore be less motivated to lose weight. I’ve hardly bought anything this year, except some fall/winter clothing in the last few months since I didn’t have any that would suffice in Wisconsin. Even then, what I bought was bare minimums, a week’s worth of clothes that I could wear over and over. I picked them for functionality more than style, and honestly didn’t even care if they didn’t fully fit properly. What did it matter if they fit well? I’m not going to look okay no matter what right now, is what my brain told me.
The weekend after Thanksgiving, when all the cyber Monday stuff was going on, I caught myself staring at long-sleeved dresses on Modcloth. I haven’t ordered from Modcloth in a year, mostly because of money constraints (mixed with the idea that I shouldn’t spend money on “temporary” clothes). They had a decent sale going on, and there were six items I wanted to buy, including three dresses. The other three items weren’t size-based, so I had no problems ordering them, but I spent a long time thinking about the dresses. Long story short, I eventually ordered them. I couldn’t say if I ordered them because it was retail therapy or because I wanted to say f-you to the negative voice in my head or because Jason said it would be good for me to buy them. Whatever the case, they’ve now arrived.
I was surprised by just how much I loved them. I honestly expected to try them on and feel discouraged by my size, but instead, they make me feel good about myself and not worry about my size so much. I guess that’s the best way, right? It feels strange to think this way, to think hey, yes, my body is obese and I am large, but hell yeah I also look good. It’s a good feeling, and still very foreign to me. I don’t know how long I’ll fit into these dresses. Maybe for a long time, maybe not. In the meantime, though, I’m happy with whatever motivated my decision to buy, and perhaps in the future, I’ll be less concerned with the negatives above and will treat myself more often to things I love.
PS – Dresses over jeans should be the style. I’ve thought so since college. Only I’m old enough now to do it without worrying about what anyone will think about my personal sense of fashion and style. Ha!
Hello! I’m fiddling with today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic, which asks for the most anticipated releases from the first half of 2017. I have few enough anticipated releases in the upcoming year that there would be no point of a first-half-second-half split. In fact, most of what I’m anticipating for 2017 involves books that may or may not even release next year. They’ve claimed they would – or claimed they’d come in 2016 – and I wouldn’t be surprised if some were pushed back until later. Still, I hope, so they remain on this list. Here they are, this semi-list, in no particular order.
1. Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor – I first heard about this one about 18 months ago and originally thought it would be out in 2016. So happy it will finally release in a few months!
2. The Elusive Elixir by Gigi Pandian – Supposedly this releases in January? Though Goodreads has conflicting information…
3. The Savage Dawn by Melissa Grey – Love this series, definitely anticipating the end of it.
4. The Scarecrow Queen by Melinda Salisbury – Ditto #3.
5. Wires and Nerve by Marissa Meyer – I only recently heard this is coming out, a graphic novel about Iko from the Lunar Chronicles. I’m not usually a graphic novel fan, but I’ll make an exception for a series I love!
6. Aztlanian by Brandon Sanderson – Supposedly this will release in 2017. I don’t believe it. Still, I hope. The first book released in 2014!
7. the third Gold Seer book by Rae Carson – No title yet, but these have been coming out at regular intervals, so hopefully next September will give me the conclusion to this lovely series.
8. the fourth Cormoran Strike book by Robert Galbraith – It’s been over a year since the last one released, so hopefully? Despite no actual title or cover or exact date yet?
9. the fifth Lockwood & Co book by Jonathan Stroud – This is a series I’m always looking forward to. **ETA: Ooh! A title is now up! The Empty Grave. 😀
10. Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson – Considering it took me years to read Words of Radiance, it seems a bit funny that this has become my very most anticipated upcoming release. I first heard it would release this past fall, then in early 2017, then late 2017…now I’m not really sure what to expect. But hopefully it’ll be in 2017 because I’m dying to get my hands on this.
Okay, people – what am I missing? I’m terrible when it comes to hearing about upcoming releases, even for favorite authors! Let me know what else good is coming out next year!
Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.
It’s that time of year. The time of year that I tend to sit back and dive back into some favorite books, rereading at a relaxing pace, spending time with old friends. Some Decembers, I reread the Harry Potter series or offshoot books. Some years, I revisit pre-blogging favorites or books from early in my blog years. In other years, like this one, I tend to revisit books I’ve loved throughout the current year.
After my disastrous reading of Aerie last month, which followed several disappointing or barely-remembered reads, I decided my brain needed to switch to books I was already familiar with. Books that had become comfort reads by starting as multi-read books (books I read multiple times in a row, not wanting to move on to others) seemed like the best choice, and that led me right back to where I was in January, with Words of Radiance. The giant novel and super-long audiobook has remained foremost among my favorite books of 2016. I’m still itching to get my hands on Book 3 (Oathbringer) even though, last I heard, it won’t come out until late next year. This world and these characters feel so real and alive to me, and as soon as I began listening to the book for the Nth time, I knew I’d made the right choice. Sometimes you just need familiarity, comfort, and old friends.
Honestly, I can’t tell these days what I’m portraying of myself online. There is so much in my world that is terrible/stressful/painful right now. Most of it involves other people, though, so not things for me to discuss here. I’m trying to stay positive, and it isn’t working so well. Maybe I seem okay online? I’ve had some people say I sound positive. But maybe I look the truth, too: erratic, scattered, falling apart.
I won’t – can’t – go into detail. The evasive, short version is this: We moved northward this summer for two sets of reasons. The first had to do with family needs (though admittedly, I didn’t want to rush, but wanted to wait until next summer). I see that as our positive reason for moving. The negative reason was the second, and had to do with the situation we were in (and the need to escape it). The house we bought in 2015 caused severe illness (mental and physical) as well as financial ruin. I don’t know if I would have sprung for Reason #1 if Reason #2 hadn’t been propelling me away from my then-current situation. In any case, Reason #1 drove me to embrace a move that truthfully isn’t sustainable for me in the long run. We won’t be moving back any time soon, but there is a big part of me that is already counting down the 5.5 years until the boys are in college and I can go back home. If it weren’t for my kids and the money and the reasons we chose to move in the first place, I’d’ve already abandoned this place and gone home.
Obviously, that’s not a good way to begin a new life, with a new house in a new part of the world. Going home right now is not an option for some time, and so my focus is now on planning and strategizing and working to be in the best place (health-wise, financially, etc) to return in 2222. For the first time in several years, I have an actual longterm plan to work toward. That’s good? I guess? Shrug. Maybe things will change. Maybe I’ll get to love my new house and meet new friends. Maybe I’ll stop being scared to drive in the snow/ice and I’ll acclimatize to six months of winter (boo! I want four seasons!). Or maybe I’ll just continue to be a hermit for the next few years, while I fight my way through this stage of my life and into the next. I don’t know. Like I said above: erratic, scattered, falling apart.
I will say that despite all this internal turmoil and debate, I don’t regret our decision to move, though I do regret the haste with which we moved. The place we were in was untenable for reasons I can’t fully explain – not without writing a novel about it, at least, and this post is already too long and maudlin.
The last few months have been extremely tough. I tried so very hard to be okay and happy, but eventually I had to just admit to myself that I’m sad, scared, lonely, and very far away from home. Hopefully by admitting it and getting it all off my chest, I can let it go and work my way forward again.
Today’s Top Ten Tuesday asks for our favorite new-to-us authors of 2016. For me, 2016 was actually a year of rereads and deep reading (for already-loved authors). Only 33 authors were new to me this year (so far, anyway), and of those, only five are authors I either want to read more from, or already did read more from.
1. Eloisa James – James was the first romance author I’ve read that actually wrote books I enjoyed. Romance (of the Harlequin variety) is well away from my comfort zone, but I enjoyed reading James’ version of fairy tale retellings. I’m not sure I’d read more of her books regularly, but I really appreciated that I wanted to read any at all (much less four).
2. Gigi Pandian – This is another one of those out-of-my-comfort-zone things. Pandian wrote some of the cozy mysteries I enjoyed this fall, and I’m looking forward to further works, both in the series I’m currently reading and in others.
3. Firoozeh Dumas – I only read one book by Dumas, a collection of essays, but found her funny, engaging, and insightful. I’d gladly read some of her other nonfiction!
4. Kate Racculia – Racculia’s Bellweather Rhapsody was one of my favorite books of the year. Her writing was spectacular and I loved the way she wove in so many different elements in the story. I’d love to read more from her.
5. Melinda Salisbury – Salisbury’s debut novel, The Sin Eater’s Daughter, absolutely blew me away and I’ve loved reading further in that series this year. I can’t wait to read the rest of it, and to see what she comes up with next!
Perhaps next year, I’ll have a few more new-to-me favorites on my list!
Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.
November was a crazy and busy month, the first full month in our new house, with some dramatic changes in those short thirty days. Things:
It was a hard month, but I’m trying to focus on some positives. First, there’s the surprise 70’s-themed fondue party we threw for my in-laws’ 40th anniversary. It was the day after Thanksgiving and we were all dress in our 70s best. The party was full of trivia, 70’s music, sandalwood incense, paisley, and half a dozen kinds of fondue. It really was totally awesome, and one of the only times all month that I felt calm and at peace.
After that came one of my favorite things of the year: decorating the house for Christmas. Christmas is another thing that will be hard so far from home, but I’m doing all I can to incorporate as many family traditions as possible.
That’s about it for my November. I imagine the next few months are going to be particularly rough for me, but I’ll keep trying to find the little lights in the dark.
The Zen Leaf 