Confusing Choices

Confusing Choices

Like many people, I put off my eye doctor and dentist visits during the pandemic. But this week, I decided to go back to this part of my life in one fell swoop, scheduling appointments for back-to-back days and jumping in headfirst.

It was a very strange feeling, even though both offices did everything they could to ensure patient comfort. The receptionist at the eye doctor’s office met me at the door, told me to switch the mask I was already wearing to a disposable one she gave me, asked me several questions about my health, and showed me where to stand and sit in order to maintain social distancing.

When I went into the office to meet with the eye doctor, he told me that he was vaccinated and saw in my chart that I was as well, so I could decide if we would both wear masks or not. I decided to still wear a mask, even though I knew that I was safe. Even though his admission that he had an asymptomatic case of COVID in the fall spooked me a little, I completed the appointment and the next day, I did the same thing at the dentist.

At both of these offices, there were very specific rules to follow. They had regulations for me to guide my actions by, which I found refreshing during a time when everything around me is starting to open up and I’m feeling less sure about which choices are the right ones.

When the pandemic first started, I decided - along with my family - that I was going to follow exactly what the CDC said. I wore a mask everywhere, didn’t leave my family’s house for months, and stayed up-to-date about every new regulation. Without making my own decisions, I simply went along with every new rule, and everything seemed black-and-white.

Now, however, I find it harder to manage as more and more shades of gray appear. When the rules and regulations that have decreed how I conducted most of my life for the last year and a half disappeared, it felt strange and stressful to contemplate doing things again that I avoided for so long.

This is how re-entry anxiety is striking me: not necessarily anxiety about seeing people or going into stores or doctor’s offices, both of which I’ve done, but instead, anxiety about change in general as well as making my own choices about things that I’ve let other people decide for me for so long.

I have a new cosplay for DragonCon, for example. But the last year it happened, there were over 80,000 people. I know the convention will have rules about how attendees need to behave, but will those rules be enforceable or followable with such a big crowd? And what degrees of rule breaking will I be comfortable with?

Everything from a doctor’s office visit to contemplating returning to a humongous convention feels strange. I am now making decisions that I haven’t made in so long, and even though I’ve now weaned off my mask outdoors and know that my vaccination status keeps me safe, I can’t help but feel weird about going back to the things I did before.

Some people I know have been comfortable with going back to everything like before, right as soon as the places where they lived declared that they were open. But when Chicago hit stage 5 for me, I had a lot more questions than answers: Am I comfortable eating in a restaurant? Am I comfortable with going to a beach party to say goodbye to a friend who’s moving away? Am I okay not wearing a mask when walking outdoors, even if I put one to go into stores or doctor’s offices?

I know that, as a kid, if I’d been told that masks prevent germs, my parents would have had a hell of a fight trying to get me to take the mask off for any reason. Even now, I’m wondering if I should consider wearing it in the winter when colds and flu are rampant, even if only when I go downtown. But until I have these decisions figured out, it’s a strange road where anxiety can come from the smallest and strangest things.

For everyone else dealing with these feelings upon Chicago’s re-opening, here’s what has worked for me: I weigh the pros and cons of whatever I’m considering doing, including both physical safety and mental health; I take new steps in the company of friends so I feel supported wherever I go; and I challenge myself to take new little steps wherever possible to help me adjust to the “normal” world before resuming in-person work in the fall.

In the end, things will work out - and I wish you luck in making your choices on the road back to normalcy!

Ellie, a writer in the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

Perfect

Perfect

I’ve always been a perfectionist. So, when it was time for me to host my first Dungeons & Dragons session in person in a year and a half, I wanted to make sure everything would be perfect.

I decided right away that I was going to prepare a very clean home with a variety of snacks, set aside a place for my friends to put their bags and D&D implements, have freshly sharpened pencils nearby as well as menus from our favorite take-out places and provide plenty of hand sanitizer. Most importantly, I wanted to cosplay.

I hadn’t worn one of my costumes in forever, and my mind immediately went to a plan I had last February, back when I hadn’t even heard that COVID existed. I wanted to make a very special cosplay of a particularly beloved character of mine (she has medical-based PTSD and weird blood too!), even though the costume was going to be extremely intricate and complicated.

In order to complete the cosplay in time for meeting with my friends, I reached out to a friend from improv who has a 3D printer. They printed the parts of the costume, I got a simple dress from Amazon and a vampire cape from Chicago Costume - and then I got to work.

Even though I thought I had everything well-planned, I soon realized that every single element of this costume was going to be incredibly complicated. I had trouble gluing the parts together, and when I left them to dry overnight, I found trails of glue across my floor in the morning. The gold paint smeared all over my hands and floors and I spilled nearly an entire bottle of white paint on my red cape that took some creative problem-solving to get out (after a lot of panicking, naturally).

In the midst of all of this, I felt stressed, unsure that I’d be able to pull off the costume in time even though I’d promised my friends that we could dress up together, and dismayed that my other plans were falling through as I didn’t have the time or headspace for anything else.

After a lot of time pacing around the apartment while hugging my new Gandalf Build-a-Bear plushie (who speaks with Ian McKellen’s voice - very motivational!), while looking down at my sticky floor, I realized that I’d overlooked the most important thing of all: having fun.

I got sucked into a typical pattern of mine - when I come up with a goal and set my mind to it, I become determined to do it perfectly. There is no room for error whatsoever - which means that all of my recent goals, whether that means walking 10,000 steps a day, using a habit tracker to ensure perfect compliance on hard-to-follow habits, or making a cosplay resemble a video game character with photographic accuracy, have been rather obsessive.

I sat down in my comfy chair, contemplating the costume on the floor in front of me. Instead of trying to get everything absolutely perfect, I tried to think of little ways I could make things easier for the day my friends were coming over (and I can always make more tweaks to the costume by DragonCon, if I decide I’d like to make them).

I decided to wear a pair of black winter boots already in my closet instead of buying proper cosplay shoes. Instead of painting a new mask, I wore a red mask with a gold pattern that I already owned. I told myself that I was not allowed to go on any more extremely far excursions to buy things for my cosplay, and instead, I would use the materials I already had at home. I gave myself permission to take the bus for a faraway dentist appointment that was stressing me out about my schedule for both work and cosplay. Most of all, I would reach out to my friends with significantly more experience than me for advice on the parts I struggled with.

In taking these steps, I was able to connect with the fun of my cosplay more. I started taking things less seriously, got great advice from friends, and even received a very special five-months-post-birthday present of a hot glue gun when the mattress protector I’d bought to line the cape didn’t stick with the glue I already had. I decided to let go of the idea of having a perfectly clean floor and instead researched ways to get the glue off my floor later, bought just a few snacks and did minimal organizing, and when the big day came...

It was absolutely perfect.

Sure, the seams of the cape lining were jagged and the back of the wig didn’t go far enough down on my head, but in the pictures, I am absolutely filled with joy. I was so thrilled to welcome my friends to my home that I didn’t care if my hoop skirt stuck out too rigidly or that I was wearing winter boots in June or that I walked less than 10,000 steps in a day for the first time since coming back to Chicago. I just cared about wearing a costume of one of my favorite characters of all time, that I’d made with my own two hands, while having the in-person D&D experience I missed so much over the last year and a half.

Now that I’m getting settled back into normal life, I’ve ordered some Goo-Gone to get the now-dried glue off my floor, folded and prepared my new cosplay for DragonCon, and even got started on a few new writing and transcribing projects. With this week’s experience in mind, I’d like to rethink how I imagine my goals. I don’t need to be on track with a goal 100% of the time if it’s stressing me out to such a degree, and as long as there’s a result I can be happy with, it doesn’t need to be perfect.

In the end, it’ll still feel perfect if I’m doing something that I love or working towards something I’ve dreamed of - and if I skip a day, it’s not the end of the world. It’s just a day when I need more self-care, and if I take the time to rest and take care of myself, I can be more fully present in my work in the future and reach whatever goals I set for myself.

Ellie, a writer in the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

For the First Time in Forever

For The First Time In Forever

Over the weekend, I took a huge step towards normalcy: for the first time in 15 months, I spent a Pokemon Go Community Day at the zoo with friends the way I’ve dreamed of for the entire pandemic.

You see, Community Day (a monthly event where players gather to hunt for alternately colored “shiny” pokemon) is how I made my first friends in Chicago. On the day I moved, it was a Community Day, and I heard that Lincoln Park Zoo was a good place to go. I went and quickly found dozens of people playing, and they all treated me kindly. I felt right away like I was part of a community - the exact purpose of the event - and that feeling has stayed pretty constant since.

Except during the pandemic, when I was at home with my family. I was in what is colloquially known to players as a “dead zone” - a place with few areas to catch pokemon and almost no one playing - and even with the features that Niantic added to help people in remote areas, I still felt distanced from my friends. I know this feeling hit almost everyone during the pandemic, but it still felt strange to be separated from a group I’d been part of from literally the day I moved to Chicago.

My friendship with the group led to a weekly pokemon trade night to fill a hole in my calendar, plenty of separate hanging-out times to trade pokemon, and eventually to meeting for non-Pokemon Go purposes. I built my beloved D&D group partially from friends I met in this group, and when I got back to Chicago, I was so excited that the next Community Day was for a pokemon everyone was excited about.

Even so, I was wary. There would be a lot of people at the zoo, even though they were only accepting people with timed tickets. I would be looking for crowds rather than fleeing from them. And sure, I would wear a mask, and I’m fully vaccinated, but there was still the fear ingrained into so many of our heads in the last year: what if the very air I breathed would hurt me or someone else?

In the end, I decided to go. I wanted so badly to meet with my friends and reintegrate into the group I missed for the last almost-year when I was at home, and a six-hour walking event was the perfect way to do so. Still, though, I walked to the zoo instead of taking public transportation, stayed distanced to the best of my ability, and only lowered my mask once - to wolf down a small ice cream cone with my coworker.

Once I was at the event, I felt the familiar feeling of obsession creeping in - but this time, it was positive. I wasn’t worried about catching or transmitting COVID, I was worried about how many shiny pokemon I was going to get (46 - my new record!), and I was willing to keep walking for almost the entire six hours to get as many as possible. Just like I try to do in many circumstances, I tried to transfer my worries about going to my first group outing to staying competitive with shiny pokemon.

In the end, I spent time with many friends who I hadn’t seen in a very long time, took my time to get comfortable with a smaller crowd that will hopefully prepare me for larger events when the world starts to open up even more, and felt really, truly normal for the first time in forever.

I see events like Community Day as a way to wean myself out of the pandemic mindset I’ve gotten so used to, and that would have been catastrophic if it happened when I was little. It’s a way to balance what feels personally safe for me with the guidelines from the city of Chicago and the CDC. And most of all, it’s a way to reconnect with the life I loved here before the pandemic, helping me feel less homesick and more like I’m exactly where I belong.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

Choosing Kindness

Choosing Kindness

TW: Trauma, medical imagery

A few days ago, I was on my way to visit a friend in his new apartment when he texted me that our mutual acquaintance Adam (name changed for privacy) would also be there.

I’m going to be honest - I almost turned around and went back to my place. I almost found some excuse to get me out of seeing someone who I had once been close friends with, but after a series of remarks where he belittled people living with mental illness and said that the reason I was able to have friends is because I “trained” myself (almost like an unruly dog), I distanced myself from him.

And yet, I couldn’t say, on the stairs of my friend’s building, that something had come up. It would be too fishy, too offensive to my friend who has been nothing but kind to me. There was nothing I could do besides finish my trek upstairs and reunite with two people who I hadn’t seen in a very long time - my friend and Adam.

I was hardly inside the doorframe when Adam, who was sitting on the couch, said, “Ellie, we’re blood thinners buddies now.”

I was surprised to hear this - after all, it was a long time since we’d been close enough for me to share any details of my past with him, let alone something so private and personal. I would especially be wary with someone who seemed to disrespect people with any mental illness whatsoever. But my curiosity won me over as I remembered how, immediately after my blood clot (and if I’m being honest, for months afterwards), I felt the irresistible need to bring what I’d experienced into every conversation. It was as if there could never be anything more important in the entire world.

“Tell me about it,” I said, sitting down across from him on a squishy chair with a lovely pillow. And he did - he launched into his story immediately, and from the way the words flew out of his mouth and yet sounded extremely rehearsed, I could tell I was far from the first person he’d told every sordid detail of his story to. His story was different from mine - a heart attack and a single stent in the heart rather than a blood clot and three stents in the leg - but he said that he, like me, is now on blood thinners for life. He was disappointed when he asked me which medication I was on and the exact medicine didn’t match.

I recognized exactly what he was doing right away. In the days and weeks after my blood clot, I tried to think of some way - any way - to connect with people again. I felt like I was seeing life through a different lens, seeing an underbelly to my world that I never knew, and I, more than anything, wanted to find someone who could share my world with me.

But what really sealed the deal that we had shared more than a physical experience was the way he ended his story: Ever since then, he’d been feeling heart palpitations without medical reasons, extreme anxiety, and dizziness.

And just like that, we could have been talking about September 19 of my junior year of college - a date I remember because it was Talk Like A Pirate Day and everyone was going to dress up in one of my classes. But I didn’t think I’d make it to class, because I was so dizzy and anxious and my heart was fluttering so fast I thought it would pop right out of my chest.

His words flew out of him in a rush, just like mine did then, and in the long days and weeks and months after. It took me almost a year to finish my cognitive behavioral therapy and start to feel like myself again. And he looked exactly like I had felt - pale, skittish, and most telling of all, checking his heart rhythm on his smartwatch a little too regularly.

I almost forgot that I was coming to my friend’s apartment to trade pokemon when Adam and I really got talking. He explained that he didn’t have good pokemon to trade because he had barely left his apartment in months, and not for COVID reasons. He was afraid of things he’d never been afraid of before. He wasn’t eating or sleeping well. And whenever he talked about anything at all, he kept going back to the three days he’d spent in the hospital and how close he’d come to dying.

For me, it was five days plus part of a sixth (a detail I’m proud to say I had to check my Facebook posts from 2012 to remember). I, too, felt very close to dying, especially the first night, and remember that when I came out of the hospital and everyone was acting normally, it felt like I was in the wrong world.

Adam looked to me then - the only person he knew with a similar experience - for what to do. And right away, I remembered what he had said to me shortly before the pandemic started, when I had asked why it was okay to bully someone who showed more overt symptoms of mental illness than me. I remembered him telling me that I was a “good example” because I had issues but kept them hidden. I remember he gave me “feedback” about which things I talked about too much that stayed in my head for far too long.

Part of me, right away, wanted to leave him in that headspace. Wanted him to realize that, like it or not, he is one of those people now, seeing a therapist and taking medication and learning how to live in a world that feels entirely different. Part of me wanted to leave him in that place of being mentally ill and not knowing what to do about it because he had scorned what I and a close friend of mine had gone through before.

But I couldn’t do it. No matter what he had said or done in the past, I looked into his eyes as he took a rapid-acting anxiety pill and saw the exact same pain I’d been in and the way so many people had turned away from me.

For me, the pain took two years to fully manifest. I tried to shove every emotion I was feeling as far away from me as possible. I knelt on my injured knee in a college dance festival two weeks after I got out of the hospital, when I still had a lot of pain, because I was going to force my world to be normal even if I couldn’t actually make it feel that way.

But when I finally faced it, I was just like Adam - afraid, unsure, and wishing more than anything for a friend. I’d done a pretty good job of making friends in college, I thought, until I started displaying overt symptoms of mental illness. And then my friends dwindled down to one person who helped me get out of bed in the mornings, coached me through eating when I couldn’t stand the thought of it, and was there for me when I went through the months of therapy and medication changes that got me back to normal.

It’s been seven years since then, but I still remember how alone I felt. How I just needed a little understanding and sympathy from people. How I needed them to believe that, even though I wasn’t acting or feeling like myself, that there was a good life out there for me if I fought hard enough for it. And I needed their help to fight.

And so, I decided to be kind. I told him about the different medications I’d tried and the therapeutic techniques I learned. I told him that I had a nervous breakdown after my blood clot - something I admit to as few people as possible - and that, seven years later, I’m doing better than I could ever have imagined. I told him how I used to jump at every twinge of any feeling in my left leg and wiggled my toes until they ached to prevent more blood clots. I told him about the panic attacks, the fear of nothing ever being normal again, and my misheld belief that living on blood thinners could never be a good life. I told him everything.

And even though it is a sordid tale, he perked up. He engaged more fully with my friend and I. We traded some pokemon, and he started to make jokes. I’ve never particularly liked his jokes - I find them distasteful - but he was out of his apartment, with two friends, and managed to make a couple of jokes. I’d learned the hard way that it was those tiny stepping stones that paved the road to feeling whole again.

After he made those remarks to me almost a year and a half ago, I never imagined that we would be able to have an honest conversation like this about mental illness. I’d written him off as someone who would never care. But now that he was in the position to see things all too clearly, he was in a prime position to understand.

Now is not the time to bring up past hurts, to say that he treated people how he absolutely would not want to be treated. After all, his symptoms are extremely overt, from the way he talks to the way he looks to the way he takes his pills right out in the open. Now, when he is in an immediate crisis, is not the time for learning.

But I wonder if, sometime in the future, when his world is starting to feel normal again, if he will reconsider the way he thought about people with overtly-displayed mental illnesses. If he’ll remember the kindness he needed and got, and will pass it on to other people in what I believe is the best way to change the stigma against mental illness for good.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

When I'm Not Inflicting

When I’m Not Inflicting

One of the many things I learned from my child therapist as a little girl was that people were not nearly as interested in my hobbies as I was, and I should be polite and not inflict my interests on other people - especially with my typical intensity.

I learned many strategies to hide the depth and breadth of my interests - how to have a “normal” conversation, how to suppress the level of exuberance I was feeling about whatever book or movie or fandom captured my heart, and how to temper my reactions to seeing or hearing about these things to not seem “weird.”

It’s worked over the years, but a few days ago, I experienced one of my favorite things - when I can talk openly and obsessively about the things I love the most without feeling like I’m burdening anyone or inflicting my passion upon them.

It started when I saw the art prompts for this year’s Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang (TRSB). This is my fourth year participating in this challenge, where artists create various forms of art relating to anything written by Tolkien, and then writers match themselves up with a piece of art and write a minimum 5,000 word story inspired by the piece of art.

There were over 200 pieces of art assembled in the Powerpoint, but one of them instantly caught my eye. It was the perfect mix of angst and sweetness, upsetting things and familial love. It had a significant mental health angle and characters I have loved for years. It was inspired by the Silmarillion - my favorite of Tolkien’s works - and was so beautiful I nearly cried when I saw it. Even though there was a week between when the Powerpoint was released and when writers could claim a piece of art, my interest never dwindled and I spent many hours imagining what this story could be.

The release of prompts to the writers tends to be very competitive, and when there was an error with the Google form accepting my response, my typing skills came to the rescue as I was able to type the entire form a second time within the first 38 seconds of it being released - and I claimed the piece of art that captivated me the most. I couldn’t wait to start writing!

But first, I had to connect with the artist. I reached out, not sharing any of my ideas in-depth, and was surprised to get a nearly-instant response. We started emailing each other, then I asked if instant messaging on Discord might be a better option for a longer conversation. When we moved onto Discord, she asked if I minded her sharing a “wall of text” about the elves in her beautiful painting.

I said I didn’t mind, and would enjoy seeing her ideas. She sent me a big list, and then asked me if I’d feel comfortable sharing some of my own.

In other words, she asked me - of all people - if I was comfortable talking about Tolkien’s elves. As if I could say anything other than yes!

Sure, it’s likely that someone who paints pictures of elves from the Silmarillion won’t mind talking about Tolkien’s world with me, but I have gotten so used to downplaying my passions that I was floored. Someone actually wanted to listen to me of their own free will? Someone actually cared enough about my passions that I wouldn’t feel like an asshole for making them listen to something I know they don’t like?

Long story short, I responded with a dozen of my Tolkien-related cosplay photos and a full page of ideas I had for the story. And it turned into a beautiful conversation where we could both say literally everything on our minds and not be perceived as weird, obsessive, too interested, or anything else so many people in my life have told me to avoid.

It’s not that I don’t understand the other side - it can be “too much” to listen to people talking about their passions for hours on end. But as someone told that obsessions are bad no matter what they are, even the ones that bring me great joy also bring me great shame. I don’t think it’s right to blabber on about my favorite things to everyone in earshot. But hiding things like this over the years has turned it into such a special experience when I get to share my passions and not feel guilty.

When I’m not inflicting, when the other person finds the topics I focus on equally addicting, I find such a rare thrill that makes me feel appreciated, valid, and worth being listened to. It’s one of my favorite feelings, and in the absence of conventions - where these conversations happen often - it was amazing to experience the feeling and make a new friend who I don’t need to censor myself around. With the two of us working together, I can’t help but feel that this might be my best TRSB story yet!

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.