Writing about Writing...So Meta

 Greetings, sane Doc Z here.  Well, semi-sane lol.  I am writing a book.  My blog led me to have even grander goals.  The book is called Deciphering the Darkness.  The blog posts will be part of the book, but it’s so much more than that.  The posts are examples of my experiences but I provide some present-day commentary so others can learn from me.  A sort of lifting as I climb. A motivational text.

A dear friend of mine suggested I write about writing my book.  Hence the title, Writing about Writing, so meta :).   As I type, my soul pours out. My story.  I lived it, but as I write, I can’t believe it’s non-fiction, let alone that it’s me.  I type and type and sometimes write.  Things are operating at a subconscious level. I don’t have to remember things because I know them, I lived them, they shaped me.   The people feel like characters, but they’re my friends and a few frenemies sprinkled in.  Kidding...kinda. 

My eyes pop open at seven.  My heart knows it writing time. Well, let me rephrase, letting out and feeding dog time, THEN writing time. I write for an hour and a half and time flies by.  I lay in bed at night and it’s writing time again.  Listening to my Spotify daily mix. I must say, Spotify is a vibe.  So, I start and end my day with writing.  It’s calming. My display switches to dark mode and my stress level declines.  I literally know this because I have a Samsung watch and it measures my stress.  This is not a paid endorsement.  

Do you all want a sampling of my introduction?  You have to promise to still buy the book when it comes out.  Here goes nothing:

Excerpt from Intro to Deciphering the Darkness

Surviving as a Black Mentally Compromised Woman in a Stigmatized World

About seven years ago I experienced the onset of a mental illness.  Since then, I have had to rebuild my life because I was literally starting with nothing.  When asked about my family history, I could not think of anyone else who had experienced the ups and downs of bipolar and the hallucinations of Schizophrenia.  That math equation equals Schizoaffective disorder.  Through the pages of this book, I will explain in raw detail what I went through, while at the same time speaking from the present about how I got through it.  I want to use my experience for good.  Excuse me for sounding cliche, but I want to lift as I climb.  I’m not fully up the mountain yet so this is for me as much as for you.  However, the mountain is a possibility despite mental illness. 

I am going to use this mountain illustration several times throughout this book because a mountain seems insurmountable.  This is especially true when you were climbing up and got knocked down to the bottom.  That’s how my life was and I’m sure that’s how you felt when diagnosed. It’s all about progress.  One day getting dressed is your small victory, other days it will be showering or making up your bed. These are all things that seem second nature to people sans a mental illness but take the world for people who are sufferings.   

When I was diagnosed, first with bipolar, they asked if I had any relatives who had similar afflictions. I asked both sides of my family.  My dad sounded alarmed and confused saying, “We ain’t got nobody like that in our family.  I didn’t believe it because I had a cousin who killed himself.  However, in the Black community, it’s a stigma to have mental illnesses.  Based on my father’s response, I didn’t share anything about my mental health.  Up to this day, he doesn’t know I’m mentally compromised.  I prefer mentally compromised over mentally ill.  

 I asked my mom about our mental family history and she said we had some cousins with mental illness, but they were related by marriage.  Then she thought for a few moments and said, I think my mother.  She went on to explain ups and downs and restless nights.  In fact, when I would go to visit her we didn’t sleep much.  My mother revealed that after my grandmother’s mother (my great grandmother) died my grandmother heard voices in the car telling her to jump out of the vehicle.  My grandmother was a Black woman living 70+ years ago. That was a time when mental health wasn’t a priority, but her uncle used to always say my grandmother was one crayon short of a whole pack.  Could it be that her eccentricities were in part due to a Lil mania?  We’ll never know, but I think my grandmother would have benefitted from a book like this.  All of her clutter and glitter, literally, she put glitter on everything, being misunderstood.