Getting Started

An Announcement and A Blessing

I am not doing well.

Frankly, it has been a really long time since I’ve been doing well, and I need that to change. Badly.

A few weeks after I wrote Reset, I was hospitalized for two weeks because of a very intense episode of stress-induced psychosis. I had so stressed my brain that it was literally hallucinating situations to get me help. Help was slow coming, as I do nothing the easy way, so things got worse and worse and worse. I was incredibly mentally unwell by the time I got the help I needed. It turned out, I’d been experiencing varying degrees of psychosis on and off for just over a year. 

Things were really bad.

I spent two weeks in the mental hospital receiving acute care, then six weeks in an outpatient program receiving treatment for the stress and the underlying conditions I was diagnosed with, and I am still in a fairly intensive program working on my mental health. 

I’m stable now. I am okay. 

But I’m not doing well.

After the worst of it - when I was still in the hospital but no longer unsure of reality - I promised myself I’d get back to me. And I set to work doing so. I followed my treatment plans perfectly. I went all the classes and treatments and groups and meetings and therapy sessions. I read the books and did the journaling. I started learning meditation and mindfulness.

I even started doing yoga.

This massive part of me was certain that if I could just get back to writing and Macon Books and podcasting, I’d stumble into myself. If I could be Macon again, I’d be okay. The world of stories and books and art has always been the safest place I know - the lighthouse guiding me home. The problem is I can’t find myself there right now. I don’t even know how to get ‘there’ anymore. I am lost.

I don’t know who the real me is. I just don’t. And I maybe never really did.  

I’ve talked before about how I grew up in a fundamentalist southern baptist environment. My queerness was treated in turns like a secret, a disease, and a curse. I was told over and over again the worst parts of me were the parts of me that loved. I learned not to trust what I love. My love was evil, so what I loved must also be evil. I felt so much guilt about not being able to change my queerness for my family that I poured myself into achievement. I couldn’t be straight, but I could be excellent.

I’ve spent the last fifteen years pouring work into a vacuous hole and calling it me and my life. 

And all it’s done is break me, cause me to hurt people, ruin friendships and relationships, and leave me empty. It’s taken my words. It’s… drained me. 

I want to be full again. I want what Mary Oliver spoke about when she wrote:

Tomorrow is my birthday. I cannot start this next year the way I ended the last. I want to belong to the world, to know myself, to BE myself. 

And I intend to get started immediately. 

I won’t be around for a while. I’m going to fulfill my commitment to Women’s Week (it’s going to be rad), but after that I am going on an indefinite hiatus. I hope I still have words in me somewhere. I hope I still have stories to tell. But I don’t know. And that’s okay. 

I’m going to take my feet and my eyes and my ears and hands and I’m going to go belong to the world for a while. I’m going to go seek me out. See what I find. 

I hope one day soon you’ll see a newsletter from me in your inboxes. But, if that doesn’t happen, know I’m good. I’m out in the world being me. And I wish the same for each of you. A life wholly lived in the fullness of you. 

I leave you with this gentle reminder from the bookshelf of my niece - one of the wisest places on earth.

Eternally Grateful. Macon