Call me Maggie

Each semester when a new class begins we are usually asked to post a short biography telling others in the class about who we are. I try not to use boilerplate words since many of the same people are in my classes. Each semester I try to mix it up. This time around, I wrote the following as my bio for Mixed Race Women’s Memoir class:

I’m Maggie. I am a wife, daughter, friend, writer, artist, but above all I’m just me. I work every day to change how I see the world, and the way I seek to make that change is through education and shared experience. I am a liberal, an atheist, a feminist, a proponent of body acceptance. I’m a non-mother and a non-conformist. All of these put me at the edge of societal acceptance. This made interesting reading of the piece marginalized people and the power of narrative since I am a marginalized person in many ways, though not through race. I have a sincere desire to see this country in a more peaceful state when it comes to race.

Anyone who is a part of my life and does not know who and what I’m about, well, you’re just not paying attention. I don’t keep secrets. I don’t pretend to be anyone other than me. Anything you want to know? Just ask, you’ll get an honest answer. I’m not interested in pretending in my life anymore. I did that for 45 years and all it got me was several bouts of depression that culminated in a nervous breakdown in 2014.

After that happened, I started thinking a lot about life and relationships and why it seems I never get what I want from the people who surround me. The answer resoundingly came back to me, “It’s not them. It’s you.”

By this I mean that I wasn’t presenting an authentic version of myself to the world. I tried to befriend a group of women with whom, other than gender and location, I had nothing in common. I listened to these friends tell me I “needed” to have children or I would never be complete. I played along with the GOBC at my job and honored their special treatment because it was what I was told to do. I listened to their lies and obstructions as they informed me of the news I was to report. I ate lunch with “friends” and swallowed so many opinions and comments that I was sick with rage by the time I got home. I kept seeing my family and keeping quiet when they asked me over and over to go to church with them, even though they knew I was an atheist.

The only person who knew or saw the real me was my husband. And by the time he got home every day I was a messy puddle in the middle of the floor. Sobbing, unhappy, depressed, angry, anxious, and, honestly, out of my mind. He knew all of these things that bothered me, he knew there was no way to help me, but most of all he kept on loving me and supporting me and carried me through this horrible time. I still have no idea why. He only says, “Because. I love you.” And to him, it’s that simple.

The work years between spring 2012 and summer 2014 were horrible ones, ones in which I was doing the job of two people for much longer than I should have been. So, in the summer of 2014, I wigged out after being told by an awful old man that, “Nobody cares what you have to say. What you say doesn’t matter.” I lost it. I had no one, not one person in my office to stand up for me and say, “she was doing the right thing.” But it didn’t even matter. It took a real, true friend to calm me down from a massive anxiety attack and tell me, “They’ve painted you as the villain. You can’t change that.” A week later I walked out on my job and broke down.

In the two years since all this happened, I’ve had the chance to think, read, talk, make new friends, share, be inspired, and be myself. I’ve been unemployed, but that’s ok. I’ve almost earned my Bachelor’s degree. I’ve left that small town behind and moved back to Nashville. And now, I am unabashedly me. No apologies.

Everyone who has met me since 2014 knows me as Maggie. Since 2010 I have blogged and tweeted as Tinfoil Magnolia. So I chose the name Maggie for myself, as a grown up way of wearing the real me because I think it’s a name that represents the true me. Everyone who has met me since 2014 knows the real me. The me my husband always knew and the me known to my closest girlfriends, my sweet tarts. I am hot tempered, and a good listener. I am foul mouthed, but kind to those in need. I am reckless, but in the safest way possible. I embrace a live and let live policy. I don’t give unsolicited opinions, but if you ask you’re getting the truth. I don’t care about fashion or my arm flab. I love the “F” word simply because of how uncomfortable it makes people.

I don’t believe in redemption, and I don’t believe people ever change their true nature. They only camouflage it as I did for 45 years. The thing I realize is that if you aren’t showing the world who you really, truly are, then you aren’t getting back anything that you want or need out of it. If you aren’t showing your authentic self to other people, they are never going to act the way you want them to act. If you can’t stand up and own your opinions, then you can’t make change. I know people will walk away from the real me. And that’s ok. I know my family doesn’t understand the real me. They don’t want to know her. And that’s ok too.

Yesterday, I spent two hours in a situation that before would have sent me home crying and puddled in my bed. Yet, no tears were shed. I only saw the truth that the way this person sees me is, in part, her own creation, and in part the former self I used as a shield all these years. I handled it honestly, with integrity, and stood for myself. It was shocking for me to see how far I’ve come.

Adieu, Mr. Williams

Robin Williams is dead. 

The earth won't stop turning, my daily life won't be directly affected. In fact, the truth is most of us will forget within a few months. And then it will hit us again. 

It seems crazy to be so sad over someone you didn't even know in person. 

But right now, I'm ridiculously mournful about the fact that we'll never again get to enjoy his riotous, manic, sometimes strange but always engaging stand-up performances. I'm heartbroken that we'll never get to see his unbelievable dramatic performances like in Dead Poet's Society or The Fisher King. It's unfair that he'll never make a feel good comedy like Mrs. Doubtfire again.

I grew up with Robin Williams being a household name. I was maybe 10 or 11 when Mork & Mindy hit the airwaves. 

As a child growing up in a very conservative, non-artistic home, it was the craziest, weirdest, most out-there thing I had ever seen. And I loved it. My parents indulged me by letting me watch it every week. A lot of the humor was beyond me, but I knew I liked him and he made me laugh. 

He made all of us laugh. 

Maybe we did know him, after all. Through all of those performances, television shows, and movies. Through all we knew and all he told us about his struggles with drugs and alcohol, failed marriages and inner demons. 

It made him more relatable to me. Little did I know, even at the age of 22 when I watched him in Dead Poet's Society, that we would have so much in common. 

I suffer from depression, too. Sometimes it's overwhelming; sometimes it's unnoticeable. Always, it's a mystery; always, it's there. It just depends. On life, on medication, on a lot of things. 

I was in my late 30's before I was diagnosed, although I'm sure it was there much earlier. As early as 2004 I began having this feeling that something wasn't right. I just didn't feel like myself in a way that was inexplicable. 

I felt .... vacated.... empty....void. I was rarely happy, but neither was I sad. 

I would cry in the car on the way home every day and I didn't know why. I just felt not right, even when every doctor I talked to told me I was fine. 

By the end of 2007 I was 12 hours from my life, my friends and my family in Nashville and I was in such a deep depression that I would make my 30 minute drive to school each day and think, “I could just get on that interstate and drive away and never come back.” Everything made me blow a gasket. I just wanted out of my life. I never thought or considered myself suicidal. 

For me, it manifested in a “If I could leave my life and start something all new it would be better for everyone” kind of thing. Finally, in spring 2008 I found an amazing therapist and an amazing psychiatrist who worked to pull me out of the mire through a combination of counseling and medication. 

The amount of time it took and the problems I had to endure to be diagnosed, well, that's another story in itself.  I was very highly functional, to be sure. I got up, dressed, and went to school or work every day. I smiled at people because that's what you're supposed to do. I wore clean clothes and cooked dinner because that was the routine, and I knew if I stopped I'd never get back up. 

But one day, I literally had a therapist tell me I looked too good and was too put together to be depressed. He said that all I needed was a girls shopping weekend. I just lost it and walked out in the middle of the appointment, unable to say a word because I was so mad and my southern manners wouldn't allow it, which only made things worse.

People, we need to take depression seriously in this country. I resisted getting help for so long because I was raised to think that if you're in therapy you're “crazy” or “broken” or destined for the mental hospital. It's just not so. 

There are some of us who feel so much. We feel everything from injustice to discontent to sadness from everything that is happening around us. We're empathetic. We have chemical imbalances that keep us from dealing with those feelings in a reasonable manner. Some of us medicate with alcohol and drugs, like Robin Williams. Some medicate with food like me. Some with sex or danger or adrenaline. There are a million ways to get enough of a high to feel better, even for a moment.

One day I was driving home from Nashville and this sky was the view out the front windshield of my car. When I saw it I had to stop and take a picture of it because it kind of felt like how I see life. 

This friends is how it feels to have depression. If you don't know why, you are fortunate. Every single day can feel like you know something else is out there. See that little patch of blue near the bottom? Through that tiny hole is where other people live their lives. You know the blue skies and sunshine are there. You're aware that other people can see it. But all you see are dark clouds ahead of you. 

Sometimes you get just a glimpse but the opening isn't enough to jump through to get to the other side. Sometimes your friends reach and pull you through. Sometimes you wriggle through or talk until the opening is bigger. Other times, when the medication is going well, it's mostly sunny and few clouds. 

This morning, I watched a video of Robin Williams doing stand-up about the invention of golf and laughed until I cried. Then, I just cried.

Robin Williams is dead. And yes, I'm sad. Cheers, Robin, and thank you. I hope you find a patch full of sunshine.

A link to the Bloggess where she writes much more frequently than I about how DepressionLies. If you know of someone who needs help, please don't ignore it or think that it will "get better."

Half a year

Five Minutes on a Sunday morning. With Jana's Thinking Place and Stream of Consciousness Sunday.



My thoughts are spinning this Sunday morning. So much has been going on this week. I find it harder and harder to keep up with it all.

This has been one hell of a month, actually hell of a year. I remember white knuckling it to finish out 2012 with hopes that this would be better. But no such luck.

Mom surgery, twice. Me surgery. Sis in law and mom in law surgery. Friend died. Friend diagnosed bi-polar. Friends divorced. Editor fired. I now have 2 jobs to do until further notice.

However, this year, for some reason, I feel that I've come into my own. Finally. Embraced who I am and what I stand for and embraced the fact that if people don't like that, they don't deserve to be my friend. I've met new people and forged friendships with them based on who and what I really, truly am.

2013 may go down in my history as a very complex year, or a very terrible year depending on how I choose to see it. Only time will tell.

Here's to you!

Lately I've had a ridiculous and overwhelming urge to get out my sewing machine, blow off the dust and start sewing things.

Now, while I'm not a novice behind the sewing machine, I'm no expert either. I've made curtains, hemmed skirts, tailored in t-shirts-easy things that aren't a big deal. But pleats, zig zags, anything with curves or any kind of detail, forget it.

I can sew a straight line. On a good day. But for some reason right now I feel like I can totally slipcover my sofa cushions, make that tank dress into something cuter by adding material from a skirt that doesn't fit anymore. Or take a skirt that is too big and attach a shirt that is too short to make a cuter one piece dress from it.(Damn you Whitney!)

I know. Anyone who knows me knows. I am delusional. It's like when I watch Olympic ice skating and actually believe in my mind that I could pull off a triple axel or a salchow. What? Like it's hard?

In reality, I'm sure my sewing machine will stay safely tucked away in the closet where it allegedly is, but I have no idea because I've never unpacked it since we moved here 4 years ago. I am not even sure it made the trip here from Pennsylvania.

But the reason I'm so delusionally inspired?

I'm surrounded right now by a lot of artistic people. People with talents who actually earn a living, no matter how modest, through their arts. This, I love. This, inspires me. This, is necessary for me.

Friends who paint, dance, take pictures, write, design and create clothing, paint pottery, make soaps and candles, run galleries, and just “imaginate” their way through life.

As someone who spent the first 15 years of my adult life in a profession that was very, very wrong for me, it's hard to explain what this means to me. I now make my living in an artistic profession and have done so for almost 3 years now.

I returned to my writing almost three years ago, first through my blog and then through freelancing for the newspaper where I now work. I have written a novel that needs some serious attention and editing, and have begun a memoir that needs a lot more of everything before it is complete.

My point is this. If I weren't surrounded by so much creativity I wouldn't be nearly as inspired to be creative, artistic and offbeat. I feed off their energy. And I hope they do mine as well, in some small way.

I know now something that I never realized before. It is...stifling for me not to have other people around me who understand what it is like to have this....thing. And equally as energizing to have them around.

But artists, we're a different breed, all of us our own kind of crazy. Some reign it in and try to maintain a normal façade while others revel in their eccentricities. But we all have it, whether we like to admit it or not.

We're neurotic, hyper, depressed, schizophrenic, bi-polar, split personality sons of bitches who'd run off all our friends if only they weren't as batshit crazy as we are. And the people who love us, well they'd better really love us. 1,000%, especially if they are a non-artistic ilk. We can only hope they love us not only in spite of our crazy but because of it (at least a little bit of the time).

It's been just over 3 years since I kicked off Tinfoil Magnolia in April, 2010. Although I've neglected her somwhat over the past year or so, she is not forgotten. I feel every other day that I will reign my life in just enough to at least commit 3 days per week to posting here. Sometimes (well most of the time) it just doesn't happen. But this blog means a lot to me.

Yesterday a friend of mine told me that he'd received a pretty serious diagnosis. Not one, I don't think, that he was entirely surprised to hear, not one he hadn't suspected. But hearing it in black and white, sometimes that's another thing, isn't it?

Although we've never met in person, I consider him a friend. He was the first non-relative or friend to comment or follow Tinfoil Magnolia when I began the blog. I had no idea who he was or how he found me, but I am so glad he did.

So I'm thinking of my friend and his wife and family today. His new diagnosis? Well, it's always been part of who he is. Part of the artist crazy. It doesn't change how I think or feel about him. I don't have to deal with it daily as his family does, but to change that part of him, I would think, would change who he is on a basic level. As it would for any of us.

The fact of the matter is, and this goes for all of us, it makes us who and what we are. Our narcicissms, our addictions, our faults, our neuroses-they are all part of us. Our insecurities, our grandiose thoughts, our voices and all of our personalitites. It makes life wonderful and difficult and passionate and thoughtful. And I embrace that about all of my friends.

No matter how crazy they might make me. :)

On-ramp

Today's post is my entry into this week's 100 Word Challenge, hosted by Velvet Verbosity. The 100 Word Challenge is an exercise in which we write exactly 100 words in response to the weekly prompt word. Click the link to read the other entries–good stuff over there! 

This week's prompt was "spirit". 

I felt pathetic and dull, like a pale gray shadow moving through a sunlit technicolor world.As if the spirit left my body, leaving nothing more than an empty shell. I found myself completely unable to function. I became overwhelmed with the smallest decisions and felt crushed by deadlines.

Driving home that day, sobbing, I felt something tugging inside me. I thought, “You could leave, you know. Get on the interstate and just keep driving. Drive until you're somewhere no one knows you.” I drove in a loop around the city for hours fighting the urge to take the on-ramp.

Hey, Brownie, will you shave my armpits for me?

Today I had the most screamingly hilarious lunch, sans alcohol, that I've had in a long while. These women who have allowed me into their friendship with open arms are some of the funniest I ever have know. As someone who is used to always being the "funny one" in any group I'm in, it is such a relief to be entertained so well, and to have people in my life (other than the hubs) who actually get my sense of humor.

I remember when we first moved to Pennsylvania, almost 4 years ago. I felt so lost and alone, so different from everyone there. I didn't know what to do or where to go to meet people. I didn't know my way around, or even what I would do if I did find something somewhere. I had a great group of friends in Nashville and I missed them all so much, even the few who I didn't see every day were an important part of my life. I spent the first six months of PA life in a consistent daily calling circle made up of my mom, my two best friends at the time, and my former boss. Bless their hearts, if they didn't hear from me by lunchtime they would pick up the phone and call to make sure I was OK. I truly do not know how I would have made it without them and their daily phone calls. Despite this lifeline I quickly fell into a serious depression.

I remember one cold Friday night in, like, May hubby and I went out to a local bar to have beer and wings. There was a table at the back of the room with about 9 women crowded around it. They were laughing, drinking, and basically having a good time and being loud. I was overcome with sadness about not having any girlfriends to spend time with, being so far away from home, and just what I was missing being so far from home. It just killed me because no matter how much you might love your husband, you gotta have your girls. Apparently I couldn't stop looking at the table full of women laughing and having fun because eventually hubs asked "Do you wanna just go over there, or are you gonna quit staring anytime soon?" And I did. I did want to go over there. So. Bad.

There were times in Pennsylvania that I thought I might never get home, home being anywhere that I had friends and people who understood me. Despite that, I said to myself every morning when I got up "I think of this as a temporary exile." I am so glad that is what it turned out to be. I accomplished many things while I was there, and for those things I am grateful. I got my Associates in Graphic Design, I got help for my depression through talk therapy with a wonderful counselor (which it ends up I should have had years ago anyway), I met some very interesting people, and I got to see NYC, Baltimore, Philadelphia and other NorthEastern cities for the very first time. But the best thing I got in Pennsylvania was getting the hell out of there.

So when I came back to live in my hometown after being away for a total of something like 20 years, I was afraid I would go through the same thing with finding friends here. However, I have a group of ladies who have accepted me with open arms because (initially I am sure) of their relationships with my best friend-from-forever and my sister-in-law. But truthfully, I think they let me stay around because they like me, and I bring something of my own to the group. Either way, I am forever grateful to have all of them in my life, and I owe them a million thanks for making me feel so welcome that it feels like I've been here forever. Amy, Brownie, Pam, Debbie, Jerilyn, Rachel and Sharon thanks for a fun lunch today, and thanks for being my new besties! I have the most fun with ya'll no matter what we do, and besides that you are the only people in the world who have stories that can make MY family look like the normal one on the block!