#Pride101: Marriage equality

Ten years ago today, the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex couples are guaranteed the right to marry under both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Marriage inequality had been enshrined for decades in a “one man and one woman” state-by-state propaganda crusade—which cycled up to fever pitch in every election cycle—led without irony or shame by “sanctity of marriage” charlatans and adulterous divorce junkies like Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani and Rush Limbaugh.

The Republicans’ desperate “states’ rights” argument also subjected couples to being married then being not married then being married ad infinitum every time they crossed state lines as they traveled—which is not only ridiculous and cruel, but also engendered very real concerns about the couples’ rights regarding hospital visits and property ownership if they had accidents in marriage-hostile states.

The fight against our equality made us perpetual punching bags and political props by the Republican party and the religious right, who positioned themselves as the only moral authority on the issue as they tore apart families, turned citizens into pariahs, and incited both verbal and physical violence against gay people who wanted nothing more than basic equality that posed no plausible threat or danger to anyone.

Republicans’ longstanding argument that same-sex marriage would undermine and destroy heterosexual marriage was desperately ridiculous and honestly called into question the stability of the heterosexual marriages of everyone who parroted this talking point.

The LGBTQ+ community was forced to organize and fight our way through endless battles and setbacks in the lower courts and then wait on pins and needles when our equality finally reached the purview of the Supreme Court, which in the height of the 2015 Pride month finally issued its 5-4 party-line verdict that our relationships are, in fact, equal and legally valid. And despite this, we’re still forced to combat hostile anti-equality eruptions that pop up every election cycle in red and swing states that need to sway voters by manipulating their baser instincts.

But for the last ten years, those of us who want it and all of us who’ve fought for it have finally been able to enjoy the stabilities and joys and ups and downs and contentments of legal and social marriage equality.

THIS IS WHY WE CALL IT PRIDE.

Pride 101: Protester hate

Virtually every pride parade and public LGBTQ+ event draws a crowd of hate-filled, mouth-frothing religious bigots carrying massive-lettered, professionally printed signs (that always use the playground word “homos,” always say we deserve AIDS and ALWAYS obsess about gay sex) and screaming at us with bullhorns, trying to goad us into physical fights so they can videotape them and whimper to the police and public about the cruel persecution they endure just for violently perverting their First Amendment rights.

At bigger events like the Chicago Pride Parade, they're walled off in pens like the rabid swine they are at the end of the routes where they're more of a nuisance than a violence-inciting threat—and so they can ruin the joys and kill the highs that people in the parades have experienced and inspired along the routes. But at smaller events like the Cedar Rapids Pride Fest, they wander freely in much smaller numbers at the perimeters, hauling massive signs as if they were crosses, yelling into bullhorns and goading us from afar so they can run like the cowards they are if they feel outnumbered and/or want to stoke their wannabe persecution complexes.

 
(Cisgender straight people: Raise your hands if you’ve ever endured any of this for being affectionate in public, having wedding photos taken outdoors, being seen with your kids or just basically existing.)

But despite these relentless, organized, violence-inciting attacks, LGBTQ+ people and our allies keep showing up to our Pride events, not letting the bigots’ cruel, puerile, relentless harassment undermine our celebration of who we are and how far we've come.

THIS IS WHY WE CALL IT PRIDE.

Pride 101: Pinkwashing

Until this year’s brutal backlash, every June companies across America and around the world have added rainbow stripes to their logos and their advertising; sold rainbow-themed clothing, food and other merchandise; and even sponsored Pride events. It was optically done in support of LGBTQ+ people and in celebration of Pride, and most of these companies were—I should note that some of them still are—acting in a genuine spirit of support and celebration.

But now many are vehemently (cowardly?) not.

Pinkwashing—a practice where companies ride the wave of Pride in order to garner public favor and persuade the LGBTQ+ and ally populations to support them as consumers year-round—first appeared in the national dialogue in the 2010s as a parallel concept to whitewashing (emphasizing the histories of European caucasians over the histories of other populations) and greenwashing (promoting—sometimes dubious—claims of environmental consciousness and stewardship by companies and organizations).

Arguably more of a hop-on-the-bandwagon public-relations tool than a genuine show of support and allyship when bigger corporations are involved, pinkwashing annually draws ire and mockery from the LGBTQ+ population, our allies, and the smaller companies and organizations that truly support and celebrate us. With good justification.

And while I agree in spirit, I have a slightly different take: Even if stores selling rainbow clothing and decorations and knickknacks are truly just using us for profit, they’re still helping normalize our existence by getting rainbow clothing and decorations and knickknacks—not to mention in-store merchandise displays—in front of the greater population.

And while it’s true that they seem to start selling this stuff on June 1 and abruptly stop on June 30, they do the same thing for Valentine’s Day and back-to-school and other holidays and events that are typically celebrated in a very specific block of time. Stores don’t waste floor space on things that customers aren’t currently buying, which is why you’re not finding Santa hats and parkas clogging up the retail racks in the middle of June.

Yes, my take can be seen as grasping at crumbs in a larger zeitgeist of oppression and discrimination. But in our MAGA-driven culture—I use that term very loosely—of open hatred, brutal backlash, and often death threats and violence, it’s still rather honorable for companies to stick their necks out for us.

So I say stock up on rainbow flags and hats and T-shirts and decorations now, and then display and wear them year-round when Pride month is officially over. Retail may follow a calendar, but we certainly don’t have to.

THIS IS WHY WE CALL IT PRIDE.

Pride 101: Supreme Court Employment Protection

Five years ago today, the Supreme Court ruling protecting gay and transgender workers from job discrimination and outright firings kicked the right-wing propaganda machine into high gear as it blustered predictably on and on about about “activist judges,” “religious liberty” (note: “liberty” is a right-wing dogwhistle that translates to “legal protection for hating LGBTQ+ people”) and the especially-laughable-in-the-context-of-its-adultrous-presidential-administration chestnut “family values.”

Right on cue, people like the homosexuality-obsessed Franklin Graham called the ruling “a very sad day” because he’d be “forced to hire” filthy gay and transgender people—and he cloaked his lust for hatred and discrimination as “a traditional Christian ethic” with the clear subtext that he and his brand of Christian cover story hold the monopoly on ethics and morality in this or any other discussion that fires up his mouth-frothing base.

But the fight is far from over. The May 2022 leaked draft of a Supreme Court ruling that would overturn Roe v. Wade left room for the conservative-majority Supreme Court to overturn its 2015 ruling in favor of marriage equality. And when Roe v. Wade was (as predicted) overturned in June 2022, Democrats in Congress had to pre-emptively write and negotiate to pass with Republicans the Respect for Marriage Act, which codified protection of same-sex marriages into law so the Supreme Court couldn't touch it.

Imagine being such a shitty Supreme Court that the President and Congress had to make laws to protect its citizens from you.

Cisgender heterosexuals: Have you ever needed a Supreme Court ruling to protect you from being fired just for going to work? Have you ever felt threatened enough that you had to lie about yourself and your relationships just to keep your job? That’s how bad things still were for gay and transgender people in 2020, more than half a century after the Stonewall Riots that sparked our collective demands for equality, justice and our right to live in peace.

It’s why we still have to carry the campaign and continue the fight and rely on your support and advocacy in our struggle TO THIS DAY to achieve basic, foundational equality so we can hopefully just exist without fear from repercussions incited by so-called moral leaders like Franklin Graham. He and his ilk are stubbornly not going away, but as the 2020 ruling shows, we keep making incremental progress toward maybe one day being able to live our lives free from their manufactured hatred and fear—and the destruction it causes in our lives.


THIS IS WHY WE CALL IT PRIDE.

CedaRound: The Drowning

Though I was living in Chicago at the time, I was in Cedar Rapids 17 years ago today to visit my folks for their June 14 anniversary. My boyfriend at the time and I had heard stories of looming flooding, and even though the rains and the swollen rivers diverted us north from highway 30 at Mt. Vernon and sent us into Cedar Rapids on Mt. Vernon Road, we still never believed Cedar Rapids could have serious flooding. I mean, it's CEDAR RAPIDS. I grew up here. How could anything bad happen?

By the time we finally got to my folks' house late on the 13th though, the flooding had become serious enough that the city's last intact water pumping station was in such danger of being breached that the urgent call went out on the news for volunteers to sandbag it. Though we'd had a 5-hour drive, we wanted to go out and help, but by the time we had a quick bathroom break before heading for the door, the news announced that they'd already gotten all the sandbaggers they needed. Which was a clear harbinger of the resilience our city would soon show. But at the time it was dark and late and we were 32 blocks from the river so all we could do was go to bed and wait.

The next morning, the footage on the news was devastating. The river had crested at 31.12 feet—19 feet over flood stage—and our entire downtown was drowning, as were 1,300 blocks of the city on either side of the river. Office buildings and banks and stores and my beloved theaters were almost up to the tops of their doors in water. All three bridges that cross May's Island to connect the east and west sides of the city were completely submerged. The Time Check and Czech Village neighborhoods were annihilated, with many houses underwater to their roof lines. The highly elevated I-380 was the only way to get across town, though all of the entrance and exit ramps in the flood zone were submerged. We—like seemingly everyone else in the city—drove slowly along the highway and peered out our windows to survey the devastation as the flood waters rippled mere feet beneath us.

As the water slowly receded, the city reeled over the destruction of homes, the closing of businesses, the undermining of infrastructure ... but never the loss of spirit. The city leaped almost immediately into action to tear down what was unsalvageable, repair what was repairable, clean up what was messy and dangerous, reimagine new life and purpose for what was destroyed, and start to recover and relocate and rebuild ourselves into a newer and better and more thoughtfully redesigned shining city on the river. We now have our vibrant and ever-expanding NewBo district and its neighboring Czech Village restoration, we've literally picked up and moved an entire museum to higher ground, we've creatively and beautifully incorporated new levees and berms into inviting public spaces, we've used the opportunity to upgrade and restore historic buildings, we've turned our once-desolate-after-5:00 downtown into a destination area bustling with restaurants and entertainment (well, before covid hit—but it bounced back as soon as returning was safe) ... and we've salvaged and restored and improved and polished up my beloved Paramount and Iowa (home of Theatre Cedar Rapids) theaters.

The flood was awful and heartwrenching and devastating. Many businesses never recovered. Many homes and families and lives have been forever changed. And our renaissance is perpetually ongoing and far from complete; in the last decade-plus, we've brought to life a towering modern addition to the stately Chicago-school American Building, built an expanding Habitrail of downtown skywalks, converted all the downtown one-way streets into two-way to feel more like friendly streets than impersonal expressways, incorporated towering, visually referential berms into the natural features along the river lowlands, and built many massive, architecturally interesting mixed-use buildings in the vibrantly revitalized Kingston Village neighborhood.

There was one sliver lining linking the 2008 flood that destroyed the center of the city to the 2020 land-hurricane derecho that destroyed enormous amounts of the entire city: The blocks and blocks of still-empty land in what was left of the flood-destroyed Time Check neighborhood became the primary dumping ground for the thousands and thousands of derecho-felled trees that the city slowly hauled away from everyone's property. It was centrally located, it offered a LOT of land and it made a mighty monument to the destruction the city endured. Driving by it was both breathtaking and heartbreaking. But also reassuring in that it provided a useful place for the city to dump the trees it collected and get back out to collect more as efficiently as possible.

Aside from the before-and-after photos of my dad's office, where he thought two levels of concrete blocks would protect his antique roll-top desk from the floodwaters that eventually submerged his entire office past its ceiling, the pictures I'm posting here aren't mine. But they show the depth and breadth of the destruction we all faced and make a great reminder of how amazingly far we have come in the last ten years.

So happy floodiversary, Cedar Rapids! May we keep our recovery and flood-protection development speeding along forevermore. (And don't forget to wish my folks a happy 61st anniversary tomorrow.)

Third Street looking south from First Avenue. You can see the old Theatre Cedar Rapids marquee on the left.

Theatre Cedar Rapids. All the First Avenue storefronts on the left were shut down after the flood, and the space became the awesome new Linge Lounge.

Dad’s office—and beautiful oak roll-top desk—before and after the flood. The desk was unsalvageable, and everything in it got ripped out and carried away by the floodwaters.

1,300 blocks on both sides of the river were submerged—some under more than 10 feet of water.

Those ghostly lines in the water are the totally submerged bridges that cross May’s Island as they connect the east and west sides of the city.

That’s normally-high-in-the-sky I-380 snaking through downtown with floodwater submerging its ramps and lapping at its floors.

The massive crown-jewel National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library building on the lower right was actually lifted and relocated to higher ground after the flood.


We parked this string of train cars on this essential train bridge before the flood to weigh it down so the floodwaters wouldn’t wash it away.


We parked this string of train cars on this essential train bridge before the flood to weigh it down so the floodwaters wouldn’t wash it away.


Entire neighborhoods. Families’ lives. Wiped out. No words.


The floodwaters floated the Mighty Wurlitzer organ console two stories from the bottom of the Paramount Theater orchestra pit to above the stage, where they dumped it like a dirty carcass.

Pride 101: Straight Pride

The right-wing privileged majority loves to claim oppression when any minority inches toward achieving any level of equality.

Read any right-wing social-media feed (or don’t—not reading right-wing social media is truly self-care) and you’ll see manufactured outrage claiming that [these are all things I’ve repeatedly seen and no doubt there’s a lot more]: 1) white people have completely disappeared from advertising, 2) it’s soon going to be illegal to be straight, 3) the Left claims to be tolerant but it’s sure not tolerant of oppressive, discriminatory beliefs, 4) when is it going to be White History Month? 5) there’s an entire Pride month but we don’t have any days or months celebrating our soldiers [you’d think people who pretend to respect the military would know that November 11 is Veterans’ Day, May is Military Appreciation Month and Memorial Day honors fallen soldiers], and this perennial flavor of the month: 6) why isn’t there a Straight Pride month/day/parade?

Here’s my short, all-purpose response to people demanding some sort of Straight Pride nonsense (and feel free to copy, edit and paste it everywhere you deem necessary): “If it’s so important to you, make it happen instead of whining about it deep in the comments under an obscure Facebook post. The gays figured it out. Why can’t you?”

And if someone responds with more whining about a fear of woke backlash, say this: “You sure don’t sound very proud.”

This has never not shut down the discussion. Because their manufactured-oppression arguments are laughably inane.

Pride month celebrates the LGBTQ+ community’s incremental victories over legal and physical oppression. It was literally illegal to be or even seem gay in America for centuries. We were hunted, arrested, evicted, disowned, beaten and murdered for just being ourselves. But as early as the 1950s we started fighting back, changing perceptions, changing minds, changing laws and taking control of our narrative.

The battle will clearly never end, but we as a still-in-many-ways-oppressed minority have created a robust Pride movement that’s celebrated across many different months in many different cities and countries around the globe. The straight majority can’t even achieve an hour-long Straight Pride celebration. They’d rather appropriate our oppression than acknowledge their own privilege. And we will always have the moral, logical, humane, loving high ground.

THIS IS WHY WE CALL IT PRIDE.

Pride 101: Blood donation bans

In 1983—at the height of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in the United States—the U.S. Food and Drug Administration instituted a lifetime ban on blood donations from gay men (specifically “men who have sex with men” or MSM, a distinction necessitated by a sizable population of MSM who refuse for any number of reasons to be identified as gay or bisexual).

The ban was actually even broader than that; it also included women who have sex with MSM and—irrelevantly in this specific context—transgender people. At the time, HIV was—and was perceived by the broader population to be exclusively—a “gay disease” and was gleefully used by religious hate groups to perpetuate their vilification of—and mock and exploit the deaths of—gay people. The ban was an extreme measure, but as 1980s technologies in HIV detection weren’t very effective it was seen as prudent—with no resistance from leading gay organizations—and it no doubt prevented an even larger American HIV epidemic.

As HIV spread beyond the gay-male population, the infection demographics leveled out and HIV-detection technologies advanced, in 2015 the FDA guidelines regarding blood donations from MSM were reduced from a lifetime ban to a one-year-of-celibacy requirement.

But these requirements served no purpose beyond discrimination; the Insti HIV test—which had been introduced nine years earlier and was considered to be the most accurate and convenient of all technologies, requiring just a small finger prick—had a 99.96% accuracy rate, with results provided in one minute. There was literally no medical or ethical reason to single out MSM for this ongoing ban.

Then in April 2020—as blood supplies dwindled to crisis levels at the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic—the one-year celibacy requirement was reduced to three months.

Still, the institutionalized discrimination was not eliminated; a man who had protected sex with one other man in the previous three months was not allowed to give blood, but—for instance—a woman who had unprotected sex with multiple men in the previous week faced no such restriction. (For the record, the relatively small populations of people with certain medical conditions, people on certain medications and people who have had blood transfusions have always been subject to other restrictions and bans.)

With often desperately low stockpiles of donated blood in the United States and with advanced testing and medical knowledge, there was literally no reason at the time to keep specifically restricting blood donations from MSM based on outdated demographic medical information and stigmas regarding HIV.

But after decades of discrimination, medical progress, lobbying, and a slow dawning of equality and common sense, we’ve finally eliminated the MSM-only restrictions. In May 2023, the FDA overhauled its screening process for all donors by simply asking a series of preliminary questions about recent sexual activity, drug use and HIV exposure and imposing reasonable restrictions for everyone based on the responses.

After literally four decades, the march to erase unreasonable homophobic stigmas and embrace 21st Century medical knowledge finally achieved its goals, and MSM without legitimate risks are proudly—despite the humiliation and discrimination of the historic bans—stepping up and doing our part as blood donors.

THIS IS WHY WE CALL IT PRIDE.

Pride 101: LGBTQ+ survival

Cisgender heterosexuals—how many times have you:

• Gathered with other straight cisgender friends while people with bullhorns held giant signs and screamed at you that they hope you die of AIDS
• Gotten egged and insulted by people screaming out of a car as you waited in line to enter a straight bar
• Pretended to be someone you’re not out of fear that your mechanic or doctor or waiter or accountant or employer or family would do something bad to you, yell at you to leave or eject you from their lives
• Walked down the street holding hands with your spouse or partner and been accosted by a stranger calling you filthy and disgusting and declaring that he or she shouldn’t be “forced” to see your affection
• Been told that other people's manufactured discomfort about who your are is more important than you being authentically who you are
• Been silenced about even casually mentioning who you and your family are by a "don't say straight" law
• Watched your rights being used as a bargaining chip in national political machinations
• Had your inequality dismissed as a "social issue" and cemented into law by a public vote over a state propositionHad your inequality cemented into law by a public vote over a state proposition
• Watched people fight so hard to discriminate against you that they take their hatred all the way to the Supreme Court
• Joined a church that condemns you to hell
• Been consumed by your own white-hot hatred that you don’t want and you don’t need and you don’t deserve because the above hostilities constantly bombard you while you have almost no recourse

Probably every LGBTQ+ person you know has been called a faggot. Or worse. I have. More times than I can remember.

Probably every LGBTQ+ person you know has had something thrown at them with the intention to hurt or humiliate them. I have. It was a barrage of eggs thrown from a car as some friends and I stood on a sidewalk in Chicago's Boystown … where we'd assumed we were safe from such bullshit. The cowards who threw the eggs missed all of us and raced away cackling like they were big men who somehow mattered.

Many LGBTQ+ people you know have been physically, violently assaulted. I never have, but I have friends who've been assaulted so violently that they've been hospitalized.

It's 2025. The homophobic violence that our forebears endured may have lessened, but it hasn't stopped. And while straight cisgender people probably barely even think about what we endure, we all still get up, walk out the door every day, and live our lives as openly as we dare and as comfortably as we can.

THIS IS WHY WE CALL IT PRIDE.

Pride 101: Pride Month begins

Before the 1969 Stonewall riots, virtually every aspect of the lives of gay people was illegal to varying degrees in America: being openly gay, showing public affection, having sex, marriage, adoption, assembly in public, assembly in private, going to gay bars … even owning bars with any form of gay designation.

The only gay bars that existed were owned by crime syndicates, who definitely weren’t at the vanguard of fighting for gay liberation; they saw in the gay population a steady and highly dependent form of revenue that the mobs could protect via their considerable influence over law enforcement. Gay people were exploited for our desperate need to find each other and for the money we were willing to pay to feel like we weren’t alone. We paid exorbitant prices for watered-down, bottom-shelf liquor. We gathered in buildings that were unclean, unsafe and unimportant to society. We entered those bars carrying cash for bail with the clear expectation that we might need it.

The subtexts were shame, risk, secrecy, and arrest and public humiliation—and the very likely loss of our families, jobs and homes—if we were caught entering or exiting these bars.

But in the gathering momentum of our achievements in equality over the last half century, our forebears demanded—and slowly, surely got—our growing equality and our freedom to live our lives openly and safely and without imposed shame and exploitation.

THIS IS WHY WE CALL IT PRIDE.

Mental Health Awareness Month: My TMIpolar Blog

My 2008 bipolar diagnosis suddenly made sense of all the weirdnesses floating around in my head: plunging depressions, paranoias, social anxieties, impulsive behaviors, suicidal ideation, big ideas without consequences alarms, racing thoughts, abject terror in social situations (I once had a full-on panic attack when I opened a party invitation that came in the mail) (remember getting party invitations in the mail?) …

Newly armed with a name for the collective demons I faced, I started fighting back (or at least trying to manage my world) with everything I had at my disposal—which at the beginning wasn't much because my doctor didn’t think I needed medication. So I launched into a homemade cocktail of deep breaths, internal pep talks, more-informed behaviors and decisions, reading everything I could find, looking for a new doctor who might have more powerful (i.e., pharmaceutical) tools for me to use … and the expectation that I might at any moment need to just retreat to the safety of my condo in the sky to regroup and start again the next day.

I also became self-aware enough to start being embarrassed by things I did in public … mostly bouncing around as though I were on fire, being so down I’d no-show at events I promised to attend, and in more than one instance literally running away when someone tried to introduce me to a friend.
So I did what any self-respecting writer would do: I turned to social media to start explaining myself and apologizing for being so damn weird. And to my surprise, I almost immediately started getting understanding, support … and thanks from people in similar situations for being so open about my mental illness and the challenges it brought me.

Eventually someone suggested that I start a blog to document my thoughts, feelings, experiences, and the highs and lows of my journey. So I launched TMIpolar (get it? It’s BI polar but I overshare so it’s TMI polar, which I will go to my grave thinking is one of my most clever linguistic inventions) and backfilled it with everything I’d posted and started filling it with my new adventures.

There is also a book in the works, but the prospect of organizing my thoughts into something approaching legitimate book form is so overwhelming that you shouldn’t start looking for it in bookstores until 2095.

In a weird way to think this is unfortunate, I unfortunately have been so stable in the last few years that I haven’t had much to post about any noteworthy ups and downs of my personal journey. But I’ve aggregated all my Mental Health Awareness Month essays along with other essays/thoughts/reviews/etc on the blog for my own—along with anyone else’s—reference.

 
So check it out and even bookmark it if you want. I’ve spent ridiculous amounts of time organizing things by keywords for your perusing convenience. And I hope it helps (or at the very least entertains) you if you find you need it.

 
Here’s the link for your clicking convenience: TMIpolar.blogspot.com 

Mental Health Awareness Month: NAMI

The National Alliance On Mental Illness (NAMI) is a nationwide organization that provides informational and emotional support for the caregivers who work to keep people with mental illnesses on track and stable—or at the very least it lets the caregivers know they're not alone.

The organization has 1,000 state and local affiliates across all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. To keep it accessible to everyone who needs it, NAMI is funded through pharmaceutical company donations, individual donors, sponsorships and grants.

My parents found a lifeline in NAMI when I was diagnosed as bipolar over a decade ago. Now my mom—a retired teacher, so this is totally in her wheelhouse—has taught classes to help NAMI members better manage the situations they face and has undergone formal training to be a group meeting leader. I'm so thankful for everything my parents and my sister's family have done to support me in my bipolar adventures. NAMI has helped them help me manage my life with a considerable degree of success and relative normalcy.

If you’re interested in learning more or finding a NAMI group to attend, please visit nami.org.

Books: Lethal Passage

Erik Larson—perhaps best known for writing Devil in the White City—has a penchant for picking historical topics you didn’t realize you were dying to know more about, researching them to a granular level and then crafting in-the-weeds narratives that can test the patience of even his most ardent fans.
I’m saying this with more respect than exasperation; I recently—and eagerly—completed my second readings of both Devil in the White City and his Dead Wake (which I highly recommend) knowing full well there would be sections that would make my eyes glaze over. He crafts a great narrative and leaves you feeling smarter page after page, but I think we can all agree that his works can sometimes be … a lot.

 
Case in point: Lethal Passage examines the confluence of economic, legal, cultural, social and historic events leading to a bullied child with limited financial means acquiring a specific gun and shooting students and teachers at a relatively wealthy private school in 1988.

The premise didn’t sound like it could support a book of Lethal Passage’s heft, and though the topic doesn’t really interest me, I was curious to see what Larson did with his research and his gift for narrative to fill the book’s 300+ pages.

And boy, did my mind wander as I slogged through it.

 
I kept telling myself if he were recounting the note-by-note process of Stephen Sondheim, Hugh Wheeler and Hal Prince bringing Sweeney Todd from concept to Broadway, I’d be hanging onto every word. So if you’re fascinated by Old West history and mythology, Hollywood cowboys and gangsters, the noble birth and jarring radicalization of the NRA, the political ebbs and flows of the ATF’s powers and purposes, and the perennial legal absurdities that make it nearly effortless for anyone to buy a firearm, this is totally your book.

 
Granted, all of the above puts deep, nuanced context behind young Nicholas Elliott’s conditioning to think shooting classmates was his best course of action in response to bullying, his access to enough information to help him make an informed decision about which gun he thought was best for the job—and the best local retailer for buying it without issue—and his relationships with the adults he could trust to help him purchase the gun and modify it to operate with enhanced efficiency.

 
But hoo-boy.

 
Interspersed between his bloated history/context essays, Larson does cover how low-income-single-mom Nicholas was at an expensive private school and why he was probably the victim of bullying. He also recounts the history of the gun store, its owners and its place in the local gun-rights zeitgeist. And he introduces us to the students and faculty who will eventually live and die in the shooting spree.
Those stories alone are compelling, and as is his usual format he masterfully triangulates them from separate stories into a singular cohesive narrative. But that information would barely add up to qualify as a beach-read novella.

 
So he piles on the contexts and backstories and anecdotes and historical coincidences and nearly everything else he can come up with to flesh out his base premise.

 
As I said earlier: I don’t have a ton of innate fascination with Lethal Passage’s broader topic and themes. But I’ve read all of Larson’s books (except for his most recent, The Demon of Unrest) so I wasn’t going to let this one slip through the cracks.

 
I can honestly report I almost quit out of boredom multiple times, but I’m not at all suggesting you will. I’m more relieved than glad I can say I finished it. And while I don’t NOT recommend it, I think it’s fair to say it has a very limited, very specific audience … and if you think that audience is you, by all means give it a read.

Mental Health Awareness Month: An Unquiet Mind

An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison is a fearlessly, brutally honest 1995 memoir examining the exhilarating highs and soul-crushing lows of bipolar disorder (which was clinically called manic-depressive illness during the events of this book) from the perspective of a psychiatrist trapped in the disease. Her frank and intimately personal insights bring bipolar disorder’s cycles of terror, elation and crushing, abject despair into stark and sometimes heartbreaking clarity.

The book was recommended to me soon after I was diagnosed as bipolar in 2008, and it grabbed me on every level—from its smart writing to the recognizable, relatable, almost comforting details of its narrative—and I all but literally didn’t put the book down until I’d finished it.

I have an indelible memory of reading it on the Red Line EL train home from work one night in Chicago, and a man who’d clearly seen me reading it made sure we made eye contact as he stood up to leave and then he patted me reassuringly on the shoulder as he got off at the Sheridan stop. That encounter—a direct extension of this book—made me literally weep the rest of the way home as I was coming to grips with the label “mentally ill” and discovering the signs I’d never thought to notice until then that I wasn’t alone … and realizing that everywhere I go I’d never be alone.

If you are or love someone who is bipolar—or struggling with any mental illness—this book will make you weep, give you hope and quite possibly change your life.

Mental Health Awareness Month: Next to Normal

Next to Normal—a searing, brilliant, Pulitzer-winning rock opera examining the lives of a family whose mother is desperately struggling with bipolar depression—changed the voice of Broadway and broadened the scope of what theater can do when it opened in 2008. The show beautifully captures the swings between the ridiculous highs and the soul-crushing lows the disease brings to those of us living in its fogs and terrors ... and to the selfless teams of people who care for us.

I’m fortunate enough to have seen the original production, very soon after I’d been diagnosed as bipolar and had found myself caught in a rather terrifying struggle to wrap my confused, exhausted brain around the fact that mental illness was no longer a mysterious entity in other people’s lives; it was MY life, and I had no idea how to manage it or what potential and very real horrors to expect from it.

The musical is rough to experience from any perspective, but seeing it for the first time tore me apart ... and then put me back together with its closing anthem, “Light,” which features an almost casually placed lyric that is at once devastating and hopeful and never fails to sneak up on me and emotionally gut me even though I know it’s coming: “The price of love is loss / but still we pay / we love anyway.”

I've been invited to be the Bipolar Person in Residence and talk to the casts and audiences of Next to Normal productions at three theaters over the last decade. And while I hope it was helpful for the actors as they rehearsed and found their characters' realities, it was extremely helpful for me to have an opportunity to articulate the swings and uncertainties and terrors of living with a mental illness—both so I could explain any weirdness I've personally exhibited and to help the actors help their audiences better understand these realities.

While every bipolar mind is different and therefore every moment of Next to Normal doesn't exactly mirror my experiences, every note and every word of the show is brilliant and hits brilliantly close to home. And that closing anthem—sung by the characters not to each other but to the audience and to the present and to the future—encapsulates the struggles and hopes I live with every day in astute prose and powerful, emotional, wall-of-sound vocals:

Day after day,

We'll find the will to find our way.

Knowing that the darkest skies

Will someday see the sun.

When our long night is done,

There will be light.

Mental Health Awareness Month: Tardive Dyskenesia

As if mental illness itself weren’t embarrassing and exhausting enough—and as if the spectrum of side effects from psych meds weren’t even more embarrassing and exhausting—along comes tardive dyskenesia. 

Aside from sounding like an antebellum flowering vine, tardive dyskenesia is also a range of involuntary, repetitive neuromuscular movements of the tongue, lips, face, torso and extremities that occur in people treated with long-term antipsychotics and other dopamine-receptor-blocking medications. If you’ve ever stood or sat near me for an extended period of time, you’ve no doubt seen the full compendium of symptoms: grimacing, lip chewing and pursing, heavy blinking, face touching (and I deserve seven gold medals for fighting back the compulsion to touch my face 75 times a minute in the Coronavirus Olympics), arm swinging, leg hitting, rocking, fidgeting, shaking, and—oddest of all—being on tiptoe whenever I’m sitting down. I continue to cringe every time I see video footage of me talking or singing with my lower jaw weirdly askew. My foot also pulses on the gas pedal when I drive, and a number of people have told me it almost makes them carsick when they ride with me.

I’m rather lucky in that my flailing and wiggling are more embarrassing than physically problematic, but about 20% of the population living with the disorder literally can’t function; it can prevent them from walking, eating and even breathing.

And as a point of clarification, these symptoms are the opposite of those from Parkinson’s Disease. People with Parkinson's have difficulty moving, whereas people with tardive dyskenesia have difficulty not moving.

Tardive dyskenesia symptoms can lessen, change or even go away over time after a person stops taking neuroleptic medications, though more often than not they’re permanent. My symptoms have noticeably changed over the last decade, but I’ve traded making alarming sucking sounds on my lips for making an entire room tremble from my violently shaking legs.

There are many medications that can be used to manage the symptoms to varying degrees. After five-plus years of needless misery, I successfully weaned myself off the anticonvulsant Gabapentin, which did or didn't work depending on the way the wind blew and the leg trembled. It also tended to make me drowsy and sometimes even confused, which makes me especially surprised that it’s used recreationally—under the totally lame street name Gabbies—for its supposed euphoric effects that I absolutely NEVER experienced.

I’m currently on an experiment with Amantadine, which started life as an antiviral for treating and preventing influenza A and soon showed promise in treating movement disorders—both on the Parkinson’s and tardive-dyskenesia ends of the spectrum. Used to enhance dopamine release in the brain, it (of course) comes with a barrage of side effects I’m currently drowning in, most frustratingly insomnia and increased orthostatic hypotension, a tendency to get dizzy and nearly (or on rare occasions completeky) black out when I stand up. After putting me through some truly miserable ramping-up side effects, Amantadine initially showed some promise in controlling my shaking and wiggling. But I lately seem to be back where I started. So the jury’s still out on my future with the drug. 

One more thing: You may have seen the commercials for the prohibitively expensive tardive dyskenesia medications Ingrezza and Austedo … the commercials where they call tardive dyskenesia “TD” like it’s some cool brand of earphones or energy drink. Dear Ingrezza-makers Neurocrine Biosciences and Austedo-makers Teva Pharmaceuticals: I’ve had tardive dyskenesia for over a decade. I’ve been seeing psychiatrists and neurologists about it for over a decade. I’ve read everything I could read about it for over a decade. I’ve been on medications for it for over a decade. And NOBODY outside of medical publications and pharmacy websites calls it TD. STOP TRYING TO MAKE TD HAPPEN.

Mental Health Awareness Month: Psychotropics

Aside from being an objectively cool band name for people with mental illnesses, psychotropics is an umbrella term for the classes of drugs used to treat mental disorders and control moods, behaviors, thoughts or perceptions.

There are five categories (and multiple subcategories) of psychotropic medications: antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, stimulants, antipsychotics and mood stabilizers. And like many of my fellow mental-illness travelers, I’ve tried damn near all of them.

Here’s a brief rundown:

ANTIDEPRESSANTS, as you might surmise, are used to treat a range of depression symptoms. They include:

• Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which steadily increase the amount of serotonin in your brain. Serotonin is a powerful neurotransmitter that regulates things like mood, sleep, blood clotting and even bowel movements. (Aren’t you glad you know that last part?)
• Selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs), which gradually increase the amount of norepinephrine in your brain. Norepinephrine makes you feel awake and alert. After over a decade of trial and error, my doctor finally landed on the SNRI Fetzima as my magic bullet, and aside from a blackout-go-boom-get-concussion on the tile floor a few days after I started it, it’s been a complete game-changer for me.
• Bupropion, which promotes important brain activity and can be used to treat seasonal affective disorder (SAD) or to help people quit smoking.

Antidepressants come with a range of frustrating side effects, including drowsiness, insomnia (how fun to have both!), constipation (more poop stuff!), weight gain, sexual issues, tremors and dry mouth.


ANTI-ANXIETY MEDICATIONS are used to treat panic attacks, phobias, generalized anxiety, and various anxiety-related symptoms.

This class of psychotropics includes beta blockers that help treat the physical symptoms of anxiety, including increased heartbeat, nausea, sweating and trembling.

Because they typically cause drowsiness, some tranquilizers and sleep medications are also used to treat anxiety and insomnia. These tend to be prescribed for only a short time to prevent dependency.

These drugs’ side effects can include nausea, blurry vision, headaches, confusion, fatigue and graphic nightmares. And oh, have I had some doozy graphic nightmares on my find-the-right-psychotropics journey.


STIMULANTS help manage unorganized behavior by improving concentration and providing a general sense of calm. They’re often prescribed for people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Their most notable side effects include insomnia, decreased appetite and weight loss.


ANTIPSYCHOTICS help manage psychosis, which separates people’s perceptions from reality and drowns them in delusions or hallucinations.

Antipsychotics can help people with psychosis think more clearly, feel calmer, sleep better and communicate more effectively. They’re also used to treat ADHD, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and eating disorders.

Their side effects are primarily drowsiness, upset stomach, increased appetite and weight gain.


MOOD STABILIZERS help regulate extreme emotions. They may rob you of feeling the extreme excitement or extreme sadness that everyone experiences—which is my case—but they help manage massive bipolar swings and extreme mood swings, which is a tradeoff I’m happy to live with.

I regularly experience all their usual side effects: drowsiness, weight gain, dizziness, tremors, blurry vision and occasional confusion. I’m especially unhappy with the weight gain, but thanks to an effective mood stabilizer (in my case, the relatively common drug Lamotrigine) I can consistently and reliably participate in everyday living. Even though I have to have a damn Santa tummy to do it.


THE SIDE EFFECTS OF THESE MEDICATIONS can be powerful and overwhelming. There’s one set of side effects that present when you’re ramping up a dosage, there’s another set of side effects that come with daily use of a drug, and there’s another (often excruciating) set of side effects that come with weaning off a drug. Which is why I’ll never understand the mindset that some people get where they decide they feel fine and they’re just gonna stop taking their meds.

Mental Health Awareness Month: Mania

Mania (or being manic) is the opposite of depression in the up-and-down swings of bipolar disorder. It’s also the other half of the no-longer-used term manic depression, which was changed to bipolar disorder in the 1980 third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (or DSM) in the interest of reducing stigmas related to the words manic and depression.

Bipolar disorder is subdivided into bipolar I (which has more extreme swings in each direction) and bipolar II (which manifests with lower levels of mania—clinically called hypomania—and deeper depressions). I’m bipolar II.

Like depression, mania can manifest itself over different lengths of time in any number or combination of symptoms, including these:

• High, uncontrollable energy
• Extreme, rapid talkativeness
• Racing thoughts or flights of ideas
• Feelings of elation or euphoria
• Feelings of irritation or agitation
• High distractibility and inability to focus
• Decreased need for sleep while still feeling rested
• Inflated self-esteem or grandiosity
• Feeling full of great new ideas, important plans or exciting activities
• Involvement in risky activities—like extravagant shopping, improbable commercial schemes, recreational drugs, hypersexuality—with a high likelihood of negative consequences

Some bipolar people claim they like or actually love their manic episodes. I can understand that sentiment from the perspective of having a little more energy or euphoria, but I find that anything more than that can be terrifying. And exhausting.

It’s terrifying because I know from experience I’m prone to do impulsive things with no consequences alarms going off in my head. After more than a decade on the bipolar coaster, I’m finally self-aware enough that I know I’m doing (or at least reminding myself not to do) those impulsive things and I need to summon the alarms myself because they won’t go off on their own. Thankfully my impulsive behaviors tend to be rather benign and fixable, like buying shoes and clothing online. But there’s always the possibility I might escalate, and who knows what my impulsive brain could be capable of.

It’s also terrifying because my manic episodes often plummet directly into the deepest of my depressive episodes. Again: I’m finally self-aware enough to know that the depressive episodes are coming and I can do what little I’m able to do to prepare for them, like canceling plans and setting out Tylenol PM to help me hopefully sleep through the worst of them.

Everyone experiences mania and depression differently—to different degrees, for different lengths of time, at different intervals and even in different environmental conditions. Neither is better or easier than the other, and both in their own way can control or disrupt your life.

You’ll probably never encounter me in a depressive state because I become immediately reclusive. But if I’m talking rapidly and visibly distracted by everything and more jittery than normal, please do your best to keep me away from the Nordstrom website. I have a pretty hefty discount. 

Mental Health Awareness Month: Depression

Everyone can feel occasionally sad, lonely or unmotivated as a result of anything from grief to just having an off day. But when these feelings become exponential and overwhelming and prevent you from functioning, you could be suffering from clinical depression.

And there isn’t a single kind of depression. It’s diagnosed when you present any long-term combination of symptoms including feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness, trouble concentrating, insomnia, fatigue, loss of interest in pleasurable things, restlessness, suicidal ideation—and even physical symptoms including body aches, digestive problems and appetite loss. Depression symptoms also vary widely based on age, gender and personal circumstances.

There isn’t a single kind of treatment either; depression can be managed with any combination of psychotherapy, antidepressants, exercise, certain supplements (vitamin D and fish oil have noticeably increased the efficacy of my meds) and in extreme cases electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)—with focused attention paid to people expressing suicidal thoughts and reckless behaviors.

Depression can also present itself along with other clinical disorders including psychosis, bipolar disorder and seasonal affective disorder. In my case, I have both bipolar II disorder and major depressive disorder—which means my shutdowns are almost always epic: I collapse into a deep, deep hole of despondency, exhaustion, physical pain, dull panic, slurred speech, a metallic taste on my tongue, and a fog that feels like a hot, wet, suffocating blanket I can’t find a way out of. All I can do is sleep in a drenching sweat, lose all track of time and frequently wake up with the pain of an oncoming migraine that thankfully never fully manifests itself.

Plus I’m totally no fun at parties. :-)

On a personal note, I have serious issues with the word depression in itself. I know it’s impossible to find a word that succinctly encompasses all these symptoms, but colloquial English has appropriated depression to mean feeling kinda blah, and people also associate the word with low spots in the ground, dips in the road and economic slumps, so they tend to think that clinical depression is just sadness. And if we depressed people had a nickel for every time someone told us to cheer up or decide to be happy, we just might be rich enough to actually BE happy. I know people who say these things are often coming from a place of not understanding and of just trying to be helpful, but the word depression is exactly the reason they’re confused and ultimately unhelpful.

And on that note, if you know someone who’s depressed or struggling through a depressive episode and you want to help, just ask what you can do. Some of us want to be left alone, but some people may want you to sit quietly with them so they don’t feel alone … or bring them some ice water … or call 911 … or some people may genuinely want you to try to cheer them up.

This is way off-topic and completely unhelpful given most of what I’ve just said, but if the latter request is the case, I recommend you start with my all-time favorite joke:

What’s brown and sticky?

A stick.

Mental Health Awareness Month: Bipolar Disorder

I’m starting my series of essays with something I know on a cellular level: I was diagnosed bipolar II over a decade ago, and I’ve spent a lot of time since then trying to learn everything about the illness, how the medical community’s understanding of it is evolving, and how we all can work to manage it both day-to-day and long-term.

Bipolar disorder in general involves one- to two-week swings between two opposite poles of mood, energy, focus and function. The top pole is mania, which manifests itself with elation, irritability, energized behavior and lack of impulse control. People in manic episodes experience racing thoughts; an inability to focus or stay physically still; and delusions and hallucinations that can inspire irrational or risky behaviors including gambling, sexual activity and drug use without regard for what can be catastrophic consequences. The bottom pole is depression, which manifests itself with hopelessness, indifference and despondency. People in depressive episodes experience extreme sadness; suicidal ideation and attempts; and difficulty functioning, thinking or experiencing pleasure (which is called anhedonia).

There are three types of bipolar disorder. Bipolar I Disorder involves swings between both poles—sometimes both at once—that are so severe they can require hospitalization. Bipolar II Disorder—sometimes called bipolar depression—involves mild manic episodes (called hypomania) and often more profound depressive episodes. Cyclothymic Disorder, which isn’t as common, involves hypomanic and depressive episodes that last at least two years.

As I’ve said, I’m bipolar II, where my hypomanic episodes involve restlessness, fast (well, faster than normal) talking and thinking, and buying shoes online that I don’t need. I usually post these purchases on here to broadcast that 1) I bought awesome new shoes and 2) I’m currently hypomanic off my ass. My depressive episodes are soul-crushing in their extremity. I can’t think, I struggle to breathe, my vision is blurred, I feel like I’m wrapped in a wet wool blanket that I can’t kick my way out of, I sometimes have visual or aural hallucinations (including seeing people in black clothing lunging at me and hearing stupid, irritating circus music coming from another room), and I often contemplate suicide but I have no energy or initiative to carry it out … I generally feel like everything is completely hopeless and I just want to have never existed. And when I emerge from these episodes I’m exhausted to my core.

Bipolar disorders can be managed with psychotherapy (talking with a therapist), psychiatry (drug therapies) or a combination of both. I’ve never found much benefit from my visits with various psychologists, but I’m a HUGE believer in better living through chemistry. Psych meds (which are awesomely called psychotropics) affect me strongly, for better or worse. They involve a lot of trial and error, but I’ve been highly functional for the last six years after finally finding a magic cocktail of three psychotropics (there’s that cool word again).

I do want to stress, though, that what works for me is indicative only of what works for ME. If you’re living with a mental illness, don’t abandon a combination of therapies that might be working for you just because someone else is thriving on a different combination of therapies. And for God’s sake, ALWAYS TAKE YOUR MEDS.

Bipolar disorders were classified as manic depression through most of the 1900s. In 1980, the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (called DSM-III), officially changed the classification to bipolar disorder to reflect a wider range of nuance and understanding of the disease. This paragraph is a broad generalization of the naming history, but I wanted to explain that manic depression and bipolar disorder are essentially the same thing.

There is a lot more I could discuss here, but I want to keep these essays short(er than this one) and digestible for anyone who cares to read them. Feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested, and I hope to have another short(er than this one) essay posted soon. Stay healthy!

Books: Dear Edward

“Don’t read Dear Edward on a plane!” a friend warned me. But I’d packed four books for my weeklong trip to Colombia and I’d finished the other three by the time we headed to the airport to go home. So I opened it once I’d checked in and gone through security … and I put it down reluctantly only when I had to.

People who know me know I lost my friend Miriam Wolfe in the 1988 bombing of the commercial airliner Pan Am flight 103. And once I’d processed and accepted her death, I discovered I’m not at all afraid to fly. So reading this entire book in one day as I flew across political borders and a massive body of water and changed planes in a cavernous international airport was concerning only in the fact that I occasionally had to stop to tend to other things on my journey.

I’m saying all of this—if you didn’t already know—because Dear Edward is about a massive commercial plane crash and the recovery journey of its sole survivor, a young boy. And if you can compartmentalize the occurrence of the crash—which author Ann Napolitano describes in almost abstract, clinical imagery because the horror and destruction are obviously part of the narrative but absolutely far from the point—you’ll find a beautifully emotional story about Edward Adler (the young survivor), his extended family, his community and literally the entire country sharing common journeys of grief, healing, support, understanding, magnanimity and ultimately joy.

Napolitano crafts the story in two alternating narratives: the interactions of the passengers and crew before and during the flight, and the interactions of Edward and his slowly expanding world in the days, months and years after the crash.

It’s a smart, effective structure for introducing readers to a number of passengers in small bits of narrative that are memorable and emotionally engaging without being overwhelming. And it works equally well for narrating the early weeks and months of Edward’s recovery, letting readers break through his fogs and reach his new understandings alongside him.

Napolitano has a gift for creating characters both on and off the plane who are archetypal enough to be recognizable and distinctive enough to be singular and memorable. An overwhelmed mother, a lecherous tech bro, a stoic soldier, a delusional romantic, a protective single parent … Napolitano introduces you to these familiar people in small bites and dappled brush strokes and gives them just enough unexpected backstory that you gradually come to know and care for them and become invested in the futures you know—and sometimes don’t know—they have.

And then there’s Edward. He’s a somewhat reserved pre-teen whose entire world is taken from him in an instant … right at the age when he’s already emotionally scattered and filled with insecurities, wonders and growing self-awareness. In lesser hands he could just come off as a mess, but Napolitano takes his hand and ours and walks us together through his anguish and sullenness and anger and hopelessness and discoveries of comfort—along with the misfirings in his pubescent brain—in ways that make him understandable, believable and sympathetic, even through his occasional unwise decisions and hostile behaviors.

Perhaps the most impressive accomplishment of this novel is its thorough plausibility. It could easily drift into the mists of mysticism and magical thinking, but it stays true to the known world from its biggest plot points to the smallest gestures from the periphery characters.

As I’ve shared book recommendations with people, many have praised everything about Dear Edward and a few have said they could never read something so horrifying and heartbreaking. So Dear Edward might not be for you.

But if you’re even slightly intrigued—and if you’ve noticed that I read the entire novel in one day that included two long flights—I think you’ll be as enamored with it, its humanity, its imperfect emotions, its journeys of discovery and love, and its dogged young protagonist as I am.