Photography by my grandmother, Margaret (Peggy) Lombardo
Sometimes when you’re feeling stressed, angry, and down, that’s when you have to push yourself and get to work. Make those feelings worth it.
Here’s where I’ve been. A few years ago, coming through the pandemic, I had a series of serious health issues. At the moment, I’m fine; in fact, better than ever, despite needing to knock off fifteen pounds soon and stretch more, but I’m as sturdy as ever from jobs, and I feel in many ways like when I was twenty, minus the elasticity.
I remember watching my two-year-old through the pandemic… and I’m feeling a bit of writer’s block right at this moment, so I have to stop myself and let the wave pass… my body doesn’t want to talk about this.
I’ve always appeared supernaturally calm on the outside to everyone, but I realize now that’s always been a mask covering my sensitivity and the heightened strength of my emotions. I learned long ago they were weird. Yet my calm demeanor is also real, because it keeps those emotions at bay. If I let them out too often, my nerves become unbearable.
My anxiety got so high at this point that I asked my psychiatrist for an SSRI, in this case, the generic version of Lexapro. Two weeks of adjustment and depression later — I now have a heightened respect for depression, not that I didn’t before — and the effects were glorious, life-changing, transformative.
It’s here that I really started suspecting something else about myself. Lexapro lessened the crushing circumstantial anxiety, for the most part, which was perhaps most important. But I felt less ‘anxiety’ in other ways too that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Lexapro can also cause hypomania. I’ve witnessed mania closely in my early 20s when I spent six months as the primary caretaker for a family member going through a severe episode. I’ve also seen it in my father. I typically have a very optimistic ‘half-full’ sensibility, but it never ventured much into true mania. My stress typically manifests itself physically instead.
But for the first time, I felt light mania myself. I did recognize it, as I’ve worried about getting it throughout my life, but perhaps I thought it was lighter than it was for a while. My mind was all there, but that underlying sensitivity felt so much less burdensome. I felt suddenly in a rush, and for good reason, because it helped me figure out how much I had to do.
I defined myself in my youth as an introvert, although I loved being around people. I just became overwhelmed in most social situations, despite constantly being attracted to them. I pushed through those forces gradually into adulthood, but it was difficult and remained difficult. With this newfound freedom and energy, I tested the new boundaries of where I could go and how I could act without this ‘anxiety.’ I realized it was time to finally figure things out.
I’d been slowly exploring and researching this book idea for probably twenty years. But I knew it wasn’t something I could do without living a bit. With the health problems, the anger and stress through the pandemic, and entering my 40s, I became frightened that I’d never finish the one thing I most wanted to do artistically. And with that fear, the trauma, and the realization of the gargantuan task it would be, I started intensely putting together my life’s work into a few different intertwining forms. And I’m nearly finished.
Lexapro also gave me the tools to feel again, if that makes sense. I didn’t have to suppress or hide those overwhelming feelings. I started to bring them to the surface, to write about them in this book, to process them, and to throw them away. The healing and the happiness have been profound, although there’s still a lot to figure out. Through that work, the stress further melted away, and the mania eventually disappeared.
This is the crux of the book, although it’s about a ton of things: analyzing my city, country, culture, external forces, art, you name it. It’s a maximalist book that attempts not to define, but to show how my mind works by removing the external forces to see what remains. And I also spent significant time researching creative figures throughout recent history who display similar symptoms to what I was going through.
In the end, after obsessive study from the artistic end, I figured out that I was on the spectrum, to a significant degree. I’ll state it plainly; I am autistic. And if your instinct is to tell me you don’t agree, check yourself. I survived it in school because most high-achieving, extroverted autistic kids in my youth were missed by the system (as were so many women). But I was significantly debilitated in school from the constraining effects of the educational surroundings, the social environment, and what was expected of me under adverse circumstances.
I could not sit still. I’ve always been a self-learner. Throw me in a quiet room and I’ll read forever, but put me in a class — put me in my kid’s classroom for Parents As Learning Partners — and within five minutes, my leg starts twitching and I feel an existential dread, retreating to safety within the dopamine of my brain.
When the external forces get too extreme, I retreat into my mind. I saw a random psychiatrist interview this year, and while you never know who online is a kook these days, they explained that they believed ADD was related to the brain’s way of dealing with stress. While I don’t know if I believe that’s the full and simple story, the general idea hit me like a ton of bricks. You put me in the safety and comfort of my room with a computer, and my focus and stamina are unmatched; I’ll put it up against anyone. You put me out into the stressors of the world — the stimuli, the forces surrounding me, the neurotypical tasks required of me — and I need to retreat into my brain and tune out my surroundings to push through and survive.
And I believe this helped my creativity thrive, to be honest. When you spend so much time in your head protecting yourself, you start to build some broad pathways. You balance the horror of the classroom with the dopamine from thinking about fun things.
I can only imagine the disability of those who feel these forces stronger than me, or the exponential trouble dealt with by introverts at the same level of these sensitivities.
Next week, I’m starting an eight-session process of being officially tested with a researcher. I started reading deeply about the disorder a few months ago, but I have a long way to go.
It feels harsh when you look into people’s eyes and see that they don’t quite believe you. For me, it’s been friends, family (including friends and family who are psychiatrists and teachers), and how surely some disagree and state their opinions of me before even listening or asking questions. I have begun to state my autism matter-of-factly to test the reactions of others, which has been a fascinating experiment. It’s quite fun yet also slightly depressing to experience these reactions.
But then you realize it’s not their fault. How could they possibly see it when you’ve become so good at masking? You realize it’s on you to describe, to try to describe, how you’re truly feeling. It’s true of any artist. The core of art is the process of understanding and healing yourself, but at the same time, there is always the aspect of wanting others to understand you. I want you to understand the part of me that feels forced to conform in a way that’s not natural, and has never been natural to me and so many others. My body has significant difficulty doing so many things that are so easy for others. There is such an internal conflict realizing that you can be so smart in some ways and yet your brain doesn’t work well in others. It’s why I never felt smart growing up, when I could barely pay attention in school and sucked at so many things others were good at (while significantly excelling at a very specific grouping of things).
It’s unfortunate but true that you have to fight for every inch to be seen in a world where everyone has their problems, and where the brain and human nature are still so poorly understood. I think that’s been what I’ve been working on all these years through my photography, my writing, and my study of history and art.
Anyway, the reason I’ve been quiet is not just the finishing of this book, which has grown to 1,000 pages (I’ll very possibly split it in two). I have a section on Freud and the conclusion, which is about autism, to be fully finished and edited. In these last five years, I started a barrage of new things. I pieced together Hype, the long-term neighborhood history/photography book which simultaneously indirectly studies cultural mania, as well as a photography book that is a pair to this double-length written book. I also started a salon (which I’ll be bringing my attention back simultaneously with this column), began a photography interview series with Session Press and Dashwood, built up my event business to be one of the top in the city with the portrait side coming along nicely, ventured into offering video, and also used this time to reconnect with old friends who I lost touch with when I got my ass kicked in my 20s.
I streamlined my entire technology system and got my business and marketing humming, especially on the higher end of income, so I can be overall more efficient. People’s eyes always gloss over when I try to talk about the business side of this world, but I find it fascinating, so I’ll do a post in the future about it.
Lastly, I created this incredible business system in Claude Cowork, which I’ll talk about at some point. I now use it to format this newsletter, keep up with and help quickly populate the gallery map, and find general, regular news and topics that I need, so I can write here easily and efficiently. Through this process, I cut the start-to-finish time in half.
I’ve been intensely practicing my writing and doing significant research, about a book a week for the last couple years. While I still have much to finish over the rest of the year so I can be fully present here, it’s a minor amount compared to what’s been done. I have the final to-do list fully mapped out. And I’ll be coming back full-time both here and in the Salon in early September. This time, for real.
I’ve been feeling a block this year for writing this column, practically because I didn’t have any creative energy left. But also, I think the previous round of newsletter energy was just testing things before I committed. In the background, I’ve built up everything needed to now fully commit, both to writing here and hopefully for some interesting outlets.
I feel much better after finally writing this. Anyway, these are the plans. Happy summer and more in Sept!
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