Nov. 2024: Seasons of change

A — mocktail 😊 — of hope and despair

Dear friends,

I know it’s already the fourth day of December — I was waiting for my submission to the citizen trans* {project} to be published so that I could share it here. It’s a hopeful post-election reflection, based on an intriguing conversation I had with a MAGA Republican when I was canvassing. You can read my essay, “The Magic In Life: A Trans Prophecy,” on the website of new words {press}.

I have been feeling more despair than hope, really, after the election, but I can only seem to write about hope. It’s a pattern for me in my creative life: some people write their blues into cathartic song, but when I’m feeling blue, I more likely can’t write at all. Perhaps I am influenced by my mother. She only likes pretty songs and happy endings. She asks me why my compositions are frequently so weird. Why don’t you write a pretty tune in a popular style? I mean, I can, but I won’t just because you told me to.

Indeed, I did write a folksy song in response to the election as well. It’s about the seasons of social movements and how not every moment is going to feel like success, but every moment has a purpose in the cycle of action and reflection. You can listen to me sing “Harvest Song” in this Instagram Reel.

(Actually, I have a few folksy songs that I need to make good recordings of. Stay tuned.)

But to attempt to address the despair. I have been quite dysregulated in the past month. Nothing too serious, however. I just feel like I want to hibernate sometimes. I spent way too much time staring at screens in the past week, trying to escape the stress of Thanksgiving week, which probably caused me to have a migraine. I haven’t really been ruminating on my anxieties, but rather they’re just festering in my body. During last night’s choir rehearsal, I had a full-on panic attack, which is rare for me, so clearly my nervous system is overburdened.

I feel so scared for myself in the world. The cruel thing is that my parents are scared for me, too, but for totally different reasons. They emphasize that I look like a delicate teenage girl. I do! There’s no denying that. Being East Asian only makes it worse. But there is also so much beyond how I seem, that they don’t realize makes me vulnerable in a world that increasingly is hostile to people who are different. I need to update my passport — because I never updated that since changing my legal name — and my drivers license — because I chose an X gender marker when I changed my name and now I feel that switching it back to F would be safer for multiple reasons¹.

I just got a medical ID bracelet that states that I am autistic and am prone to overwhelm, so that next time I have a shutdown in public, I can quickly show people the bracelet to try to prevent them from distressing me further even if my verbal communication is impaired. I already have a note on my phone explaining my shutdown symptoms in case anyone has doubts that my physical symptoms are actually due to overwhelm. Just trying to do everything I can to keep myself safe. I’d encourage others to carefully consider what steps they should take to protect themselves.

Other things regarding my mental health:

I tried an ADHD stimulant for one day and discovered that it was intolerable. During the daytime I was mostly fine, with some subtle changes to my focus, but then at night, twelve hours after I took the pill, I became extremely physically energetic. I had to run back and forth in the hallway or else feel like my heart was about to jump out of my chest. I started speaking quickly, similar to how I might in some (though not all) manic states. But this felt very different from mania, as my mind felt utterly blank. It felt like I could be made to do a very repetitive job and not be bored and just be an automaton. I had extreme focus, but I had no joy in my focus. This felt like an utter contradiction in my psyche, as I usually experience a strong correlation between mental and physical energy — I can frequently be seen jumping and pacing all around when I’m full of ideas. It was such an alien state for me as to be almost painful. Given that I had taken the lowest dose possible, this medication was clearly not the right choice for me. I don’t know if I will try any others — most likely not another stimulant.

I have been attending Pilates classes for about three months, but now I am quitting because I’ve been having some degree of shutdown in almost every class. Sometimes it’s minor and lasts only a couple of minutes, which is manageable. But often the instructor or other people notice that something is wrong and start worrying about me, and that has become disruptive to the class. I took a class last week and had a severe shutdown that was exacerbated by the instructor and another participant stressing me out by trying to make eye contact with me and touching me in a “caring” way. I became totally nonverbal and was terrified because class had completely stopped and the folks were trying to figure out what to do with me and seemed to believe that this was a medical emergency. Luckily, I got them to give me my phone, and I showed them the note about shutdowns, so they let me be and I was then able to text my mother to have her drive me home.

I think possibly the Pilates class environment is overstimulating for me. I also may be dealing with some sort of psychosomatic tension in my body, which I’ll explore in therapy. But I’ve been having more shutdowns in the past three to four months in general, not just in Pilates class. I am getting frustrated and a little desperate for a solution. I am terrified of having a shutdown in public and someone calling 911 on me (which has happened once), thus forcing me to interact with paramedics or even the police. I am worried that paramedics might believe I am having a mental crisis and send me to the ER, and the police might respond insensitively or even violently. I also just don’t know how people will react to me even if I disclose that I’m autistic: will they doubt it? Might they underestimate my intelligence or assume I cannot make my own decisions? I just don’t fit the usual stereotype, despite my autistic friends considering it obvious that I’m autistic.

If you have any suggestions for managing or preventing shutdowns or any useful resources about this, please send them over. I probably have said that multiple times already, but I really need to figure out how to keep myself safe. I’m also a little scared that this apparent worsening of my autistic traits might actually be a prodrome to psychosis, given that autism and the negative symptoms of psychosis have high overlap. There’s not really clear evidence of this being the case — psychosis prodrome cannot be diagnosed until after the fact — but I do know one thing: at age 15, I noticed clear signs of my becoming more sensitive and intense. I had already suspected in middle school that I might be more prone to bipolar than unipolar depression. I realized that my intensity wasn’t a problem then, but I felt a sense of foreboding for my future. With every new level of intensity, the question arose: when will be the peak?

At least I have a good support system now. If I fall, there will be people to help me up.

Good News

The Pennsylvania Youth Chorale, which I accompany, will be performing a Winter Concert on Sunday, December 21st. It will be at Saint Luke’s Catholic Church in Glenside, PA at 2 pm. The theme of the concert is “I Believe,” and there will be mix of secular and holiday-themed works. Tickets can be purchased at the door for $15 each.

Last month, I performed on keyboard at the Christmas Village hosted by the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Bryn Mawr, PA! It was really fun.

I also played a short piano improvisation as part of Citizen University’s post-election virtual Civic Saturday. In the previous monthly Update, I wrote that I was invited to have one of my ensemble compositions featured; this was the first of two miscommunications to me, the second being that I was invited to perform a “song.” Being additionally a vocalist, I interpreted that ask as an invitation to write an original vocal song and perform it in the event. But turns out they just wanted an instrumental “song” as background music for when people were entering the Zoom call. Which was fine for me. But this is the real reason why I ended up writing “Harvest Song.”

Post Roundup

This post contains the autobiographical essay that I had to write as part of the admissions process for the grad program I’m starting in January:

This is yet another post-election reflection that harkens back to when I attended a civic leadership program in high school:

Featured Creator

This month’s featured creator is Jen Elam!

Dr Jennifer Elam is the published author of 8 books, a psychologist, dancer and artist. Arts and spirituality have been her passion and ministry for 25 years. Her latest book is a personal narrative of using co-creativity to re-vision grief/trauma; she facilitates workshops on that topic. Dr Elam was a Quaker for over 30 years and is now an Interfaith Leader who has traveled to 35 countries studying various cultures and faiths. Her prayer is that her work will continue to bless God, herself and others for many years to come.

Website: http://jenelam.com/

A Contemplative Offering

Many people voted — or chose not to vote — in the recent U.S. election based on a desire for change. Eric Liu, CEO and co-founder of Citizen University, pointed out at the post-election Civic Saturday that there is a substantial number of people whose voting patterns in the presidential elections since 2012 were the following: Obama in 2012, Trump in 2016, Biden in 2020, and Trump in 2024. These people clearly desire change with new administrations, even if the change they envision does not align with a particular leader.

How do we connect from a desire for change when the changes we envision are different from one another?

Might there be a sense in which the changes we all want are actually the same, even if the concepts or language are different?

Harmony, health, and happiness,

Margin | 天涯

1. The question of whether people should keep or adopt X gender markers given the incoming administration is controversial. Others may choose differently from me given their own circumstances. My choice is informed by knowing that I may need to use my passport to travel to China, and China does not recognize nonbinary genders, and I think it would be best for the gender on my driver’s license to match my passport.