I learned a couple of new, yet suspected, traits about myself this weekend.

After months of (almost always) blissfulness with my boyfriend,

of him doing absolutely everything he could for me,

of him never saying no, of him putting me

in the absolute center of his

world-- I betrayed 

him.

I think.

I haven't seen my friends in weeks, I've been so busy with school and work and homelife, that I haven't wanted to go out. I've kept in touch over text, but vaguely. I am happy with my writing and my boyfriend and my coworkers and my dog. I realized while I was in New York, that besides the champagne at my cousin's wedding, I hadn't drank in three weeks. Up until yesterday, I hadn't been drunk for almost five weeks. That is by far the longest I have ever gone without getting drunk since before my fifteenth birthday. I love alcohol. And I hate alcohol. I've had this vicious, toxic relationship with alcohol for so many years it has become the norm for me. It's ruined so much for me. I've made so many mistakes, burned so many bridges. I've had probably between 15-20 jobs in my life, I can't use any of them (except for my current one) for a recommendation. And 99.9% of the reasons are alcohol related. I received a DUI when I was 17. It was the day after I had received an MIC. And seven more of those before I turned 18. I still don't have my license, because when I had an interlock I failed it too often.  June 2008: As of recently, I had begun to earn back my father's trust. I had a smart boyfriend who was a good influence, I had worked as a hostess at hooters for almost a year, I had started going to the gym, and limited my partying to only on the weekends (every weekend...) I remember that my boyfriend at the time, Matt, once said "you're the perfect girlfriend Mon-Thurs, it's just when the weekends come you change." He was right. I remember the first time I cheated on him, I was at his next door neighbor's house, Claire, and I was with this asshole that I've known since I was a kid, Brent. I vaguely remember it happening, but before intercourse happened my conscious caught up with me, and I pushed him away. I felt so guilty. He was just next door, loving me for all I was. I was blacked out, and I never even told him the truth. He suspected it for years, and we would grow close again in college, frequently the library together. He even took care of me when I was sick, and provided me with junk food and killer weed and movies we both loved. He knew not to lay a hand on me when I slept by his side that night. He wanted to though, he never got over me. I was the bitch who used up and threw away innocent Matt McQueary. I was the one who made him by a new car, embarrassed by his Saturn, before I would date him. I got drunk and met Mitch, a tattooed party-er and told him how Matt was so mean to me and bought me diet pills. I had asked him to buy the diet pills for my birthday present. He had teased my about my weight, but it was harmless, he was infatuated with me. I met Mitch and we drank every night and I blacked out every night and my dad had no idea. hI received my MIC the night my dad was leaving for a trip. It was the first time he had ever trusted me when the house, and the car, while he was away. It was the first time he didn't lock the extra bolts, placed there to keep me from sneaking out at night. He told me, that night I received my MIC, "Lauren, don't fuck this up. I'm giving you a chance."  And then I bought lingerie and drove to Mitch's with a girl who is now a pornstar, and we got fabulously drunk just like every other night. And then the cops came. I freaked out, I went to my car. I sat there for a while, nervous and drunk and chainsmoking. And then I decided to get a fucking ice cream from jack in the box and drove without my lights and got pulled over immediately and refused to blow so then they took blood and I pretended I was phobic of needles and I cried and cried. My BAC was 1.64, double the legal limit. I wasn't my first time in jail. My dad was called and turned around while on his way to California and I never drove that car again.

All of the incompletes I've received in school, all of the ruined friendships, ruined relationships, lost jobs, my $1000 warrant because of an MIC two years ago, the lost shoes and clothes, my virginity, my dignity, my very little money, I can't imagine how many brain cells...

Gone all because of alcohol.

And then I was going to talk about my second newly learned trait: my preoccupation with death. But then I realized, that it too is a result of alcohol. Nothing seems more lovely than death after a night of drinking and hurting people you love, your stomach heavy with guilt and your eyes heavy with tears. Death seems blissful. And it's this attitude toward death, this attitude I've had for years, that I am simply not afraid of death, that has been reinforcing my habits with alcohol. I'll sit on a plane, and imagine it burning up in flames, and I'll think--"I'm not scared. How easy death seems-- all of my problems will go away." And then  I'll order a bloody-mary and chug. 

My grandma and papa were alcoholics, and so were three of five of my mother's siblings. One is dead from it--literally drank himself to death, his body was found days after he actually died, I remember the phone call-- my mother and I were at Micheal's and all the sudden she stopped and left the cart and walked to the car and she cried. The other is nearly dead from it --60+ and never lived on his own, missing a foot with skin cancer and over 10 DUIs-- my cousins and I would blow in his interlock for him as children, hehas lived in my papa's trailer for 25+ years, and the other drinks every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, the days he isn't working at the local shop. He'll buy his beer and sit in his double wide and listen to The Beatles and Elton John and talk about how Elton's the only faggot he'll ever love and he grab my face and tell me I look like my mother and that I'm so beautiful and I'll feel uncomfortable. 

It my genes. Just like this wonderful illness that my mother's crazy southern family gave me, I am bipolar comorbid with alcoholism. It's all because of alcohol. I can't call it self medicating anymore because I am medicated. I hate it and don't want it and I'm going to do everything I can to get rid of it. The worst part is-- I can't even remember what I actually did. I have one glimpse retained in my memory, looking at Lacey's face. I don't remember anything else and we fought about it, about alcohol, and he never even doubted me. He trusted me. He was only mad about the alcohol, about me not sleeping at home. And it keeps replaying in my mind over and over again and it's not telling me anything and it's driving me crazy. But I can't tell him my suspicions, he'll never forgive me. I guess I will I never know and he will never know and I hope that ignorance is somehow bliss.

And I'm going to stop fucking drinking. 

We write to taste life twice.

This past week, Piper held one of it's largest events this year. As part of our Distinguished Visiting Writer's Series, Amy Tan visited the house on October 17th. We had been preparing for this since I was hired in May. Before I left for New York, on October 8th, I had to gather all of the different materials that we were going to need for the event. The day I returned back to work, October 16th, it was chaos. I had dozens upon dozens of emails, from the general email, from my work account, from my personal/work/school account. I had a handful of new Piper Friends, that needed to be added to the database and sent a care package. I had RSVP's and questions about the event. I had upset Piper Friends, who wanted to bring their husbands but didn't want to pay for a Piper Friend membership for them. I had new Your Novel Year Applicants, workshop registrees, and cancelations. 

I was instructed not to answer any of them. Unless it was absolutely urgent, I was to focus on nothing but Amy Tan. 

In her contract, she makes it clear that she brings her dog Bobo with her everywhere. In the car, on stage, on the airplane in first class. It also says that portobello mushrooms are not allowed to be served, or in sight, while she is visiting. I had picked up Joy Luck Club a few months ago, intrigued but with a bad taste in my mouth (I don't know why though...), and read the first couple of chapters before throwing it aside. With how much I have to read for school, it is very rare that I actually find time to read for pleasure -- although much of my reading for school is pleasurable. Amy Tan didn't make the cut.

I was intimidated to say the least. My co-worker Mollie was interviewing her, and as they finished up I introduced myself. Her hands were fragile, and she only briefly looked up at me. I then had to escort her to an MFA workshop she was hosting, a Q&A, and I was instructed to ask questions whenever there was an awkward moment of silence. As I walked with her, and our event coordinator Gwen, to our neighboring building, Old Main, neither of them made eye contact with me once and continued their conversation without inviting me.

Okay, well this is awkward.

And then finally, as we are on the last steps of the grandiose, late 1800's staircase, she makes eye contact. It's like the popular girls told me I can sit with them. She is speaking of her editor, calling her "miraculous" and referring to her own work as horrendous. She says that she needs her editor, that otherwise she feels naked.

I know exactly how she feels.

I feel so naked when I write. I feel like it's another part of me--one that few people know. Even my dad always comments, "you write so well. It is nothing how you talk." I talk too fast, and usually before I have the chance to think about what I am saying. Many have said that I have "no filter." I come across ditsy and bubbly and not quite sure what she's talking about. I hide things, I lie. I exaggerate and make up facts.

When I write, I know what I am talking about. I'll edit and re-edit, add in and then take out words, obsess over how each word rolls off your tongue, and rearrange my sentences no short of a million times. Everything I say, I mean with the uttermost of meaning. I can perfect the truth and make it worthy and reliable. I can submerse myself in the facts of a story or person or time or place until I have seen it from all angles, and am confident in my interpretation of the event. It is a me as me gets.

And that's why I get nervous. I think it is too me, that I am narcissistic, that I think I'm better than I really am. I think back to earlier pieces I wrote, how I thought they were so perfect at the time, and how childish they would grow to be. I think, Of course my dad gives me all of those compliments-- he doesn't know anything about the literary world. He will say: "Lauren, your talent is so special. You are going places." And it will be the nicest thing he's ever said, and I will be unsure of how much truth it holds. 

I've wanted to show the writer me for quite sometime now. I'm bursting at the seams, and she's intent on coming out. I'll leak a few poems on a food blog, I'll submit a story to a writing contest, letting bits of her drip out onto the me that everyone sees, tweaking the image that everyone knows so well. I'll post on facebook and ask for editors for a story, and I'll always get good replies. I'm known well, simply as Lauren Rice. I have too many friends than I know what to do with, and quite the list of enemies too. I am known as beautiful, as a drunk, as nice, as funny, sometimes as a slut, sometimes as a prude, as the girl who can write A papers for $20 a page, as a smoker, as a student, as an old friend. I am known for a million and one reasons, yet very few know me as a writer. And I tell myself that it will come with time-- that I'll get into my capstone classes with ease, and find a good graduate program. I tell myself that with all the studying that I do, and plan to continue doing, on writing, will have a benefit. I will be a good writer, I'll have to be. 

But it could all get fucked up so easily too. What if I don't get into my capstone? Just switch my major? Switch my dream? And I'm afraid that if I label myself as a writer, and then my plans don't follow through, that I'll be labeled as a failed writer. Simply, I'm afraid to expose this side of me in fear of rejection, just like most writers. And I want that editor, to blanket my words and soften the edges, to make it good and tell me it's beautiful and it's going to be published.

But in this era, social media is everything. All I would really have to do is give my stories some exposure and I would be sure to find lovers and haters. I have those who love me, and those who hate me. I assume it would go the same for my stories. But it means that I don't have that in-between person, and that I'm posting them naked to the real mean world. And I'm scared they won't be as good as I think they are.

And then I sat with Amy Tan through the Q&A workshop. I took notes and below are some of them:

• Who cares what people think--"I have to write what I need to write"
• The images in the story can be the most powerful pieces
• Images begin in childhood-- -nightmares, hallucinations
• You see things different as a child
• The world is mine, and everything in this world is a creation of my mind. Once I die, the entire world in my head dies too. That's why I have to write.
• An author is public, a writer is private
• "Pain is not a feeling, it's a place, a very lonely place"

She got to me. She tugged at the strings of my heart, and made me feel something inside. Everything she said confirmed my dreams are plausible. She spoke my thoughts, and made me feel that special thing that you can only feel when admiring other writers. It like how they say to "read like a writer." I had been doing that my entire life-- making notes of passages, scrambling to find a highlighter to highlight a piece of dialogue. I've been acting like a writer for nearly my entire life too. I had kept a journal until my late teens, which are all neatly tucked into my bookshelf. I have at least a hundred unnamed, random documents that I typed through ferocious tears or in the middle of the night while manic. I have notebooks upon notebooks with scrambled messages on most of the pages. I write on everything I can find. And I understood everything she said about writing, I kept nodding my head and trying to keep myself from asking (or commenting) a million things.

I guess you could say my fire was running on low fuel, and she just ignited the fire a bit more. And this was before, her hilarious, heartfelt, and interesting talk at The Tempe Center for the Arts. Which made me one of her biggest fans from this day forward.

Thank you Amy Tan. I'll definitely be picking up a copy of The Valley of Amazement this November.

Below is the quote I told her after the Q&A.

This past week I have been in New York with my father and brother, visiting my father's brother's family. His name is Uncle Alan, he is married to Barbara, and he has two daughters, Mandie and Steph. Mandie is getting married tomorrow, and we came for the wedding. 

The last time I visited this side of my family was when I was fifteen. I had a few very troubled years from the time I was fifteen until, well to be honest, this past year.

My mom was dying, my dad was a jerk, and I was a rebelling teen. My dad had sent me to New York the December before my mother died, when I was fifteen. He had sent me there for three weeks as a form of punishment. My family in New York are orthodox Jews and they live in a kosher home. It was a miserable time, and all I wanted was to be back home with my friends and my mom.

In the time since I had last visited, I have kept in contact with my family, but only vaguely over facebook. They are all teachers and therapists. My dad does not believe that I am actually bipolar. He disagrees with the fact that I take medicine to manage it, and nearly every time I mention my meds he says something along the lines of "I'd really like to have a discussion with your doctor", in a negative and doubtful tone. He has also hidden my diagnosis from my family. 

When I spoke of my bipolar today in the car, and explained to them the horrible depression I went through, the mood swings, the fights with family and friends, and the lack of a bright future, it clearly adds up to a correct diagnosis. 

I am still in shock that I got through it all. I really, truly believed that I was never going to be able to live a normal life. Nearly everyday I would write down in my journal that I felt like I was losing my mind. That I knew I was never going to stop having all of these problems. Mainly, that I wanted to die. I didn't want to kill myself, but I wanted to die. I would take the bus to school, praying and hoping for a car accident. I just wanted something to happen so that I wouldn't feel that way anymore.

Ten months later, something happened. I got on medication, I regularly saw my doctor, I got a job that I love, a boyfriend that I love (and that loves me), and I couldn't be happier with my life now. It seems so clear--- I am better, and I was sick.

Ironically, my dad thinks that my bipolar diagnosis is "all in my head", which, it is. But it's not something I gave myself... it's just there. 

Saying my story out loud to my family just confirms how well I am doing... and I'm so happy.

And they are happy for me too.

I have such a bright future, and it's because of the meds and the doctors and my boyfriend (who my dad also hates, once when Waleed left for Texas my dad asked me if I was sure he wasn't a terrorist-- like really Dad?)

and it's working!

Oh, and on an even brighter note-- I just found out that my work is sending me to AWP in Seattle, in February, to represent Piper!

Obamacare

I would like to dedicate this post to our current situation, the government shutdown.

This is for two reasons:

1) I really haven't had any problems with my bipolar lately. I haven't had any symptoms, and I truly believe it is because I am on the right medicine for me. I started seeing a psychologist-in-training. It's this great program through ASU, and I get to see a student earning their graduate or doctorate in psychology, once a week for an hour, for $20 a semester. The session is recorded on a camera in the room and they are graded by our sessions at the end of the semester. When I had my first appointment this past Monday, he asked me why I had signed up for counseling. I told him I was bipolar, that I had done a lot of research and know psychiatry plus talk therapy usually leads to the best results. I told him that I had felt good lately though, and that there were no pressing issues. He applauded me for coming in, and I told him I was sure issues would arise. I can't believe things are so... normal :)

2) The whole reason that I have been restrained to using only mental health resources through ASU, is because my father's insurance doesn't cover mental health, and over the past year I've found a lot of loopholes enabling me to find the least expensive services. I didn't have health care for a while after I had turned 18. My dad had taken me off his and it was at a time I had really needed it. I was in an abusive, toxic relationship. I wound up pregnant, 18, broke, and being evicted from my apartment. I applied for access, Arizona's health insurance. They didn't cover abortion. I had done ecstasy twice before I had found out I was pregnant. The day I had taken the test, my friend Kasey drove me to his house. He started screaming and told her to leave. I can't remember exactly what happened after, just one of the typical physical fights we'd always have. He wouldn't let me abort it, he wanted me to have it. I frantically looked for another option... I found funding through a few different companies. I was eligible for the funding, I made the appointment. I didn't tell my dad, but instead my best friend's mom. She begged me to let her drive me, she begged me to stay away from him. For whatever reason, I agreed to let him drive me. Of course we got in a huge fight, and he dropped me off and left me there alone. I went through the appointment and had to convince the nurses through snot and tears that I wanted to do this, that someone wasn't forcing me. I was given the pills (I was still only a few weeks pregnant so I was able to just take the pills) and my best friend sat by my side as I sobbed through the bloodcurdling pains, for six hours, until the cramps finally stopped.

The nurse told me that the fetus was about the size of a grain of rice. This may be bold (or horrible) of me to say, but having my abortion was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Who knows what could have happened to that child-- I was an alcoholic, druggie, self-medicating untreated bipolar teenager. Once I had the abortion, I realized that I needed to get away from my asshole boyfriend. I enrolled in a local community college, changed up my group of friends, and look where I am today. Four years later and worlds apart from that girl I once was. I have a future now, a bright one. I had a best friend who found out she was pregnant at the same time, Hannah. She hasn't had custody of her daughter for over a year, is currently addicted to crystal meth, and is homeless. I know that's a bold comparison too, but we were going down the same path for a very long time, and I'm so glad I strayed from that path.

Personally, I think that this entire government shutdown is absolutely fucking ridiculous. I don't want to get too political (this is a very controversial post...) so I'll let Jon Steward and Jimmy Kimmel say it for me....

http://democracyforamerica.com/blog/765-jon-stewart-says-exactly-what-we-are-all-thinking

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mo-VlRAKns

Maybe part of the reason I feel so passionate about this is because I am a young, mentally ill, previously-uninsured, currently-underinsured, hardworking, poor, student. Maybe it's because I grew up in a family that still very much believes in racism, as well as currently believes that Obama is a Muslim, trying to destroy America with Obamacare. I don't think any of them even know exactly what Obamacare is.

Obamacare is something that will help insure that all of our futures are bright. It gives us options, it gives us the ability to be our healthiest selves, and it gives people like me, that are uninsured, options. My mental health is just as important as my physical health, if not more important. As are the decisions I make as a woman. Although I was able to find help through both situations (my mental health and abortion) I am sure that a lot of people out there aren't as lucky. There are so many mentally ill people that can't afford the ridiculously priced services of psychiatrists and psychologists. There are so many mentally ill people, self medicating with street drugs, and having children throughout it all as well. Homelessness and prison tie in so often with mental illness that it's absurd something hasn't been done yet. Not to mention the countless other medical conditions that require insurance.

All I am saying is that if people were to actually learn about Obamacare maybe they would have a different opinion. Maybe if they were to think of someone they loved... that was sick in some way and couldn't afford (or receive because of a pre-existing condition) insurance. And maybe if they were to learn something about our government, they would understand that The Affordable Care Act is THE LAW. And that a SMALL portion of the house, the tea party conservatives, are literally holding our government hostage because they aren't getting their way. And in the end, is it really because they think it's bad for our country? Or is it because they've been holding out for so long on this issue, and even though nearly every news network has called this "suicidal", and the ratings back it up, they are too fucking stubborn to let down now. They'd embarrass themselves, they can't back down. 

Maybe I'm just venting because I come from a group of conservative, uneducated, raciest, obama-hating people.

Maybe the illuminati will take over in the end and none of this will matter.

But in the meantime, let the people have options.