My “Episodes” of MD: from Novelist Carol Plum-Ucci I watched Cordelia’s YouTube last night. Cordelia, you are a sweet heart and your voice has much aloha to it—peaceful and soothing. I’m new here, …

[Carol Plum-Ucci]

My “Episodes” of MD: from Novelist Carol Plum-Ucci

I watched Cordelia’s YouTube last night.  Cordelia, you are a sweet heart and your voice has much aloha to it—peaceful and soothing.  I’m new here, so this is my long-winded bleh bleh bleh first entry.

 

I have seven novels released with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.  My last write was grueling.  When I finished it finally, it’s like my mind snapped like a rubber band.  There appeared this array of characters that had nothing to do with that novel or anything else I’d ever written.  I have done very little in the past six weeks except drop into that world that seemed to come out of nowhere … it’s almost like being on revolt from reality and from working.  Okay, so here’s a bad pun.  I can’t help it:  “This is becoming the story of my life.”

 

Personally:  I do not always have MD.  I have “episodes” that go on for a few months to a year, and then they stop as suddenly as they start.  In most, I am fine to go to work and converse with coworkers, though if I have a “bleed through” at work, I’ll find people staring at me asking, “What’s so funny?” Or “Are you with us?”  I’ve become an astute liar. 

 

I am not shy.  I speak before audiences and teach and love both.  But in an episode, I dive into my private time to the point of ignoring family members and friends, who just don’t “do it for me” like these mysterious people who appear in my head. 

 

This current episode is the first I’m calling “threatening” because it is affecting my job and my relationships.  It is so hard to break out of that even when I have company, I will go smoke a cigarette on the deck to dive back in for five minutes.  Yah, this one is a little nuts.  I’ve crossed some sort of a line, pfwaa. 

 

I read people in forums laying down their markers (symptoms) to help out others, so here below, I’m adding mine to it.  Feel free to share back.  I thought some other artists might find these helpful or just giggle worthy  as I am a novelist, or they might actually prevent other sufferers from feeling so alone, so here goes:

 

I did daydream a lot as a kid but not in school or in the middle of other gatherings.  I would go for long walks a couple-three times a week, and that was my daydreaming time.  When I finished my walk, it was over, pleasant as it had been.  I had a wonderful childhood.

 

After I stopped being a teenager, my daydreams were never about myself.  I don’t show up in them.  Nobody real is in them.  They don’t trigger from movies or books, usually, or if they do, those daydreams don’t last long.  I don’t know where these people come from.  I just know they are a little more perfect than people in reality, and for whatever neediness issues I have, they are more entertaining.

 

I don’t try to create novels from my episodes, even though the characters generally come up more vivid more quickly than my novel characters do.  They are of a different fiber.  They seem quite Freudian, full of wish-list traits.   My daydreams also lack a cohesive point of view, and trying to give them that, or any of the discipline that is required in novelizing, is generally exhausting and takes all the fun out of it.  I have ended up episoding with characters I had already created in novels, but I rarely if ever started novelizing over characters that formed in episodes.

 

Which isn’t to say it can’t be done.  If you want to try to novelize your episodes, I can probably help you do it; I’m just too lazy to do it myself.

 

I am 55 and have had maybe six major episodes in my adult life along with a number of shorter or smaller ones.  They start when something totally stressful has happened.  In fact, I use them to gage my happiness/sadness because I don’t think we always recognize when we’re in a bad patch in life, maybe until months after.  Then we look back and go “woe, that was bad!”  Episodes allow me to acknowledge one in the present.

 

My heart goes out to others who have MD, young or old.  People on diets often complain that food is only as far away as the refrigerator, so they need so much will power.  But folks addicted to their daydreams do not even have to open the door of the fridge!  They don’t even have to scratch. 

 

That said, in looking for therapies, I am reading a lot about ways to stop daydreaming, but to me it seems like ignoring the elephant in the living room.  Many people looking for help have done this for years, and my current episode is only six weeks old.  So it may be that a lot of people have lost sight of their starting points or no longer even need to see them as valid…?   The elephant in the living room is that we probably started daydreaming to fill voids, and perhaps, if we could find a way to infuse our realities with what we daydream, we might be able to move more easily back to reality…?  I think a standard shrink would be very interested to know the content of the episodes and to help fuse that to reality.  Has anyone had any luck with this?

 

For example, we really do try to be interesting, but the reality is that my husband and I are these fat old farts sitting around the house.   My body image is terrible.  My hubbie had a terrible accident/surgery/months of rehab two years ago and comes home from work each night with this “I-just-want-to-be-left-alone” breed of depression I can’t snap him out of.  Because I write for young adults my tendency anyway is to see my life as over…like if something actually fun can happen to fat old people, I can’t envision it.  I mean, however skewed I might be in my thinking, the fact is my daydreams are full of therapeutic archetypes:  The lover, the protector, the young hot goddess who needs to be rescued.  It’s just ridiculously hard to pull out of this time.   I’m scared of getting fired from my freelancing job for producing brainless swill. 

 

I call episodes “avataring.”  To Avatar is a verb in our house.  My jaw almost fell off my face when I saw my likeness in the movie:  The hero who couldn’t get around very well, had very little fun, and thereby projected his mind into these virile and studly creatures rife with adventures.

                                            

No matter what therapies we decide on, I think it’s got to help to stop and tell ourselves the truth a couple times a day:  These people are not real.  They will never be real.   The hugs, kisses, money, validation, beauty, adventures we get from them will never really be forthcoming.   We deserve a life; not our little creations. 

 

Hugs to ya’ll–Carol Plum-Ucci, author, The Body of Christopher Creed