I'm so depressed I act like it's my birthday

Hello from a week of fireworks 🎆

I am choosing to believe the obnoxious fireworks and firecrackers that have been popping off all weekend are protest booms, because I simply cannot imagine actually celebrating this…joke of a country.

This week I’m having FOMO. On Friday, the latest VCFA residency will kick off in Colorado, and I’m not going to be there. Ever since my first residency back in January 2022, I was determined that I would return as a GA for the first few residencies after graduation — and maybe forever, tbh.

But a confluence of factors, including timing with Lambda, inability to request the PTO necessary, and quite frankly some lingering trauma from last July’s Colorado residency, all came together and I didn’t even apply to be a graduate assistant.

And boy, am I sad about that now! I’ll survive (mostly because I’m traveling on Friday to visit a friend, lol), but I’m bummed.

In this issue, you’ll find:

1. From the heart: thoughts on depression

2. From the camera roll: dispatch from Pride & fireworks

3. From the page: rage about book bansShare

From the heart 💗

TW: contains discussions of depression, self-harm, and suicidal ideation

I shan’t sugarcoat it: I’m pretty depressed, y’all.

Maybe it’s foolish to write this when I’m actively in the midst of an episode, but alas, that is all that is on my mind & heart right now, so fresh from the front lines this dispatch comes.

I’m depressed in a very visceral way, the kind of depression that doesn’t just rob me of my desire to do anything or my faith in anything, but that makes me feel so much agony that I swear the only thing that could assuage the agony is to cut.

It’s a kind of depression that convinces me I am all alone; not that I’m the only person to feel this type of way, but that I am alone in my feelings. That my friends don’t care, and in fact secretly wish I would just man up and commit to taking my life, finally, so they can be free of this ceaseless, annoying, obnoxious prattering on about how sad I am and how nothing will fix me and no one can help.

It’s a depression that eats away at my psyche until I don’t even want to do anything to make it go away, because isn’t it so much nicer and cozier and more comfortable to be wrapped up in this malaise? Watching that TV show will make you laugh, and you don’t want to laugh, do you, Karis? No, I don’t. Forgetting for a moment will only make the pain worse when it returns, won’t it, Karis? It will. Believing there’s a happier path out there is only going to result in frustration when you can’t find the opening, isn’t it, Karis? It is, isn’t it?

I’m depressed and it’s sapping away at my energy, eating away at my will and faith and sense of self. I’m depressed and sometimes it’s all I can think about, all I can focus on. I’m depressed, and I hate it, but more importantly, I hate myself for it.

I’m sitting at my desk, trying to type this on Friday. There’s thunder rolling outside. I’m listening to my ‘liked songs’ playlist on Spotify. It is 8 p.m.

And all I want to do is curl up in bed, disappear under my blankets, and exit existence for a moment. All I want to do is scream at the top of my lungs until my throat is raw, just like my emotions. All I want to do is step out of my skin because it is constricting me and making it hard to breathe.

All I want…is to be someone better.

My depression these days is compounded by my self-loathing, and God, it’s fierce. Nothing I do feels like it will ever be good enough — to me. Nothing I have to offer the world is of any worth at all…and if I’m not adding value, then why the fuck am I breathing oxygen that someone else could do something better with?1 I want to take my soul, beaten and battered and bruised mostly by myself, and strip it out of my body and maybe I can make you see that I am hurting.

I did not realize when I started writing this newsletter just how bad things were in my brain. I think I had some grand plan where this was going to be a hopeful, uplifting piece of writing. Unfortunately, I’m not in a hopeful, uplifting state of mind. All I have to offer is this: I am here.

I am hurting, I am bending, I am nigh on breaking, but I am here. I am opening my mouth to utter a guttural cry for help because, by god, I want to be here. Fuck. No matter how bad it gets, I forever want to be here. I have dreams; hopes; fantasies; plans; fight. I have all this within me, living side by side with the pain and the agony and the depression, and sometimes the depression seems to take over, seems to smother the rest, but I am here.

I am here, and for today, that is enough.

From the camera roll 📸

From the page ✍️

I’m about a year behind on my reading of online articles (it’s a whole thing), so the other day I was reading a few essays and articles published last July that touched on book bans — what it’s like to be an author whose books are banned, and why it’s so detrimental to the public at large that challenges and bans are taking off the way they are.

And the worst of it was, the numbers just keep getting worse. These articles talked about Moms for Liberty and coordinated attacks and how it’s the same, like 11 people who are the cause of something like 80% of challenges, and that is all still so true today. We are in a fight and the fight is prolonged and the book banners do not seem to be flagging in their efforts or mission.

And that is a very bad thing, my friends. If you’re reading this newsletter, though, my guess is I don’t really need to convince you of that. So this section is really not meant to be persuasive or journalistic reporting or whatnot. I’ve done that here, and I’ve interviewed people about it here, and I’ve spoken about its effects on queer teens, and I’ve spoken to authors affected by bans, and I’ve even written about it in this very newsletter before.

Today, I just want to talk about how book bans scare me as an aspiring author with an exceedingly queer, unflinchingly angry-at-the-patriarchy-and-christofascism book on sub. Whether or not that books goes anywhere now, if it ever does sell, I have a lot of fear about what will happen. That people will call me names like “groomer” — that they’ll cherry pick portions of the book to read aloud in school and library board meetings to accuse me of heinous things — that they’ll come after me with all the fires they’ve gathered from hell to burn me to a crisp.

I am afraid, and yet I am not ashamed.

Because that book, and the books I’ve written since finishing Nat & Cami, are the ones I could have used as a child. Ones that show that there is not just One Way, One Truth, One Reality — that, rather, we are each a universe of our own, that the way we are wired and choose to live & laugh & love is beautiful and spectacular and miraculous on its own. That just because you don’t conform to one way of being — that just because you maybe rebel against a constrictive worldview — doesn’t mean you are doomed to the fires of hell.

And that, you cannot convince me otherwise, is beautiful. And necessary.

Kids deserve to be free, and they deserve books that show them various ways in which they can be free.

Book bans are a net evil. You cannot change my mind.

Alla prossima 👋

Israeli bombing campaigns continue to harm Palestinians in Gaza. There are so many fundraisers to help people get out, or to buy esims for Palestinians who can’t get out, and today I’d like to highlight Kidlit 4 Ceasefire, where you can donate and get some bookish and writerly goods.

Keep advocating for Palestine’s freedom.

And be kind to yourselves. I love you.

— Karis xoxo