X: [instrumental yoga music]

"The reason? The reason I haven't felt like writing is easy to explain, actually. It's quite straightforward, and it makes sense. I just had never actually considered before that real people who I might actually know might be schizophrenic, and suffering from real hallucinations and hearing real voices inside their heads. Because this whole thing - this whole blog, this whole writing experiment - it's just a game to me. It's not real. I don't suffer from those things."

"You suffer from me," moaned the Anxious One.

Nobody said anything. They had been over this so many times already - all old arguments - and they were far more interested in what the Writer had to say.

"Anyway...I had not considered it. It just had not crossed my mind. And when... when... well, when on of my dearest friends' wife started to maybe exhibit traces of something like this, it just completely zapped all my desire to even come close to mocking it." 

"It wouldn't have been mockery, you know."

"Yeah, but it might've." The Writer buried her head in her hands on her lap.

"You've been drinking that one's kool-aid," said the Researcher, pointing at the Anxious One. 

"Hey. Kool-aid is gross. I don't even drink that stuff. It's just for kids with parents who don't care about red-40 making them hyper."

***

"Why do you have all these shirts, anyway?" asked the Researcher to the Mystic. She had just finished an hour long yoga class in the park and was now folding laundry. Her Na-Meow-Ste tank was neatly folded next to a pile of others. For example:

Another tank with a cat in sunglasses in a yoga pose with the caption "Caturanga!"

A faded Three Wolf Moon shirt that she had owned before it was really a thing

A shirt with a Kit Kat bar and the caption "Break me off a piece of that!"

A shirt with about ten cats sitting on stand-up paddle boards doing yoga, one of them saying, "Flow With Me." 

A shirt in German Fraktur stating, "Making Eyes Bleed Since 1515"

"Easy. They're really dorky."

"Huh?" The Researcher was genuinely confused. "What's the... what's the appeal in that?"

"Misdirection."

"Tell me?"

"Sure. It's just this: you guys are always mocking me. Making fun of my attempts at reaching inside myself, trying to focus on the good, breath away the bad."

"That's because it's a bunch of hocus pocus nonsense that isn't based on rational thinking."

"No, it's because you guys are all somewhat insecure, and you don't or can't admit that there are things that I could teach you about the world."

The Researcher didn't really buy it, but was genuinely interested in hearing more. "But what does that have to do with the tees?"

"You always mock me anyway. Why not give you something concrete to laugh about, why not live up to your expectations of me. It hurts a lot less when you're laughing at something that doesn't matter and actually, maybe is a bit funny."

"So... the tees are just a way of getting us to forget about why we actually dislike you?"

The Mystic frowned. "I don't think you actually dislike me."

"Distrust, then." The Researcher waved her hand, as if the two were one and the same.

"There's a pretty big difference, you know."

"Hmm. If you say so." 

"Wasn't there something else that you wanted to talk about?" asked the Mystic. She was getting a little bit irritated. 

"Yes!" The Researcher brightened. "It's been brought to my attention that - that, well, you've been... how do I say this? You've been dreaming."

"We all have dreams."

"Yes, yes, of course, but I mean night dreams."

"Sure. Don't we all?"

"That's just it! I don't think we actually do. I certainly don't. The Writer doesn't. The Philosopher doesn't. The Anxious One only has nightmares, and that's not at all what I'm interested in studying right now."

"Sure, I dream. I had a really great dream last night."

"Will you tell me about it?"

"No."

"Was it too sexual?"

The Mystic laughed. "Not at all. In any way."

The Researcher frowned. "Then - then why won't you tell me?"

"You wouldn't get it."

"What wouldn't I get?"

"You would go about interpreting it the wrong way."

"Oh? You... you interpret these things? How can one interpret the subconscious?"

"It's literally all about feelings. There aren't cold, hard calculations that go into it. I simply replay the dream and think hard about my feelings, and the meaning is just there. It's simple."

"So let me get this straight - after you think about it for a while, the meaning just... it just appears?"

"It's just suddenly apparent."

"How?" The Researcher was genuinely fascinated.

"It just is. That's how it's always been. That's how I receive messages from beyond." 

"What?" The Researcher looked skeptical.

"Look, I have stuff to do. I don't really need you making fun of me about things that are actually important. If you came here to laugh, just do it." She pelted a t-shirt at the Researcher. It had a confused looking cat in a downward facing dog position, except her belly was towards the sky. All the surrounding mats had dogs. The cat's thought bubble read, "Am I missing something?"

The Researcher grinned and was pelted by another t-shirt that said, "THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE FLOW BUSINESS." 

"Fine - fine. You're not going to tell me the dream. You're not going to tell me how the analysis works. But can you at least tell me the conclusion? What does it mean? Why are you so happy?"

"When I've had dreams like this in the past, happy, calm, good dreams about the thing I've been worried about during the day, it has always been so irregular, so outside myself, that I take it to hold a bit more meaning. Once, a long time ago, a dream like this literally protected me from completely giving up on a friend who was being particularly difficult.

These dreams are not really assurances of *exactly* what's to happen. I don't predict anything actually like the scene that played out for me will actually happen, or even with the exact people I was dreaming about. Dreams aren't that literal in meaning (usually). But still, it means I can have good reason to hope that I will get what I'm longing for, and that what God has in store for me really does involve people with whom I can relax and just hang out, and be me - people who actually listen to me, and ask my opinion, and want to know me. That I'm going to get what I'm after.

It was a very, very good dream. Precious to me, even."

The Researcher smiled and did something unexpected. She got up, walked over to the Mystic, and gave her a hug. "I might not understand everything about the way you and your mind work, and I may be predisposed to distrust what I do not understand. But something about your story just make me feel so happy. I want the same things, you know, and my methods and net-casting aren't...well...they just..."

"They don't really work that well."

The Researcher hung her head in shame. "I don't understand it."

The Mystic touched the Researcher's hand gently. "Hey, it's okay to not be perfect yet. You gotta just accept who you are in the Now. It's going to be okay."

"I want to know everything."

"You either will, or you won't, but right now you don't. And that's okay."

"Sounds like a mantra for lazy people." 

The Mystic laughed. "Don't you remember the other day when the Writer sat there at her computer, laughing and laughing and laughing? Her co-author friend had written something about how happy he was with the progress, and how surprisingly fast they had been getting along through all the Czechlish."

"Don't even mention Czechlish," sighed the Researcher. "It has been a major source of frustration to me these past three months."

"Yeah. But anyway, don't you remember how our co-author friend said something like, "I overestimated my laziness."? And the Writer said, "That's literally something that I have never done in my life."" 

"Because it's true. We've never done that. I can't even really quite imagine circumstances under which I might think, let alone utter, those words."

"The point is, yeah, some people would take some sappy mantras the exact wrong way and interpret them to mean complacent, immobile apathy. But you won't. So they mean something different for you. You can internalize them and they can really help you with the kind of self-love that would ultimately increase your productivity and - and - and perhaps be the key to solving this weird How to Make Friends mystery." 

"I thought the problem was more that I only get along with people who share my same super-niche interests."

The Mystic shook her head. "No. The problem is squarely that you don't believe that other people out there exist who might love you as you are. And until you yourself love yourself, you're not going to be able to internalize it as a real possibility."

"So, focus my efforts on self-love?" The Researcher felt really uncomfortable and skeptical.

"In a way. But the First and Greatest Commandment is actually not self-love, you know."

The Researcher smiled. "Sure do know that. I've been studying the New Testament, you know! Matthew 22..."

The Mystic smiled back.

IX : Let's pick up the pace. Let's make the parties longer and the misery shorter and shorter. Let's all go to #### in a fast car and keep it...SMART!

The Anxious One was sleeping. Or maybe she was gone for good?

They always hoped that would be the case, even all these years later.

The Writer was antsy to get to work on other projects. There were many other projects to dive into, so many interesting things to think about. The reader cat was off somewhere, purring contentedly on a pile of open books.

The Tragic Romantic was definitely still there, but she was dozing on her chaise under a copy of an article titled something like, "13 Things You'd Never Believe Actually Work." Nobody moved to wake her. She had a stack of half-written poems scattered on sticky notes around the floor. She would be really irritated to know that I found them and decided to include them here:

Note #1:
Steam of Consciousness

Note #2:
Fishing for Compliments:
Insulting yourself to gain sympathy is
the flirtation tactic of tweenagers

Free refills at the compliment dispenser

ample-ompliments

try to remember the times I've been starving for attention and validation. The times I've felt that, hey I just did something really great, and no one mentions it! A sincere compliment gives me an inner glow. So why would we be reluctant to compliment someone else? Unless it is undeserved or coming from an obnoxious person with an over-inflated ego. Then you can say "gee, I guess you are feeling pretty darn good about yourself."

[It looks like she copied and pasted that straight from some Quora article about it. I wonder how she was going to craft it into a poem.]

Note #3:

Ebonics phonics

Note #4:

Pessimist met Passivette
Going to the fair;
Says Pessimist, "You wanna date?"
Says she, "Don't really care."

[I guess this one will continue with the rest of Simple Simon met a Pie-man.]

Note #5:

"Things to lay on the altar of sacrifice"

Being right
Understanding everything
Being treated with equality and fairness as a woman
Expectations of others
Speaking freely and openly with most people
The delusion that people exist on earth that can understand me
Idealism
Optimism
Earnest desire to help fix the world
Comfort and peace

Note #6:

"How to be nice to Kate when she's really upset about something."

1. Listen carefully to what she says.
2. Ask for more details to prove that you listened, avoiding hints of disbelief.
3. Ask a critical, logical question in a critical, logical way, without immediate judgment.
4. Validate her logic by agreeing with what you can, even if you actually mostly disagree.
5. Keep listening through the emotions, even though they will probably be obnoxious. Keep asking questions.
6. If there's no solution to x, don't offer one.
7. If Kate found a solution to x that makes sense, acknowledge it.
8. If there's another solution to x that Kate did not see, which is very likely, approach it with very gentle, logical statements. Emotions, brute force, and least of all derision will NOT be convincing.
9. The gentlest, softest suggestions can end up having the deepest, longest-lasting impact. These are the words which are most likely to be played over and over again in her head, taken from many angles. Choose them wisely. It can be difficult to strike a balance between honesty and kindness; honesty should always be prioritized first.
10. Give her some time. Logic will win out in the end.

Note #7:

"It's Not About You"

You mean to say
"It's not about you"
That I can't be
Around you?

You mean to say
"It's not about you"
That I can't hear
your voice?

You mean to say
"It's not about you"
That you don't want
To talk to me?

You mean to say
"It's not about you"?
As if it weren't
Your choice?

"It's all about you.
It's only you.
And right now I'm trapped in this
Ominous mood.

And all that I say
Comes out tinted gray.
Your happy sunbeams
just shine in my way.

So, later. Bye.
It's better this way.
Not at all about you.
And have a nice day."

What else could it be?
It's all about me.
It's always, always
All about me.

My selfish, selfish
Selfish self
Can't even grasp
Anything else!

"It's not about you"
without a doubt
These words mean I'm
what it's about.

I've said these words myself.
- all lies.
Lies by mistake.
Lies despised.

Lies I wanted to believe.
"It's not about you,
why I should leave."

It's all about you.
And it's all about me.
There isn't another
Way to be.
The only
Possibility.

It's all about you.
I can't talk to you.
I had a bad day.
I've nothing to say.
I don't want you near
my terrible fear
I'm a terrible friend.
So instead, instead 

instead just
- end.

"It's all about you."
Words more true.
Words that hurt.
Words I hate.
Words I'd rather
You'd not say
Or better
Even contemplate.

So tell me instead
The lies in your head.
"It's not about you."
Alright, I said.

And it's alright.
And it's okay.

These stupid, stupid things we say
Which everyone, everyone knows anyway
Not even the tiniest little bit true.
Not not about me and not not about you.

***

"Can we be done now? There's a pretty long list of things I want to get done, and we haven't even started yet." The Researcher literally had three suitcases full of...are those papers?

"Well, yeah."

"What the...?"

"I've been making plans for what we should be doing."

"Um...okay..."

"There's a LOT of stuff to do! Like, all of our Czech stuff, editing the book - "

"We can't edit anymore today. We've gone as far as is allowed."

"Awww come on."

"No. We don't want to step on our collaborator's toes again. That was - that was really awful. Things are good now. Just follow his lead on this project and we'll be fine."

"But I just want to finish it! It's been two years..."

"Yeah - but there's lots of other projects to pour ourselves into in the mean time." 

If we pour ourselves into projects, if we direct this happy, positive energy into serving the people near us in our world, if we immerse ourselves in reading excellent, interesting sources of wisdom and knowledge, if we smile and laugh and make sure to exercise daily - 

Well, some problems still won't go away, but perhaps they will be easier to deal with?

It's so hard and sad to watch a friend suffering. I wish that there were more that I could do, but there isn't. Every time I feel that way, I just get on my knees and say a prayer. Directing my thoughts and wishes to the only source of power that is big enough to fix the pain in my friend's life. 

I am glad that the Anxious One is not around right now. Perhaps she will stay away? 

How is it possible for me to feel so sad for my friend and yet, it's not - it's actually really nothing like how it gets when the Anxious One is around. It's not out of control. It's not debilitating. It's not as painful. Even though there are no solutions, I'm not devoid of hope, which perhaps doesn't quite make sense. Hmm. 

"Writer, are you ready to go somewhere else?"

Yes, Researcher. Let's go.

VIII : Thousands are sailing to somewhere away

Do not vocalize your dreams.
They are such fragile, tender things.
Don't give them words.
Don't give them names.
Just time
and space
and time
and peace
and time again -
to find
their place.

When dreams bloom into plans, that's when
the spoken naming can begin.

Though safe
to name a thing with wings,
the strength
of words
beats hard on dreams -
those little, helpless paper things.

***

The Anxious One was stunned. The Researcher had found some diagnosis online ("Hey, it was a totally legit, peer-reviewed source! NCBI isn't like, webmd or Women's Health or whatever," said the Researcher) that described everything - all of it - with such acerbic ferocity that she was speechless. 

Maybe in the end, this story wasn't going to be about learning to love the Anxious One, after all. Maybe she really was some sort of defect - a messed up piece of garbage, some kind of genetic flaw inside of the mind. Maybe giving this condition a name was the first step to solving the problem.

The Researcher continued to read all about what we had all suspected: the problem had something to do with hormones. The Anxious One could vividly remember being far away from home, surrounded by classmates, trudging up a dusty hill in the middle of a sweltering hot desert. She remembers complaining loudly and obnoxiously about her aching abdomen - the cramps were almost unbearable. But it was not the physical pain - though that's what she had complained of out loud - that had been the worst part. It was a dark shadow of gloom and despair. Had this cloud been chasing her in circles her entire life? How had this gone unnoticed for so long?

While pregnant, it hadn't been there. 

No - while pregnant it had been more of a constant cloud, gradually getting darker and darker. Taking up all of the space in her mind until at the very end, she had barely had the strength to sit in a chair with an irritatingly mind-numbing crochet project. It had been around that time that she had gone into labor. She had continued to crochet and crochet until the blessed contractions had been unmistakable. She hadn't wanted to go in to the hospital without being absolutely sure. Once with one of her other children, she had been sent home for a "false alarm." The fear of that happening again was worse than the fear of the labor itself - by a lot. When they had arrived at the hospital, signed in, and been sent to triage, the nurse had been fairly casual. Danny had said, "Just so you know, this is our fifth baby." There had been some agonizing moments of waiting. A nurse had eventually stuck her finger up her vagina to check the dilation of her cervix - so horrid, so embarrassing, but also who really cared anymore through the pain of it all? The contracting muscles were now visible on a screen - empirically proven to exist. The entire world could no longer continue to tell her to be patient and wait just a bit longer - there was definitely something happening.

The nurse hadn't told them what was going on. They just sat there in triage, next to some noobie mom with her entire family, excitedly hoping and probably praying that her cervix was at some magic arbitrary number beyond the previously measured arbitrary number - total subjective numbers based only on the nurse's experience and sense of how much space her own fingers take up in that dark, enclosed hole, the entry to this world. Well, an entry, at least. Some babies force themselves to come out the hard way. But that was not likely to happen to Kate this time.

"Why do you think you want to write about this now?" the Philosopher asked gently. She had given up on wearing those obnoxious Roman Togas. She was instead wearing comfortable jeans with an old, faded t-shirt that read, "Screw the Patriarchy!" (that, of course, made several of the others chuckle with its terrible pun-ishness). 

I don't know. It was an important life experience. It mattered to me, regardless of how little it seems to matter to anybody else. Baby #5 might be just another kid - the final member of the basketball team. Final? Maybe? Hopefully? But uncertainly? To me, he is a priceless angel. I hold him every day, sing to him lullabies, touch his sweet little face, chant his little name over and over again. I kiss his cheeks and make him giggle and laugh. I can almost always stop him from crying with just holding him the right way - only twice these past six months have I been powerless, and both times sent me into a hysterical panic. He is an angelic baby. He sleeps long. He is already almost 20 pounds, which is huge! The size of a baby nearly twice his age! He is outgrowing his size 9 month baby clothes. My milk might not qualify to save the lives of other peoples' babies (yet?) but I am certain that it is doing a good job sustaining my baby. 

There is no recognition in this job - and that hurts. I got asked, "What do you do all day? Do you just stay home with the kids?" That hurt. It was an innocent question by a nonnative English speaker. You can't blame them for not navigating something with so many facets and nuances clumsily. It still bristled. I am not ever going to know the feeling of recognition and appreciation for the truly difficult things that I do in my life.

This internal war with myself that happens every month, that is unknowable. Unnoticeable. Nobody can get inside my head to know how painful it can be. And then - like magic - it just completely disappears. The cloud lifts. I feel guilt ridden and ashamed for any of the poisonous arrows I've managed to inflict in my closest friends and family members while in this rage-like state of mind. I have become an excellent shot over the years. Recently, I've decided to avoid all contact with people online while in this state of being. It is too difficult for me to suppress the Anxious One. 

***

The Philosopher brought over a stack of CD's.

"What's with the CD's? You know, we live in a world that's pretty much a few clicks away from any songs." 

"Oh, well, I guess it's just a physical manifestation encapsulating the idea of music. It's something to hold. It hearkens back to earlier times when this was how we consumed music. Sooooo many mixes."

There's ways to control the mind. One is by deep, purposeful immersion into research - of almost any kind. One is by conversing with other people. One is by surrendering the mind completely into a novel. 

Music is the one that we've probably tried the least, but it is surprisingly effective at taming emotions. Perhaps even more so than research - which is more of a distraction technique, anyway. Research can be rewarding and fulfilling to the mind, but it does not ever really seem to touch the heart. The place where the emotions can grow thick and tangled. Research is like running away from it. Music is like...

It's like...

How to put it into words? Hmm.

"We'll have to read up on how other people have described what music does to emotions. There must be whole libraries written on this subject," said the Researcher. Yeah. We could do that. But to what purpose, really.

"You know what's funny about music? We can't even carry on a conversation when anything is playing. That cheesy instrumental music they always insist belongs as the background to any so-called inspirational video? It is always distracting." The Philosopher was grinning. "I guess it was more than distracting, it was supplanting." 

"Yeah, I totally observed this earlier as we got our two mile run in. Listening to music, even horrible music from the 90's, made the laps instantly shorter. It's weird!" The Researcher was itching to know if this phenomenon had some kind of name, or if there were some kind of academic paper to skim about it.

"There's got to be! People write about everything...well...almost everything. Sort of. Okay not really. But yeah. Certainly about this." The Researcher was running to her computer. She...she's a funny person. Really weirdly interested in everything, somehow. Craves it. Maybe she's just an addict. She's nice to have around most of the time. She's pretty much the reason that it's been possible to avoid confronting this for so long, all these years...

"Guys! Listen to this!"

"Several, but not all, studies suggest that among women with premenstrual dysphoric disorder, symptom severity is correlated with levels of

"I thought you were researching music, you dork-face," muttered the Anxious One.
"Present!" shouted Dorky McDorkface. She had been reading the liner notes of all the CD's the Philosopher had brought over and singing the lyrics to her favorite ones out loud, a pretty annoying habit.

"...levels of estradiol, progesterone, or neurosteroids such as allopregnanolone and pregnenolone sulfate (77–79). One of the most compelling findings supporting the role of ovarian hormones in the pathogenesis of premenstrual dysphoric disorder comes from a study by Schmidt et al. (46) demonstrating that women with the disorder are more sensitive to both estradiol and progesterone than comparison subjects. In that study, women with premenstrual dysphoric disorder experienced significant improvement in core mood and physical symptoms with GnRH agonist treatment, only to have a return of negative affect when either estradiol or progesterone was reintroduced in a double-blind, placebo-controlled fashion. Notably, healthy comparison subjects pretreated with the GnRH agonist did not react negatively to administration of estradiol or progesterone."

"Yeah, yeah, we all know that you're really smart. Way to rub it in." The Anxious One rolled he eyes and sunk her head into her lap again.

"It means it really is hormonal, and it really is related to progesterone, just as I hypothesized from those graphs of prevalence of menstrual migraines! HA!"

The Anxious One muttered under her breath, "You're such a hypochondriac. Nobody's going to care. Nobody's going to believe you."

"Don't matter much anyway, do it? Even if they cared, there's not much that can be done. We already know what it's like to have to choose between a happy sex life and a happy life. SSRI's aren't tenable. We just have to bear it, somehow. Maybe it'll go away with menopause?" The Philosopher shrugged. "Here, let's start making some playlists. The music can transport us somewhere."

And it really could! It was strange - like a magician's spell. It probably wasn't special to Kate; this is probably the reason music is a thing that humans do, like - at all, across all cultures. But who cares, if it helps to at least momentarily lift us out of the cloudy fog. Even a weepy, sad song - maybe even especially a weepy, sad song. Powerful magic. 

Impossible to think about anything else. Only rote tasks like laundry and dishes could remain. No talking. No thinking. Impossible to write. 

Balm for the soul.

VII: I am the woman of constant sorrow. I've seen trouble all my days.

The Anxious One was pacing the room. All the others had been gagged and their hands were tied behind them as they sat back to back in a disheveled circle. The Anxious One was furious. She turned sharply and pointed an accusatory finger in the Researcher's face.

"Why do you start all these projects that you could never, never in your wildest possible dreams ever hope to finish? At least half the guilt is squarely your fault!"

She had been shouting things like this to everyone. The only one who was not tied up was me, the Writer. I was commanded to write this miserable scene.

"Guilty - you're all guilty! How much time have we just utterly lost today - dissolved in thin air! Let's review.

Woke up early. Unable to fall back asleep. Immediately started researching something on a mobile device. Wanted to be prepared for later - wanted to solve some genealogical mystery.

But was it a relevant to you mystery? No.

Was it the piece of research that's been sitting on your desk for the past three months? No.

Was it the research query a cousin texted you about yesterday? No.

Was it the research query a friend of a friend asked you about a month ago? No.

Did it have to do with the book we've been cowriting for the past two years? No.

Was it an interesting piece of genetic genealogy that could be shared in the online space you're supposed to admin? No.

Rather, one of several online spaces that has been a dying desert wasteland - abandoned for the new shiny ideas! No!

No! It was a totally low stakes, completely unrelated piece of random research which resulted in almost nothing -

- I can hear you in my brain, Researcher. The two and a half hours of database searches may have resulted in two new connections created somewhere to some branch of the human family on the giant familysearch family tree, but it doesn't justify the massive opportunity cost. The story wasn't good enough to use for the pathetic podcast project. The outcome was mundane and sad. What a waste! UTTERLY FUTILE AND USELESS. You will never contribute to the libraries of human knowledge if you insist on wasting your time this way."

***

Several days later, the Anxious One was alone in a corner. The others had undone their gags (the Anxious One never was that thorough, for all her bravado) and were sitting very far away from her, not speaking with her. But I was still commanded to sit and observe, and record the scene.

She was curled up in a corner, hugging her legs to her chest, weeping softly, and muttering things like, "I'll never get the time..." and "there's nothing I can do!" and "All of my efforts are just a waste."

The Tragic Romantic handed her a small piece of paper with these lines which we had written together, scrawled in messy, free-flowing handwriting. The kind of writing that was personal, the stuff of journals and letters.

Please hold fast to your good heart.
Don't think about the futile part.
You are allowed a moment but
don't forfeit who you truly are.

I shall not join you wallowing
in lonely words of saddest pain.
I know that it is not your fault,
but only you can take the reins.

I am a lamplight on your way,
to mark the path, lest you should stray
along some darker, easier road.
Come, let me all your fears allay.

Come, let me in my constancy
help you to walk with honesty.
Do not forsake your truest self,
the self I know you want to be.