Tag Archives: being open

In Which Steff Talks About Mental Health

Come Saturday I’ll be giving a talk at Vancouver’s “Mental Health Camp,” where the goal is to get people thinking about stigmas attached to a wide range of mental conditions — from ADHD and depression through to eating disorders and compulsions all the way to harder-core afflictions like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
Me, I’ll be talking specifically on two things — one, I’ll give a 45-minute session on blogging for therapy in my solo “Ripping the Scab Off through Blogging” talk, and two, I’ll be on a panel discussing how each of us 4 panelists have used social media to share our psychological struggles and what it’s meant for us.
This posting is sort of to just touch on both of those, in support of the event, and to let you know what’s going down.

_____

I’ll be honest: Yeah, I’m not particularly wild about talking at something called “Mental Health Camp.” There is stigma, yeah. Damn right there is.
I also know that if there’s anyone who can overcome such stigma, I’m probably at the front of the line.
I’ve spent much of the last five years already writing about myself in very open ways as I take the journey of going from She Who Was Very Unhappy to this much more interesting and fun-to-be-with version of self I’m excavating from under years of neglect.
Writing about myself has been a huge part in how I’ve been able to accept where I was, where I needed to be, and what it would take to get there.
By learning how to write in an open way while still hanging on to details that weren’t really necessary to share, I’ve managed to be open yet keep some of my struggles inside, too. Snapshots, that’s what y’all get.
In homage to one of the great Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, I call the writing technique “surfacing” and it’s pretty simple to do, it’s just a matter of perspective. Shifting that perspective ever so slightly creates a whole new reward from the writing.
I’ll be talking about it in  detail on Saturday, and don’t want to blow my hand by writing all about it here and now.
The talk will include a lot more than that, though.
I’ll look at the differences between journal-writing and blogging, and point out all the pros and cons of turning to the web for an audience. I’ll tell you who should be blogging more openly (almost everyone) and who shouldn’t (and there are some).
I’ll tell you the top 10 reasons I think anyone willing to blog should be willing to be more personal, and why blogging for therapy just makes sense from a societal point of view — both from solidarity and healing perspectives.
I’ll also share the prices I’ve paid while attempting to cash in* on living the revealed life. It’s not something one should enter with the foolish notion that “I’ll write it and they’ll read it.” There’s a lot that can go wrong. There’s a lot that can play out well. There’s much to consider.

____

Later, I’ll be on a panel with three friends — all of whom have had far, far harder mental health journeys than I have — discussing how we’ve been “out” about our lives and the prices/rewards it’s cost/yielded us.
In both situations, I’ll briefly outline the facts: I lived with mild depression for most of my life. I’ve learned that, when it comes to natural depression FOR ME, it’s controlled with diet and exercise. I have indeed been medicated on a few occasions, both for “situational depression” as well as ADHD.
I’m on no meds now. It’s not a prize I’ve won for being a Good Mental Health Patient. It’s just that I’ve found a way to mostly regulate my chemistry.  When I was ON meds and began eating well and exercising, what WAS a good level of meds went sideways fast as I started building my own seratonin and dopamine.
Do NOT fuck with meds just because I’ve been able to get off mine. It’s NOT about the meds, it’s about what’s safe for you. Talk to doctors!
But all this is to say I’ve been to my mental health hell with a chemical depression that took two years of medication to regulate back to normal. I’ve been on the verge of suicidal with a desperate cry for professional help in the past, all while being an intelligent person who felt trapped in this chemical mood I couldn’t shake for months and months.
Before that, I had to overcome a head injury. Since the chemical depression, I’ve had to learn to adjust to an adult-ADHD diagnosis and how it makes me see the world.
So, I’ve had some experiences, and they’re probably more common to the general populace than my colleagues’ are, so I’m happy I can provide a “mental health light” perspective to balance it out.
Being on the other side now, I remember how hard it was to be in the chokehold the disease of depression had on me. I never thought I would escape. Suicide seemed like a smart plan.
Here, now, and looking back, it does shock me how putting my head down and keeping on keeping on, fighting the fight, eventually paid off and has brought me to a better sense of self than I’ve ever known before. Yeah, I’m proud of the stuff I accomplished.
The journey was long and strange, and I feel I’m still on it and I’ll always have to be aware that depression can find me again, but having this kind of self-awareness and openness, as much as it’s been problematic at times, is something I feel that will probably help me navigate whatever stormy waters might one day roll my way again.
The truth shall set you free?
Yeah. Maybe. Let’s talk.

____

People in Vancouver can see these talks, among many other good ones, for a lowly $10 at the door. There are plenty of tickets, and, yes, it’ll be air conditioned in the heatwave. Wahoo. There’s a chance it’ll be streaming live, and if so, I’ll be posting that URL for my followers on Twitter, and you should check there Saturday morning, in case I forget to post it here.
*Figuratively, not literally.

The Dubious Nature of Anonymity

I’ve had an email or two that has asked what I think about bloggers getting outted and shit like that.
I got outted last year. My name is Steffani Cameron, all right? I really don’t give a fuck who knows, ‘cos anyone with a nickel and half a brain can run my handle through Google and tap into an interview I did last fall in which the bonehead ran my name and unwittingly destroyed any chance for anonymity that I might’ve had. Jesus, if you have half an iota of ingenuity you could probably even find a photo of me, ‘cos there’s at least three of them accessible. Besides, back to the “my name is known” thing — when I did Sex with Emily on FreeFM, I gave ’em permission to use my name. And the CBC used my name in promoing my blog on Zed in February.
I recently did a job search in which I know for a fact at least one of the employers knew of my blog and its content. I almost know for certain that one of those employers sent me a sexually explicit (and very creepy) email to an uber-private email that is NOT in any way associated with this blog, and which no one who has ever contacted me through this blog has ever had the privilege of knowing. That’s the only time I’ve ever been creeped out about my lack of anonymity.
Both my last employer and my present employer, and every parent of every student I’ve ever taught, has known that I write sexual content. My father, brother, and every friend, family member, and longtime acquaintance knows about this blog.
As far as being a public blogger of sex goes, I’m ALL that, baby.
And that ain’t about to change.
My phone number, however, is unlisted. I have caller ID blocking on my phone as well. And that ain’t gonna fuckin’ change either. Last thing I need is anyone deliberately reaching out and touching me.
What do I think of the recent spate of bloggers that I’ve heard about who have up and vanished in the night because someone leaked who they were? It’s too bad. It’s really a shame we live in a society where people can be judged on these bases, but the fact is, we do. I’m doing my part to fight the fuckin’ power, ‘cos I think it’s flat-out wrong. I’m doing my part to prove that a good person can like getting shagged senseless. Sex is a sin if you want it to be. Sex is a shame if you allow it to be. Sex is a stigma if you let it be.
Sometimes people are powerless about the bigotry and the judgmental POV that peppers our society. That’s reality, baby, and it’s the cold fuckin’ light o’ day.
I was having this discussion with my coworkers last week, since I work with highly political people who are well-connected and who have political aspirations that will build on their political histories, and I jokingly said, “Yeah, well, politics is likely out for me.” The web designer guy was commenting how he thought that might not necessarily be the case. He commented to the effect that we’re on the cusp of this era where everyone’s dirty little secret is about to stop being so secret. Just look at PostSecret.com and how hauntingly real all those unthinkable sentiments are. Suddenly we know people’s dirty little thoughts. Suddenly we understand that our own dark and cobwebby little corners aren’t as unspeakable as we might’ve thought, because they beat us to the punch and said it first.
The information age makes everyone Googleable, and the fact is, those skeletons YOU think are in YOUR closet might just be behind far more transparent doors than you suspect.
One day, and that day’s coming soon, we’re going to realize that everyone has moments of shame and degradation. Everyone’s done something they’d rather not have exposed. Everyone’s cozied up a little too close for comfort with shame. We’re all fallible, we’re all products of the same erroneous genetics, but a lot of folks just haven’t the a) balls or b) fortitude to admit their dubious pasts.
Me, I’m honest to a fault, always have been. Why hide my shit? I’ve fucked up, damn right I have, and yeah, I like my sex with a side of dirt, but so what? Who the fuck are YOU to judge me? No one perfect, that’s who you are, so let it go, man. Let it all go. I’ve never met a person I couldn’t find a fault in, so I’ve given up my quest for perfection. Good is good enough. Bad is good enough. I’ll take what I got, man. It is what it is.
So, to those beloved bloggers who’ve been outted and don’t feel they’re in a place where they can be honest and be who they are without retribution, well, I don’t feel their pain, but I understand their reservations. We’re on the cusp of a new era of honesty, but for now we’re still mired in lies, and I understand. Hopefully more people like me’ll come out of the woodwork and be what they gotta be to get this show on the road, but in the meantime…
You got me, baby. You got me.
It’s weird being honest about this shit. It’s odd meeting new people and having them be clued in, either by yours truly, or just because they just know. It’s a little surreal. I get fun grins out of people, but you know what? No one has ever recoiled. No one has ever judged me. Most of the people are impressed, actually, and they’re usually taken quite by surprise, something I really enjoy. They’re amused, they want to know more. It’s awesome. Honesty’s freeing. They may say it’s the best policy, but, dude, it’s one hell of a ride, too, y’know?

The Fantasy Business

The guy is asleep, about four feet to my left. He looks so different when he’s sleeping.
We were talking the other night and I told him I would have to start getting up before him for awhile on weekends, so I could write, as it’s really important to me. He understood, naturally, and began narrating, suggesting the above opening line as an opening line. I had different ideas in mind, naturally, but hey… I’m in the fantasy-fulfilling business, you know.
And maybe you don’t know it, but you are, too.
I was reading a certain high-profile sex blog yesterday in which another blog was mentioned, in both a positive and negative manner.* The former blog included a negative mention of the latter’s recent dismissal of her lover’s desire to come on her tits sometimes. The latter told her man he was “acting like an idiot,” and apparently he apologized, saying he was “horrified” with his behaviour.
Yeah. Right. Both myself and the voice of the former blog state that any notion of this guy truly being “horrified” is more hilarious than it is likely.
What is likely, though, is that she managed to, in one simple, fell swoop, dissuade her man from being anything but truly honest with her in the future. She more than likely made him feel like an idiot, though. Shame’s a killer in a relationship, and she’s going to come to regret that, whether she wants to admit it or not. Somewhere down the road, she’s gonna wonder where it all changed. Well, that’s the fulcrum there, baby.
Sex takes all kinds. We’ve all got strange little fantasies, although his wasn’t all that strange, nor really out of the norm at all. Far be it for me to suggest you do anything you’re uncomfortable with, but as far as fantasies go, allowing your guy to shoot his load on your tits isn’t exactly all that invasive.
Personally, I’ve admitted before that I’m not really into the above. Would I shut a lover down for asking? Jesus, no!
Your job, as a lover, is to listen to your partner’s wishes, dreams, and desires. That means, if they have a d-i-r-t-y fantasy, you should be listening to it. Do you have to partake? Absolutely not. But I don’t care if you’re the goddamned Queen of England – you have NO right to ridicule them or mock them for their wishes. Don’t you EVER think otherwise.
Deep down inside, I’ve always had this ridiculously stupid fantasy of having sex in an anti-gravity chamber. Yeah, loverboy and I are cracking the code for NASA and taking a field-trip. Right. (Although there was reportedly a hotel in Paris that offered the services once upon a world, if I recall correctly.) Still, I’ve thought of it more than once. It’s there, on that list, “Things I’ll do if the chance arises.” Mental note made, long, long ago.
Fantasies are what they are, and everybody has the right to them. Shutting down your lover for their wishes is akin to telling your kid they’re too stupid to be an architect. Who in the HELL do you think you are?
Don’t like the idea? Just say no. Tell them you understand why it might get them off, but you’re uncomfortable with performing that act. They’re not insulted, and you’ve made your point known. Peachy.
But in a perfect world, you’d grow the hell up, and realize that most of these things aren’t going to kill you, but they might take your lover to a place they’ve never been before. Now you decide. Do you want to be a selfish person, and just say no all the time, or do you want to explain that it doesn’t do anything for you, but you’re willing to indulge their desires, if it makes them happy, once in a blue moon?
Consider it like one of those strange food cravings we’ve all had: pickles and ice cream, a bacon & peanut butter sandwich, liver and onions. It’s not a regular part of our diet, but once in a frickin’ while you just can’t help yourself. There’s almost this shame behind it. I’m eating bacon with peanut butter. Just like that fat fuck Elvis. Is there a dire future with a toilet in front of me? We’re secretive about it. Guilt, guilt, guilt, baby, but GOD, it feels good.
Now, imagine you’re sitting there, dreaming of this sandwich, and in comes your lover, who’s always stated it’d make him/her ill to have one. And there they are, holding the sandwich with bacon cooked just the way you like it, on the best bread, with the best peanut butter, and they made it themselves. Now, I guarantee you, apart from just satisfying a craving, it’s gonna be the best fucking sammich you ever sank your teeth in. It’s a gift, it’s thoughtful, and completely selfless.
Like fulfilling any fantasy can be.
And let me say another thing: If you lord it over them (“see how generous I am? You owe me, you know,”) then you’re still a lousy lover, don’t kid yourself. It’s not about power or debt or superiority. It’s about just being there in a way that makes your lover feel a little more validated by you.
Hmm. And you know? Mine really does look a little different while he’s sleeping, and it’s time I returned to him.
Listen to your lovers. Indulge them sometimes. Never judge them. Always respect them. Is it really so fucking hard?

*I’d rather not give publicity to her in a negative way. She’s already getting slammed, and if she reads this, she’ll know it’s her.

Unleashing Your Vixen: Some Serious Thoughts

Do you ever have those moments when clarity comes up behind you with a baseball bat and beats the hell out of you?
You get up, groggy, woozy, disoriented, but shit, you know better now, man.
I’ve been avoiding getting into this Vixen thing. The problem with procrastination is that you avoid things so much that you fail to even become aware of why the avoidance is there in the first place.
But then clarity comes along with that fucking bat and, sooner or later, you clue the hell in. Like I did about 30 minutes ago. For some reason, today I feel like I’m Frodo walking across that marshland with all the corpses under the surface of the pondwater. I feel like I’m about to go under, like there’s some kinda tether wrapped around my heart and strung to the reeds below the surface, tugging me down and trying to seduce me into the dark.
It sounds really intense, but it’s not as bad as it sounds. Sure, it feels like that, but it’s a really surreal feeling, like there’s a bubble around me, like there’s all these dead little faces floating around me of people who think they’re alive, but really just aren’t. That I’m sitting around in utter silence on a freezing day in February might be adding to those Dali-esque proportions, so maybe I’ll just browse my iTunes here and stoke up a change of pace. When in doubt, go with the Butthole Surfers, that’s my policy.
This week, the week that follows Valentine’s Day, is the least favourite of my year. In a span of six days falls the anniversary of when the docs found a grapefruit-sized tumour in my mother’s belly and her birthday. Yes, that’s been on my mind. She has been on my mind an awful lot, particularly in relation to this topic. I, more than anything else in her life, am my mother’s legacy, and that’s not arrogance, that’s the admiration of a daughter who had a mother deserving of it. I am my mother’s daughter – in most ways.
If you met me in real life, you’d see a lot of similarities to the person on these pages. I’m boisterous, brazen, demure, open, scathing — whatever you want to call me, I’m an awful lot of those things. But my mother blazed that trail, baby. She was a model in her youth, she was hot when she died, didn’t look over 50. She had red hair, green eyes, and she was a risk-taker and a daredevil. She sold real estate, raced yachts, and wasn’t afraid of a fucking thing (most of the time).
She was never open about sex. I doubt she ever became a vixen. I bet she never trusted a man enough. I don’t think she ever got past the shame of what sex symbolized in her demented little worldview on the subject. My father and I were recently talking, musing about whether she had been sexually assaulted at age 12. My father grew up in her neighbourhood, they were friends all their lives, and he remembered when she changed, as if she just broke. He said something was never the same after she was 12, that day they came home to find her scantily clad, rocking barefoot under the farm’s kitchen table, shaking and sobbing.
This Vixen thing… it’s a personal mission for me, really. I’ve been the legacy of dysfunctional views on sex. I’ve seen what a loveless marriage does not only to the participants but the children involved. I’ve seen what happens to men (including my father) who get neglected and taken for granted, what happens to women forgotten by their lovers, and it all breaks my heart. It’s a really sad thing to behold, the loss of someone’s sexual side.
When I was young, I fell for that fascist Ayn Rand, and one quote stands out after all these years, that “avoiding death does not equal living life.” We’ve somehow fallen into this trap of “surviving” life. Yeah, you go right ahead. Survive. I’m gonna live, thanks.
And that’s the problem, most of us are content to merely survive our jobs, survive our relationships, whatever it takes to make it to the other side with the least resistance.
Being a vixen, or in the case of the men out there, an attentive, daring, open lover who’s receptive to his lover’s needs, takes guts. It doesn’t happen from just thinking it’d be nice to go there. It’s about actively pushing your fears and apprehensions. It’s about saying you’re not scared about being judged. But mostly, it’s about trusting this lover of yours you claim you trust. It’s about putting your money where your mouth is, baby.
It’s too late for my mother, and I caught the bus last decade, man, so I’m good, but there are a lot of folks out there who must learn how much more fun life is when they learn that being vulnerable doesn’t necessarily mean becoming hurt*, it means sucking the marrow out of life and taking the chances you’ve been resisting.
Mostly, though, it’s about really having great new experiences. So, you know, like they says, you better get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’, but make your fucking choices and stop just letting life happen to you. Being a dead fish is simply the personification of all those other little fears you have inside. Confront them.
Me, being a vixen underlies EVERYTHING I do in my life. I take chances, I go with the moment, and I may not have the fancy car and the retirement package some of my conservative friends have, but I’ve got experiences. Very cool experiences. So far, dying tomorrow, I’d have few, if any regrets, and knowing that is the greatest thing I can say about who I am.
*And even if you get hurt occasionally by becoming vulnerable, I’ve discovered firsthand that the richness of everyday experiences far outweighs those occasional bumps and bruises along the way. Like mountain biking or something, sometimes you fall, sure, but at least you’re out there having the experience most of the time… and hurts always heal. I take my lumps and go again.