Julie Greene
author of
This Hunger Is Secret: My Journeys Through Mental Illness and Wellness
and
Summer in November
and
I Am So Cold, and Hungry in My Soul
and
Breakdown Lane, Traveled: An Anthology of Writings on Madness
and
Tilting The Thing
and
It Notebook
Also known as "The Mad Blogger"
My name is Julie. I am a writer and WAS* a mental patient for a number of years. I have survived over 50 hospitalizations. I made significant progress when I turned 40. Twelve years later, convinced that my life was over, I found joy. Here is my story.
I believe I always had mental problems, but they first became overt when I was 22 and developed an eating disorder. The next 18 years were hell. I was in and out of the hospital. I was miserable with depression, mood swings, and an Evil Being who eventually revealed himself to me as "The Thing." I was given every diagnosis, every medication, every treatment, and nothing worked. On my 40th birthday, The Thing left me, and has never returned.
I decided, then, to write a novel, and called it Tilting The Thing. It wasn't very good, but I was inspired to attempt to take college writing courses. When I found that I was successful in school, I returned as a degree student, and at age 45, earned my BFA in Creative Writing from
Emerson College (Boston). I graduated Summa Cum Laude, and I am very
proud of my college accomplishments.
In 2003, my boyfriend, Joe, died suddenly from a heart attack. This was right after my graduation. We had known each other for 17 years, and had been dating for the past 13 years. Joe's death was
devastating for everyone who had known him. Joe was and is a big part
of who I am, and he was the one of the several people who helped me on
the road to recovery. I have struggled ever since Joe's death, but The Thing never returned despite the incredible stress I was
under, and I am grateful for that.
I was accepted into Goddard
College's MFA in Creative Writing program the day of Joe's funeral, ironically. It was a tough way to start a graduate program, to say the least. I began work on my
master's degree the following January. It took six years, but I finally graduated on July 12,
2009. It was the proudest moment of my life.
In 2002 I published a book of fiction and nonfiction about my experiences and about mental illness in general: Breakdown Lane, Traveled. I published the book with an on-demand publisher, AuthorHouse. The title comes from the titles of two chapters of my book. I have mixed feelings about having published the book.
After I published Breakdown Lane, Traveled, I went on to work on many new writing projects. My MFA thesis was titled This Hunger Is Secret: My Journeys Through Mental Illness and Wellness. I have gotten bits and pieces of it published already, in Swamp Magazine and soon in The Awakenings Review and Quay Journal. I have sent other excerpts to magazines that turned me down, but did send very good feedback; in fact, Descant asked me to send the piece again, if/when they offered a mental health issue. I have also had pieces published in Breath and Shadow, Pitkin Review, and Fresh! Literary Magazine.
I started a book right after I graduated, that was interrupted when life got in the way. It is yet another memoir, about my six years as a student at Goddard College. Given the adventures I had over that period, I would not be surprised if this book turns out to be quite suspenseful! I am thinking of calling the book, After the Funeral, because of the unusual and awkward timing of my acceptance into Goddard.
Then in November, I participated in National Novel Writing Month and wrote Summer in November, a memoir about my hitch-hiking trip across the country in 1979. The book is also about my current struggle with anorexia nervosa.
I had begun to relapse with my anorexia during the last couple of semesters of graduate school, and this didn't end with graduation. I was hospitalized twice for it at a local eating disorders treatment facility. This was in January 2010, for five days, and in March 2010, for 16 days. During my 16-day stay, I was put on a feeding tube, and gained 10 pounds! But both hospitalizations did me no good. In August, my eating disorder was at its worst that year. I did not know what to do. Perhaps I hit bottom with it. My eating disorder seemed to run my life, and permeated everything I did. At the time,I feared, and at the same time almost accepted, the inevitable: that anorexia, or a faster form of suicide, would kill me before the year was up.
Then I met Frank. He currently lives on the island of Maui. He is also anorexic and we became friends. We wrote long e-mails, and then Skyped for many hours, sharing our experiences. Here was someone who understood. Not only that, something magical was happening. Frank and I started eating together over Skype. This was hard at first, but we began to skype three or four times a day, and we always had food with us. I was getting used to it gradually, and I as of September 21, stopped starving myself. I believe that September 20th was the night that I suddenly realized, "I want to live."
Finally, I was happy that I was alive and I realized that I came very close to having my life come to an end. I was fit and strong. I ate balanced meals. No longer did I stagger around my apartment, too weak to get from one room to the other. Starvation was a thing of the past--for now.
I participated in National Novel Writing Month last year, and completed a novel in 17 days! It is called I am So Cold, and Hungry in My Soul, about a woman with anorexia who loses everything. She is raped. Her three sisters abandon her. Her pet rat dies. Her best friend commits suicide. In the end, the only one left is the man who raped her and continues to abuse her. She finds him so seductive that she cannot leave him, and she dies.
Before I met Frank, I used to struggle to walk Puzzle even one block. Actually, it was probably unsafe for me to walk Puzzle at all, given how weak I was. After I started eating again, I walked Puzzle several miles a day. And later, I became an avid runner. I ran 5k daily, and on December 19th, 2010, ran my first 5k race!
Suddenly, two days later, everything crashed in on me. For the first time since 1997, The Thing returned, only now, I called it It. My life completely and dramatically changed. I was no longer the joyful person I had been, and my days were filled with despair. I was hospitalized for three weeks. When I came home, I was barely managing. I could not dress myself in the morning even, let alone feed myself. Gradually, I gained back my strength and independence, but it took another three-week hospitalization to help me realize, "I want to live."
I began writing the It Notebook on January 28, 2011, a journal about my thoughts and feelings on life, and my experiences with It. I ended the It Notebook March 28. Just about the entire It Notebook is published in my blog.
You can read my entries in the It Notebook, at http://juliemadblogger.wordpress.com.
In May 2011, when I realized that my anorexia was worsening, and I was beginning to experience the medical consequences of long-term self-imposed starvation, I began a new notebook: The Starvation Transformations: how hunger befriends me, nourishes me, and betrays me. You can read many of the entries to this notebook in my blog.
At this time, I truly believe that Anorexia Nervosa has me beat. Enough is enough. I am resigned to the fact that I will die of this disorder down the road. I do not know if this road is short or long. I feel crappy every day, weak and starved. I no longer feel thirst or hunger. My weight is dropping fairly rapidly. I no longer have the will to live.
There are a few moments of joy left in my life, not many. I enjoy walking my dog, Puzzle. Our walks are the high point of my day. I am the wild lady blasting her headphones walking with the little white dog down the streets of a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, getting thinner and thinner every day. You can't see her she is so thin. You can't reach her. You can't touch her. Surely, she must be out of her mind.
To read a summary of the book This Hunger Is Secret: My Journeys Through Mental Illness and Wellness, click here.
To download a .pdf copy of the book, click here.
To download the book for the Amazon Kindle, click here.
I hope you enjoy my site. Do visit my BLOG, which I update more frequently. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions please do contact me at julie@juliegreene.name.
