Under Construction - MHWA Retreat

Hello everybody!

I am a 52-year-old woman, never married, no kids. I live in Southern California and am active in my Catholic parish as a lector and Communion minister to the sick and at the altar: I am also a Lay Carmelite. My current psych diagnoses are PTSD, dysthymia and recurrent major depressive episodes, moderate: since I have both dysthymia (persistent depressive disorder) and major depression, I have what is called double depression. I also have asthma and hypothyroidism. My current psych meds are Bupropion 450 mg and Abilify (Aripiprazole) 10 mg: I have been on these meds since 2006, and at the current strengths since 2012. I have been on other psych meds from the mid-1980s onward.

I like to write novels, though none of them have yet been published. My current project is an alternate history. Set in the world of Edwardian and WWI-era British politics, the point of divergence is Joseph Chamberlain dying in 1898 (instead of 1914, as he did in our timeline). The main character is Venetia Stanley (1887-1948), the young aristocratic socialite who became the obsession of the very married Prime Minister H.H. Asquith (who was 35 years Venetia's senior and the father of Venetia's best friend). In this alternate timeline, the newspaper publisher Lord Northcliffe publishes in May 1915 Asquith's letters to Venetia: these love letters (which were published in 1982 in our timeline), occasionally written during Cabinet meetings, revealed state secrets and military strategy. Scandal and tragedy ensue.

I like to think of my current project as my version of Downton Abbey, but influenced by the #MeToo movement and with added suicide. I have been working on my novel since June 2018. In the 1990s, I wrote a manuscript of a novel based on the life of Brazilian President João Goulart (1919-1976) -- I studied 20th-century Brazilian history in grad school at UCLA in the early 2000s, but was unable to finish my studies. In the late 2000s, I wrote a novel manuscript about the marriage of the French-born actor Charles Boyer (1899-1978) and his wife, the British-born actress Pat Paterson (1910-1978). In the early 2010s, I also wrote a trilogy of alternate histories set in 20th-century France (1904-1905, 1953, 1967-1968), about three generations of women from a petit-bourgeois family (originally from Paris, later based in Lyon): the point of divergence was the victory of the Jacobite rising of 1745 in Britain.

Lately I have felt rather suicidal: I have had suicidal thoughts off and on since I was 16 years old, in 1982. I don't feel particularly suicidal at the moment, but it is a rather tentative feeling -- my suicidal thoughts have been papered over, but not completely eliminated. The triggers for this latest episode of suicidal thoughts are being a caregiver to my 79-year-old mother (she is completely bedridden after a series of falls starting in December 2017 which caused a hairline fracture in her spine: spinal surgery in February 2018 was not of much help. Also, her short-term memory is worsening) and financial difficulties (Mom is two months behind on the mortgage, and not enough money is coming in to pay for it). I have been on SSI since 2004, shortly after I was obliged to leave grad school due to my inability to study during a relapse of suicidal depression and paranoia.

If there is anything else you would like to know about me, just tell me and I will try to oblige.

Katheryn
(Gentillylace)