As part of our effort to profile more authors within the LGBT community, we present Stephanie Schroeder.
Stephanie has published erotic fiction, personal and political essays, profiles, interviews, reviews and features in various genres. She is currently a freelance Contributing Editor at Curve Magazine where she publishes features about art, fashion, music, culture, and politics as well as blog about relationships.
This excerpt is from her memoir Beautiful Wreck: Sex, Lies & Suicide, to be published on September 10, 2012. The synopsis:
As part of our effort to profile more authors within the LGBT community, we present Stephanie Schroeder.
Stephanie has published erotic fiction, personal and political essays, profiles, interviews, reviews and features in various genres. She is currently a freelance Contributing Editor at Curve Magazine where she publishes features about art, fashion, music, culture, and politics as well as blog about relationships.
This excerpt is from her memoir Beautiful Wreck: Sex, Lies & Suicide, to be published on September 10, 2012. The synopsis:
Twenty-five year old Stephanie Schroeder arrived in New York City in 1990 with edgy good looks, attitude to burn, and undiagnosed bipolar disorder. Her unflinching memoir chronicles her trajectory through the worlds of queer political activism, corporate America, intimate partner violence, unwilling parenthood, erotic discovery, 9/11…and three attempted suicides.
Repeatedly falling through the cracks of the U.S. healthcare system, Schroeder became her own advocate, found help, and began a healthier life. Readers will find both entertainment and inspiration in the rollercoaster twists and turns of this “beautiful wreck” of a memoir.
Get your copy of Beautfil Wreck: Sex, Lies & Suicide from Barnes & Noble. Excerpt below:
Ever since childhood I had thought of suicide as one of many logical options to end my pain. Because I wasn’t afraid to die, suicide had always seemed a realistic alternative to a whole host of difficulties. But that September of 2000, in utter despair, I considered it more seriously than I ever had before.
Why not kill myself? At the age of 36 I was living a life that felt horrific, a life that I had never wanted and in fact had actively tried to avoid: in a sexless monogamous relationship, battered by my partner, and trapped with a child dependent on both of us. Couples’ therapy was going nowhere and any sort of breakup seemed far away. I felt as if death wouldn’t be a shock because I had already died and was only shambling through the motions of living and relating to others, as if I were a robot or a zombie. In other words, I was seriously depressed. Like many people suffering from deep clinical depression, I could not envision any way that I would be able to crawl out.
Even suffering from depression and despair, I was still a journalist. As soon as I had chosen the precise date of my death, I started a journal describing my feelings, daily events, and my suicidal plans.
9/23/00, 7:57am - Sunday morning. don’t fret, I’m better off dead. Better dead than read. ha ha
9/23/00, 8:09am - Give my clothes to Carmen -- she’ll be even chicer than she already is -- and donate the rest.... Please give my journals to Joan Nestle for the Archives. I’ve also mailed some stuff to [name redacted] mostly printouts of our e-mail conversations w/my notes on them.
In prior years Lauren, Michael and I had spent summer weekends at Lauren’s musty, moldy, run-down house in the Catskills. Aside from being out in the sun (which was very unhealthy for me) there was nothing to do except work through a long list of chores that Lauren assigned me. This summer I had rebelled and obtained Lauren’s agreement that I would join her only every other weekend. So I chose a weekend when I was scheduled to stay in the city by myself while Lauren and Michael went to the Catskills with June, still Lauren’s best friend, and still our stoic, stocky redheaded next-door neighbor.
I carefully plotted every aspect of my death. I imagined that when the three of them arrived home on Sunday night, Lauren would pull up in front of our apartment building. When I did not answer the bell or come down to help unload the van, Lauren would stay with Michael and send June up to get me…
As it happened, June was a case manager working with homeless clients. She had in the past found clients dead in their apartments, three in the past few months. I figured June could handle whatever she found in the apartment and then warn Lauren, and that the two of them would be able to shield Michael from the horror.
With this plan in place, from what I planned would be my final Tuesday, through my planned final Saturday, I filled my journal with entries that I hoped would be found and read after my death. Although I now completely despised Lauren, I wrote a bunch of crap about loving her, knowing she would most likely read it. Then I wrote about growing apart from her, and added in a photo of Michael and me from Christmas the previous year. Articles about depression alternated with the movie schedule for my final Saturday:
I think I just need to keep writing, explaining – the thing I love/hate most, will hate to read this...I have picked up the laundry, will put it away, have cleaned the fan blades, but sorry, couldn’t change the lightbulb by myself.... I don’t know what else to write – you always hate reading my stuff, but please be gentle w/my memory even as I was harsh in life – you have been so patient, tolerant, kind & loving, sometimes – if not always – supportive. And I appreciate all that.
This was all complete bullshit, but I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly. Lauren had always argued that mine was an “existential” depression. She kept trying to convince me that my depression was situational and I had control over it and I was just being stubborn not to snap out of it. So I pasted in several letters to the editor of the New York Times debating this question of existential depression.
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