i was at work on thursday when i felt like i suffered a minor psychotic break. i was looking at something and was convinced it was (stand-in-example to follow) red when it was clearly blue. but i couldn't see it was blue. i saw red. and then the moment passed. and yes, well, okay, maybe it was blue. maybe it was somewhere between red and blue, it wasn't red, that much i could see.
i felt, in that moment, like i had lost my mind. it was deeply embarrassing and even more unsettling.
and i realized what must be so hard for those who really are losing their mental facilities are the moments everything is clear and right and they are aware of the breaks--the absences--the mistakes and the total control to reign those things in.
the awareness of the crazy. the awareness of the loss. it's...i can only imagine it's utterly devastating.
yesterday i missed the train by a mere ten seconds. and so i began to cry. that was the morning. and then in the evening when someone told me something unkind i cried again. crumpled on the floor of a coat-check closet, i lost it.
i spent a good portion of work on saturday night trying to figure out if a particular man, sitting at a particular table, was a man i had dated for nearly three months. and by the night's end. the jury was still out. it very well could have been him. but i couldn't be sure. how can you not know? everyone asked me. i know, i know i dated him for long enough that it should have been clear. but, well, we weren't particularly kind to each other, so, it turns out you can date a guy for nearly three months and two years later know nothing about him, recognize very little about him.
i'm not losing my mind, i'm not. but it feels a little bit right now (a lot, actually) like i'm losing something.
a part of myself, a group of friends, or some vital organ that once kept me afloat. something has been lost. and the unkind, not good, too proud part of me wants to etch-a-sketch the whole thing and say fine, blank-slate, i never needed that thing anyway.
but this is an opportunity for growth, i suppose. to be better. and let go of the cruelty of others. to let go of of my own unkindness, to relinquish that part of me that bristles and reacts to no end.
i'm really not perfect. and sometimes i'm not good. but i am honest, and that's what i'd like in return. the use of fear to manipulate, the going to someone else to suss out a situation, as opposed to facing the problem directly, denotes a lack of courage that is wearing me thin.
to live honestly, that's all i'd like. well, that and true love, and wild success, and some money to keep things moving...but that'll come i suppose.
“I actually attack the concept of happiness. I don’t mind people being happy - but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying 'write down 3 things that made you happy today before you go to sleep', and 'cheer up' and 'happiness is our birthright' and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position - it’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say 'Quick! Move on! Cheer up!' I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word 'happiness' and to replace it with the word 'wholeness'. Ask yourself 'is this contributing to my wholeness?' and if you’re having a bad day, it is.”
Hugh Mackay, psychologist and social researcher
on learning to say shut up
growing up, shut-up was not allowed in our house. with good reason. it's a powerful little phrase. it packs a punch. and there wasn't a place for it in our home.
it's an expression that's overused. taken too lightly. made casual by how commonly it's tossed out.
but it's got some claws that one.
i can be far too judgmental. it's one of my worst traits. absolutely not something i'm proud of.
i'm judgmental of myself, of others (equal opportunist here), i make assumptions and take things too personally. and then, adding insult to injury, i rarely say what needs to be said, when it needs to be said.
but i'm working on it. and sometimes, shut up, as it turns out, is a great place to start.
i found myself in a situation recently with someone i barely knew and the conversation moved swiftly from global warming to scientific research to antidepressants.
ah antidepressants. why would anyone take them when they're known to increase the risk of suicidal thoughts? he asked.
a perfectly valid question. mostly posed by those who've never been in the grips of a knock-out-drag-down fight with the disease.
the thing is, that question is not terribly well informed. it's one-dimensional in nature. there are so many questions that can and must be asked. and that one is just the start. and to begin and end there is too miss the point entirely.
perhaps it was the way he asked it that pissed me off. perhaps it was his judgement that really drove me nuts. perhaps it was that after asking the question he just kept talking, with none of what he said grounded in experience.
here's the whole of my philosophy on depression: unless you've ever suffered from it, you don't get to judge those who have. unless you've gone to the mouth of the thing and managed to gather up your mangled limbs and trek back out, then shut up. because you haven't a clue. unless you've watched, helpless, as someone you've loved has lost the fight or lost years of their life to it, you do not get to stand on the sidelines and pass a judgment. and you certainly don't have the right to give voice to that judgement. so again. shut. the hell. up. because, with all due respect, you sound like an idiot. so is my stance on love. and relationships. no love story (throughout the entire human history!) has ever repeated. yes, similarities abound, absolutely. but my love story does not, nor cannot compare to yours. but because we all have experience with love, we assume we know. and so we judge. from the outside, we judge and we assume. he's all wrong for her, one of them must be cheating, and on and on the wheel does turn. but we are not there when two people fall into bed at night, nor are we there in the morning when a small pulse passes between two hands, a signal to begin the day. we are not there. and because we are not there, on the inside of the thing, we do not get to judge.
so we best just shut up (and trust me, i include myself in this).
the love stories that have colored my life have been mostly private. i keep them as such because in my experience people attempt to make small what i hold to be most dear, most true. well i've been in love, so i know. well i have more experience, so i get to say.
you do know? how do you know? you do have more experience? how do you know you have more experience? is it that your love stories have followed a more traditional course that you're entitled to sit there on your high horse and pass a judgement?
shut. up.
listening is a powerful thing. and there is certainly a place for silence.
moving on. growing up. and the confidence to say it.
i'll miss the corner cafe. the short trek to it. just one half of a block. the lattes that have become both ritual and story. i'll miss hector poking his head out from the kitchen to say hello in spanish. the granite bar and tiled floor, the ever-changing art adorning the walls. the quiet familiarity of the place.
i'll miss the wine store across the street. the one so large it feels out of place in manhattan. painted in colors that bring to mind the open air, mountains, and a drier climate.
i'll miss the way the light plays off the red-bricked building across the way. the building that each saturday men and boys enter into, through an unmarked door on the first floor. i'll miss the curiosity that parade elicits.
i'll miss the river. especially on those days it's so quiet and still, the air so clear, that i feel i can reach my thumb and forefinger to the opposing bank and drag it towards me. tangible. i'll miss the way the spring air angles against the bluffs, and the trees reborn, swaddled in green.
to be honest though, i've mostly stopped noticing it. the water. the green. the very thing i first fell in love with--i've mostly stopped seeing it. i didn't mean for that to happen. it just did.
surely i'll miss the eccentricities of this very small and very specific corner of manhattan--washington heights, hudson heights. so close to water, right up against no longer used train tracks. i'll feel nostalgic for this suspended moment in time in which i stumbled into womanhood.
but it's not enough. those things i love are simply not enough anymore.
no one tells you that one of the joys of getting older is the confidence in that phrase: not. good. enough.
you know yourself better, priorities come into focus, and lies are easier to unearth.
you learn, with grace, to let some things go: friendships that were more a product of youth and need than anything else. men who diminish your worth and underestimate your intelligence.
you care less about satisfying everyone--being thought of as kind. you invest far less time in pretense because time is in fact a commodity and so you give it to those you love--your friends and your family and yourself. and you stop apologizing for that. you make decisions. and you move on. and you let go when need be.
and where need be. corners and cafes and shared apartments.
growing up, it turns out, has its perks.
an open letter to my one-day-sunday-someone:
this.
love, love,
the-woman-you'll-one-day-marry-the-hell-out-of
gathering storm clouds
i had to write an essay recently and after four drafts of pure drivel this came out. it was an attempt at explaining the last few years in the very short span of two pages. some of it is recycled and much of it is known, but i thought i'd share anyway...
It must happen silently. The slipping from one's skin. On long subway rides and quiet mornings. In the middle of a crowded room or alone in an unknown city. Perhaps it exits the body like a breath. Such a sad quiet thing, the loss of one’s self.
My story isn't singular and I can't say that it's particularly interesting. There was the usual depression and the usual difficulty getting out of bed, but that's not really of import, nor is it what I remember. Instead my mind continuously circles back to a night late in December nearly three years ago. I walked down a freshly blanketed street, white with snow, my suitcase trailing, leaving behind two clean lines. The air was perfect and clean and there was this sense not just of returning home, but of returning to myself. Oh, here I am, came a thought, dropping down weightless from the nearly black sky. And then another, I didn’t even know I had gone. Until that moment, until that quiet walk, neither thought had ever occurred to me. It was only upon the start of the long sojourn back--that beginning of the bildungsroman—that I became aware of the loss I had suffered. Funny thing about sadness, the kind sneaks and steals whole years from your life—it doesn't just steal time, it takes the whole of the person—skewing memory and experience, wiping whole moments from one's life.
What occurs to me now, courtesy of the lovely gift of hindsight, is that I had begun writing just months before this revelation. It began innocently enough. I wrote about silly things. Morning lattes and fresh flowers. Men with deep-set eyes and long lashes. Cobblestone streets. I used words to dream my way out of sadness. And before I knew it, words were moving up and through that I hardly knew were in me. Stories were everywhere. And everything, even the worst of it, especially the worst of it—the anger and frustration, the sense of unknown—was part of a tale and thus worthy of a voice. And so I became worthy of a voice. The words had lungs, the words breathed life, revealed life, unraveled and unfurled that which I had hidden for so long. I credit writing with returning me to myself. And so while my loss may have been marked by silence, the return was anything but. I was a writer. Without my words ever being published or seen, I knew at the core of it all, I was a storyteller.
Writing to me seems much like gathering storm clouds. That is to say, nearly impossible. But then such is life. It is nearly impossible and absolutely frustrating and more often than not, a great mystery. But when things get tricky on my end, when upheaval reigns, and nothing is clearer than murky, when I feel most alone, I remember I am filled with words, and their endless, malleable patterns. And so I am never without. There is the loss of one’s self. And there is life after. And the life after, it's just so much better. You walk home one December night, snow collecting in your shoes and find you’re a better person, filled with the love of small, tangible, wriggly words--and those words open worlds and life thrums along. Only different, better.
I don’t yet know what my life will be. I don’t know if I’ll author a book or make a living speaking the words of others. It is all so unknown. But I do know who I am, and the rest is adventure. And heaven help me because I’m yearning for some adventure.