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Holes
The psychiatrist on call pulled me aside. I hadn't seen him before; it was a Saturday, and my "usual" psychiatrist - whom I had also only met once - was off for the weekend. The psychiatrist on call pulled me aside. "What are you here for?" he asked.
Maybe it was my calm demeanor, my anger, or my resolve. Or my heartbreak, fear, and bitterness. But those things always seem to go together, don't they?
"I got burned out at work," I said.
I couldn't even cut correctly. I couldn't bring myself to kill myself. I just slept, the entire time I was in the ward, and when the nurse came into my room to tell me "You will get out of here faster if you join group activities" was what finally made me get up, put on my hospital slippers, and draw the same line over and over again on construction paper put out by some art therapist who probably felt like she was changing us.
The psychiatrist on call asked me what medication I was taking. And - what were my symptoms? How long had I had them?
"Look," I said. "I'm taking ____, _____, _____, and _______. They work great. I'd like some refills to my local pharmacy. I'd also like to be out of here by tomorrow."
The psychiatrist nodded, typed some notes into his portable computer, and left. I was in the hallway, surrounded by bad art on the walls and no way to kill myself. I wasn't even sure if that was what I wanted. I was just fed up, angry, and only had complete disdain for a broken medical system that would end up costing me $22,000 for a three day stay (thankfully, I had health insurance and "only" ended up paying $2,000).
I had no love for a "psychiatrist", on call or not. I had no love at all.
Here's the thing: life fucking sucks. It hurts, and then you drink, or cut, or smoke, or throw up, or starve yourself, and it feels better for about three minutes. Rinse, and repeat.
I walked out of the hospital the next day. It's incredible, being surrounded by sharp objects again, traffic, people out walking their yippy dogs that have no idea what lies behind just three feet of concrete.
I texted my friend, the one who I had had a falling out with. "I'm out," I said.
No response. Not a minute later, not the next day. Just never.
Maybe it was my calm demeanor, my anger, or my resolve. Or my heartbreak, fear, and bitterness. I was alone, and what is there to do alone but drop off my hospital bag at my apartment, and stare at the wall, and drink, cut, smoke, throw up, and starve myself?
Covid hit one month later. As if God had an envelope, and lips to seal it, I was now completely cut off from the outside world.
It's not what you love that saves you. It's what you love that hurts you. It's what you love that leaves a hole in your heart that only destruction can fill, the kind you inflict on yourself, the kind that is not kind, at all.
My friend didn't talk to my again for another year.
Sometimes, we make mistakes. And sometimes, it's just you and your personality, a bottle of gin and a full pack of cigarettes. It's just you.
The psychiatrist on call had indeed refilled my prescriptions, and I picked them up at my local pharmacy. This was in March 2020, and CVS was selling masks and gloves, hand sanitizer and hazmat items. I laughed. So funny that a problem China was having could ever affect me, in the United States, in my own little untouchable world.
I walked home, and I considered the last two months. How they had left a hole in my psyche, in my very being. I reached up and touched a branch of a tree. It's probably infected with that virus they're talking about, I thought.
I laughed, and walked on. The hole in my heart was the size of China, the United States, the whole world. It was a sink hole, and I chose to fill it with prose.
I sat on my back deck and wrote. I wrote until the gin wore off, the sun set, the whole world was as silent as death. I wrote and my roommate laughed as I cooked eggs and poured the champagne I had been saving for a party that never was.
I had started writing, and the hole would soon be filled.
The hole would soon erase itself, as steadily as the backspace key, the bitterness evaporating and the vaccine helping everyone, the hospital a mere blight of sickness in the past, in my little untouchable world.
Look, honey
I took a kickboxing class
with a girl I knew
in another town
who afterwards said:
maybe you can try
a class closer to you next time
& like, who needs that?
I'm incredible
I lead with my knuckles
like they taught me
punching bags and people's pads
like my life depended on
saving myself, in a dark alleyway
kicking over my head
roundhouse style, impeccable
form, the black mats of the gym
almost unable to hold up my glory
& who are you to say
I'm not worthy?
& who are you to say
I don't have the ability?
I'm flawless, honey
a queen in my own right
powerful and winning fights
arms tucked up close to my body
flipping people over
I only took the one class
& already
I'm more powerful
than the words
you could use against me
Speed
When you said
you look like you're on speed
when I was sixteen
I had to use context clues
to figure out the meaning
did it mean I was racing
trying to reach a pinnacle
I couldn't feasibly touch?
did it mean I was taking a supplement
something for a better outcome?
or did it mean I was on drugs
and if so, where could I get some?
I literally had never heard that word
come out of anyone's mouth
as a teenager, in suburbia
I only wanted
to weigh as little as possible
was that so wrong
like taking a stimulant
to quell the shaking and the thoughts?
Ghost
my husband and I joke
that I'm not really
living this life right now
I'm not really
a wife and dog mom
in a deluxe house and town
I'm back in Berkeley
the place where we first met
where I spent the early stages
of the pandemic
I'm in lockdown
that has gone on
for four years without pause
my dog Ernest is a rabid raccoon
that I pet and have become sick from
my California house
and our vacations
are a calendar of images
I hang in up my closet
stroking each picture
I am talking to myself
convinced I've survived
when I'm only insane,
diseased, a ghost with nothing
tangible to touch
I Am the Problem, and Not the Solution
Psych ward 2011, refusing to eat the Chinese food my aunt and uncle provided while I sat on the hospital gurney, waiting to be processed, like cattle, or a criminal.
It contained rice, which was carbohydrates, which was bad news, if you were me in 2011.
Ever since I was sixteen, I have had the desire to rewind time. At what moment did it all fall apart? More likely, there were many moments; a trail of bread crumbs leading to some witch's manor, where I was to be in bondage - forever. Instead of Hansel and Gretel, I was completely alone - and the impending desire of the witch to eat me alive was my cross to bear, my penance and my life sentence.
I dropped out of college, spectacularly, if we rewind time to right before I was being processed like just another patient, a Young Girl With Depression And An Eating Disorder.
The nurses probably scoffed in some secret corner, while I judged them for their love handles almost hanging out of their tight, polyester uniforms.
My aunt detected right away that I wouldn't eat the Chinese food because it contained rice. "Rice will fill you up," she said, rather icily. That, right there, was the problem: when you have an eating disorder, you remain perpetually hungry, because fullness means you have failed on some fixed, spectacular level.
Here's the other problem: the judgement.
People judge young women, or probably anyone, with depression, with an eating disorder. They thing they're helping you (actually helping you) with their repeated attempts to get you to eat, to get out of bed. I found that other women were the worst example of this. Their bitterness, perhaps that it couldn't be them, with that level of self-control, with their thighs rubbing together and their relentless crusade against exactly what they would want for themselves: being underweight.
You're probably thinking, "Who's judging who now, bitch?"
But it is, in fact, relentless. And the only person you have to blame is yourself: you know this, like you know that once you are processed by the doctors, you will lose all control, eating sugary jello and hospital soup one bite at a time like the prisoner you were processed to be.
It's only you, honey. It's all in your head, and when people point fingers at you, they are 100% correct to blame the person who dared stray from the herd, the person who ingested weight loss commercial after weight loss commercial and dared to believe the message, that women are inferior, required to be skinny - and then hated for being so.
It's a cycle, like laundry.
I think back to sitting on that hospital gurney, refusing Chinese food, and my skin crawls. Did I really think I was some kind of martyr?
I don't know, what subliminal messages are women getting?
Ask yourself this: if you are the problem, how can you also be the solution?
Oblivion
When I think of anger, I think of red hot vomit coming out of my nose, of laying my entire hand on the horn of my car instead of just tapping it. I think of her whipping around in our kitchen, throwing a spoon so hard across the room that it shattered a plate in the sink. I think of looking down into that sink at the age of eight, and cleaning up someone else's rage.
When I think of nostalgia, I think of her getting drunk. Of too much fun. Of selfies and long walks at night and booze coming out of our noses after laughing too hard. I think of the hospital, of how badly things can end. There is no visiting a hospital without a sense of an ending - there are no new beginnings when you're being restrained, when you're being told it's all in your head anyway.
Anger is like a drug. When you raise your fists to hit a wall, and smear it with the innards of yourself, that is blood running too hot. Nostalgia is anything but: at its core, it is a heavy hit of someone else's fist in your gut.
Nostalgia is dangerous. I think it's more dangerous than anger. And to quote some girl's Tumblr from 2012: "Nostalgia is a dirty liar that made things seem better than they were."
A dirty liar. Of puking into dumpsters when there's too much vodka. But it's all in the name of fun, right? I have to physically remind myself, by looking at pictures, that it wasn't like that at all. That people die because of alcohol, that people throw spoons across rooms because they are too hungover to function.
I drink. I drink quite a bit. But never in a million years do I let anger win.
I've learned that.
For me, the dirty liar is the one who ruins moments in the present day because "everything used to be so much easier." I get bitter. In the worst moments, I can convince myself that I used to be happier.
That is dangerous: it is an ice pick in the present, rose colored glasses.
Alcohol and anger are a dangerous combination. But when I get wine drunk and think of my past, I just get sad. And because I have severe depression, that's a dangerous head space to be in. Maybe I've just learned to control my anger. But nostalgia? That son of bitch keeps coming back for seconds.
It's dicey, actually, which one is more dangerous. Learn which one makes you pick up silverware and use it as a weapon. It can be more convoluted than just what grips you in the present moment. There's repercussions to every single one of our actions, mental or physical.
I raise a glass to nostalgia, because becoming friends with your enemies is better than sitting in a room, alone, drinking yourself into oblivion.
Born Again
I was in the car
she was in labor
my grandmother
who now has dementia
driving like a racehorse
on too many steroids
my uncle
her brother
said, I thought
for sure
this baby would have
been born
outside the house
in the yard
my mother laughed
she held her belly
tightly
I came out
in a rush of
blood and happenstance
I am thirty-two
sitting next to
my infant self
in the backseat
of a Buick
I woke up
after I saw myself
my bald baby head
coming out
I was
immediately conscious
once again
are dreams always
in the past tense
the fact that
once awake
they are gone
we are left
with the residue
of them
an umbilical cord
tied to the future
a remembrance
while still in utero
born again
a rebirth
but never sure
in which reality
I am my true self
which reality
do I live in now
Hurry Down Sunshine
There’s a scene in Little Miss Sunshine, where the little girl presents her brother with a color blindness test. His dream is to be a pilot. However, he fails the test - and that means he can’t be a pilot. It was his biggest dream, getting out of hellish, mindless suburbia. He runs off, and after a long period of self-imposed silence, finally screams into the arid air of the desert. It is a powerful scene and a testament to the true power of a dream - and being very deeply alone in it.
Similarly, I applied for an MFA in Writing recently. A comment on my last post reflected that I could have added to it, elaborated more on it.
So here’s the movie of my rejection:
No, I didn't scream into the arid air of a desert. Instead, I took it in stride, waxed philosophical, as only a writer can.
There’s a scene later on in Little Miss Sunshine, towards the end, where the uncle, who had slit his wrists over unrequited love, yells off a pier, into the ocean, in front of the brother who can‘t be a pilot. He says, after a long rant about someone: “All those years of his suffering were worth it, because it made him who he was.”
When I got my rejection for the MFA in Writing, I didn’t slit my wrists, or break weeks of silence. I squinted at my little phone screen, where my rejection sat in front of me. And I thought: fuck ’em. I’m good without an MFA.
Queue the moody movie music.
I live in a coastal city in Northern California. The day I got rejected, I walked down to my city’s pier, near the boardwalk. I watched the sea lions and felt the salt breeze. I thought: I’ll be OK.
I think the hardest part about being a writer is existing alone, in silence. It’s just like a self-imposed silence, and when I hit “publish”, I scream into the arid air of a desert.
I become one with potential failure.
I’m not sure if my years of suffering “make me who I am.” But right now? I’m trying to figure out how a rejection letter will be a part of my story. And how I can best write about it. How it will fit into the screenplay of my life.
My final thoughts? That I think I’m an adequate writer, able to pass the test to make me an official one. But maybe there is no test, maybe it’s more important than that. Maybe I’m blind, not color blind, but I have existed in that moment - in the movie, the brother‘s eyes flash quickly when he realizes he’s failed, and can’t be a pilot. I too have now had a moment where I was totally alone to process, in a single “frame” of my life (if it were cinematic, which it’s not), that I am not able to achieve my dream.
So, alone on the pier of my coastal California city, I was left alone to process my failure. But it’s not that, at all. It‘s going to be a scene, perhaps part of a future masterwork I will be able to call mine, and mine alone.
I took a picture of the ocean and saved it to my little phone, the little screen capturing a vastness I cannot fully comprehend - just like when the movie-goer watches the uncle speak philosophically about failure, we can relate to it, without fully understanding why, its vastness.
Like in the movie, I realized life is messy, and I am ready to move on - perhaps alone, as I always am in my writing, but stronger for having failed. Stronger for having tried, for being blind but now able to see beyond it.
“We regret to inform you”
Last week, I applied for an MFA in Writing.
Today, I am going to dye my hair peroxide blonde.
Because I am all talk, apparently, with very little substance.
Five words isn't very many. You have an incurable disease. You are going to hell. You are a bad person. It's only a flesh wound.
Nothing I haven't heard before.
So why do these five words hurt?
Let me explain it as a Facebook post:
[I read a post on Facebook yesterday that lobsters can't scream when they're being boiled alive. Their exoskeleton releases a high pitched noise when it boils, and that is their scream - the only way they can release the pain.]
I put that in "[]" because it is contained.
When my hair strands meet the peroxide, they can't scream, either.
It will be contained, and I will be contained, in this little post where I share that my dreams were put in a pot, boiled, and were determined to be nothing but hot air.
It will be contained, in a hair salon, where I will ask the hairdresser to make me blonde.
In five words, she will say: I will not do that.
In five words, she will say: You will regret doing this.
In five words, the lobsters boiled to death.
In five words, I couldn't scream out loud.
All it takes is five words.