A big part of achieving my goal of 'not falling apart in the face of every fucking thing in my life' this year has been 'being uncomfortably honest about some personal shit on the Internets'. My parents seem to be okay with it, and the only person whose real name I use is Kyle's (dude, I don't know why I have like, no concern for your privacy? I'm so sorry. Love you!) so I suppose I'll just continue in this vein.
Most of my time in the next 30 days will be consumed by The February Project. The February Project consists of 'not getting completely, utterly, soul-crushingly depressed in the month of February'. Which is REALLY HARD, guys. I know, 'self-fulfilling prophecy'...but the dread leading up to this month is unreal. Stuff REALLY DOES GO TO SHIT. In the last 90 hours I've had fights with two of my closest friends, and another is MIA, when I really need them not to be. Another one flipped our shit completely. My computer keeps threatening to die. I don't fight with friends! Friends don't disappear on me! (I disappear on them...recognizing a taste of your own medicine makes it no less bitter going down.) Flipped shit makes me cry a whole bunch. And computer, I need you. I need you to watch television shows I steal with my brother's HBO.GO password when I literally cannot work up the mental strength to do anything else.
Two of the hardest things to describe to people who've never experienced them are depression and anxiety. Normal people get sad, and normal people get nervous, but they don't seem to get the cloud that penetrates every pore, all the way into your bones, pumps through your blood, chanting; 'don't, don't, don't' when you should, should, should; 'it's not worth it' when it most definitely is; 'why bother', when there are so many reasons; and 'you are, forever, undeniably, a piece of shit', when that is certainly deniable, and nothing is forever.
Depression is a heaviness that settles into every crevice of you, your body, your brain. It makes everything simple seem impossible: getting out of bed, getting in the shower. You actually congratulate yourself for walking the dog, and this makes you feel worse, although he seems to appreciate it. Food loses its taste in your mouth. You think 'maybe seeing people will make me feel better' but then you don't want to see anyone, anyway, because you are just a little grey cloud personified, and there's a yogurt stain on these sweatpants, and oh my goodness, just the idea of finding other, relatively clean sweatpants is too much, please can I just hide in bed and find a marathon of some HBO programming that I've already watched twice? Yes? Okay.
In no way is this relaxing. Because the entire time you're submerged in your little foxhole of dread, currents of anxiety zap you at irregular, unpredictable moments. And anxiety demons are judgmental as shit. Anxiety is like a spider. She spins webs all through your body, settling wherever she sees fit. She never commits, never announces. She likes to make sure you're as uncomfortable as possible, always, right in your own skin.
The worst part is knowing not everyone feels this way. Lots of people do, but not enough so you can call in: 'I can't come into the office today because the world is too awful'. So you take a lot of deep breaths, and try not to cry at the bus when it's late. Try not to cry in the bathroom at work when you can't find a file. Try not to cry on the walk home for no reason at all.
I always want to go back to New Orleans when I'm like this. Isn't that strange? Maybe it's not strange at all. I suppose it's a place I associate with being crazy, and a place where being not-quite-right is okay. A lot more okay than it is here. Here: 'there's medication for that'. I know there is. Meds are a good thing - a great thing, the best thing - for a lot of people with wacko brain chemistry, but they aren't for me. So instead I'll peruse Craig's List every day, finding all the adorable apartments I could rent for so much cheaper than anything here. I'll watch Treme and cry a bunch, because they're always in my favorite bars (but why is no one ever in the park?) and David Simon can make you miss a place like you miss a person, the heart, the soul, the good parts, the terrible bits.
And for perspective, I'll read 'The Awakening' again, because as long as I don't feel like my only option is walking into the ocean forever, I must be doing something okay.
Some Things I Don't Like:
- Birds
- Dolphins
- Escalators
- When a drop of water falls right in the part of my hair
- Most preparations of shrimp
- Swimming in natural bodies of water
- Anything anise-flavored
- Math
- When the seam of my sock touches the wrong part of my toes
- Ham/Roast Beef/Most meats served at holiday dinners
- Holiday dinners
- Birthday dinners
- Any dinners with large groups of people
- Okay, just FUCK YOU, Dinner
- Heavy Metal
- Most animal print apparel
- Jerry Maguire
- Going to the bathroom on any sort of moving vessel (what if it crashes/sinks while you're in there, and THAT'S WHERE YOU DIE???)
- Talking on the phone
- The month of February
There's a lot more (just wait), but those are the biggies. I've learned how to handle the majority - even the Top Three, the Phobias. Birds, I pretty much have to encounter in my everyday life, be it pigeons or cardinals or G's mean parrot, they're there. And I'm making progress: the first night the mean parrot came to live with G, I refused to go inside and stayed on the porch all night. Now, even when he MIMICS MY LAUGH - even though it makes my heart jackhammer and my breath stick in my lungs - I can at least stay in the room. Although I still don't like to keep my back to him.
Escalators, too. I used to take the stairs at the fucking Kendall T stop rather than dealing with that mountain of escalators. In DC, there is rarely a stair option, so I just had to suck it up and deal. Even if I do keep the ends of my scarf or my skirt balled up in my hands while I ride. And dolphins have, thus far, never been an issue.
Most of the other shit, I can just avoid. Don't bother trying to eat stuff I know I hate just in case I've 'acquired the taste'. Buy the right socks, don't jump in the water, don't over-hydrate on the plane. But February...ugh. There is nothing I can do about February.
It happens the same way every year. December was great, the first part of January was nice, getting back to a normal schedule, sleeping a little more. But then I start to get bored again. And then it starts to get cold. Really cold. I hate being cold. Even just a little cold. I'm so intolerant to it that I used to think that I got colder than everyone else, like it was a measurable issue of blood-temperature. I believed that until a few years ago when my brother said: "I don't think you get colder than other people. I think you're just really, really bad at being cold." Which is fine, and probably true, but it still doesn't keep the cold from filling me with any less despair. Yes, despair. Compounded by the creeping awareness that things, in late January begin to go slightly awry. Nothing to really worry about yet, just...things aren't right.
Then, as January hisses out its final frigid death rattles and rolls over into February, everything goes to shit. You lose someone important. You lose something important. All you've got is square pegs and the entire world turns into a series of round holes. It's not like you can take a long walk to soothe yourself, it's so fucking cold. You don't even want to walk down to your friend's house, it's SO COLD. Forget taking the train across town. And there's nothing to look forward to. Nothing. Here is another list:
Things I Don't Look Forward To In February*:
February 2nd. Groundhog Day: February is chock full of stupid holidays, this being the chronologically first. Why are we still doing this? Waiting on an enormous rodent to come out of a hole? Any other day of the year, this would be cause to call an exterminator. Also, it's incredibly boring. At least jazz it up a little. Like, what if we took four raccoons, named them shit like 'Prosperity', 'Peace In the Middle East', 'Swine Flu' and 'Locust Plague', then hid a bag of cookies in the bottom of a dumpster, filled the dumpster with trash, and let the raccoons loose on it in the middle of the night. Whichever raccoon gets to the cookies first, that's what's in the Global Forecast for the year. That, I would watch**.
February 14th. Valentine's Day: Oh, come on, like you're surprised I hate Valentine's Day? Honestly, I don't hate the concept of it at all. St. Valentine marrying illegal Christian couples in secrecy so the Romans wouldn't throw them to the lions...I love that, that's great. Love's cool! Everyone should be able to get married! If that's what we were celebrating, dude, I'm down. But in practice, modern V-Day is mean. That's all there is to it. It's a mean, mean holiday where there's all this pressure to impress, or outperform, or 'find someone', and that's too much to put on everyone on the middle of fucking February, so the whole country just ends up binge eating half-price Whitman's Samplers and candy hearts on the 15th. I won't be part of that, I just won't. I hate seeing everyone get so worked up.
February 18th, President's Day: You'd think I'd be all about this one, because I get a day off work. And yeah, that's pretty okay. Mostly I just think this holiday is stupid because I don't really understand it, and that apostrophe situation doesn't help. Is this a holiday for all the presidents? Just Lincoln and Washington? Is this a day that belongs to all the presidents? In any of those cases, the apostrophe should be somewhere else, or non-existent, right? The only way this works is if this is one day belonging to one individual president, yes? So who is it? I hate that I obsess over this EVERY STUPID FEBRUARY.
I know, I know. Self-fulfilling prophecy much? I tell myself this all the time. But February is still, always,
a pile of crap. But, at the very least, this year I'm going to try and deal with it. Because it's inevitable, and because, like all those other things on the list, I can probably figure it out. If you'd told me two years ago I could be in the same room as a bright green bird who copied laughter...man. I'll figure it out.***
I've still got nothing on that whole 'water drops on my part' thing, though, so ideas welcome there.
*NOT TO HATE on any of my wonderful friends with February birthdays, this is absolutely nothing against you, I love you. You're not responsible for February. **And of course, I will always always watch the shit out of the movie 'Groundhog Day'. That's just the shit. **And please do not give me any of that 'but at least it's the shortest month!' stuff. Are you familiar with February? Two more days of February and the world would end. It has to be that short. For like, the survival of the species.
Remember that scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where the Bad Priest with the horn-helmet reaches into that guy's chest, rips out his heart, then lowers the now-heartless dude, still breathing, into a pit of fire? And then the heart catches on fire and Bad Priest has a good laugh, and there's a lot of ceremonial drum beating? Yes? Okay.
My brother and I watched the shit out of that movie as kids. We watched the shit out of everything in the Indiana Jones franchise* (including the 'Young Indiana Jones' series - remember that? With River Phoenix? RIVER PHOENIX IN FRANCE? Granted, there was a fair amount of trench warfare going down, but still. RIVER PHOENIX IN FRANCE. Dork girl fantasies breathed alive, my friends.) But particularly that one. It was the most fun. The plot was the easiest for kids to follow. It was the only one that featured a kid. And the only one without Nazis. Even if they do get their faces melted off in the end, Nazis are always a bummer.
So even though Raiders of the Lost Ark's Marian was a better feminist role model, and Sean Connery was cranky-screwball hilarious in The Last Crusade, it was still Temple of Doom that hooked us the hardest. It taught me a lot of influential life lessons: adults can sit on pillows on the ground to eat dinner. Don't pour perfume on elephants' heads. If someone is shooting at you in a crowded nightclub, run behind a giant gong until you find a window to jump out of. And, while I didn't realize it until recently, that de-hearting scene cast a drippy net over my whole life, bled into everything.
The way I saw it, unless something could - metaphorically - rip my heart out through my sternum and set it on fire with a combination of squeezing and maniacal laughter, then it didn't matter to me, and I was fine. Be it a person, an event, an experience, a feeling: all that mattered was keeping my breastplate intact. I went for so, so long with a miniature Short Round perched on my shoulder, shouting, into my ear, with utmost concern 'Indy! Cover your heart!'
I mean, in a way, it worked. I was vigilant. If I never gave anything the power to pull my heart out, I was completely safe. I could take or leave whatever, whoever I chose. It never hurt to leave. It made it very, very easy to pack up and bounce, or to let wonderful people fall out of my life without putting up a fight. When you live like that for too long, it's easy to start thinking you're invincible. But of course that's not the case. Bulletproof vests don't make you bulletproof. They're just vests. And eventually, someone will just shoot you in the head.
But delusions of invincibility have a habit of lingering, a way of getting tied up with your sense of worth and your sense of purpose, and, ultimately, the pernicious little conclusion of leaving you entirely, utterly cold. I don't for a moment second guess where I am right now, or how I got here - in a way, I'm glad I was so unattached to the operations management elements of my life. Gracious, I might have actually become a lawyer**. But what I would like to do right here is give a big, messy, runny mascara and knotty haired apology to people in my life I may have treated like that. Cold is worse than mean, cold is worse than bitchy. Cold is worse than crazy. Cold implies that you don't matter. And you did, you do. You matter. So I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, that I didn't give you the power, I didn't even give you the opportunity to root around in my - metaphorical - chest cavity. I covered my heart for way too long, and you deserved better. I'm sorry I assumed everyone, everywhere, was trying to sacrifice me to unspecified gods and dump my body in a hole full of lava.
Because that is completely insane. No one is trying to do that. Life is not trying to rip out my - metaphorical - internal organs in a creepy underground religious ceremony. Or, maybe it is***. Maybe it is. Maybe life, when you actually like, participate in it, is all just that part where the Kali Ma dress Willie up in that white outfit and lock her in that cage-contraption and she's raised-and-lowered over the fire pit for like, ten minutes while they try to wake Indy up from the Black Sleep, and the entire time she's like 'WTF!' and semi-hysterical, and all the flowers from her massive lei are falling off, and her hair's getting all crazy from the...humidity? Why did I assume it was humidity? Maybe just because she was getting kinda sweaty down there, but anyway - the point: She looks super fly in that scene, and after she gets out of the cage, she's so much more badass for the rest of the movie. I think she even punches some big dude in the face at one point. And, I don't think she'd have reacted to the Rope Bridge of Death Over Crocodile Canyon incident nearly so well if she hadn't been through the whole fire pit ordeal.
We don't really learn what happens to Willie - in the Last Crusade she's out of the picture and Dr. Jones is chasing that (Nazi) German chick (which - come on Indy, have you been paying any attention? The Germans are always the bad guys!****) but I'm pretty sure she turned out okay. Nothing probably seems too overwhelming after a giant dude in sweaty face paint and a fake-goat hair loincloth yell-chants at you while a bunch of hypnotized cult members bang drums and the guy you're sleeping with locks you in a cage while under the influence of an evil blood-drink. After that, she could probably handle anything.
*I loved Indiana Jones so much, that, for a time, I really wanted to be an archaeologist. I guess working in historic architecture is kinda the same ballpark, and I'm glad I veered slightly to the right on that one, because oh my goodness, have you ever met any archaeologists? They are the weirdest motherfuckers on the planet. Like, I am honestly not trying to throw shade at archaeology, but its professionals are truly odd. I can only imagine archaeology conventions. I would need so many drugs to prevent turning my hand into a fist and eating it. And I bet I could be on drugs, or be eating my fist, or both, and probably no one would notice. And NO ONE even vaguely resembles 1980s Harrison Ford. **I love you, lawyer friends! No shade here, either! Just - let's be honest. Attorney-hood would really not have been my jam. *** I do believe in magic rocks, after all ****I can say that because my last name is German.
I met S for a late lunch in Columbia Heights on New Year's Day. I took a cab there. (Fun fact: If I am meeting you at a restaurant, I am taking a cab there. No matter how meticulously I plan my trip via public transportation, I always end up spending 45 minutes like, individually separating my eyelashes with a pin, and will, in the end, need to take a cab.)
This particular cab ride was...unsettling. After a few perfunctory questions about my job, he started going off on marriage. First, about how it was 'the last thing I had left to do' - which, no. I have a lot left to do: see Macchu Piccu; have lunch with Rashida Jones; learn to pee outside in case of the Apocalypse. Lots of stuff. I didn't get a chance to share that, though, because he'd already launched into a tale about the ill-fated marriage he arranged between his son and his niece. This was a really, really long story, and I didn't get to ask a single 'WTF', because he barely paused for breath. He also kept making really intense eye contact in the rearview mirror: further troubling on several levels. By the time we got to the restaurant, I was pretty disturbed. By the nature of the conversation, and because I didn't get to say anything. You at least check in to see if any Cab Therapy is in order, dude. This is an essential function of your job.
Cab drivers make for amazing therapists. They are completely objective, and allow you to procure a variety of diverse opinions - if nine out of ten cabbies tell you you're acting crazy, the likelihood is: you're acting crazy. You can cop to anything, because you'll likely never see them again. The back seat of a cab would be an ideal place to have a meltdown. But I never have them there. It took me forever to figure out why.
If you've known me for more than five minutes, you've likely experienced one of my meltdowns by reference. This is frequently how I meet people: "Hi, I'm Katie, nice to meet you. Sorry I'm dressed like this, but I had a missing-bracelet induced meltdown right before I left my house and it made three scarves and a long t-shirt seem like a reasonable outfit."
Yes, sometimes they're triggered by accessories. Sometimes by people, sometimes by disappointment. They can be kicked off by wonderful things, too: recently I got a card from my dad and sweater-tights from S in the mail on the same day. They were both unexpected, and led directly to a twenty minute cry-fest on the couch over how lucky I am. Basically, they're tantrums. Everything is too much, all at once, and the only solution is to crumple into a pile and wait it out. For most of my life, I assumed they were unavoidable.
Meltdowns can take a variety of forms. Sometimes they are quiet, and involve shutting myself in my room for a few days and not returning anyone's text messages, with a side of insomnia and late-night dog walking. Sometimes they are large-scale and public, like the day after J's wedding, two days before I moved to DC, when I started hysterically crying in the security line at the Detroit airport and did not stop hysterically crying until we landed in Boston approximately five hours later. I was dehydrated for a week afterwards. When I leave a loved one, I regularly cry on the trip home. Less dramatically than the Detroit Airport Incident, but enough so I'm sure I make whoever's seated next to me fairly uncomfortable.
Meltdowns are a consistent fact of me. But unless you're a really really special friend* (or an airline passenger), you've probably never dealt with me mid-melt. I usually manage to dry the tears up by the time I get out to meet you - even if I'm 45 minutes late and wearing Adidas windpants from high school. Until recently, I thought that was a fair measure of success.
I had a bad one a few weeks ago. Nothing terrible, just a tad larger scale than usual. I hadn't had one in a while. Part of me even figured I was due. Typical, typical. Except...how I handled it.
Usually I handle things one of two ways: 1) Deal with it ALONE, melt, then tell everyone about what a mess you were later; or 2) Hail a cab, get in, pour emotions over unsuspecting driver. When life knocked the wind out of me, a cab often felt like the best place to go. For a long time, vulnerability was not a trait I fathomed possessing. Far better to be an unstable mess than tell anyone what's honestly bothering you. A few years ago, after a particularly cathartic ride, it occurred to me that cab drivers up and down the eastern seaboard knew more about my heart than some of my closest friends.
This time, curiously, I took a slightly different route. I called friends**. I tried to figure out what the fuck I was so upset about, and I asked for help with it. Holy shit, that works so well! Yes, it's somewhat uncomfortable to let people in your life see all your scabby raw parts, but...it actually ends up soothing them. Who knew! And rather than, as per usual, one meltdown creating a series of smaller implosions in it's wake, like a little mental archipelago of insanity, talking about shit actually made me feel better. Lots better. I haven't had another since. AND I saw my family last week.
Of course, I feel like an asshole for needing a decade to figure out why I liked cab therapy so much. (Talking about what's actually bothering you with other human beings is awesome! And effective! It can prevent future meltdowns***. Do other people know about this?) But that's fine. The realization's worth it.
New Year's Eve was my last day of family vacation. Before the flight, I ran errands with my Dad. He wanted to talk about New Year's Resolutions. He said: "This is the last time we'll have to talk before you leave." But I couldn't engage. Those lumps on the sides of my throat were beginning to ache, and I didn't want to start bawling in the middle of a South Florida Publix. "You seem a little sad," he said. I told him: "Of course I'm sad." I was quiet for a minute, and then I said: "But it's okay for me to be sad. I'm leaving my family. It's okay to be sad." And as soon as I said it, it was. It was okay.
The Detroit Airport Meltdown of 2010? I was just fucking sad, man. So much was changing, for everyone I knew, it was a huge, huge time for all of us, and when you asked me how I felt about it all, I just said 'excited, excited, excited.' And of course I was excited, but a lot of loss comes with change like that, and I was sad. If I'd just fucking talked to someone about it, I probably could have avoided all that time spent standing in a corner hyperventilating and hoping no one noticed the weird choking-seal noises escaping from my face.
On Monday afternoon, my Dad dropped us off at the Miami airport, and I said good-bye to my brother and his lady right away - they were flying out of a different terminal. I didn't cry then. I didn't cry over lunch, I didn't cry on the plane****. I was sad to leave, but I was happy to be going home. They are not mutually exclusive emotions. It was okay.
On the cab ride home, I talked about how excited I was to see my dog, how New Year's Eve is wildly overrated, how surprised I was that the Raleigh airport a) existed and b) did not serve food after 7:30pm. We didn't talk much about my feelings at all. I can do that with other people now. It feels like a nice change.
Happy New Year, Loves.
* Or my brother, who deserves a fucking medal in this event.
** Well, first I talked to a random bartender, which was a hilariously tragic misstep. No one gets MORE emotionally reasonable with a pound of champagne in their system, even if it's free.
***This is not to say that I will be crying less. I just desk-cried at some pictures of Obama shaking hands with veterans.
****Full disclosure: I cried a little when I said goodbye to my Mom earlier in the day.
BONUS MATERIAL FOR MAKING IT THIS LONG: The title of this post comes from the greatest Mariah song that you've forgotten about. Please, enjoy.
