The Advantages of Being a Babysitter

"I have freckles, too. On my arms. See?” I pull up my sleeve to show you—the right sleeve—thinking it’s enough, but no, you are six years old, all fragile limbs and sunlight, and you want to see them all. What can I do? Grab your hand, stop you—no, not that one— How can I? I bite back a gasp as light, your light, falls on what’s had me wearing long-sleeved shirts on eighty-degree June days: the faint lines of old mistakes crossed with the harsh reality of the recent, scabs still not healed, the scar tissue I wear around my wrist like a bracelet. It isn’t bad. I’ve seen worse on other people’s arms, but this one’s mine. I hold my breath.

You don’t even blink.

Of course you don’t. You’re six years old, all questions and tangled hair. You don’t know. You don’t know. In the dark, with shaking hands, I have told myself over and over that it’s nothing, but to you, it really is. To you goodbye is as simple as “You’re dead! You’re dead now!” and “Now I brought you back." Where I see mistakes, you only see my arms.

And now you bring me back. I see them, too.

Realization

[Disclaimer: I am much more okay now than I was when I wrote this.]

* * *   

The awareness slips in on shadow feet and questions.

What is the cause of the sleepless nights?
Is the ceiling really so fascinating that you’ve had to stare at it for three hours after waking?

For several days running?

The small things that aren’t getting done—who isn’t doing them?

How can the results of hours of your own work and exploration seem repellent to you?

What did you do to your arm?

Are you truly not troubled by your failures?

What did you do to your arm?

“No,” you protest, “but I’m all right. It’s not what it looks like.” Do you know of anything else that looks like this?

What kills is how insidious it is. How you don’t even notice that something is wrong until there’s blood everywhere and, just like that, you’ve broken a five-month streak of no new scars—No, not even then. Even then you make a conscious decision not to acknowledge it. “It’s nothing. I refuse to reinforce this behavior with attention.” It’s nothing. You’re nothing.

And you try to fight back with all the evidence at your disposal: “No, I’ve been leaving the house; I’ve been talking, taking pictures…” Mediocre pictures that no one wants to see. No one wants to hear what you have to say. No one cares, you self-involved child. You try, but— What have you not been doing? The self-professed writer who hasn’t written anything serious of her own free will for six years. Gave up on it even then. The “inspiration” who has not finished a single thing in almost twenty-one years of existence, who responds to her few undeserved triumphs with panic attacks.

The siege commences and the portcullis slams down, just as you’ve been thinking it’s past time to learn the art of unlocking doors. Remembering, anyway, the past results of unlocking. They say, they say, “I’m here for you, you can tell me, I want you to tell me,” but they never know what to do when you take them at their word; “I feel this way,” you say, and even the ones that know you best, all they have to offer you is, “Well, don’t.” And unspoken—and if you can’t help it, don’t tell me. It hurts to hear it. When all you want is, “I know. I understand. I love you anyway. I love you even though you are a broken excuse for an imitation of a human being. I love you.” Even though you hate yourself for wanting it. Even though you know exactly how they feel and why they say it, even though you’ve said the same damn thing in their situation and cursed yourself for it afterward. You don’t want to hurt anyone.

“But I decided to be happy!” you protest, and the shadows laugh and fold themselves around you. Welcome back.

The Pursuit of Happiness

A man’s car won’t start one morning, so he takes the train to work. The outcome: he’s late, and his boss tells him to notify her in advance about “these things.” Not really important, is it? Except that his irritation at his boss’s unreasonable demand plagues him through the whole day, causing him to make numerous mistakes, including a misplaced decimal point that will end up costing him his job. All right—one man loses his job. In terms of larger things, inconsequential. Except this man has a wife and teenage daughter, and the loss of his job puts his already rocky marriage on more dangerous ground. His daughter’s grades suffer, her parents blame each other for her unhappiness, and she, overhearing their arguments, starts to believe everything that’s going wrong truly is her fault. All right, maybe that doesn’t matter either. What if she kills herself? Does it matter then? I suppose it doesn’t, if you look at the big picture.

So what if the man’s car had been working perfectly well? Say it was. Say that on his way to work, he was killed in a car accident. Say that his wife had refused to let the matter drop until she found out what exactly had happened; say the accident turned out to be the result of an engine malfunction that could have been avoided if factory inspections were more frequent; say his daughter grew up and went on to get a piece of legislation passed that would all but prevent accidents like the one that killed her father from ever happening again—Does it mean anything? In the grand scheme of things, do the little movements of people on this little planet in the middle of a mind-bogglingly large universe matter at all?

My point is that eventually, you have to accept that either nothing matters or everything does. No picking and choosing—“this, but not that.” Zoom out far enough and all you see is an expanding universe where things rise and fall, come into being and are destroyed, and “time” means nothing else but “change.” Get in close enough and you find that even the movements of atoms are heavy with meaning—that contained in the seemingly chaotic actions of these tiny, tiny things are the building blocks for life. Time. Change. Everything touching everything else and sending it in new directions, making new shapes. Nothing matters or everything does. Choose either. Both mean that you’re free.

Either there is no reason for you to be concerned with purpose, or with meaning, or with doing anything “right”—there is only your little, inconsequential life, and if it doesn’t matter what you or whether or not you’re happy, then there is no reason not to do what you want and be happy—or even your worst, most crushing defeat is its own point of light in the heavens. And if you think that doesn’t matter, then let me show you the Milky Way stretching across the sky on a clear night and, with a word, block out all the stars. Then tell me, specifically, which ones you don’t miss.

And if asking them means that I am paralyzed by lack of answers, I am done with questions. I am done asking whether I and what I do are worth anything. All I have are the minute-by-minute choices that everyone has. Paper or plastic. Do or do not. All I have is this one life that I call mine, and it is going to end. I want to make things of power and beauty, but I cannot define either of those words without being aware that you likely have a different definition and the longer I live, the more I realize that I have never seen anything or anyone that is not beautiful and powerful and I doubt I ever will. I am done with the notion of deserving. I am done with judging what does and does not deserve to exist. I am done with questions of meaning and mattering. You can keep chasing those shadows if you want to, but me? I’m going to be happy. And I sincerely hope you join me, because life is too short to be spent pursuing anything but joy.

For Example

I would like to be an expert in something besides psyching myself out. I would like not to be sitting here worrying needlessly about things I can neither predict nor control, too, but anxiety is a bitch. For instance, say your mother’s surviving parent and both your father’s parents are having serious health problems of both the physical and mental varieties. You can think that sucks pretty hard and try to be there for your parents, or you can spend a lot of time thinking about how old your grandparents are, and how this is the point where people tend to, well, die. You can think about the fact that you’re not close your grandparents and never were, and how that makes you utterly terrible at taking care of your parents now and how it will be much worse when your grandparents actually do die. And when they die, which they will, you will have to go to their funerals—because what kind of shit child would you be if you didn’t, and also you promised—but what if they die while you’re at school? They probably will, considering that you are home for three months and gone for nine. Of course, it is also true that all three grandparents are deteriorating at about the same rate at about the same time, so worst case scenario: there will be overlap and you will have to choose—Actually, come to think of it, that’s likely, considering your family’s track record—no, that’s stupid—but what if it did happen? What on earth would you do? Not to mention the fact that you can’t really just up and leave school—I mean you can, to go to a funeral, but how can you just go to the funeral and then leave when your parent’s parents just died and your father lives all by himself in that godawful messy house and really doesn’t have anyone else but you even though you don’t take good enough care of him, by the way, and you really should keep that irritation of yours in check when all he wants is some attention what is wrong with you—So if you leave for the funeral you will have to stay home for a while to take care of everyone otherwise you are a horrible person, but leaving means you neglect things back there and god knows—forget schoolwork—god knows there are people you cannot fucking leave alone, especially if they think you’re not okay because for some reason you not being okay for any reason even if you are handling it sets off this whole nightmare domino chain that you then have to deal with no matter how not-okay you are and let’s face it—can you really persuade anyone you are okay, no matter how convincing you are, when they know all the shit that’s going down? Oh god, look, here you are doing that thing where you’re stupid again. You know that if you do this it will just make everything worse because you won’t be able to deal with it when it happens on account of being a nervous wreck. This tendency of yours will be the end of you. If it’s not the end of someone else, first. I mean, how much longer can it go on before…etcetera, etcetera. Do you get it? That’s what it’s like.

No, that’s not what it’s like.

It’s like being tied to the railroad tracks. You can’t hear anything yet; the train isn’t coming—but it is coming. That’s the point. It’s a beautiful day—sunshine, birdsong, a nice breeze, little puffy clouds sailing by overhead—but the fact is that some time in the indefinite future, you are going to get hit by a goddamn train. You don’t want to wait for that, really, or think about it at all, but you’re human and you’re alive, you’re alive and you can’t move, and every part of you that can seek it out is looking for a sign of that train. The distant rattle. The slight shaking of the ground. The whistle. You don’t know what the first warning sign will be. You don’t even know that. All you know is the waiting, your blood, your heartbeat as a measure of time. Your whole body a clock, counting down. All you know is the inevitability of impact.

Against Romance

I have no patience for romantics. A shame I know so many. After my friend’s messy breakup with a pretentious pseudointellectual, she wrote his name in curly letters on a bookmark she made herself. She wrote, she wrote—long letters to him that she posted on Facebook for all her friends to see, more words on the bookmark, titled her new notebook “Return to the Imperishable Realm.” Whatever that means. I’m fond of her, but the girl’s in love with pain. How romantic.

Pain is pain is pain. There’s nothing attractive about it. And I don’t understand how music is more about the feeling than the notes when what I want to do is master the instrument. I don’t understand how the print on the wall over there makes that woman feel as if she’s floating in a calm pool of water. Abstract art, like sex, does nothing for me.

No, I don’t want candles or rose petals or any doors opened for me. “I’m just trying to make your life a little easier,” he said, as he sweetly tried to take away all my little chances to prove I could do something. Not much, but something—Let me carry things that are heavy and leave me to my own pain. He wanted everything I have. How romantic.

Pain is the infinite space within the nutshell, a private matter. If the weight is too much for you, put it in my hands. Don’t explain. I understand. I don’t understand other people’s insistence on spilling theirs on the floor or coming after me with nutcrackers. I’m not interested in sharing. I am the queen of this castle, when I must inhabit it. Such crowns are not comfortable. I will abdicate and leave this place when I can. You, stay on your own throne, but be wary of jewels and cushions.

To My Fourteen-year-old Self

Work with your hands.

Read everything while you still have time. It won't always be like this.

You're not the only one who's ever felt this way.

They're never going to listen to you.

You're tougher than you look.

That friend you've always wished you could have lives on the other side of Lake Michigan, and you two are going to find each other one day. It will hurt more than you expect, but it will be worth it.

Don't stop drawing.

Don't stop writing.

Don't stop.

All that makeup won't make you look any less terrified.

You're allowed to say "no."

Please eat something.

She's going to be okay eventually, but you won't be able to keep her safe.

You're allowed to tell the truth.
 
Please put that down before this gets any worse.

It won't always be like this.

No amount of navel-gazing journal entries will make you as mature as you think you are, but that doesn't mean you should stop trying to understand yourself.

You're too young to be a failure.

Write more.

Finish things.

Write more.

Stop teaching yourself how to shut people out and start learning how to let them in. Start early. Start now.

It won't always be like this.

The Earth turns. Time is circular.

It won't always be like this.

Second Thoughts

Every so often, I get emails about blogging-- usually either requests to advertise on my blog, or invitations to upload old or new content onto someone's shiny new writing website. These emails are inevitably confusing and distressing.

"Why the hell are you doing this?" I wonder. "I have no audience. I have no content. Do you not realize how obvious you're making it that your desperate little self is contacting everyone on the internet ever? This is stupid. You, sir, are stupid." Judging other people makes things so simple, doesn't it? In this case, it's a convenient way of not acknowledging the fact that I actually think it would be pretty cool if something I wrote was to matter to anyone who wasn't me or someone close to me. These things do happen, after all-- don't they? My sister decided she wanted to be a writer last year, and less than two months later, she had a paid weekly column for The Gloss (which you should definitely read, by the way, if you're not easily scandalized).

That kind of thinking is ridiculous and childish, though, and I tell myself so as often as I need to. I tell myself a lot of things. I've found it a very effective strategy for preventing sensible, caring individuals from getting through to me, especially when I'm dead set on destroying myself and that is absolutely fine, okay, I am fine and this is practical and I am just being realistic and I do not see how it is relevant that I have desires and fears and vulnerabilities and the rest of that nonsense so will you stop looking at me like that before my voice breaks and this whole thing goes to hell?

Things and people get lost. The important bits fall through the cracks while you are desperately trying to patch them and hating the whole damn, structurally-unsound edifice for falling apart in the first place. Life, at times, seems very, very long. And today, my reaction to getting an email--a followup, actually, to one I had already deleted without responding to--was to go and take down both of my blogs to make sure that no one else could get the incorrect impression that I'm still trying.

I sort of did. My older one is definitely gone, and I still say it was about time. But this one-- Well, here I am. New post =/= deletion by any stretch of the imagination, but here we are. I got here to Infinite Space and I remembered what its original purpose was-- how I was going to "get serious," put my writing in a place where other people could see it, develop good habits, get feedback, etc. etc. etc. Actually do what I have literally always said I want to do. I remembered why I picked the stupid title in the first place. I became painfully aware of how irrational of me it was to fall back into the hole because my resolution to get serious about writing had not "worked out," as if all this was dependent on some external force. I wondered how many times I will go through this cycle of  determination --> fear --> inaction --> self-loathing/disgust --> despair before I stop taking the easy way out. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, when will I actually do something different instead of deciding that my (very common) form of insanity means that I am broken and that everything and everyone I touch is doomed? Stupid, self. Unproductive. Naive, cowardly, hypocritical, and arrogant. But then, those thoughts don't really help either, do they.

So I didn't delete the damn blog. I wrote this instead. Another reminder to myself (as if the list isn't long enough, but there's no point in going there) that I am not special--and that includes not especially bad, not especially ineffectual, not especially lost, and not especially broken. Things that are possible for other people--and god knows I spend enough time saying that they are--are possible for me, too. At least, they may very well be, and I will certainly never know if I don't stop shooting myself in the fucking foot.

Upekha. We're done here.