I cannot remember a time when I did not know the smell of the sea, the feel of damp sand under my feet, the rounded roughness of a wave-tumbled rock, the harsh and plaintive cry of a seagull.
I have always loved car trips. Aside from the desperate waiting for a rest stop, I can think of nothing better than to sit in a cozy place, with books and snacks and nothing expected of me. I love the views out the window—herds of placid cows, mist circling pine trees, old barns listing to the side and just begging to be explored. And then, after the snacks are reduced to crumbs and I have begun to read the least interesting book, the road swings out wide along a cliff and we can see—and smell—the ocean.
* * *
As I got older, my grandmother got weirder. I became less cute—buck teeth, acne, a persistently flat chest—she became more critical, more apologetic in front of her friends.
I began to be aware of how critical she was, how intolerant of anyone who “let themselves go.” She hated the long, ridiculous German name that came with her second husband, but claimed she couldn’t go back to her beloved maiden name because “people would talk.”
Eventually I realize that as a child, I was harmless. I could be loved. Now that I am a woman, she is torn between love and competition.
* * *
My father’s sister Linna was one of the boys. She protected her little brother from the high school bullies, and taught herself to pee standing up. Growing up, I knew I could never be as tough as my aunt.
Certainly my mother could not. Raised in an intellectual, declining-middle class city family, she was never able to fit in with my father’s rough-and-tumble, relentlessly rugged tribe. She was considered, as I later would be, weak and over-emotional. My father wanted a wife who would boss him around like his sister had. My mother was not ideally suited for the job.
* * *
The first time I slept with a stranger, I was drunk. Two Irish Coffees and two Coronas drunk, if memory serves. I was carefully dressed in a short skirt and tall boots, and I was very, very nervous.
(We didn’t actually have sex that night, but not for lack of trying. Will was a virgin, very nervous and somewhat drunk himself.)
Will’s ad was the first Casual Encounters ad I had ever answered. I’d found jobs on Craigslist, photography models, and a few things from the virtual free pile. I sometimes read the “Erotic Services” ads for a giggle. But it had never occurred to me to do anything like this before.
December ’08 was, at that time, the lowest point of my life. I had left my husband of 15 years for my best friend a year ago. Now that friend had left me, leaving me mourning the simultaneous loss of boyfriend and best friend. I was also very nearly out of the money I’d received in the divorce settlement—money I’d been living on while trying (and failing) to make a go of it as an artist.
As my money dwindles, I started looking for a job, only to find that the country had entered a recession while I wasn’t looking. I landed exactly one interview, with Macy’s Santaland. The interviewer told me that over 1000 people had applied for this part-time, minimum wage, temporary job. Needless to say, they were not interested in hiring someone with the complicated schedule of a single mother. I resigned myself to moving back in with my parents as soon as my lease was up.
So there I was, alone, broke, and heartbroken, drinking whiskey and Ovaltine in front of the computer. I needed something to distract me, something to make me feel wanted.
* * *
My stepmother’s sigh is the default weapon in her arsenal. Deprived of any autonomy in her childhood, she is determined to grasp it as an adult—whatever the cost. Any disagreement, any contradiction is met with a heavy, accusatory sigh and its accompanying eyeroll. Heavy footsteps, slamming doors, and angry finger jabbing in your face, all are anticipated in the exasperated sigh.
She has never understood me, and now I hate her.
* * *
I would be dead by now if it weren’t for my son. Sounds nice and inspirational, doesn’t it? A troubled life turned around by the love of an innocent child. But that’s not the way it really is. It’s really just that I can’t bear to fuck him up any more than he already is.
I’m not much use to anyone right now. I’m a force of chaos, and everyone wants me out of their immediate sphere as soon as possible. Most of my friends have deserted me, others I’ve pushed away, trying vaguely to protect them. I try not to let anyone know how bad its gotten, but at the same time, I want everyone to know just how intolerable my life has become. In class I read stories of when things began to fall apart. People say how hard it must have been. It was, but it is nothing compared to how hard things are now.
I know that I am wallowing in self-defined victimhood. What I do not know is how to get out of it. A way of thinking can be as addictive and resistant as a drug. Except that there is no rehab for addiction to self-hatred. There is no 12-step program. There is no federal funding, no on-campus support group, no way to give yourself over to a process put in place to wean yourself off of a terrible illness.
All you have is you. And you are the last thing you want. Today is the first day of the rest of your life—a life that is more painful than you ever could have imagined. Today is the day you wake up and wish you hadn’t. Today is the day that you will shuffle through hopelessly, with pain and fatigue in every part of your body. Today is the day that you will walk among strangers and try to convince yourself that every one of them is a caring being, with their own struggles and triumphs, but today is the day that you will fail miserably. Today is the day that you will not reach out for help because you know that there is no drug powerful enough, no friend patient enough, no bestseller inspirational enough to save you from your own crooked thoughts. Today, like every day, there is only you. There is only you, impaled on the entomologist’s pin of your own destructive thoughts. You cannot squirm away from your own self. Not today. Not any other day. Not for the rest of your life.
Your friends, your family, your spiritual advisers, the therapists, the clinicians, the authors, the old lady in line at the bank: they will all be able to tell you how to fix things, And they will all say the same things and they will be right. All you have to do is stop being a victim. Stop blaming the bad luck and unforeseen circumstances that brought you to this pass. Stop dwelling on the poor decisions that put you here, and start making better ones. Don’t be so selfish; take other people’s needs into account. Take care of yourself—eat right, exercise, don’t get self-indulgent. Remember that everyone has their own problems. No one wants to hear you whine. No one wants to feel like they have to take care of you.
Keep a stiff upper lip. Loose lips sink ships. Keep calm and carry on. Hang in there, little kitten, and
“thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.”
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