I can't tell if this feeling is that I have something still that I need to do, or that I am trying to find something to do to leave behind. Tonight is the first night in a while I have genuinely felt the darkness, felt like it was so close beyond nothing more than a veil, a comfortable mystery, a great adventure. Telling my husband how often I felt that way was maybe the last night until tonight that death felt close, either just under the floor or over my shoulder. As I say that the wall starts creaking, and a momentary fear makes me cling back into life. As much as the heaviness inside me wants to deny it sometimes, I do cling, I have some amorphous feeling of desire to be, just as vague a mist as any other feeling I have, and just as concrete. I don't think it's any desire to justify my not-being-dead, more of just trying to find any kind of point or something to show for it. In my opinion, there is no justifying my existence against what I go through to maintain it. My continued living has not felt for my own enjoyment, but if it has not benefited anyone else, then it truly was an exercise in futility, in torturing myself. If there was some art, or some thought, some image I could leave that would bring any modicum of joy or comfort that would last longer than any awkwardness, pain or resentment I will inevitably leave in my wake.

It feels really sick to feel both relieved and resentful that my husband isn't bothered to know that his wife detests living. Oftentimes I regret marrying; it's something I've often wondered if I'd ever do it at all. Because he seemed unbothered by my troubles, maybe I felt like I wasn't so inflicted on him. Like most other things, I could wash over him and leave no trace. But then I realize how alone I feel. How un-cared for. And the perversion of how nice that feels sometimes.

Somebody once asked why I keep living. Why? Why? My answer was the thoroughly depressing, "Why not?" Usually meant in an encouraging way... why not stop for ice cream? Why not get the red instead of the blue? Why not take a few days off? You have the vacation days saved up! No. Why not stay alive? Nothing actively drawing away, because I know leaving abruptly will accomplish nothing. The lasting impression would be sadness, tragedy, unrequited longing for a purpose. Perhaps that is mostly why I long to leave something behind... not to justify the pain I am going through, or to explain it or attempt to make sense of it, but to make some kind of positivity out of it. I don't think I'm so special that my attempt would be any good, but it would feel better to be hit by a bus or blown up at a time when I had something going, something I was reaching for, something that people could look at and know I really was enjoying myself here and there, and that I wanted them to know I was okay.

Alive

I was trying to decide if I recognized the echoing introduction to the song Spotify had chosen to play for me when a meek and familiar voice rippled through my car.

"I tremble
tremble
tremble
tremble....."

It had been years since I had listened to Metric, and I had never listened to it on Spotify, so it was an honest and organic choice made by my Discover Weekly playlist. I had stopped listening to Metric and many other artists I was enjoying at the time years ago because they had become associated with the period of time in which I was a 24 year old with a breast tumor.

Here was this song, and I was simultaneously recalling the lyrics as they trailed through my car's interior. The straining pain in my chest that I had been carrying for weeks made my sternum ache as I heard my symptoms sung to me.

"Help, I'm alive.
My heart keeps beating like a hammer.
Hard to be soft, tough to be tender.
Come take my pulse, the pace is on a runaway train.
Help, I'm alive.
My heart keeps beating like a hammer."


Metric, Metrik, Muse, Silversun Pickups... I never listened willingly to LaRoux, but that also fell solidly into this realm of music, this soundtrack to my early 2013. I had not listened to any of these artists since then, and here they all are, present in this week's Discover Weekly. Together. It is by no means a complete list of music of that time, but it's enough that it became increasingly surreal as they cycled through the playlist I didn't plan on that drive home from work. By the time Knights of Cydonia made it on, the windows of my car were rolled down and I was leaning heavily into my hand, my elbow propped up on the inside of my door.

On this date four years ago, I was just a couple of days away from the surgery to have my breast tumor removed. At 5'9" tall, my weight had dwindled down to 115 pounds. What felt like a rock in my breast now constituted a significant portion of it. Upon removal it was well over "golf ball" size, venturing into "egg" proportions inside my tiny boob. Before the procedure, a "friend" of mine called me to chat, and upon hearing of my health situation, he told me that at least if it was cancer "people won't be sad for very long if you die". He then described a metaphor about human lifespans being like those of flies, tiny and meaningless in the scheme of the universe. We don't talk any more.

At the time, I thought that this chapter of my life was some dramatic brush with mortality, but looking back it looks like just another of life's hazing rituals. "Adulthood is looking both ways to cross the street and getting hit by an airplane," said an image macro my sister put on Facebook once. Growing up is just hurting in new and humiliating ways, and forgetting how to cope with ones you've already dealt with a thousand times.

Still, the pain I've been carrying for the past few weeks has been distinctive in a way that I feel like I should take a moment at some point to be eloquent and articulate it (but this is not that time). It was only last week that I was finally able to word it to somebody in such a way that they (he, my husband) repeated it back to me in a way I understood. In trying to explain it to friends, it always came back something like, "Oh yeah, I'm a total worry wart. What you need to do is not worry about anything purple monkey dishwasher." I told my husband, "There's no specific worry that's upsetting me. It's like the fog I get when I have depression, only this is just doom, and there has been a constant pain in my chest that feels like what happens when you're having a dream and you slip off a cliff, only it never resolves itself or goes away. I'm constantly missing that extra stair, going *gasping noise*."

After that drive home, that particular straining in my chest is gone. My chest still hurts, but with a dull ache I am more or less accustomed to. My heart still races, but not as quickly. The hummingbird in my chest is now a sparrow, is the dumb way I want to say it. I still wonder what will get me up tomorrow, how I will get home, who I will be to who I see and who sees me. But it hurts less, and it feels less urgent. Like the answers to all those questions are already here, and I maybe don't need to consciously know them to act them out.

I don't feel like I need to beg for help any more. It's just I'm alive.

Little Talks

We had been dating for close to a year, or at least we had met each other almost a year ago. It took a few months for any labels to develop, but the weekend we met was the first of infinite consecutive weekends together. Anyway, this particular night we wound up in a dark, moody bar not  far from his townhouse. I had never been inside this one yet despite our thorough exploration of the different drinking venues in the area almost each and every weekend. The darkness might have been accentuated by a thick haze I had been developing for the past 12 hours, starting with our "pregame" lunch before the beer festival.

Of Monsters and Men's "Little Talks" came wafting into the room, buoyed by the thick atmosphere of fairy lights and my own pleasant buzz. I complained to him that as much as I liked the song, it reminded me of a very irritating person from their country of origin.

"It is a good song, though," he said fairly, always pragmatic and just. A sudden grin took over his usually placid face. "We should sing it karaoke some time."

"You'd sing karaoke?" I said skeptically.

"Sure!" he chirped, as if it was an obvious proposal and as if he was not the most introverted person I had ever met in my life.

Two years later, we were newly weds on our third (third? third.) night of marriage. We had been wandering the bars of San Francisco between Union Square and Chinatown. The wind and rain had driven us into a swanky coffee shop that, like many other hip establishments in the city, seemed to only play "indie" hits from five years previous at the most recent. Ladytron's "International Dateline" gave way to "Little Talks" as we decided to start commuting to the next bar.

We followed a very stylish chihuahua and his man-bunned handler out onto the sidewalk and back into the solid wall of wet dog smell that seemed to permeate the entire bay area. "Little Talks" still lingered in my head.

"Do you remember saying we should karaoke that song? I think it was after our first beer fest together."

He chuckled, "Yeah, and we still can. I think I know the lyrics better than most people."

I started singing gently:

"Cuz though the truth may vary this-"
and he chimed in with me,
"ship will carry our bodies safe to shore."

We linked arms, our free hands holding our matching cold-brew coffees as we trundled down the hill to our next destination.

The View From The Couch

A few thoughts and anecdotes from my struggle for normalcy:

My therapist xeroxed a list of things to do when I was feeling irritable. Among the list of things she couldn’t come up with herself (watch a favorite show, go for a walk) was the suggestion:

“Fly a kite.”

…...

It might as well have said, “Fly a fucking kite” while shrugging and taking a drag off a cigarette.

Fuck you, xeroxed suggestion sheet.

The psychiatrist asked how I was doing on my break without medication, and I told him that I feel like killing myself at least once a day. He shrugged.

While talking about cognitive disruption, the therapist stopped and looked at me the most sincerely she ever had.

“Don’t should yourself.”

Near-swearing in a professional environment helps me cope with therapy.

I still get mortality warnings in the mail for a drug I stopped taking months ago.

Place You Always Go But Have Never Been

There are times when you are having a dream you are at a place you know, but your mind has generated a scene that is nothing at all like that place is in waking life. But somehow, your brain still convinces you that you are in that place, even if it never had a bathroom in the garage. You just accept it as it develops in your dream.  Twice in the same week, I had a very similar feeling in my waking life about places I have gone through a thousand times.

 I took an Uber to an event, and we drove along a section of town that I drive all the time but don't have the freedom to actually look around. It's like when you're having a dream about a place, but it isn't that place, but your brain is convincing you it's that place, except in this case, it really IS that place and it's horribly confusing but also kind of neat.  Not that it was a nice area or anything... Abandoned lots half-assedly paved with weeds poking through the empty foundations and such... And lots of BBQ joints crammed into building that were probably formerly dental offices. You might know the kind of place.

Then on a recent Monday, I was able to mosey into work a little later than usual. I merged onto a bit of interstate I go on at least twice a day, usually five days a week, sometimes more and sometimes less. It’s a segment that has been undergoing some manner of reconstruction every day I have drive in it in the past 2 3/4 years, so I have always had to be on my toes for out-of-towners who wouldn’t be anticipating the sudden shifting or disappearing of certain lanes. But that morning, I was able to look around a bit, as there wasn’t another car heading my way as far as the eye could see. For the first time in my entire life, I was able to notice the housing addition whose backyards ran almost right up to the highway. Some had fences, but some homes were just relying on faith and a slight downgrade to protect their living rooms from stray semis and drunk drivers. It struck me as very sad that some people have to buy homes like that, and that never in my life had I noticed them.

But then I guess I have to cut myself some slack since my car time isn't my time to observe extraneous details and feel feelings about them. It's my time for me to get from one place to another via controlled explosions, trying not to ram or be rammed by other motorists. And it doesn't help my powers of observation that I'm always blasting some music, something chaotic like "Is It Raining In Your Mouth" and mentally (or sometimes orally) screaming "FIVE SWEATY FINGERS ON MY DASHBOARD, FIVESWEATYFINGERSONMUHDASHBOARD, FIVE SWEATY FI-

FIVE- SWEAT- FING! GAH!!"

#FMLAIMD: Fuck My Life And Its Many Dicks

A few days ago, I had a bizarre run-in with a stranger. I was at a cheap big-box store I don’t usually go to because of how crowded and sad and dirty it is, and I was leaning on an empty shopping cart I had gotten from the front of the store where they keep about five thousand empty shopping carts. I was in an aisle full of large, heavy lamps because I intended to use my empty shopping cart to move a large, heavy lamp. My right buttock rested jauntily on the edge of the cart as I stood with my hip popped out, contemplating what heavy lamp I was going to pick up and put in my cart. It was probably a good thing that I pulled an additional couple of inches away from the cart to actually pick up one of those heavy lamps, because what happened next would have startled my buttock something terrible.

A fifty-something white man in a camouflage hunting coat stomped briskly over to my cart, slammed a boxed vacuum cleaner into it with an aggressive, rattling thud, scowled at me, and whipped the cart away from the skinny-teenager-looking girl who was standing next to it with a large lamp in her hands. His leathery wife gazed hilariously up at the ceiling, desperate to look like she hadn’t noticed anything as I squatted there with my lamp in my hands and cartoon question marks popping out of my head. He was long gone by the time my brain could come to terms with the fact that two grown human beings had just swept up to a smaller, younger, lamp-buying human and taken away the resource she had gathered for herself to move a lamp. A resource they could have walked one hundred paces to get while carrying a handy vac much more light and hollow than a large lamp.

I set the lamp down at the end of a tissue display near the store entrance and went to gather myself another empty cart. Even though all I wanted to do was go home and spoon the lamp I had endured such confusion to get, I still had to get groceries in this huge, overwhelming store I had not been in for months and which apparently had gone through so much reorganization that I found my spirit animal while looking for a can of spicy Pringles. Tired from a long day, abuse by strangers and the enlightenment of having just completed a spirit quest in a Walmart, I then got in the one line with a screwed up card-reader and the only cashier in the world lazy enough to not try any of her training and instead subject everyone to wait in line for a manager for fifteen unnecessary minutes. An older woman in line behind me was intrigued by my lamp and wanted to talk with me about it excitedly, and I did my best to be friendly and bubbly like I want to be perceived. Of course she had to ask how much my lamp was, and when I told her, she seemed to scoff and turned to whisper what I had just said to her family. I assumed by her whispering that she disapproved of me and my highfaluting lamp.

Anyway, after I got home and had time to chill out and put away my hard-won groceries, I texted about the Hunting Coat Cart Wrangler to one of my guy friends who is usually good for a chuckle after such incidents. When I told him about the Jackoff Bandit, his response was something along the lines of “These things only happen to you.” Many months back he used to jokingly call my run-ins with sexual harassers and idiot men “hot girl problems,” but apparently over time it became clear that it is a much more specific issue. An issue quite specific to me. He said something like this again, only I think he abbreviated it even further to “only you”.  To which I said:

“fuck my life and its many dicks”

He responded:

“FMLAIMD”

I decided this acronym needed writing about, and was reminded again today when I was contacted by a woman who had recently broken up with an ex of mine. She wanted to know if his harassment got violent, since I still occasionally get eerie calls and texts from him a couple of years after the fact. And again, I thought of the times he would call and how it made me feel very much like saying “FMLAIMD”.

As someone who tries to be an eternal optimist, I want to break down why I am endorsing this phrase.  If I may:

“Fuck my life.” Those are some strong fucking words, particularly since they start with “fuck,” that hardest of the hard swears. But in a world where tragedy makes me hear a mental recording of Louis CK saying, “Do I even want to be alive any more?” it feels like a comedic hyperbole, void of suicidal implications or true despair. It’s like repeatedly trying to do a simple task and failing, but punctuating the last failure with an arm-flapping gesture and an unwarranted hard swear. It’s no longer an issue, it’s now a slapstick bit.

“and its many dicks.” Okay, as a grammar stickler, it’s going to drive me crazy when this catches on and people will inevitably try to spell it as “it’s many dicks”. No. I T S with no apostrophe is possessive, and for better or for worse, my life owns those dicks in this phrase. My life is not dicks, it has dicks about it. There is much more to my life than dicks, quite luckily, but the dicks are certainly there. And while I have been trying really hard to eliminate gender-based swears from my vocabulary, “dick” is just too good a word for what it is. In this case, a jerk. A special brand of jerk that just screws everybody. It’s like the difference between “guys” and “men”; all guys are men, but not all men are guys. All dicks have penises, but not all penis-wielders are dicks. Dick is a crude slang word, not an organ on a sacred body. I have many wonderful men in my life, and they are not dicks. But if they want to call their penises dicks, such is their prerogative. 

So I’m inviting you to rally around FMLAIMD. May it remind us all not be dicks, so as not to bog each other down with endless dickery. Let us remember that dicks come in all shapes and sized, and many don’t even have dicks. Let us not discriminate and know that even we ourselves are often the dick, and that we can have much higher aspirations and be more to each other than just another of the many dicks Fing up one’s life.

Sorry, I just couldn’t handle publishing that much swearing. Here: puppy. I think that balanced some of that out.

Things I Learned Purging Photos

Today I received my new MacBook in the mail, so before I even THINK of syncing my devices together, I thought it prudent to go through purging all the photos I had collected on my iPad over the last couple of years. I knew it was going to be uncomfortable, but… man, I date a lot of guys and save a lot of stupid pictures. Apparently I can add “screen shots of unknown context” and “hot girls with really short hair” to my list of favorite hoarding items. Anyway, there are some general concepts that seemed recurring during my Embarrassing Photo Hunt, and some of them felt weirdly poignant. Here are some things I learned while cleaning out my photo albums….

Do Not Flip the Bird to the Camera. It might turn out a great photo, and then you will find yourself having to decide if sharing a great picture of yourself is worth looking like a total A-hole.

Take Time to Enjoy Being Single. When you inevitably delete every photo with an ex in it, you might find entire events and even YEARS of your life disappearing after the breakup.

Take Lots of Pictures of Pets. Nobody will thumb-up your glamour selfies and sappy Instagrams with above-mentioned exes, but they will certainly appreciate a dog in a chair. Also, you will greatly value these pictures much longer than all those exes and selfies you’re deleting in shame.

Screenshots Are a Great Placebo. “I will totally remember this by taking a picture of how it looks on a computer screen.” *three years later* “Why do I have a photo of the bottom right quadrant of a Skype conversation?” *delete* SO much brain-memory space saved!

Delete Haircut Inspiration after the Appointment. Seriously, you look like a serial killer stalking ginger women with rockin’ sidecuts.

The Best “Sexy” Photos are Ones Where You Don’t Know if They’re You or Not. At least you won’t be incriminated in this way if you ever run for office.

There Is Such a Thing as Too Much Filter. When editing a photo, it’s not a bad practice to save progressively altered versions and give it some time before going back and picking one to send out into cyberspace. Of course, this still means more photos to clean up later. This process just reinforces lessons in restraint.

No Filter Will Replace Eyeliner. The joke about black eyeliner being “hotness in stick form” comes from a very real place. You can bump up the contrast all you want, your little squirrel eyes will be just as disappeared.

Your Pictures Can Outlive a Phase. And You. Make sure the face you are plastering all over Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram is the face that you want to have looked up well after you can’t be looked up, and also is the best representation of that time you wore your hair that way for the Skrillex show.

Topless Young Christopher Walken Completes any Photo Collection.