Yeah. So there’s almost something a little comforting about your life breaking.
All those things you’ve feared have come to fruition. You’ve told yourself, with an optimistic, but forced laugh, that it can’t get any worse. < ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” />
And then something else goes wrong, and you hit the ground, and in the moments you’re lying there, you feel like you’ll never be able to get back up.
Lisa once told me that sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you can even begin to move on.
So my rock bottom has hit, during my last semester of college, on a day in which the loneliness that has dominated the past three years of my life was thrown in my face. It was pouring salt in the open wounds left over from the worst summer I can remember, setting off tears that I have stashed away.
I was sitting in Modern Political Thought, listening to Professor Burns lecture on Rousseau. I don’t particularly care for Rousseau — he thought the state of nature was peaceful, so clearly, he must be an idiot. But then Burns asks, to give relevance to Rousseau’s discussion of community “Have any of you ever been on a team, or in a group, where your presence was necessary to success? Where everyone needed you, and you needed them? That’s what Rousseau means by community.”
The last time I was a part of anything like that was my senior year of high school, with The Little Team That Could. We had a common goal, and the hours we spent together cemented a friendship that still exists today. Anyone I try to explain this to looks at me like I’m kind of crazy. But these people remain my family, and I have never found anything that makes my life as whole as they did.
Now, I throw myself into my work to save myself from loneliness. I take obsessive-compulsive notes of my readings for class. I read every Paul Johnson book I can get my hands on. I re-write old papers. I am proud of my accomplishments, but in the end, it is just me, and there is no one to share them with, and no one to really understand the small victories.
I spent much of the past summer dreading my return to school. I have never found a place for myself at college, and I just want to graduate and be finished with the whole mess. This was the worst summer I can remember and it ended even worse, and I am still trying to reconcile that whole mess.
But this summer, no matter how bad things got, I still got out of bed in the morning and went to work.
I never neglected my responsibilities. You always hear stories about people who are depressed being completely unable to take care of themselves, and why would anyone classify such a functional, rational person such as myself as depressed? It has been easy to trick myself about what I can handle, because I am so tough-as-nails. I try to rationalize away any emotion that seems as if it doesn’t fit properly with my reality. But then it backfires.
A few nights ago, the Red Sox won Game Seven against the Yankees. They’ve come from being behind 3-0 in the series. It’s amazing to watch, even though I am a Jersey girl, devoted to the Yankees by virtue of location. Outside, Red Sox fans are celebrating. They’re chanting. They’re probably drunk. They’re hugging strangers wearing Red Sox hats. It’s crazy how they’re so happy over something so stupid. But I start to cry, because I wish I could be made this happy over something so dumb. I don’t have anything I belong to. I don’t have “community.”
So I cried so hard I broke the capillaries around my eyes again.
It can’t be that bad. Waking up and getting out of bed is hard, but once I meet the day, I am fine. I go to my classes, and I pay attention, and I occasionally talk to an acquaintance. Days are easy; it is when I come back to my room and drop my books on my bed, and all the good feelings that I have built up over the course of the day just drain out of me.
When I shared this with Brent he expresses his concern. “It isn’t so bad,” I insist. “It’s just lonely.” And then I tentatively admit that it would be nice to just be able to breakdown. It would be nice to just let go, neglect my responsibilities and not get out of bed in the morning. I can’t do that, because it would make me feel worse, but I am almost envious of the freedom that those who break down allow themselves.
“That’s just not you,” he tells me. “You’re too willful to let that happen.”
He’s right – my stubborn streak will never allow me to reach a point where I have to ask for help. I can take care of myself. I have to take care of myself.
At my rock bottom I’ve already bit back tears, and curled up with my favorite book, and felt worthless. I have thrown back so many shots of vodka that they don’t even burn the back of my throat. I’ve woken up without a hangover, but with the nagging sensation that I’m completely out of control. I have been in a free-fall for months, and maybe even years, and now I allow the tears to fall for all the tiny little needles that poked me incessantly, and all the punches that hit me in the stomach, and all the Mac trucks that ran over me.
And so I am sniffling through a sinus infection induced by three straight days of bawling and I think to myself, “Damn. Well. Still standing.” And then I get out of bed, and take a deep breathe, and I go about my day. Because that’s all I know how to do. I’m currently pretty proud of myself for how I’m handing these spates of drama that the fates have decided to throw at me. Because sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you can even think about pulling yourself into a sitting position.
Sure I’m having problems making tiny, tiny decisions like, what to eat for dinner.
And, sure, I sit at Starbucks, reading and taking obsessive notes and about every five minutes I stop what I’m doing and run through a mental list of how things are broken: 1: boys 2: regret 3: boys, 4: social life, 5: job search. Oh yeah, and boys. Well boy. And then I kind of sigh, and go back to work.
Normally, one or two of these things would turn me in a puddle of sadness, but when a bunch hits you all at once, it kind of just makes me want to stand up and say, “Yeah? What else you got?”
I’ve even managed to start acting like almost my normal self again, which I’m sure has my housemates breathing a sigh of relief. Because bitchy and or melancholy Rachel is not very fun. Unless you get her drunk. Then things start to look up, but then you have to watch out for hysterically weeping Rachel. Which is also not my best color.
So while maybe I won’t be making the right decision between sushi roll and Thai garden dumplings, at least I’m out at a restaurant, and not in my room sobbing. And that’s pretty damn good.
