This was a TMS blog, but this post isn’t about TMS. No, it isn’t about Led Zeppelin either. It’s actually just going to be one big wall of GIFs
lol kidding Robert called me out. But anyway, it is about the mind…which- although TMS served as a framework- is really what this whole shebang was about. Away we go.
The other night, I’m talking to a guy about “left behind people”. In response, my hand gets earnestly held, but it feels wrong because I don’t know that it’s a response I earned. I mean, it’s not like I’m changing the world. I’m just another person talking. But anyway. I decide it probably has less to do with what I was saying and more that he was just looking for an opportunity because he thinks I’m purdy in this lighting.
Later, I’m emailing a family member about those same concerns about the “left behind”, on the train.
Then while I’m *on* the train, lo and behold…Left-Behind-Person–Here-Now-WWYD? ACTIVATE
She tears down the car in a fury with a yowl. I don’t notice her boarding because of all my emailing- she is like a tornado out of nowhere. Young, early 20s at most, unruly curls, pained squinting expression, tattered all-black clothing and some sort of large, unwieldy sack presumably containing all of her belongings. Up and down the car, shouting nonsense. A Mess. There’s now an eccentric-looking but all-in-all lucid and “together” guy sitting near me chastising her for her behavior…in that patient but annoyed way that um…oh boy, I know that tone. I hope he does know her, because if not, he’s being way overly familiar and a bit of an asshole. You only get to talk that way to someone who’s got a piece of you.
I could be normal and ignore all of this. Like everyone else is doing. But probably no one else was just talking about “left behind people” twice in the past hour. But I was. I was just talking the talk, wasn’t I? And I don’t want have done that but then here just….and so then. If you know me, you know what happens.
I ask if he knows her. He does.
“That’s my girlfriend.”
His eyes are large and brown and friendly and concerned. His voice is steady. I ask him what her deal is.
“She’s just been drinking.”
I ask if he’s taken her into a clinic. A doctor. Considered medication. This is beyond drunkenness, obviously. Mental illness. But he says none of those things help. That it has to- he points to his heart- “come from her”. This sounds defeatist to me and also, knowing a thing or two about the mental health industry, sounds totally plausible. I don’t know what to say.
She starts yelling directly at him. She’s being kind of terrible. She stumbles off again for another trip down the length of the car. He turns back to me.
“I’m the only one who gives a fuck about her. And she’s about to lose me too.”
I see he’s not kidding. And I see the distress on her face. I see her body jerk and weave. I see her almost fall down.
“And she’s about to lose me too.”
Those words bite. I know what it is to have someone lose me and I really know what it is to be lost. And I don’t want that to happen. Like I really, really don’t want that to happen. Yes I know she’s being awful. No I don’t know if I could do what he’s doing, unless I was deeply in love, and they hadn’t always been like this. Love makes you do crazy things. Still, if there’s a heaven, this guy should basically get guaranteed entry for putting up with this.
But. She’s broken. But. She’s the kind of person everyone turns away from. And. If she loses him…she’s fucked.
He shows me his dirty, calloused palms.
“Look at this. I work all day and then-” he points to her- “it ends with this.”
Black streaks embedded in grooves. I stare too long at them, looking for words. It takes some work, but this is the kind of grime that can be scrubbed out. We can fix palms like that. Brain grime…that’s another bag of ferrets.
I feel stupid recommending specific clinics. If I knew one that was a surefire bet…maybe. Maybe. But also I know how it feels to be recommended specific clinics, in high key moments like this, when your hands are filthy and your girlfriend is blowing her top and you just want to go to bed. So I don’t.
“It has to be really hard for you. If you’ve dealt with the professionals every which way you know how, I don’t know, man. But I hope you’ll keep looking. Keep trying.”
He nods at me. The show goes on. But eventually, after a fair amount of back and forth, somehow he gets her to sit down. Maybe she’s just too exhausted to keep pacing. Maybe this is how it always goes with them. It certainly looks like it. Like a familiar dance. How he leans in. Wraps his arms around her. How she melts into him. Sometimes this is all you can do. Two bodies, yielding. Yes. I’m sure they do this all the damn time.
It’s time for me to go and the man notices this and waves up to me from his low position near her lap. Next thing I know, words are falling out of my mouth again.
“You’re doing good work.”
I don’t know why. Maybe because people who are being a rock for a headcase (not my preferred term here, but, let’s get real, this is where our minds go) don’t get enough credit. I know about this, don’t ask me how but I do. I wonder if everyone tells him he should just leave the bitch. That sounds about right. But I wonder if anyone also just acknowledges to him that he’s a goddamn saint. He smiles slightly. His face softens.
Not her face though. Her face screws up in confusion- hardening.
“What?”, she says. Suspicion. I get it. Who the fuck am I?
I’m fairly certain they aren’t used to anyone on the outside popping the bubble. I’m fairly certain they aren’t used to being seen at all. Especially her. And especially when she’s like this. I’m fairly certain they’re used to everyone popping on headphones instead, pretending like they don’t see it, don’t hear it. That’s what I usually do. I mind my business. After all, I can do so little. Don’t ask me why, but I’m telling you that’s true. I just say-
“He loves you. He really does.”
She’s struggled for words this whole time. She doesn’t now.
The crease between her eyebrows disappears. She blinks slowly. She nods. The words are mumbled but still slip out effortlessly.
“I love him too.”
If you’re going to engage a loose canon, you have to be prepared for anything. I think I am expecting to be spit in the eye then, and have her think on that later. I do not expect warmth.
Something stirs in me and now I’m not in the car in my mind, I’m hit with the image of me steering a ship, yanking the ever living fuck out of that wheel
and it feels like it’s about to graze glaciers anyway, and I’m failing, and everyone’s watching it happen.
“YOU TRY IT WITH THIS SHIP IN THESE WATERS”
It doesn’t matter what I say. Everyone is just super disappointed in my sailing…
But then someone is there- right behind me. Not steering for me. No. That’s my job. But holding on. Believing in me. Knowing how hard this ship is to man… because you can only really grasp that when you’re at the helm too. Telling me, “I know you can”. Through me jerking the wheel and cursing and growling. Because I’m trying. I’m really fucking trying.
What a strange flash of an image just then. Although the mental picture wasn’t what struck me the most. The strongest element of it is somewhere in my body- the sensation of being held. Like when you imagine the taste of something to where you almost really can taste it, this is what it is like- feeling arms stronger than mine. Except this isn’t like the phantom taste and mouth feel of a gooey chocolate center, and then remembering you’re not really having it (probably for the better)
This feeling-not-real, this vision, when I snap back, is the pain of waking up from a beautiful dream where you are safe, to a reality where you are not.
Tears coming fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK
You’re supposed to be the level-headed stranger!!!
Push it DOWN down down down down
“It’s a gift. You’re very lucky.”
It just comes out like that. When it does, her eyes meet mine and then they droop. Like she just got a shot of Sandman dreamstuff in them.
Then I step off. Aching inside. Thinking of them and a ship and all of these things and I can cry now. It’s ok. I mean, the lesson I’ve learned is it’s never really ok, but it’s more ok than crying in front of someone who has it much worse than I do…
I don’t tell this story to brag so you’ll think I’m an amazing person. Because I don’t think the exchange makes me an amazing person. I don’t see myself as some savior. Because what I really wanted was to be that dude in the corner with the noise-cancelling pillows on his ears, deep into a book. I didn’t want to have any feelings about a situation I can’t do much about.
I wanted to be thinking about whether I would do my martini tonight with vodka or gin.
What could be a pretty story on human kindness is tainted, because as “my people” can tell you, being this way kind of sucks ass. It’s a component of my essence that sometimes benefits despondent people- both strangers and familiars- but it doesn’t really benefit me. If anything, it’s the opposite. It comes with a well of emotion deeper than I care to have, and an instinct to not only “see” people but encourage them to “see” themselves…even when they don’t want to. Not because I’m an asshole that thinks people are projects, but because I literally see the better they can be and I fall in love with not just who they are in the moment, but also the beauty of that potential. Unfortunately it also makes me really good at spotting unnecessary bullshit. And because I am what I am, the more I love you, the more it can hurt me, so the less I let the bullshit slide. It is a soft and lovable Gizmo that can turn Gremlin if neglected.
For me, that often does not go well. For me, it is a sea of stuff that has eaten up time and energy, and has often left me…isolated. Distanced. Broken up with. Time and again.
I’m not noble. I’m not amazing. If I was, I would cherish this part of me no matter what. I do not. I am selfish and I want to feel accepted and 90% of the time I just want it gone. I want to be pleasantly stoic in the face of heartache. The occupational-therapist-in-training I once tried to force myself to be, who walked the path and only helped who was on my clipboard and didn’t get too involved.
My mind is wandering.
Why was I unhappy just being that? Why didn’t I tighten my blinders instead of feeling dread over the idea of being an upstate O.T. for the rest of my life? I wouldn’t have to take the subway, I could be in my car and not see things like this. Why did I let my creative spirit lure me into diving deeper into the human condition or whatever the fuck it was trying to do? Why reach millions? Why not just a few hundred? Why dream like that?
They say to treat yourself as you would a child you love. I am worlds away from doing that to any measure of success. Because I could not look in the eye a little girl or boy of mine who had a head and heart like mine- who I showed the rough waters to (and how they’ve affected me) and yet still had the determination to take them on- and tell them to please just dream smaller. I would not have the heart. And yet it is so easy to say to myself:
I want my blinders back.
I want to hang that Real Human Engagement shit out to dry and correct myself for ever daring to connect to too many, by flooding your feeds with soft giggles and my dry sense of humor and my nice tits and making everyone feel good.
And watch love come my way, knowing it may not be the most authentic love, but that it is ok because I was misguided to think I deserved to be loved for any more than my brand.
Walking the path to being cherished, although it is a dull path, and that is ok, because I was an idiot to think I could climb.
Keeping it basic- getting love reacts and offers for more pairs of arms around me than I can count, from people who don’t truly know me, like a wealthy celebrity sent boatloads of free shit, more than they could ever hope to use. It works.
“Feeling sorry for yourself? Cry me a quote, ya dumb bitch”
k here’s some
WAAHH
No, I am not really feeling sorry for myself. Well, maybe a little (I can maybe relate to that last one). But don’t pretend like you never fucking do too.
But moreso, I feel sorry for all the people I can’t really do shit for, because I thought I could handle the rough waters, pick up more drowning people, and I maybe shot too high.
Maybe I thought I could do it because sailing alone did not occur to me. If I had one more person next to me at the helm, I could do better in helping the drowning out there. And yet, how do I be lovable like that, but also keep the pain-in-the-ass thing inside? The thing that makes me cry at a not-good time, that also makes me care about a society that’s so broken that we have a rising epidemic of people blind drunk and drugged out of their minds- and if that’s not enough, dead- to cope?
What I wrote above about wanting to be a Basic Bitch(™) , I don’t really mean it. That’s the Gremlin talking.
What I want- and maybe this is me dreaming big again- is to be loved despite, or maybe even because, of having this thing. It just often seems out of reach. I want to see value in it. I do. But I also want to not be the only one who does.
Does that sound like a pat on the back? I did say I didn’t write this as a humblebrag. So why did I?
I wrote it because I want to somehow keep caring without being so affected, and I don’t know how to do that because the two things come from the same place. So maybe someone can tell me how to do that.
I wrote it because I want to know how to not give in to giving up when I’m the only one engaging, and it feels lonely.
I wrote it because in my heart of hearts I know I’m not the only one, and I would like to not feel alone as someone who loves a lot but also emotions a lot.
I wrote it because sometimes the mental health industry fails, and when it’s failing someone who is trying to utilize it, sometimes- if you can- it pays just to tell someone they’re loved and they matter, and to help them keep at it, in defiance of the machine we’re living in that’s all kinds of disconnected and kinda busted.
I wrote it because even if no one else reading goes through this, at least maybe you’ll wave from your own ship over there. Some of you here even visit my ship, and I hope you’ll wave up from the lower decks and say you forgive me for scraping the side of another glacier because the fact that there are good pot brownies straight from my ship’s kitchen and drink specials and bangers over the speakers is enough reason to.
But as far as the helm. Yeah. Just me. Maybe it’s because being that close, when the weather is bad and I’m not sailing well, it’s like being up close to a movie screen, where it’s too big and you can see every flaw and it’s just- a lot. Can you watch a movie like that?
So you back up, and I see your arms are still outstretched but I can’t actually be within them….
….
Like she was when I left her. That girl…
…
And back to the train car in my head and all that feeling and I don’t even know that I helped with my paltry words. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned about this type of two-person world, one where one of the people is routinely whirling it up into a dirty torment of a psych-storm…it’s that sometimes a shock to it does it some good for a hard reset (at least temporarily). A stranger engaging in a compassionate manner is not normal for anybody whose meltdown is a bit of a public inconvenience. Especially a stranger that reminds them of the good right there in front of them, when they just can’t see it.
I didn’t solve a damn thing. But I decide that what I said was meaningful human connection, a Fuck You to loneliness and disconnect, a balm to get through another night. I can make it work in my mind because after all, it’s been done for me by strangers.
Anyway, I have to. Otherwise this thing in me exists for nothing but…I don’t want to think about that.
Maybe I should do more. Maybe I should visit those veterans. There go my feelings again.
“You serve your country and you come back broken from witnessing horrors and the thanks you get…who goes to see them? I should…”
Wet eyes.
I can’t stay here. I have to slip back into normality.
I decide on the gin for the martini. The vodka is running low.
Now I’m going to cave and throw that inner Basic Bitch(™) a bone. This Shawn Mendes song just came on in the Subway I’m writing from. It sates my BB because Shawn Mendes is cute and now she’s throwing her hands in the air. But it also sates the rest of me because, despite my resistance, it’s gotten under my skin in this vulnerable moment and, music gods forgive me, speaks to a strength I hope to have.
LOL NO I’M NOT
I’m going to leave you with Led Zeppelin, because this is what plays over my tossing, thrashing, party boat’s speakers.
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