In Which I Delight

Note: For those who might need a heads up, this post discusses suicide and suicidal thoughts.

 

 

(VCCA grounds, June 2019)

***

for someone I know who ultimately chose a different way

I’m sure I’ve written before about how terrified I am about wishing away time, of not being present even when the circumstances are difficult. The sort of presence I try my hardest to practice feels impossible while I working at a place where the desperation is not quiet, and most bonding between people is done in whispers–at times bitter, at times distressed, many times both– about such things like “higher ups” family trips abroad and holiday homes outside the city. Meanwhile a trip out of state is a stretch for most everyone else, or God forbid, an unexpected medical expense. Meanwhile dignity is synonymous only with title and power, a distorted order of things made more frustrating and even more painful by the almost mandated performance of enthusiasm, gratitude, and community, and the belief that all the “good” the work is presumed to be doing out in the world allows room to sidestep the irony of bloated grants and paychecks that could directly transform the lives of the people about who we claim to care so deeply. Have I described the non-profit where you work?

I’ve been trying to remind myself that me being disposable in the work machine does not make it so in real life. In real life, I have agency, and should be able to move beyond whispered grievances in someone’s office doorway to a place where I decide how to seek and hold on to joy and work with meaning. Unfortunately, depression also exists in real life, as evidenced by the average of 45 minutes it takes me to get out of bed on most work days, and the frequent stepping away from my desk for a quick cry, or a moment to sit outside the building and just breathe. Even with Beyoncé’s Homecoming on a loop, or interviews with Toni Morrison, Dionne Brand, Jesmyn Ward, Julie Dash, and other Black women whose work sustains me playing in the background, I am increasingly absent. So much so, that I can go days before realizing I have lost track of the date, and that I have worn the same combination of black leggings and black shirts far more drab that what used to be my usual. But I can no longer afford this sort of absence from my own life. As hard as I have tried and laughed and joked and made grand pronouncements about “surviving,” I am not able to successfully insulate myself from the discontent (justified and understandable though it may be) that coats the  office walls and the feelings of being stuck that keep me fixed to my swivel chair.

On the last Tuesday of March, a few days before my mum was due to fly into Boston before our trip to New Orleans, I tried to end myself. It was in a small way, relatively speaking, but the despair and feelings of worthlessness behind my actions were not small, and neither was the harm I was working myself up to, one which a growing part of myself hoped would be more final. This wasn’t the first time I had seriously considered and even planned suicide, like 2017 4^th of July weekend when one of my roommates coming home earlier than expected save me from my own mind, or the summer of 2014 where I drove my mum’s car faster and way more aggressively than I usually would dare because I didn’t care what the outcome could be, or all the times before I left home where I explained away my own sorrowful feelings as being “moody” or “dramatic.” But this time, what terrified the larger part of myself that loves life and wants to continue living it was that for the first time I had the means to succeed, namely three months’ supply of an anti-depressant that I now know was not doing its job. Everything I’ve said prior to this point might point to work as the primary source of my misery, but the conditions I have tried to summarize are just the backdrop against which so many other low moments converged in my mind on that Tuesday night. I honestly can’t remember what happened that day, all I know is I was on the train trying to sniff back my tears until I could get home to let them out.

All at once, I was standing and walking in all the public places I have cried; the 80 bus, the road sloping down towards Medford Street from the corner of Highland Ave and School Street, a significant stretch of Broadway from Powder House Square to the CVS in Magoun Square, the 86 bus, the entire length of the red and orange line platforms at Downtown Crossing, the 86 bus, the car park in front of the giant Kappy’s that would be so much more convenient as a supermarket, the 88 bus, on Cambridge Street down the road from the nail salon and the dentist, the Lechmere-bound green line platform at Park Street, the complicated highway I have to cross to get to my otherwise wonderful apartment, any number of places in Harvard Square and Boylston Street downtown, and the beginning of yoga class in Dudley Square while everyone’s eyes are supposed to be closed. There was the weight of reflections of myself I didn’t recognize and with which I’m constantly struggling; selfish, needy, demanding, burdensome (whether you think you are hiding well or not), and waves of grief about things I have been terrified to reckon with, things like “Maybe I didn’t really say no. Maybe that didn’t happen.”

 

 

(Downton Crossing, Wellington, Home, Savin Hill)

Mostly though, I was exhausted in every way one can be, just wanted so badly to sleep, and was not really concerned with whatever lay on the other side of that sleep. Recognizing I was putting myself in danger, I called my therapist’s voicemail box, and she called back right away because she happened to be working late. I refused to check myself in to the hospital no matter how much she insisted, because even more terrifying than what I was trying to do was the prospect of checking myself in on my own. I promised to go in to see her the next day, and I did, after going to work and before going to a yoga class that I feel strongly helped me save myself that week. My therapist could not convince me to go to a psychiatric ward, and I think the only reason she stopped insisting was because I promised I could hold on until my mum’s arrival on Saturday, and more importantly that I wanted to live, that I had been making plans for my future, as uncertain as it all seemed.

 

 

(Swimming back to the surface + candles and some high-maintenance plants)

I spent the rest of the week swimming furiously back to the surface of my own life. I took a personal day from work and bought the plants I’d been meaning to get for a while, as well as an overpriced tea from a café on the way, I called my mum and told her about the plants, about the much better tea I could have had for free at home, about the spring weather finally coming in, about how healthy my hair was looking, but not about Tuesday night. I wrote this in an effort to ask for help while still remaining partially in hiding, I brushed off any concerned messages following that post about silence with a mention of “work stress,” I cried on the phone to my friend Mel and yelled back at the rude neighbors who complained that I was crying too loud. By the time Saturday arrived, I was feeling stable enough to make my café date with my gem of a friend Abigail (we meet every few weeks at a different café and sometimes in between for film screenings, author talks, museum trips, general catch-ups etc.), and then on to the airport to wait for my mum. By the time my mum walked through the arrival gates, I was in tears, a mix of relief that she had made it and fear of what I was about to tell her.

 

 

(Myself and a gem: Abigail and I a few days after what happened had happened, and again this summer)

New Orleans could not have come at a more perfect moment, and before she went back to Accra a few weeks later, she was sure to tell as many of my Boston people as possible that she needed them to check on me because she knew I wouldn’t call. I was grateful she did, because I would have just kept hiding and got on with it as is my wont. My swim to the surface included actively looking for a new job (which I now have and will be starting at the end of August), writing, Zumba-ing, and yoga-ing because it really did feel like my life depended on it, and most importantly, trying not to be silent about what I tried to do. People who I love and who love me, especially those I have not yet told about this in person or on the phone, I hope you will understand why I had to write this. Saying everything out loud gives the silence and the low moments far less power over my self, and I promise you with every part of this self that I am ok now. Moving back home isn’t what I want to do right now even as I see how much that might put you at ease, and as much as I would love to be there right this minute. There is still so much I want to do out here, such as it is. I need to choose to live everyday for myself, because that is what I want to do, and not only because of the fear of letting other people down. I hope you will not be angry with or disappointed in me.

Here I am at the surface of my life, present and accounted for by Alwin Mana and by her mother Lolomo who loved me even before she knew who I would be. I have been actively trying to re-orient the way I think so that I don’t sink to those depths again. I had bloodwork, a general check-up, an appointment with a psychiatrist, and a change in medication. Bank accounts, work  drama, the inhumanity of borders, and the rising sea levels are still on my mind daily, the last two far more urgent than the first two, but I am loving and listening to the inner self assuring me that I must hold on, and that I must keep choosing life daily. I can no longer afford self-deprecating humor about depression; I can’t afford ironic pessimism; I can’t afford to keep hiding behind sarcasm, although I do not at all intend to shame other people who use these as coping devices. Personally, I just cannot do it any longer. I am choosing life. There is nothing to joke about.

Choosing life also looks like trying to find small things in which I delight as often as I can. I got the idea from a lovely person I met during an Alternative Spring Break program in college, who posts “small and beautiful things” she observes as she moves around New York City. Trying to do this daily over the past few weeks has shown me that Boston can truly be as miserable as people make it out to be (seriously, there is nobody as mean and abrasive as someone yelling at their fellow passenger on the MBTA at 8:45am), and especially if you are not a well-off white cis person. A lady at the hair salon once described Boston as “Atlanta for white people” and I have never heard anything more accurate. Trying to find things to delight in where I can instead of every day has made it much easier and much more pleasant than putting pressure on myself to find any hollow thing to be happy about every single day. Because this is already so long, I will only post some of my favorites for now. I am choosing to continue living this life, and in this life I will delight.

***

An [initial] list of things in which I delight: 

A wide-eyed little girl wearing a t-shirt with the words “Small Wonder” printed across the front

A woman with a New Orleans accent making pleasant small talk with her neighbor on the train

The words “fly blackbird” carved into the brick on the platform at the Davis T station (and running into other lines of poetry on unexpected pavements and platforms around the city)

A new shoot finally pushing through after my asparagus fern’s sickness

Surprise “Have a good week” texts from a dear friend who was just on my mind

A baby giggling on a bike ride (although I generally find it frightening to see small children strapped behind their parents on bikes)

In someone’s front yard, a sunflower taller than me with a bee kissing up to it