An Overview (In Which I Examine Everything)

The last few weeks have felt like an accumulation of endings. I do not fare well with endings. I feel guilty for not appreciating what I was experiencing when I was experiencing it, so I want to resist change. Every arena of my life (ie: school, work, personal) changed simultaneously in the last month of the year and it has been chaos within. It’s been so easy to cry. I don’t want to let go, but I’m uncertain if I should hold on…but there seems to be nothing to hold onto, at least it’s not the same thing I wanted to hold onto. I think this is what people call life.  

It took three solid years to figure out the best routine in the "office." The best way to sleep. The best way to store my belongings (which has now reached a ridiculous limit...I have a hot plate, kitchen set, a travel guitar, paint, supplies to make coasters, a magic set, plants, boxing gloves, multiple backpacking packs, a space heater...I can go on and on). The best way to live. Home is rather comfortable and cozy now. It wasn't always, and I wish I knew how to have made it as delightful as I feel as it is now back then...but I suppose I learned something along the way in those trying initial years.

Construction on the office was a rumor for so long. And maybe it is finally happening now because the universe knows that I've grown comfortable here. I am as safe as a squatter can be. There's never a perfect time and I wish it wasn't happening, but it's as good of a time as any.

The last few days have been disheartening. I do feel a need to nest and rest. But still there are some things I won't budge on, financially. My standards, albeit odd, are still standards. I'd rather sleep on a table than have a bed for $1400. That’s easy for me to say because I don’t have $1400…but I’m sure if I did I’d choose the table.

For the first time in many years I'm not leaving the country in January, but I'm feeling the itch for adventure, for exploration. Two nights ago I met a potential client, a man who had a three-legged cat named Daddy, and his studio apartment was decked out to the T as if Ernest and Teddy were his private decorators. Zebra and cheetah prints, elephant shrines, bamboo walls: a kitty-cat's dream. I forgot what it was like to venture into someone's home, a cat myself, nervous for the unexpected.

Yesterday, unrelated to the Safari-three-legged-cat man, I reached out to a man whom I've corresponded with briefly three years ago, about a boat. Our brief conversation was strained, rude, and overwhelming. A highlight:

"Are you one of those people who say they're going to show up but then don't? Or do but just waste my time and don't have any money?!"

"Uh, no?"

"So you're coming with hard cash?"

"Before I commit to anything I want to actually see the boat and figure out if it works for what I need."

"If you're not coming with any money then don't even bother. Every day I have people call and say they're going to come, and I wait around and nobody comes. It's a waste of my time. This is my life. My life is an actual waste of time. I should just kill myself because this isn't worth it anymore. What am I even waiting for?"

"Uh...well, I'm sorry...that...you've dealt with unfortunate people. I still want to come by. I promise I’m not wasting your time."

After some more back-and-forth banter about nothing and suicide and money and more nothing:

“So, how do I get to the boat?”

"The closest address you can use is the Circus Warehouse."

Well, then.

I was convinced that this man was possibly a deranged, unstable dick and that he was going to murder me, or that I was going to murder him due to how anxious he made me.

It was my first time exiting this particular subway stop and he met me at the subway, unexpectedly. It didn’t feel like NYC, but maybe that was because I didn’t know where I was heading. I felt foreign and out of place. He was a red-head in his mid-forties dressed in a black hoodie. He looked like someone who had lived on the docks, and it was possible he was recovering from something, but my perception may have been colored by the thought of him ready to kill himself. His wrinkled face was desperate. He walked quickly and nervously; we began the small talk.

"You can see the mast from here." He was right. There were multiple masts bobbing along. Good. The boat was real.

We zigzagged across traffic and took a shortcut through parking lots where the big-rigs sleep for the evening. I tried to keep track of my location. Right by the water I saw a big warehouse of a building.

"So, the circus warehouse...is that, like, an actual warehouse for circus props, or..." I said it more as a joke.

"Yeah, well, it's where the circus people train."

"WHAT!"

"Yeah."

"Do you ever go in and watch them?"

"Yeah, sometimes."

He was absolutely not fazed or impressed by his neighbors.

Ah, what a feeling. It was a feeling of excitement, wonder, and curiosity. I was a traveler again. I forgot what this felt like.

We reached the river, and squeezed between a wire fence and a crumbling cement wall. The bank along the water was steep and unstable.

"Wow, it really smells like dark chocolate here."

"Oh, yeah, that's from the warehouse."

"Wait, it's actually dark chocolate? I have a good nose."

"It smells good at first, but you get tired of it fast. They kept dumping it here with all these cement bricks, so it's a bitch to get to the boats."

And he was right. We had to stand on unstable, crumbling cement abutments and leap onto the side of the sailboat; or climb down a metal ladder held together by rope to a cement wall. He never stopped to make sure I didn't fall over myself. He never asked if I needed a hand getting over the high wires, or with leaping from one sailboat to the next. He just ploughed through, and I liked this about him.

We talked for a long time. We shared a lot of similarities.

"My sister moved to Amityville for a while. She only lived there for 5 years but she picked up an accent. She sounds more Long Island than you do. You don't sound like you're from there at all."

"Thank you. I get that a lot. Maybe it has something to do with having a deaf mother-"

"Oh, your mother is deaf? My sister and all four of her children are too."

He showed me the sailboats; bare-bones and to the point. Here is not a place for luxury. But for the asking price I wasn't expecting luxury. In need of luxury, like a shower, I could easily access my current resources. All I really needed was a place to sleep and a nice quiet place to write. Considering what my needs were, what my bare-bone needs were, this seemed to actually satisfy them. I splurged an extra $50 to have the boat with electricity, a move that, perhaps a few years ago, I would have forgone to save a few extra dollars, so perhaps I was also changing unknowingly.

I said yes.

It was my first time going to a "viewing" of a “home” with the intention of purchasing. It's "impressive" I've managed to go 29 years without officially paying "rent," or going "apartment hunting." The ordeal creates vulnerability. It is terrifying. The barter system just makes more sense to me. But, when bartering no longer can work, it’s nice to know I can still find a way around a system.

"Sorry if I was a real dickhead earlier on the phone."

"Yeah, you were a little overwhelming."

"It's just...I get screwed every day, and I'm not making any money. People here think it's okay to say they'll show up and then disappear."

"I know what it's like to wait."

“Hey, at least now I can pay my cell phone bill.”

“And I have a place to crash. This worked out well.”

Three years ago I began my life over in New York, scrambling for opportunities and insight. I’d drive out-of-the-way to LIC to save on commuting costs and park in “free” places and carry onwards to gigs where I used to work as a clown. And then unwillingly, briefly, was displaced to a boat and later transitioned to the office. It was an odd life-choice rooted from unfortunate circumstances. Now, I end this cycle again, willingly, on a boat, close to where I used to drive and park, and no longer a “clown” per se, but excited to watch others perfect their circus art. Endings don't feel so bad when there's symmetry to help make sense of it all.

So, in January or February, if anyone feels like taking a journey to Long Island City, and climbing over some ladders, hopping over some boats, exploring dark chocolate riverbanks, wondering what the big-rigs are lugging in, listening to the circus trainers practice...you're welcome aboard the Ranger's Charlie and having some wine with me.

Reluctance

The thing with Depression is the frightening familiarity of it all. It returns; wades; treads; impedes my movement. Quietly. Only until I come up for air, to regain clarity, do I realize I've been submerged, and holy fuck look at how much time has passed, I need to stop this and move on and wait, maybe I'm just lazy or tired and I should get up, get up, get out, come on, get up. Rinse. Repeat.

For the first time in fourteen years I finally went to speak to someone. Not particularly because I was in a rough head-space (but I was), but because economically it was feasible. By the time I met Margo I was already in the process of moving forward from an unfortunate trauma. With the annual winter sadness, late-20-something-year-old fears, typical graduate school stress, I unwillingly tacked on the task of recovering from an assault that occurred during my travels last January. It was already a trip masked in sadness and nostalgia; I found myself questioning characteristics about myself that I thought I had already answered. It occurred during a time where I was determined to override all of my anxieties. When it happened I quickly realized I was unable to cope with such an event, despite the experience I had with dealing with past/familiar trauma; the aftermath proved that coping was not happening any time soon. This wasn't my first attack. Not by a long shot. But it was the first of something, but what or how is still difficult to express. These things are unnameable.

Now there was something foreign about me. Something off. I felt it. Others saw it. I wasn't the same.

Spring had arrived by the time I met Margo and I was on my way to breathing real air again. I had spent the winter physically ill from my incapability of coping emotionally. I had known Depression for so long in many different manifestations, but this was a new breed. This was silent. It wasn't sadness. It was absolute nothing. It was giving up. My immune system began attacking itself. I was covered in stress-hives for three months. I gained an incredible amount of weight. I couldn't write at all. For the first time I was late and unresponsive to deadlines. I had my employer even ask if I was suicidal because of how unlike myself I had become. Textbook Depression. Textbook Trauma Aftermath. And with all of that I still didn't care. But because I felt myself not caring I started to care about not caring. At the end of the day my obsession with my neurosis will always somehow help dig me out.

Then came more sunlight, more reflection, more time to accept myself and what had happened.

When I told Margo my story she asked, "How did you cope afterwards? Who did you speak to?" and I surprised myself when I admitted, "nobody." That wasn't totally true. Where I was I had limited access to people I would have spoken to, so I wrote about it briefly in a message to the Boy, but being halfway around the world from one another there's only so much support one can receive. It took over a month for me to talk to anyone face-to-face about it. I didn't realize that's how long I had waited to finally start the process of asking for help. When one hits the final stage of giving up, asking for help no longer feels necessary.

Margo looked surprised. She said that was a long time to go without reaching out to a friend.

That was the beginning of realizing that being honest isn't necessarily the same as being open. I have really grown into myself these last few years. I'm constantly surprising myself with my own audacity. It's bold and exciting. Sometimes it's only afterwards when I realize "Oh! Wow, I didn't know that was how I felt." Usually it involves me not caring about certain conventions or rules. I'm an open book. I don't have anything to hide; if my self-deprecation is any hint, I don't have much pride or ego to protect either. I'm proud of my honesty. I don't shy away from difficult discussions.

I assumed being loud, honest, and unforgiving about my life also meant I was a complete open book. Lately I'm discovering I'm more of a private person than I ever realized. Rarely do I openly discuss my relationship with the Boy (but won't shy away from discussing him when asked) or ask someone to talk about something that is bothering me. I let it fester until somehow it comes up organically in a conversation with someone. It's been an interesting thing to discover about myself. I keep everything inside until the levee breaks.

 Margo also asked, "When would you say you first felt depressed?" and before I answered I actually laughed. "It's always been there. Beneath the surface. Some days are good, but it's always there. I don't know who I am without it. I thought that was natural?"

She didn't confirm whether or not that feeling was a typical human feeling like I had assumed. Given her reaction I reckoned it was a no. My frame of reference has always been a bit skewed.

So, here we are. Again. I now understand the question "Do you feel a loss of interest in the things you used to enjoy?" I used to feel determined that it was never that bad because, at least, I had interest. It's been difficult to muster up motivation after experiencing the opposite of that. I'm trying to wake up again. It's a slow process. Slower than I remember.

I hoard my feelings, my time, my words. And only now, seven months later, do I feel up to the challenge of wanting to breathe again. Though, I'm still reluctant. I'm still missing deadlines. I'm still hesitant. I'm still in bed, wherever I find my head these days, unmovable.

Rinse. Repeat.
Wade. Tread.
Wake up.
Get up.
Move.
Please.