Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing

But the thing I know about depression is if you want to survive it, you have to train yourself to hold on; when you can see no reason to keep going, you cannot imagine a future worth seeing, you keep moving anyway.

Just keep moving and hope the next place will be better. It has to be. Just around the next bend, everything is beautiful. And it breaks my heart.

There are few codes held more deeply among the poor, the religious, and the uneducated than that it is good and healthy and wholesome parenting to hit your kids. That their kids grow up with anger-management issues, who like hitting almost as much as they like getting hit, is not taken as evidence that maybe they're wrong here. Its right there in the Bible: "Spare the rod, and spoil the child." The Bible also says, "Violence begets violence." But the Bible says a lot of dumb shit.

I’m as wary of certainty as I am of good vibes and positive thinking. They’re delusions that allow you to ignore reality and lay the blame at the feet of those suffering. They just didn’t follow the rules, or think positively enough. They brought it on themselves.

Those are the moments I’m proud of. The times I saw through them. The times I made them work to break me, even though I knew they would. The times I questioned the lies being fed to me, though everyone around me believed. I learned early that if everyone around you has their head bowed, their eyes shut tight—keep your eyes open and look around. I’m reflexively suspicious of anyone who stands on a soapbox. Tell me you have the answers and I’ll know you’re trying to sell me something. I’m as wary of certainty as I am of good vibes and positive thinking. They’re delusions that allow you to ignore reality and lay the blame at the feet of those suffering. They just didn’t follow the rules, or think positively enough. They brought it on themselves. I don’t have the answers. Maybe depression’s the natural reaction to a world full of cruelty and pain. But the thing I know about depression is if you want to survive it, you have to train yourself to hold on; when you can see no reason to keep going, you cannot imagine a future worth seeing, you keep moving anyway. That’s not delusion. That’s hope. It’s a muscle you exercise so it’s strong when you need it. You feed it with books and art and dogs who rest their head on your leg, and human connection with people who are genuinely interested and excited; you feed it with growing a tomato and baking sourdough and making a baby laugh and standing at the edge of oceans and feeling a horse’s whiskers on your palm and bear hugs and late-night talks over whiskey and a warm happy sigh on your neck and the unexpected perfect song on the radio, and mushroom trips with a friend who giggles at the way the trees aren’t acting right, and jumping in creeks, and lying in the grass under the stars, and driving with the windows down on a swirly two-lane road. You stock up like a fucking prepper buying tubs of chipped beef and powdered milk and ammo. You stock up so some part of you knows and remembers, even in the dark, all that’s worth saving in this world. It’s comforting to know what happens next. But if there’s one thing I know, it’s that no one fucking knows. And it’s terrifying. I don’t dream of a home and a family, a career and financial stability. I dream of living. And my inner voice, defective though it may be, still tells me happiness and peace, belonging and love, all lie just around the next corner, the next city, the next country. Just keep moving and hope the next place will be better. It has to be. Just around the next bend, everything is beautiful. And it breaks my heart.

Fact is, there are more than two doors, forgiveness or Kathy Bates. The third door is, you don’t have to forgive at all. You can just go right on living your life with one less asshole to deal with.

People describe falling in love as meeting someone who they feel like they've known all their lives. Someone who understands them immediately. To me, that seems more like a nightmare than a fantasy. I always thought love meant the process of discovery, the work to understand someone. I want to know what it feels like when someone tries to figure me out, and keeps trying. I want someone to ask the questions and listen to the answers. I want to be studied the way I study others and learned the way I learn them.

It’ll work all right for a while, until you lose something. I mean your identity is glued together with scraps of meaningless pop culture, and your supposed friends only like you when you’re funny at parties, and you’re so fucking broken inside you’re a fucking Jell-O mold held together with duct tape. One leak and it’s all coming out.

I told him it would be a week, seven to ten days to get a new line. He said through his teeth he needed an exact day. I gave him my supervisor's number. This whole time, his wife was in the kitchen wiping a clean counter. I was filling out the work orders and emailing my supervisor to give him a heads-up on a possible call from a member of every cable tech's favorite rage cult when his wife knocked on my van window. She stepped back and called me "ma'am." Which was nice. Her husband with the tucked-in polo shirt had asked my name and I told him Lauren. He heard Lawrence because it fit what he saw and asked if he could call me Larry. Guys like that use your name as a weapon. "Larry, explain to me why I had to sit around here from one to three waiting on you and you show up at 3:17. Does that seem like good customer service to you, Larry? And now you're telling me seven to ten days? Larry, I'm getting really tired of hearing this shit." Guys like that, it was safer to just let them think I was a man. She said she was sorry about him. I said, "It's fine." I said there really wasn't anything I could do. She blinked back the flood of tears she'd been holding since god knows when. She said, "It's just, when he has Fox, he has Obama to hate. If he doesn't have that . . . " She kept looking over her shoulder. She was terrified of him. "I'm sorry," she said. "I just need him to have Fox." I got out of my van.

I’m reflexively suspicious of anyone who stands on a soapbox. Tell me you have the answers and I’ll know you’re trying to sell me something. I’m as wary of certainty as I am of good vibes and positive thinking. They’re delusions that allow you to ignore reality and lay the blame at the feet of those suffering. They just didn’t follow the rules, or think positively enough. They brought it on themselves.

It may not be as visible a mark of your class as bad teeth, but a history of violence being acted upon you by those you love is just as effective at keeping you from climbing too high. Violence isn’t so much a belief system as it is a symptom. The Bible only serves to provide a necessary excuse, because the truth is, you can’t afford the cure for the disease you inherited. It was passed down from your parents who still don’t believe in therapy. They inherited it from their dads who came back from France with shattered nerves and screamed at night, sucked it up and went to work.

Any child of narcissists, addicts, or rage junkies is an expert at de-escalation.