What a week

dispatch 51

Hello everyone…this post is a week off my regular schedule because honestly? I was in a spiral of overwhelm and depression! High-fives to everyone who has sobbed on their bathroom floor in the last week!

Standing on the edge of a dark, swirling void: an aesthetic

I know I’m not the only one in the weeds of it. So many of the people that I love are going through a rough time. There is fear, uncertainty, overwhelm, and depression, a many-headed hydra of calamity in a world that seems continuously consumed by pain. Things are very hard right now, personally and locally and globally, and things have also felt very hard for a very long time.

This space has been wonderful gentle accountability for my writing, but it has also been a place to practice stepping away when I know that I need to. So I am taking a little space to acknowledge where I’m at right now.

Last week, I experienced one of the scariest hours of my life, when I thought that a close loved one was dead. The fear brought back memories of a friend who died by gun violence and of distant friends and family members who died unexpectedly, leaving ragged holes in my life before I even knew the space they occupied. This was only the biggest and latest fear of the last few weeks, and it was one too many.

And while I tried to manage the crisis of it and understand the truth of the situation, I flitted between my phone and…chopping carrots. In panic, my brain tethered itself to reality via the thinnest of strings: folding laundry, emptying the dishwasher, chopping carrots. In those moments, I watched myself from the outside, wondering at what kind of unhinged monster can make dinner while their world is burning.

The relief of the truth came quickly, my loved one was okay. But fear can stretch minutes into days and the resulting breakdown was swift and heavy. It hit the usual notes: the feeling of perpetual falling, weak knees, sobs that stretch to your toes. I have not been taking care of myself, and that moment how close I had come to the brink of my capacity.

In therapy two days later, we talked about how when I am scared or overwhelmed, I become a fortress. I close the gates, fill the moat, and allow no one near me. I don’t talk about the things that scare me because I am hoping they will just go away if I don’t look at them dead on. Sometimes you pull the blinds and curl up in blankets because the thought of explaining yourself to someone else again is impossible. A fortress is protective but it is also really lonely.

For the last few nights I have been sleeping for over 10 hours, something that was typical in my 20s when I slept easily, but something that I thought I had long lost to time and anxiety-induced insomnia. I have been surviving on far fewer hours throughout the last year but finally my body is resting.

I cut my hair off, the shortest it has ever been and I can’t stop putting my hands through the shortest part, thrilled at the closeness of beginning and end. I have been thinking about perception and expression and how sometimes a change can free you in ways that you did not know you needed to be freed. Sometimes change can lift a depression.

Of course, sometimes it can’t. As of now, I am bumbling my way out of this one with a haircut, too much green tea, and re-watching my latest favorite show. Like chopping carrots, simple things can help. I started running again, have actually gotten dressed multiple days this week. I have been creating and finding moments of brightness to get me through.

So, things are fine. I am fine. But what I want to say, to you and to myself is this: Take care of yourself, take care of yourself, take care of yourself. Even when, and especially when, things feel particularly bleak. May you move through it given enough time and space. May you find rest on the other side.

Assorted, rad thing(s): 

In this house gratuitous vampire content is self-care. So as we close out Goth SZN I wanted to share my top 5 vampire movie reccs:

• A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night : I spent my college days (the first time!) knee deep in Iranian film and really taken by its signature lack of resolution. Iranian cinema is my absolute favorite cinema, and this movie is a masterpiece. Filmed in black and white, with one of the most beautiful single take long-shots I have ever seen. I love how this movie plays with danger and gender, troubling ideas of vulnerability as gender, the ways that a girl who is dangerous is considered monstrous. Bonus points for cowboy western elements and a killer (intentional pun!) soundtrack.

• Only Lovers Left Alive: The ultimate 4w5 movie (Jim Jarmusch is for us, my fellow melancholy headcases!), this movie is stunning with an amazing cast. (The leads aside: John Hurt, Jeffrey Wright, Mia Wosnikowska, Anton Yelchin!) Again, an amazing soundtrack starring Yasmine Hamdan, a kind of dry humor roasting of hipster culture, and Tilda Swinton wearing an aspirational robe while eating a blood ice pop. It’s camp but very luxurious camp.

• Let the Right One In: Swedish, haunting, and very violent. About two lonely children (one of whom is a vampire) who fall in love. There are a lot of readings of this a queer love story but I’ll let you decide!

• The Lost Boys: I somehow had not seen this until a few years ago when Max suggested it. Nothing on this list is as vaguely disturbing as Kiefer Sutherland’s mullet. Deeply excellent cast and that kind of “young kids take on big evil while their parents leave them completely unattended for long periods of time because this is the 1980s” plot that we know and love. Campy and wonderful.

• The Hunger: Explicitly gay but in a way that hasn’t aged well! Still worth it for the bisexual powerhouse cast. (Sarandon, Bowie, Deneuve)

And if you’re debating watching Interview with the Vampire this season, do yourself a favor and skip the movie and Tom Cruise in a wig…check out the show on AMC instead (playing on HBOMax through October for free!).

I hope that the rest of your Goth Season is haunted in all of the right ways. See you in November.

hang in there,

lisa

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