On Sadness in Salt Lake City

Last night, I had a dream. We were driving down the interstate when, abruptly, my old dog (Lucky) jumped out the window and waddled off the road into a subdivision. Our younger dog, Jesse, quickly followed him. Frantically, I dove after him, leading me on a chase through darkened backyards and fading twilight. I was filled with worry that I would never see him again, never love him again, aching with concern given his age and lack of awareness of the dangers of the world. Eventually, I reached a point where I accepted I could not find him, and I slowly retraced my steps. I came across my family, smiling as they followed my trail. They had found Jesse, who was running joyfully. But, despite their almost oblivious smiles, Lucky was gone.

Then I woke up. And I remembered that Lucky's death was not a clear and present danger; he had died when I was 13, in seventh grade. Even Jesse, in this dream practically a pup, had died a few years ago, driven mad by a kind of doggy dementia, eventually not even able to leave the house to go to the bathroom. In an unconnected part of the dream, my grandfather's apartment was being flooded by water, the rising levels threatening to wreck the place, and again I felt so worried about losing someone I cared about. Waking, he too has been dead almost four years.

It's an awful thing, to feel so worried about a loved one's safety in a dream, only to wake up and remember they're already dead. Like a damaged memory that can't even hold the certainty of the past as a kind of relief, I get the fear and ache without the resolution. And it has me wondering about sadness. What the value of it is, and what happens when we do away with it entirely.

***

Growing up, my family was choked with sadness. It hung in the air like a poison, a fog which blurred our vision but which we'd never acknowledge. My father would move about our house like a wounded animal, bleating (in huge, exaggerated sighs) for some kind of attention or comfort only to harshly push it away when it was offered. He was like a living ghost, corporeal enough to hurt us but so clearly trapped inside his past that he was practically unreachable from the present.

My mother was even more peculiar. Taking her tricylcic antidepressant, she had the energy and disposition to keep going (often seeming like a pack animal who carried the material realities of the family on her back while we all managed our own pains in isolation). But even though she's kinder and better to me than my father, I've always felt more distant from her. Whereas my father is drenched in sadness, rolling off of him in every moment he's alive, my mother's is compartmentalized, hidden inside somewhere she (and the rest of the world) never wish to go.

But while the pain was everywhere, we never would talk about it. No one told me my father was an alcoholic. He just seemed to act crazier sometimes for no reason (which I, of course, attributed to some aberrant behavior on my part). No one talked about his periodic outbursts, where he would scream at my mother (and to a lesser degree, my sister and I) about supposed betrayals and attribute to her a brutal callousness which even as a child I knew was fantasy. In these episodes, our family would periodically be brought to the brink of apocalypse, with my sister and I reduced to abject masses of tears and terror, saying anything he wanted us to in desperate attempts to get him to stop. And the next morning, we would all act as if it had never happened. Not a word would be said, as if it was all a fever dream and we'd all gotten over it. Even now, it's tempting to believe none of it was real. But as I have slowly worked through this awful lifelong depression, I've found my body still knows what my mind can't bear to process. The sadness is there, whether I face it or not.

***

In Salt Lake City, there is little room for sadness. The city is clean, the people are bright, the pursuit of perfection is a constant. Unlike the Southern United States, where people are raised to accept their fundamental brokenness from the day they're born, in Utah they're always working towards utopia. Whereas the South's Old Time Religion incentivizes the faithful with the threat of fire and brimstone for eternity if they don't comply, the LDS Church gives promises of happiness in this life and even greater joy in the next. Unlike the South, where the majority of people want things to be "as they've always been," out West people want change. Conservative as much of their ideology is, there's a desire to learn, to grow, to be "better" that constantly challenges the status quo.

Just so, I've become more hopeful out here. I see change as possible, for myself and others. I see growth, flexibility. I feel like things don't have to be the way they are. And in a city of this particular idealism, I've been pushed to move in ways the South would never offer.

***

I'm not sure I'd call it better, though. Utah consistently ranks as one of the happiest states, with Tennessee (and other Southern states) some of the lowest. Utah also has some of the highest rates of antidepressant use, prescription drug abuse, and suicide in the nation. In my experience, people's outside expressions are happier here. And yet, for some reason, I feel more disconnected than ever.

Part of it, I think, is that at least in the South there's space for sadness. The chords are darker. The literature is gothic. Even the grass is blue. Sin is everywhere, and we all know it. But out here? More often than not, LDS folks are true believers. As a friend put it, "people in Utah actually are what people in the South claim to be." As a nonbeliever, it often strikes me as practically bizarre, even as it genuinely seems to work for so many. But at least for me, while it does seem happier, I think there's something missing all the same.

In Inside Out, Pixar proposes that the core value of sadness is expressing vulnerability. Expressing sadness, while painful and potentially opening one to hurt, also creates opportunities for intimacy and emotional support. It's the stuff connection is made of. And in connection, we find safety. And in safety, we find the space to change. When we don't express sadness or pain, we end up like my family: disconnected, separate, going through the motions of togetherness without the feelings that make it worthwhile or the change that help us all work towards something different.

And while I've been in Salt Lake City, I've felt similarly. People are nice. People are sincere. But it all seems so surface and distant. Even in progressive, artistic spaces, I can't escape it. Both times at Utah Pride, I went to the Queer Poetry Slam and at an Arts Festival I saw some really cool storytelling and short films. It was wonderful to have those opportunities for artistic expression. But all were framed as competitions, with the audience asked to rate every film, story, and performance, and I just can't stand it. I can't stand being prompted to evaluate everything, as if I can't just experience something without having to compare it to everything else and then establish which is "better." Yes, it might push people to "try harder." But it also disconnects us from the act of authentic expression and prompts us to see it as a product for consumption instead. In the drive to turn it into something "fun," we lose the pain, lose the sadness which makes it all so beautiful.

I'm sure this is hardly limited to SLC. But much of The Beehive State does feel uniquely driven to make everything positive and good in a way that undercuts so much of the real pain that doesn't have a place in "perfection." Everyone's trying to be the best, to look the best, to perform the best. There's constant pressure to look and be so gosh darn good. Utah's "Utahpianism" is more hopeful and maybe its optimism and forward thinking genuinely results in more happiness for some. But, at least to me, it so often feels like avoidance. Like a city of missed connection.

Of course, I don't know if the South's way is all that much better. The constant aggrievement of white Christians is obnoxious, and as a friend once commented to me, the Civil War is still very present in some incredibly toxic ways. But I think somewhere between the South's holding on to the pains of the past and Utah's emphasis upon the possibilities of the future is a present space which strikes me as different.

Sadness (and even its more painful cousin, depression) is important. It causes us to step back, to reflect and observe, to think about where pain comes from before deciding to venture forth anew. Ignoring sadness causes us to do the same thing, over and over again. And when that same thing isn't working for us, we just end up in a cycle where there is pain without change.

In some ways, I feel like that's where I've been for awhile: a cycle of pain without change. But now, I increasingly want to do something different. SLC's helped give me some hope, but now I want connection. I want to find that middle space between holding on and ignoring altogether. One that acknowledges, learns, and moves. But at least for the next while, I think I'm going to practice letting myself be sad. I suspect I have a lot of catching up to do.

On Change and Happiness

I was reading an AVClub review about an episode of 'Girls' where it suggests one of the characters had a pretty easy life because she was pretty but then found that things didn't work that way outside in the "real world" and thus she finds herself floundering.

But far more common, at least to my mind, is the Marnie, the person—male or female—who had a pretty firm idea of what their life was going to look like and expected life to just hand it to them once they got out of college. They had done everything right. They had the looks and the education and the five-year plan. But they’d forgotten to build a personality, because they never really had to. 

 When I read it, I thought about being smart. Unlike Marnie, I don't know that I had an expectation that things would work out. I had such low self-esteem I basically just wanted a job I could be somewhat creative in without worrying about being fired from for performance; I've always been afraid things will fall apart.

What's similar, though, is how having one particularly strong area can mean the other areas don't get developed well. The nature of school fit particularly well with my most developed skillsets, so even though I haven't been happy since childhood, I don't know that I was as anxious as I am now about my ability to function in the non-school world.

As it happens, though, being smart and critical don't help with what's most important in working with others: relationships. I had the comfort of being a detached idealist as a young adult (it's a great fit with male socialization). But the more I'm asked to be in "the real world" the more I've wilted.

I don't trust other people. It's a weird mistrust that I haven't quite figured out. But I assume they'll think the worst of me. I assume I will displease them. I assume they resent me for not being better than I am to them. They're all still my father. And although it's made me terribly unhappy, I don't think I've had to learn to trust others, because I always had the independence and forward momentum of school to keep me going.

That momentum's about to stop. I'll be done with school in July, and the hope of things somehow "getting different" when I reach some fabled destination at the end of the academic rainbow seems mostly fantasy. And it's probably a good thing. Like Marnie, I'm pretty insecure. I was a one-trick pony growing up (two, if you count the jokes, but I stopped trying to entertain people in my early 20s). And that trick's no good anymore. For a good decade or two, I've not felt I had someone I truly trusted who I could talk to, who would consistently love me. And now, I'm just a person in a sea of people without secure connection hating how her life is going who has more ungrieved trauma than she knows what to do with.

Unlike in the past, I don't want to double-down on what's not working. I don't want to invest all my stock in hoping things will someday get better. Right now, as has been true for most of the past 20 years, I'm not happy. And I want to be happy. I want to have deeper, secure connections. I want to feel like I'm doing what I can, that more people than not will be ok with that, and that I'm capable of doing something that can positively impact others (whatever it may be). I don't want to wait for life to get better. I don't want to waste more time striving for a fantasy that won't be true. I want to learn how to have good relationships with others. I want to learn how to have a better relationship with myself. I don't want to worry about school or work or conventional models of success. I want to be happy and I don't want to wait for that to happen anymore.

So that's my plan. Do what makes me happy. And if it doesn't make me happy (and I have enough money to sustain myself), it might be time to try something else.

On Honesty

Every time I try to write something here, it's like some kind of performance. I try to go for a big theme, a big narrative, contexualize or historicize. It's funny: people used to talk about how well I write. They'd talk about how vulnerable I can be, how articulately I can express myself. But for awhile now, I feel like I haven't been expressing myself- I've just been telling a story. A story where I can't get hurt. Where I'm not hurting. Not really.

My mind was never a safe place growing up. My father saw to that. One of the scariest situations I could be in would be riding in the car alone with him. And he turns to me and asks "what are you thinking?" When I was real young, I used to answer honestly. But almost always he'd get upset. If there was anything I was upset about, he'd take it personally and fire back at me. At the time, it was incredibly confusing: he'd ask me what I was thinking, but it was like he never wanted to actually know. He wouldn't even let me say "nothing;" he'd always say "I know you're thinking something." And of course what I'm thinking is "I wish you'd leave me alone, you don't actually want to know what I'm actually thinking." Which is why he's asking me in the first place, because he's probably afraid of what it is too. That I'm afraid of him, that I feel incredibly uncomfortable, that I don't feel like I can protect myself or leave and that I'm just completely exposed without recourse. So eventually, when I was in the car with him, I would constantly have another narrative running, a decoy script I could give to him that would assuage any of his fears and reassure him everything was ok. It was exhausting, certainly. But it was better than the alternative.

I don't know if I know how to be honest. To say what I really feel. I guess I say versions of it, certainly. Maybe we all do. But so much of it still feels scripted. Like all of you are him, and I have to tell you what's palatable. What you can handle. What won't hurt you, what won't worry you, what won't tap into your insecurities and set a fire nothing but time and causing pain can put out. And maybe most of it's not a lie. Not really. But it's not the whole truth. It's not everything. I'm not really sure what everything even is. Maybe I should figure that out.

I had an ex, once, who looked different everytime I saw her. I never could understand it; she just seemed like a different person each time. As if my mind couldn't contain her in all her dimensions so it always imprinted on part of her and was befuddled when the rest came out.

That's how I feel about my dad, too. It's difficult to separate all the versions of him, sometimes in the same scene. The dad that drunkenly dragged my sister and I into our frigid backyard in the dead of night to tell us how our mother used to love him before we were born is the same father that was so intentional about making sure we were warmly ensconced in blankets before he did. I can't say he's a monster who didn't care about me. But I can't say he did what he did because he thought it was in our best interests either.

And I guess that's part of the challenge. People aren't all good or all bad. I want to hate my father, but I remember all the things he did that shaped me in ways I value. I want to love my father, but I remember how he screamed at me, how he blamed me, how he poisoned me against myself. I don't understand how he can say he loves me and then treat me so terribly.

And I'm not sure why it's so important for me to understand, either. I think about him so much, trying to make sense of what happened, trying to come up with some "unified theory of Fort" which will make it all fit into place. So I can understand, so I can move on. But he's a blackhole. He's a contradiction. He's scattered. Or, I guess, I'm scattered.

I want him to stop having so much power over my life. I'm not a child, I don't have to navigate him anymore if I don't want to. But there's so much of me that still feels like I'm trying to figure out how to survive living with him. I don't know what to do with that. But I guess awareness is a good start.

So, transition has been really hard. SLC is pretty good, but it's different. The people are different, the space is different, the energy is different. I don't know what I can get away with, I don't know what to avoid. I don't understand it, the way I understood the place I spent almost 29 years of life. I worry a lot. I feel sad most of the time. It feels better when I cry, but most of the time I feel like I just need to keep it together. I just need to keep all the horrible things inside until I'm finished. With my dissertation, I guess, but there's still more life after that. It's not like things just get easy.

I'm feeling things more, though. I used to just listen to painful music or watch painful television and see it with my mind. But now I feel it. Not all of it. But, like, it hurts now. I can feel the pain, relate to it, better understand why people would talk about feeling devastated by art. I'm thawing. But there are still monsters everywhere, and I feel more alone now than I have in a very long time.

Sometimes I idly wonder if my father knew what he was doing. I usually tell myself "No, he's just caught in a web of his own" but I don't know how true that is. Surely you know what you're doing when you lock yourself in a room with an eight year old for hours and tell them about how sick you are, how unhappy you are, how no one cares about you (wanting them to throw themselves with care upon you even as you both know you'll reject them anyway when they do), how everyone in the world is selfish and cruel and powerful except for you. I mean, you would think. But I don't know.

I want to say he lacks self-awareness. He only ever talks about the feelings of others ("you hate me," "you're trying to destroy this family," "you've never loved me"). He never says, "I am afraid" never says "I feel neglected" never says "I need someone else to make me feel better because I don't think I can do it myself." He is a perpetual victim, and me you and everyone we know are the perpetual perpetrators. And I want to say he's just constantly reacting to a fear of something not happening, to words not said, to thoughts not thought, to slight twinges of emotional reaction on my face which make him feel so out of control he lashes out in shaming accusation to bring it all in line. Perhaps the actions lack conscious intentionality. But surely the desire to never remember those actions does not.

It's sometimes scary, to see how he's trained me so well. To silence myself, punish myself, shame myself. I can say so many words, but my feelings all leave him unscathed and me with nothing but guilt and recrimination over how terrible a child I am. My chest feels like tar, bubbling and black, swallowing any cries for help. And I don't want to hurt him, don't want to break him, don't want to avenge myself upon him. I just want to be free. I want to be free. But the tar pulls me down, pulls me back inside myself, to fight and choke and die bit by bit as I continue his work of self-annihilation.

Before I can feel my fear, before I can feel the feelings of myself, I have to feel the feelings about myself. I feel ashamed of how hurt I am. I feel angry that I still feel this way after so very long. I feel afraid I will feel this way forever. I hate that I feel all that I feel, that I don't feel good and fine and well as all sane and happy and productive citizens should. I am afraid of myself, I am infuriated at myself, I am humiliated over myself. And through those feelings about myself lie what I feel. May I someday feel that, too.