Starting at the Finish Line
Lives of Quiet Desperation in the US Suburbs
This is a strange post to try and write. There’s a passage in a Dave Eggers book I re-read recently (You Shall Know Our Velocity!), where the main character describes a council of incessant mental “advisors” who tap him on the shoulder throughout the day, reminding him of the most traumatic, embarrassing, and shameful aspects of his life. Well, I definitely have a similar team of mental consultants, who tap me on the shoulder every day just to remind me, “Psst, Hey, Jeff! Remember! Your opinions don’t matter! Nope, not even a little bit!”
The thing that makes this all difficult to write is the fact that, I still believe that’s completely true—in fact, in light of recent events with respect to friendships, interpersonal relationships, therapists, etc., I believe it now more than ever. What this means is, I can’t provide a narrative like “I used to believe this hyper-negative cynical thing about myself, but I managed to break out of it, and you can too!”
So then… why write anything?
Because, long story short, I think there may be value in what I’ll call a “climbing in through the window” approach to mental health: ways we may still be able to attain a modicum of emotional well-being even when we find the front door (the “standard” approaches in popular self-help books, that seem to suffice for most people, maybe?) locked, and none of our keys are working.
It was another re-reading, of Beattie (1986), that pushed me to seek out a full-on outpatient mental health program a few weeks ago. I can’t explain exactly how I got from there to here, but maybe if you’ve read that book or done this type of program it’ll click: I had the thought that maybe, even if my opinion truly doesn’t matter to anyone else, it can still matter to me? It’s not so much that I believe that (because I don’t), but that I aspire to believe it. And… while my subsequent instinct is to run to my journal, writing thoughts out here feels like a healthy step at the moment, as I’ve reached a point where I can write dozens of pages in my journal every week, expressing how I feel in minute detail, yet I lock up the moment I try to express it outwardly, to anyone else.
So, here goes.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but when I think about my childhood in DC → adolescence in the DC suburbs there’s something extremely… unsettling, dark, gut-wrenching, subtly horrifying about it. One thing I’ve learned about myself recently is that I’m way too scared to describe anything about it directly, in my own words, but thankfully there are in fact tons of media representations of this—the under-the-surface horror of suburbia. There’s a movie, Chumscrubbers, that really nails it I think, or there’s also the movie Palo Alto which covers it to some extent.
For me, though, there’s a spoken-word poem that I feel too possessive about to even name the artist1, that captures it way better than any of these movies do, and way better than I ever could. They’re talking about growing up in Smithfield, Rhode Island, and yet their description feels… just as applicable to my subjective experience of Rockville, Maryland (if you end up finding a recording of the poem, you’ll quickly understand why it has to be quoted in all-caps):
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!
SMITHFIELD SCREAMS TO ME LIKE AN OPEN MOUTH, BLACK MUD, RUSTED IRON GUMS, GRINDING GEARS FOR TEETH, GRINNING LIKE A SERIAL KILLER WITH BODIES IN ITS BASEMENT…
MURDER! MURDER! MURDER! SO MANY GIRLS, SO MANY BOYS, WHERE THE FUCK WERE THE PARENTS? IS EVERYONE INSANE?
THE KIDS, THE KIDS, THE KIDS ALL AROUND ME GETTING LAID TO WASTE:
JIMMY TO LONELINESS AND HIS MOTHER’S PREEXISTING MESS, THOMAS TO LIES AND PEER PRESSURE, JOHN TO SOME IDIOT CHURCH, PAUL TO LEUKEMIA, DOMINIC PULLED AWAY FROM US SLOWLY BUT SURELY BY DIVORCE, BY MONEY, BY CONTEMPT.
AND THEN THERE’S MIKE, MIKE CARDIN, MIKE CARDIN, MIKE CARDIN WITH NO EXCUSE, MIKE CARDIN WITH NO MERCY, MIKE CARDIN MY BEST FRIEND, MIKE CARDIN MY FRIEND IN BUTLER HOSPITAL, TO BUTLER HOSPITAL, TO BUTLER TO BUTLER TO ME TO BUTLER HOSPITAL TO ME TO PILLS TO ME TO PILLS TO PILLS TO PILLS TO ME TO DEAD MUSICIANS, DEAD HANDS, BIG BROTHER, THE THUNDERING “FUCK YOU” FROM THE SKY, THE INEVITABILITY AND THE SIMPLE SURENESS THAT LIFE DOES NOT WANT YOU, WILL DESTROY YOU, WILL BREAK YOU SOON, AND IS MUCH TOO MUCH FOR YOU TO EVEN TRY
MIKE CARDIN, THE INEXPLICABLE, PERFECT, ETERNAL, failure. Who lives to this day. I have seen him this week, in fact.
I know that Katie still lives too. I know that Rena lives with her. I pray that Adrian is gone, and that Rena was never old enough to remember him. I know that Rena was never old enough to remember me.
I keep a photo of Rena in my wallet. Last month, for a couple of weeks, I forgot the name of the baby in my wallet. The baby’s name is Rena. I will love them both until I die.
I went back to college, but I dropped out. Katie kept on trying to figure this shit out, but was missing me. I forgot to miss her, for a long while, but things are slower now. I’m sorry for everything. I hope all things for them. Kate. Rena.
And so, one of the reasons this clicks so hard for me is, how the extreme-ness of it shines a light on the discrepancy between suburban adolescence as something that is “objectively” nice, calm, controlled, peaceful, while at the same time feels subjectively miserable.
References
Footnotes
My excuse: I support them as best as I can through bandcamp, kickstarter, etc., to make up for the non-exposure! Also, my ruse is very easily shattered by just googling the lyrics, lol↩︎