December 12th, 1983 - Chablis
Dear TNY,
I made it another week; “Chablis” appears to be your offering.
I say “appears” because it doesn’t show up in the normal fiction section. But it’s listed in the contents of this week’s magazine, so I’m guessing it’s a throwback issue. Which is fine.
Everything is fine. Nothing to see here.
It’s hard not to be biased towards Barthelme. His work is genius. So when I read it, even if I don’t get it, I like it. Because you can tell there’s this energy to it. It’s got something special. And this one has that. It’s classic 80’s bare-bones fiction. Gets you pretty close to the finish line but allows you to go over on your own. Spartan sentences with a sharpness long gone in today’s fiction. Is this piece good? I don’t know. I liked it. I’m biased. So I can’t tell you what the “right” answers are.
I can’t tell you anything actually. I don’t know anything. I’m completely lost.
Since last week, I’ve gone down hill. Had an emergency meeting with the shrink. I’m on antidepressants now. The sadness is everywhere. It’s not even sadness. It’s dread. It’s a lack of future. It’s neverending. Complete loss. No escape. I dream of her. I think about her all day. But it’s more than her now. It’s all the isolation. All the time. Shattered communities and families and life and loss and grief and everything. It’s everything, all at once.
I packed up all the things that I couldn’t look at last week. I shook. I shivered. I gagged and screamed at the top of my lungs and wandered the house like a ghost with a broken knee. It could be anything, you know? All the things she touched. The space we shared. All the contact and the closeness. It’s all so fresh. But it was the goddamn spaceman that did me in. I shoved him in the box and packed it into the van, hidden under my backpack and some kitchen items. I drove for way too many hours because traffic was bad and it was so fucking hot and I went to my sister’s house to pee before going to the storage unit and she hugged me and wouldn’t let go and I almost had a seizure I was shaking so hard. And I cried and told her I was not okay. I am not okay. I know people say that. I know I’ve said it. I can’t say it more forcefully or plainly. I am not okay. So then my sister went to the storage with me and I couldn’t bear looking into the box, seeing the spaceman’s helmet, his giant broadcasting eye looking back at me. Had a panic attack right there in the parking lot. My sister rubbed my back and took the box out of the van and put it on the cart with the rest of my belongings. We shoved them into the storage unit, which is now full. Not organized. I could not find the motivation to do that. Or anything. All motivation is gone. All focus. All future making. It’s all gone. It’s only the dread now.
I’ve spoken to people about this project, FTNY, many times over the years. About writing in general. What I write. Why I write it. It hurts to document all of this. First and foremost, as I am the first reader. It hurts me. Saying it out loud makes it better, but it still hurts. Turns out I’ve been in pain for a long time. I caused a lot of that. Others too. This is the nature of humans. One we all dislike, I think, but none of us can seem to solve it. I hurt others with this project, too. And that hurts me. But then, there’s so much feedback that others, third party others, feel less alone by all of this. Feel seen. Feel like their story isn’t entirely exclusive to them. And reading the things I write has saved people, as evidenced by emails from them. Saved relationships. Saved lives. At what cost? One would expect it would be easy to do that math. Saving is important. But it’s killing me. And hurting others. What’s to be said about that? I don’t know.
What’s to be said about so many people in my life saying I’m magic, keep living, keep pushing, hang on, you’re a special one, strangers telling me to keep going, finding me and hugging me for no reason, all this evidence I should keep going. But, I can’t get a person to stay, you know? We could point out data. I fuck up. They fuck up. We fuck up. No one fucks up. Everything and nothing happens. Shit sticks and then it doesn’t. There’s no way to know every detail, to trace out the crimes committed, follow the evidence, diagram it all like a thousand word sentence and point to the cancer and work to excise it. It’s too big. Too complex. Too everything. That’s what they say.
I heard this exchange the other day.
Interviewer: So what would you say the biggest deception was? What was the biggest lie you were told?
Vinny: It’s not that simple.
Interviewer: Why not?
Vinny: No, that’s the biggest lie I was ever told. It’s not that simple. And it’s a lie they tell you over and over again.
Interviewer: What’s not simple.
Vinny: Any of it. All of it. It’s how they get you to give up. They say it’s not that simple, Vinny.
Interviewer: So what’s the truth?
Vinny: That it is. That if you just do the thing they tell you that you can’t, then it’s done. And you realize it is that simple. That it always was.
It is that simple. I choose you. You choose me. Everything else will fall in place. I didn’t choose a lot of them. I knew, in my heart, I wasn’t choosing them. I was choosing to not be alone. Choosing to see if it worked. Choosing to avoid the alternative. Choosing to survive. I’ve made choices.
But J? I didn’t choose her. It’s not a choice. I surrendered to a command from outside of me. Which was and is really comforting, even though right now I’m dying. I still choose to surrender. I choose her. I was just trying to make it more habitable for myself and I fucked up a lot of that phrasing. I waited my whole life to meet her. Why wouldn’t I want to spend my time with her? But I was a dick. I got angry. I was hurt. And I did my part to rip something beautiful apart. I feel horrible about that. And I pushed her away while I was trying to protect myself. I feel horrible about that too. I was trying to stay safe, but my life is worse without her in it. Substantially. It’s missing whimsy. It’s missing challenge. Complexity. Simplicity. Magic. It’s missing an equal. But there’s nothing I can do about that now. I got what I asked for. And I’m fucking devastated by it.
Please forgive the degradation of this narrative. My mental state is not what it used to be and these meds are kicking in. I have the shivers. My face is pins and needles and my hands are numb. My breathing is shaky and hunting like a maladjusted carburetor idle. They feel like a DayQuil fucked an Oxycotin. And they make me so tired. And, weirdly, so angry. And they take away the fear of suicide and/or dying and replace it with a very firm, data driven, path to ensure that I’ve lost this battle already. They force me to take in the details. This is the last time I will sit at the counter at the coffeeshop in Port Townsend. This is the last time I will listen to how Jess’ kids are doing. This is the last time I go in the storage unit. This is the last time I see Steve. This is the last time I call my kids. It’s all so beautiful. My god is it all so beautiful. Even all the ire and anger and sadness and pain. Like swirling threads of energy all around me. What a privilege to have existed at all. I’m trying so hard to stay alive. I don’t know how much longer I will last. There’s an outpouring of support. People are texting people behind my back. Trying to set up watchers so that I stay safe. But I don’t want to be a burden. I’m still alone a lot. Isolation breeds depression as they say. I’ve decided that hurt or not, I’m going to keep trying to document all of this. I don’t know that it will help or harm. Maybe it will just be. Like all of us are just trying to be. Moment to moment. A hopefully multifaceted picture of love and despair, idiosyncrasy and failure, passion and dumbfuckery, striving and apathy, a wild and misguided effort to contain this person’s experience of the human condition.
Anyway, I love you, J, even though you aren’t reading anymore. I love you so goddamn much I can’t determine where that love ends and I begin. I’m sorry I fucked up. I’m sorry for everything. I know that it matters and it also doesn’t. I still choose you. No matter how bad it feels. Every day I wake up and choose you.
Nick
P.S. Please excuse the shakiness of the doodle. Some of that is intended but the shakes have me, as it were.
