Monday, August 30, 2010

Proof

Relationships are like sharks / you have to keep moving or they die
Life is a great big shark. Depression is the emptiness. Absence. It is not the sharp high Mozart
note of great pain it is the white noise Don DeLillo wrote an entire novel on. The line across the screen. The blank screen after the line. The empty eyes of a brain injured human being. The French say orgasm is a small death. I say depression is the small death that duplicates until it is the great white. Until is is the master of it's ocean. Until there is no more thrashing blood amputated arms stories of survival and triumphant reentry into the point of attack until all that is left is the sea lapping it's wounds and the holes where you were which are now just holes.

I dare you to speak with a seriously depressed person and tell them to
take a boat ride.
it always cheers me up.
well.

I think the closest I've come to hating people is when a serious triumph of mental fuckedness is attended to with boat rides and focusing on the positive. No one understands the inanity of American cheeriness like a depressed American. For every movie we make with Jennifer Aniston and Colgate smiles and face lifted happy endings the French or German or Chinese are making a film where adults have sex with saggy aroused breasts and baggy eyes and weep as they fall asleep before awaking to the moment of comfort of arms that love. Nothing can make me suicidal faster than an American romantic comedy and nothing is more comforting than life reflected the way it is. Why do you think it is people often seem so much better right before they kill themselves. They have figured out what everyone wants and they can supply it for a short time. Boat rides bleached teeth and a complete denial of all the hard hard work and pain that life holds next to it's pretty little tits.

In conclusion I am depressed but please do not tell me to A take a boat ride or B bleach my teeth or C finally do something about the bags under my eyes.

I would like to instead be reminded of the heaviness of this world, it's soul beating slow and steady but covered in the marks of a long life lived. Covered in scars and wound. I would like to be reminded that life is not a pleasure cruise or a vacation or a series of endless highs and acquisition of sex, otherwise we would all be permanently stuck on the movie set of American Pie. I would like to be reminded that this is the best time of my life, man. Because it is. Because I grew up with a brilliant and abusive father and my mother did the best she could. Because my sister was so damaged I haven't talked to or seen her in 7 long years. Because my childhood was one long choppy sea punctuated with sunbursts and ships on far with happy people waving my way who never saw my signs for help. Because my relationship with Mr. Curry is the deepest intimacy I can imagine having with any one human being without bordering on the pathologically codependant, and it still does anyhow. Because I have three children and one on the way who are too much for black typed words to represent. Because I am not in constant physical pain. Because I can get help. Because I can ask for help. Because I have 6 years of therapy and some intensive life workouts behind me. Because I'm not dying, starving, hurting anyone or unable to stop the immense suffering of someone I love.

Charts Prove: my life is awesome and I'm just too fucked up to feel it.

Proof:

my lola: singing oh oh it's magic / never believe it's not sooooo

my employer: yes i can advance you money from your next paycheck to help cover your rent

my mom: i can pick up the kids today

my husband: if you don't like the honey on your breasts, would you like me to just hold you?

my son: well. sometimes we have something positive to say and sometimes we don't say anything at all. the child is 16. let's give him a pass.

my other son: straight up sweet carry the groceries because your rib is hurt doing pushups

my dogs: noses on my lap in concern

my blog: readers who give a shit and do so with soft toilet paper

myself, to myself: that's enough now honey. you've been sad. now pick it up and dance. all you fly motherfuckers just get on out there and dance. dance i said
image Laurie Rosenwal

Ramona Quimby said...

Yes, this is it exactly. The universe is fucked, we're all fucked and it's all fucking beautiful anyway. Because of it.

Saw your poem in Diagram; another contributor went to grad school with me. Sister, you're GOOD.

Paula said...

Thank you for reminding me to look through the shit and grasp the good that does exist in there. Sometimes I just forget to look for it...
I give a a shit and I will get up and dance with you...

CitricSugar said...

I love you. You never pull punches and I can always relate. Because even if I can't relate, you tell it in a way that makes it feel like I can. When I read you, I feel. And feeling, whether high or low, is a good thing. Gonna dance now. Because it's raining.

Maggie May said...

oh man Citric i love you right back. that's the same thing i want. right backatcha.

Paula hell yes.

Sara so glad to meet you. i love your page and will be nosing round.

Rashel said...

oh man. i swear when i read your blog i am reading myself. from the beginning i have thought that. you bring tears to my eyes and also give me a push to live. thank you.

Ms. Moon said...

I hear that dancing on a boat is very cheering.

Maggie May said...

ms. moon you cheeky thing

Annie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Elizabeth said...

Well, there you go.

I, myself, am periodically stunned, absolutely stunned, by the quickness of grace, how it comes and goes -- so quickly, too quickly, etc.

Bless you, Maggie May, for noting it.

Maggie May said...

dancing on the grave of a son of a bitch!!!! i love that annie

Elizabeth you and i have a similar way. yes we do

mosey (kim) said...

"No one understands the inanity of American cheeriness like a depressed American."

This is why I come here. You say it how it is and how it feels and I nod my head yes.

Boat rides suck.

izzabitz said...

I think it's when I'm a little melancholy (depressed maybe? But I finally have my lovely meds, so I don't want that to be the case.) that I see life more clearly -- that it's so beautiful and so goddamn hard all at once. I'm amazed at your employer's generosity. That is a blessing.

Mary said...

Oh god imagine a world where the dance did not exist

Kate Moore said...

*Bump* *Grind*
Get on down. Yehhaaaa.

Pris said...

This is a wonderful post! I really hate it, too, when people say 'why aren't you smiling?'. Are we supposed to go through life with one glued onto our faces??

Marion said...

Even in my darkest depression I am fucked unto literature and can hide in my books and the words there bring me tiny pinpoints of light. If I get to the point where I can't read, I'll know I'm truly screwed.

Ms. Wakoski's book (which inclues the title poem) is titled "Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch". It's one of my favorite poetry finds ever. xoxo

Still Life With Coffee said...

wonderful.

Jos said...

I adore you and your writing. Through your pain, you allow others to relate. Though our pain can have different causes and our depression different catalysts, nobody wants to be told to take a f*ing boat ride to cheer up.

How wonderful that through the pain, you're still realizing the beauty of having a loving family & a supportive employer.

Praying for your quick journey through this canyon of hell that is depression. May you be shitting rainbows on the other side.

Sarcastic Bastard said...

I have no rhythm, so a bitch can't dance. I can scream though.

J Sweet said...

I agree with you re: foreign films making you feel better and American romantic comedies being depressing by reflecting life back at us, flat, detoothed. I like your writing.

~L said...

you are beautiful Maggie May. thanks for reminding me to dance.
~L

Leslie said...

I went through PPD this past year and I had to stop reading the hap-hap-happy blogs. I still have a tough time with them. I like hearing the truth about life instead of pasting on a smile for others to see. And that is why your blog is my absolute favorite.

Annje said...

Ay, Maggie, I wish I had something profoundly comforting to say. I do know that even when life is objectively, rationally good, there is pain that contradictorily seeps through-it is the great juxtaposition of life.

Feel what you have to feel, and then find relief, if you can, in whatever gives you relief.

Ida Mae said...

thank you.
thank you.
keep on
~Ida Mae

Anonymous said...

Outside the semi-impenetrable bubble of depression, telling the person in the bubble what to do never really works. They can't hear you properly anyway, and even if they could, the bubble has limits.

For a while at least. Eventually the bubble starts to degrade and something sneaks in - a flavour or a sound perhaps. And so to return begins. Perhaps slowly or perhaps not. It doesn't matter.

You are loved. You are safe. You are wanted.

And yes, your life is awesome and full of miracles just waiting for you to discover them. (These are things I also tell myself)

xo

37paddington said...

everything is just fucked up sometimes. but hang on because sometimes the fog lifts and you can dance. i love how real you are because this is so how i feel and cant express it and sometimes there is just nothing to be cheerful about. except the fact of being really, truly love. in spite of everything. sending love. truly.

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