Hi there! Welcome (back) to the pink room! Grab a seat, get comfortable… we might be here for a little while.
I have been writing a lot of love letters lately. Maybe it speaks to the times. Or maybe it speaks to the isolation. or perhaps. the discovery of a vibrator four years ago. who has me crying out love poem nearly every night since. Or. Maybe. Love letter just makes for a great title opener.
The first time I drove on a toll road. I started planning three days ahead. I looked up the route on google. first. Google gives an estimate of toll costs. So. it could be a rough estimate. what if it was wrong? what if I got to the toll and didn’t have the right amount? They required exact change. What if I didn’t have exact change? It’s illegal to not pay tolls. Would they keep me there until the police came? What if the police did come? They would kill me for sure. Am I ready to die? The next day, I figured it only made sense then that I check. again. to be really sure. The stakes were high. unlikely? maybe. but it could happen. And if it did. I would panic. perhaps even die. And I really wanted to visit my friend, so I just needed to be sure.
The next day, I looked up the exact fare on the state toll website. I used the toll calculator. I made a plan to go to the bank. I counted my coins. again and again. and again. Convinced one missing coin could potentially…maybe be fatal. When I finally got in my car. I counted the toll money maybe 10 more times. I knew I had all of it. but you know, just needed to be sure. I put the well-counted money in an accessible place. no need to move slowly to arouse suspicion. and. my stomach did back flips every mile until I made it to the toll. pulled out the change. gave it to the toll worker. the bar opened up. and a sign read in bright letters: PAID. 2 miles later. toll station out of sight, I finally released a deep and heavy sigh. My body felt like jelly. it had been an hour since I first pulled out of the driveway. And now, each exhale felt like the come down from a marathon. I was exhausted. drained. cautiously relieved. And yes, I felt absolutely insane.
This was not the first time (nor would it be the last), to put it simply, I would feel insane. mad. crazy. unwell.
I first started fantacizing about death at 10 years old. Terrified, I told my parents. They looked at me. with these cold dead eyes. And said without warmth or irony, if you kill yourself, you’ll go to hell. As an adult, I can understand perhaps that hidden in those eyes was most likely dread or terror instead of the coldness that greeted me as a child. Either way, terrified now that I might do this terrible deed on accident. I started micromanaging my breath. my sleep. my thoughts.
It came first as a sticky thought after watching this school-wide assembly about something called the choking game. which had proved to be fatal to enough kids that they thought it appropriate to traumatize other kids about these fatal consequences.
I dreamed once I think of playing this game. and desiring death. without understanding really what it meant. but terrified of hell. and worried that the hole which seemed to grow each day inside of me would, if not careful, get the better of me. I decided then, it best, to be vigilant. on guard. as to not accidentally die. kill myself. in my sleep. or perhaps hold my breath one minute too long. I was rigorous. breathing in a consciously counted rhythm. Monitoring my thoughts with excessive prayers and pleads. some nights. worried I was too sad. and that perhaps my dreams would trick me without my knowledge into this terrible act. I just stayed up. Willed the night away with eyes forced wide open. but. But. When I couldn’t.
when I couldn’t will the thoughts away, I mean. I dreamed of hell. I wrote letters to god apologizing that I would end up there. I would tell him I tried everything. I would tell him I am satan’s. i would tell him despite all of my efforts, I just might not be able to keep myself alive long enough. The sleepless nights were getting the better of me. And I couldn’t be sure what terrible things my dreams might will me into doing.
I felt crazy. I knew I wasn’t supposed to have these thoughts. I knew the thoughts themselves were the problem. I felt sick. I felt ashamed.
I felt insane.
At 16, I finally decided to get to the bottom of this webbed feet phenomenon. Perhaps you have never noticed or paid much attention to it but our toes don’t fully separate. When you try to pull them apart, there is a web-like structure of skin, which seems to hold them together.
And by 16, I had grown quite comfortable in this small secret practice of stretching my toes apart. for the fun of it. which is mainly the lie I told myself. But sometimes when I was feeling particularly reckless, I would whisper in the silence of my mind that really it was the pain I liked. I had discovered at some point that this pain, which was produced from what seemed to be an innocent act, made me feel less. and I liked this.
And so with such intimate knowledge of the structure of my toes, I was hyper aware of these annoying webbed limits. It seemed strange anyway. I was a human not a duck. And what purpose did this skin serve anyway. I had stretched my two middle toes to the point of a kind permanent redness and yet seemed to have no impact on the webs.
So I decided to simply cut the skin.
I did not use particularly sanitized scissors. Just a random pair I found. And on the floor of my sister’s room, I stretched those two middle toes as far they would go and cut down the middle. and. immediately.
Blood.
Here, perhaps, I should tell you that by 16, I was not actually afraid of my own blood. I had an occasion to see it nearly every day as I routinely ravaged my skin and nails. Nor did I even mind much (mostly) the pain that followed.
Instead. What worried me the most. about said blood. rushing from my wounded skin, which I guess, must have after all, been necessary for something. was that it seemed quite complicated to hide. I was embarrassed. ashamed. Although not exactly sure why. I knew for sure these regular wounds across my fingers and now toes were not normal.
I dreaded having to explain.
Explain why my skin was raw and hurt to the touch. Why my thumb throbbed having been bitten so far down on the nail, it bled. And now. how could I possibly explain this? I really thought. at least initially. cutting this annoying skin web would finally allow me to stretch my toes in the range they were meant to. Like I could free myself from the shackles of visigial webs or something. Even worst. my first instinct. unperturbed by the blood (which at this point is pooling from my toes down my foot). Was to use the wound to stretch apart the toes even further. this way when it healed. it would heal unwebbed. which of course cemented the depth of the wound. extended my so-called healing clock and all in all would for sure put me in a mental hospital if explained to anyone anywhere.
I wore tissue paper wrapped around my toes in my socks for at least two weeks. Every step hurt. I didn’t tell anyone. I never had. Something is wrong with me I thought. Something is very wrong. but I knew even then this had to be my secret shame.
By this point in this post, I guess I have now thoroughly terrified you. Jamie is mentally ill. unwell. crazy. insane. Not in a cute way. In an insane insane kind of way. in a that makes me uncomfortable kind of way. in a I wish they never wrote this kind of way.
Well, I am sorry to disappoint. I have no defense. this is a love letter to insanity. in an insane insane kind of way. I guess. And well, it’s true. I am insane. not well. crazy. mad. mentally ill.
I wish away entire months in a deep somberness that many colloquially call the winter blues but I think that hides the heaviness. how it feels to be hallow. for three to six whole months. how every other emotion has a hint of this wintery grief. joy. pleasure. desire. gratitude. calm. boredom. rage. how living itself becomes a chore and you do it anyway. you live by alarms and elaborate google calendars. you wish for night. for sleep. for sun. and you do this again. and again. and again. for days and then weeks and then months. and at some point the sun does come. and the clouds part. and the heaviness lightens. and you cherish the levity of living until. leaves begin to change again. and again. you, turn rock. you make the heaviness romantic. warm mugs and soups and long blog posts. and watch good movies. and make elaborate schedules. and distraction. and sleep. and again yearn for sun.
You see. I do not know what it is like to be well. who. I mean who determines which bodies are well? are healthy. sane.
and which are not.
Perhaps there are some. who have never been sad for months. nor felt the blankness of pain in an overstimulating world. who has never cried after a benign surgery, chest wrapped tightly in a blue strap, tears streaming down their face not on account of any pain but how desperately they wished to never take that tightly wrapped bandage off again. who never spent hours planning and studying the exact route they would walk to Nina’s house. because they had never been there before and there were too many overwhelming unknowns. and a plan, a detailed plan made the anxiety well, manageable. who has never learned how to do it, stomach turned upside down. who has never bargained with a racing heart at 9pm on an empty street and decided to turn around and try again tomorrow. who has never looked at their body and felt strange inside them. who has never questioned work. despised the monotony of watching your life slip away in 8 hour chunks. who has never felt lost in the complicated socially acceptable lies each person is required to tell. And perhaps. that who. is you.
perhaps. you are well. sane. normal.
By which I mean. You have a body whom, the scientists study and the doctors know how to fix and the teachers praise and the bosses love. You have a body to whom the friends flock and the lovers worship. a body for whom the streets are architected. the families are invented. the cities are accommodated to.
Frankly, I have not much to say to you. other than. I do not. Maybe too congratulations.
All I can say is I have a body. She is not broken. She does not need to be fixed.
And she is surely mad. unwell. sick. crazy. insane.
You see, bodies are neutral. minds are neutral too. worlds are not. cities and hospitals and jobs and parents and doctors and genders and lovers and friends are not.
I will likely always be faced with the flush of anxiety when presented with a new task or path or plan. I will likely always manage with elaborate schedules and routes and gentleness if sometimes I can’t or don’t want to engage in the prolonged discomfort of doing that unknown thing. winter will always come with weight. sometimes lightened by experiments with chemicals concocted into tiny white pills in orange bottles, professionally prescribed by those experts in brain experiments often known as psychiatrists. The curiosity of pain in a world filled with too much noise may too on occasion quiet with more of such pills and confused alphabets. diagnoses. ADHD. SAD. PMDD. GAD. AuDHD.
Some days though. I will still move or think or feel slower. or bigger. or more inconveniently. than I suppose a sane person is expected to move. or feel or think. Other days, I will stand stomach backflipping, face steady in the line sight of hundreds of police in concert with all the other people who decided that day to get free. We will march and sing. dream and chant. sleep exposed in tents or in homes infiltrated by risk and consequence. And I will be afraid. and yet somehow not afraid. of the fear. I will not run from the discomfort. And I will in that moment, be what some deem brave. Yet, I will know that this day is no different than every other day. every other moment. that I chose to survive insane. to walk to that new place. to do that new thing. to not check-in again with that same friend to be sure we are really okay. all those moments, I did the thing. uncomfortable. terrified. stomach in my throat and heart sprinting.
I am not ashamed.
I have a body. and she is. they are. perhaps by your… if yours are the standards of medical institutions who still regularly kill for sport or ignorance or indifference or a government, an empire, a country, a civilized world who sanely eats the flesh of infants with their sunday morning coffee. yes by your standards
I am insane.
mad. crazy. unwell. And I guess I want to say I am okay with that. I am not ashamed anymore. I am not ashamed. I will be unwell in public. I will be crazy in print. I have a body and I will love her. I will love how strange they seem to you. I will love them with or without you.
this is a love letter.
to all those who are crazy. in a “clinical way.” in an unrelatable way. in a scary way. in a mad way. in a loving way. in a demanding a freer and breathier world way.
in an insane way.
Okay, thanks for joining me in the pink room. See you again here real soon!
From the Pink Room 