For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by family lineage. Where did my parents, grandparents, great grandparents, great great grandparents come from – geographically, culturally, and personally? What is their story? Who is this woman with dark eyes and a hairstyle that resembles an inflated plate on her head and how did it presumably come into fashion? Is she a fierce power with a sharp tongue or more on the demure and mindful end of the spectrum? Is the black and white image of a man with a sharp nose and distinct side part whose blood I have running through my veins a man of character? Is he a gentle soul with a compassionate heart? Or is he a punk, a womanizer, a man of arrogance and pride and prejudice and resentment? If I knew the ideology of these souls, would I feel shame, embarrassment, and disappointment in my biological roots? Or would I feel honor, pride, empowerment? What is their legacy and what impact did they leave on their small world? How might their legacy have an invisible and silent influence on my tendencies or even my destiny?  

“My life is a plot, twisted from directions that I can’t see” – Kendrick Lamar

I don’t have many answers in that regard, and I don’t love that. I am someone who is much more comfortable with certainty. Give me clarity as distinct as the contrasting hues of black and white in the pictures of my ancestors. Please, I need to know. 

Or so I think. So I believe. 

Historically, I’ve been someone who would froth at the mouth for guidance, answers, direction, and insight from the external world. “What would you do if you were in my shoes? What do you think I should do? Help me!” I would beg. After I successfully extract a coerced response that resembles what I un-objectively deem as valuable guidance, only then can I move forward, although still with a fair amount of trepidation. I’d look over my shoulder toward my insight-source and holler back, “You mean like this? Am I doing it right?!”. I both demanded and for a while, required, a detailed map to instruct the direction and pace of every step. Without it, I was lost. 

I can now objectively recognize this pattern as insecurity; a timidness rooted in a flimsy self identity. Ironically, however, I took a degree of pride in my apprehensive nature by falsely labeling it as being resourceful. Possibly even sadder, I believed I was being responsible. I held on to this righteous belief that, by inquiring into the minds of those whom I respected or trusted, I was following through with what was “best”. I was a dutiful student of the world around me, and I was completing my homework.

It wasn’t crippling self doubt that drove this displacement of decision responsibility. Or at least not wholly so. In fact, I consistently held my capability to achieve goals in high regard. I did, to a certain extent, believe in myself. I believed I could follow through. I believed I would one day make it to the other side – cross the finish line with my chest first. Just point me in the “right” direction, and goddess dammit, I’m going to get there, one way or another. Here I was, after all, having secured my second “dream job”. I was “living the dream” in the sense that I was putting my expensive graduate degree to use, banking that six figure salary in hearty DINK fashion, in a WFH role, under my very own own circa-2021-low-interest-roof, in a city I love no less. Bitch, you did it! You secured the ‘dream’! What could be better? Except, it seemed, everything. 

My, how easy it is to feel utterly neutral to all the beauty and wonder and opportunity in your life when one is depressed. Even more, I spat hatred and disgust at myself for being sickeningly selfish in my absence of feeling. I have everything I’ve ever wanted. How on earth do I have the nerve to feel so empty? You lazy, selfish, bitch. You’re what’s wrong with this world. I truly believed this. 

Capitalism. It really fucks with your mind, eh? 

Every day was the same. Painfully tedious; here I am, yet again, going through the same physical and mental motions as the day, week, month before: 

• Wake up to the jarring sound of an offensive alarm. 
• Mentally calculate how many times I can hit snooze until I’m already late. 
• Play cognitive acrobatics about why today won’t be as bad as I feared last night. 
• Swallow the guttural feeling that I know I’m lying to myself. Again. 
• Coffee. 
• Sit at my desk in the same pants I slept in, which just so happen to also be the same clothes I wore yesterday because I also wore them to bed the night before.
• Realize how sharply sour my armpits smell. Oh well. Maybe I’ll shower tomorrow. I will, after all, be a different person by then anyways. 
• Did I brush my teeth? Take my meds? No. I’ll do that after I respond to this Slack message so I look like I’m a timely employee. Maybe.
• Swallow the acidic nausea fueled by anxiety, caffeine, and lack of food because of course I haven’t eaten anything resembling breakfast.
• Fail to consume eat lunch because I still feel queasy and can’t conceive an idea of a meal that sounds remotely appetizing. 
• Focus on the easier tasks at work first in an attempt to trick my brain into believing “you can do hard things!” 
• Avoid said “hard things”, and mindlessly scroll on Instagram for a collective three hours.
• Somehow you drag yourself to 4:00. Even though you neglected the tasks you really needed to prioritize, it’s basically the end of the day so it’s fair to call it.
• Enter the welcomed dissociative window. 
• Watch an episode or two too many of my comfort shows because the revenge bedtime procrastination anxiety is raging.
• Eventually coerce my body into bed. What do I do now? Watch another show? Listen to a bedtime story? I feel a heavy desperation for something, anything, to distract myself from the reality that I wasted yet another day of my life to The Void. At some point I pass myself over to an avoidant sleep because despite what justifications and fabrications I tell myself, I know I’m going to continue lying to myself tomorrow. 

I’ve come to the conclusion that it either takes immense courage and/or significant privilege to escape this vicious cycle, but that’s an essay in and of itself. Either way, the inertia of this late-stage-capitalism-work-force-army-driven-emotional-detachment spiral is often too overwhelming of a force to even conceptualize the resilience necessary to oppose it. As it turns out, inertia and velocity can be toxic. However, that shouldn’t be much of a surprise; physics has always been an intimidating study for my tender little brain. 

Newton’s first law of motion applies even in this emotionally suffocated digital age. And so, I continue resisting change in my current state of motion, despite its mind, body, and spirit sucking consequences. Change demands time, energy, ideation, introduction, and enforcement of new systems. It’s easier than not to consider the mountain in front of you and cower in its massive shadow. Day after day it beats you down into a flatter, paler version of yourself. After a certain point you fail to recognize your own reflection in the mirror. It is as though you’re a walking, talking husk of yourself. A marionette controlled by the forces you’ve long since yielded your agency over to. How could a person so hollow and subservient possibly summit a climb so arduous?

As the daily pattern continued on and on, with no end in sight, I started looking for alcohol and drugs to take me somewhere, anywhere else. I welcomed the temporary distraction with open arms. Eventually, I was drinking an entire bottle of wine by myself most nights of the week. I never considered myself to be anything remotely resembling an alcoholic but, now with hindsight clarity, I realize dependency was involved. I needed a glass or two or five after work the same way you uncontrollably pick at a raw wound that is just beginning to scab. Emotionally, I needed it. Fuck the hangover, I’m going to feel like shit in the morning regardless of whether I stay sober tonight or not. I may as well drink my distractions. 

Day in, day out. 2021 came and went. I’m convinced 2022 never happened because I never saw her. 2023 starts the same. Until one day, as predictably monochromatic and nondescript as all the others. I lay there, deep in the bowels of depressive dissociation; my wine and weed handy on my bedside table, laptop open, Housewives playing. This is my “happy time,” my “me time.” But I am not alone. Someone is here with me. Staring at me. Disappointed and saddened by the sight of me. To this day, I don’t know who it was, but their voice sounded a lot like mine. 

“You don’t know who you are. And the small parts of you that you do know, you don’t like,” it said. 

While much of this moment closely resembled the safe familiarity I clung to, there was something dire in the air. I categorize this as my “rock bottom”. In hindsight, I feel an eternal gratitude that it took this rather benign moment to shift something in me, as it could have easily cascaded into something darker, something more reckless.

Here I was in this moment. Alone with myself. I paused my show and allowed silence and thoughts and feelings to marinate the moment. This scene marks the first time in a very long time I recall making a decision for myself. I knew I was decomposing day by day. I was consciously aware of it but I forced my consciousness to bury the truth. I was killing myself. But now, I was done with it.

I decided to shed the instructions I greedily demanded that herded me here. I decided to resist. To fight. I decided to survive. I decided, just as my and all our ancestors have, to carve out a little corner of the world for myself. I decided to seize control where I could and write the story I wanted to leave behind.

My story.