In the fourth or fifth grade, I picked up a book How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found. This was some ten-odd years before Tinder entered the dating scene, before Facebook and Twitter and tumblr and half a dozen other invisible technological ties made it almost completely impossible to disappear from view -- but I was enraptured. I think I’ve always been courted by the notion of packing it all up and disappearing one day, leaving nothing in my wake but half-formed questions and a shrinking space that I might have once occupied in people's lives. This was, of course, before anyone ever gave me a good reason to remove myself from their life. But when someone did, I had thought through how I would surgically excise them from my life. When done well, ghosting is an art. One fades into the wallpaper like a ghost, the remnant of a rosebud on yellowed silk. Were you ever truly there at all? And when did you begin to leave? Of course, it’s never as simple or as artful as that in practice. It can’t be. I’m not talking about leaving behind someone you went on an awkward coffee date with, or a string of clumsy dinner outings or fumbled with in the back of your car or in their dorm room. It’s more than declining a friend request and not answering texts. You can’t fade out of a life that you were never a vibrant presence in. There will be times in your life when you realize that someone you have allowed close, someone who has carved out their own spaces into you, someone you love -- is merely using your bones for kindling to keep themselves warm. The fire started as a smolder years ago, and while you smelt smoke you missed it, you ignored it, until the flames were licking at your heels and you wondered if the landlord had the heat on too high for October. Sometimes, someone else must come along and tap you on the shoulder and tell you: you are on fire. The first step is to realize you have options. The second step is realize that even when you douse the flames, there will still be parts of you in ruin. I didn’t buy a yearbook in high school. I’d been making my plans for escape for years, assessing friendships and relationships with a fine-toothed comb. Was any foundation structurally sound? I spent most of my junior and senior years in a depression fugue. I started to leave before I ever truly left. For months, I walked the halls knowing that I would never speak to many people ever again. I would do it on purpose. I may hurt some of them. Some of them deserved to be hurt. But most importantly: I was running, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t have to turn back. My first vivid memory of being eighteen is sitting on the floor of a new friend’s dorm room with my laptop on my knees, viciously unfriending most of the people I knew in high school. I was merciless, wheedling down my friend list on Facebook by half, and then some. I wonder now what that friend thought of me, then. I had known her a week, maybe two. The rug on her floor was rough, industrial grade, laid over hard tile. But she had an air conditioning unit, which made all the difference in our cinderblock box dorm. We didn’t go to my room until almost November, and she sat at her desk, the bright blue light of her computer screen illuminating her face as she hummed in response to summary judgment after summary judgment. Did she wonder if she would be next, in four years? When you leave someone, you must commit. The summer after my freshman year, two girls who had been my best friends in middle and most of high school -- only to betray me, speak about me behind my back, and write me off as That Heinous Bitch after a perceived slight when we were sixteen -- asked me to come to a house party at one of their houses through a mutual friend. She had, months before, noticed I’d unfriended her on Facebook and wrote it off as a glitch. I didn’t go to the party. When you leave, you stay gone. That’s the first rule. As much as ghosting someone is inaction, it is a conscious choice. One you have to make again and again, on Facebook, on Twitter, on your phone, down to every stupid form of social media you’ve allowed to integrate into your life. Form a buddy system. The second time I left someone, it was the aftermath of my own personal calamity. I think I had fallen prey to the sunk cost fallacy -- years and tears and hours of worrying and mothering gone into a friendship that had long been filled with fractures that cost me dearly. And in the face of the giant of my own tragedy, I knew. I had to leave her behind. Boundaries heedlessly crossed, my own needs neglected, a Pavlovian flare of anxiety in my chest anytime a text notification or instant message alert crossed any sort of screen. Warnings had been given gently, and ignored. My mental state laid bare, and disregarded. But when faced with the choice, I froze. Could I? I asked myself. Yes, a friend all but yelled. Yes, you can. You’re on fucking fire, Emily. The acts of ghosting are simple. Turn off notifications from them for a few weeks. Then you unfollow them. Then you block their email, or create a new one. If you’re lucky, you won’t need to block their number, but there are apps for that now that will save you the call to the phone company. Google voice will generate you as many new dummy numbers as you need. And whenever they contact you, whenever you feel the pull back to the fire, you ask your friend to remind you that you are an ember in a cloud of ash. People will try to convince you that the smell of burned flesh is just something you’ve imagined. And that is when you leave them. Some relationships end in explosions, in mutually-declared nuclear detonation. But some end more quietly, with you watering your own remains after years of coming third, fourth, a distant last. Collect your bones, and rebuild without them.
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“I am mentally ill. I can say that. I am not ashamed of that. I survived that, I’m still surviving it, but bring it on. Better me than you.” Carrie Fisher I wasn’t raised in Star Wars the way some people are -- I’m a first generation Star Wars fan, and even though my grandparents were OG Trekkies, the science fiction obsession skipped a generation before finally, at twelve years old, I watched Star Wars: A New Hope at a sleepover. Prior attempts had been made by various parties to engage me with the prequel trilogy, but it wasn’t until Princess Leia entered the frame that I cared.
She was a damsel. She was in distress. She could handle it. I loved Princess Leia, small and fiery and combative. There was an anger in her I could just barely identify within myself. There was no formal reception of my mental illness, it came uninvited and unannounced during my middle school years, but Princess Leia squabbled with Han Solo in the hallways of Echo Base and mouthed off to any Imperial regardless of rank. She could be at the best of times, mercurial and unpredictable, competent and emotionally volatile. Because no elder person had taken me by the hand and inducted me with Correct Star Wars Opinions, I was free to consume every last interview, every single news article, every last morsel of forum gossip and fandom wank, unfiltered. I learned that Carrie Fisher was on drugs. I learned she was promiscuous. That she was crazy and unbalanced and unladylike. But she was Princess Leia, and so I didn’t care. In a world that wanted to see her as slave Leia, she took no prisoners. Fifteen came, and ruined me. My closest friend is kind enough to describe me at that age as “a handful,” but I was known for making fellow students and even teachers cry with a sharp tongue and certain flare for apathy. PTSD had finally planted its flag, declared the invasion, and with it came unbridled rage. But I was just adept enough, just competent enough, that I skirted any real trouble. My grades were never in question, I performed well in class, I was liked or at least tolerated by enough people. I was the ultimate F-word: fine. This isn’t a story about how I fell into drugs or slept with a lot of men or entered a psychiatric institution. My mental illness was never as big as Carrie’s, though I imagine I should never count myself out of possible future achievements. I bullied my way through adolescence with a no-holds-barred take-no-shit attitude that left me unfriending almost every single person I knew in high school and on a downward spiral my first three years of college. I was a case of walking suicide ideation, peering down into the steep ridges of my college campus wondering if the dive was far enough to break my neck. I never went that far, and my taste for self-harm only went as far as purposeful sleep deprivation and refusing to eat for thirty-six hour stretches from time to time -- I went home more than one semester suffering from clinical exhaustion. I watched a lot of Star Wars. (All of the original trilogy is one movie, if you watch it like I do, which is without leaving your couch for seven hours.) It was a Halloween movie, a Christmas movie, an Easter movie, and if you squinted and tilted your head, a Memorial Day movie. It became to me what the parables of the Bible probably are to people who profess to be more Christian than I am. There was little thrill left, I knew everyone’s dialogue, but it was comforting in the way a stress ball or worry stone could be. Han always comes back to cover Luke’s six in the Battle of Yavin, Luke always tries to redeem Anakin from the Dark Side, and Princess Leia always saves the rebellion to defeat the Empire, indefatigable and stubborn and compassionate, even in sorrow. Then we were all handed a miracle: we got to watch Princess Leia grow up and become General Organa. I was admittedly rankled by the news of Episode VII -- why would Disney allow George Lucas to continue George Lucasing himself? Who allowed this? Would I be forced to pretend that disagreements over trade terms was an invigorating plot once more? This was also, admittedly, around the time I first followed Carrie Fisher on Twitter. I read Postcards from the Edge and learned about her long career as the script doctor. (If you enjoyed any movie in the 90s, it’s probably because she rescued the script from being a dumpster fire.) She invited anyone who wanted to call her mom to do so, told the rest of the world to fuck off, and was unapologetic and unabashed about her mistakes and her mental illness. (And her use of emojis.) She destigmatized emotional therapy dogs, turning her own into a quasi celebrity in his own right. She was necessarily private, but not closed-off. She lived as Carrie Fisher on Carrie Fisher’s terms. She was no one’s daughter, no one’s wife, no one’s co-star. She made her apologies to no one for the life she led as a bipolar woman in a society that wanted her to be quiet, be less. She refused to be a parody of herself, or conform to any ideas of what a “good” mentally ill person was like -- she was not medicated into the good night. General Leia Organa showed up to the Resistance dressed in coveralls, unbent by the betrayal of her son, the absence of her husband, and the disappearance of her brother. Undoubtedly, we will lose General Organa in the next installment of Star Wars -- not as she deserved to go out, as the last soldier on a barricade, blaster cocked and saving the rebels once more -- but on an exploding ship or doomed planet and some nifty VR work spliced and diced into a suitable last line. The Force will cry out, just as it did for many earlier today. When Carrie Fisher’s death was announced, misery rippled through the world. Not her. Not her too. Not when she had faced so many other insurmountable odds. Not when it seems like we all are facing insurmountable odds, when we are all gripped with fear and wish to turn to our Space Mother for comfort and guidance and proof that no, the Empire will not win, our mental illness will not win, our addictions will not win. But all we can do is memorialize this amazing woman, who spoke honestly and without fear. And live by her example, telling the world to fuck off and live on our own terms, even in our suffering. Choke our struggles with the chains they gave us, and never make ourselves smaller. Thank you, Momma Carrie. For teaching us how to embrace our special brand of crazy and strangle fascists, how to grow older and care less without losing our empathy, and stare boldly into the face of pain and laugh. For living in a series about hope, and teaching us how to have it, and give the gift of it to others. May the force be with you, wherever in space you've gone. Carrie Fisher, age 60. Drowned in moonlight and strangled by her own bra. It is fall semester, sophomore year of college. I am not necessarily the most put-together student. I sleep through my morning classes semi-regularly, and never take notes when I do manage to walk myself across campus to my Intro to Comparative Politics class. I live on the third floor of a walk-up dorm. My bed is an oasis. Wawa and its delicious mac and cheese is only 200 yards away. I am in the throes of depression, anxiety, and agoraphobia and… no one really notices. My professors undoubtedly write me off as a slacker, which is understandable and I do not correct them. My parents, five hundred miles away in New Jersey, are largely uninformed of my decade-long battle with mental illness. My roommate has her own health struggles. My friends are largely understanding, and don’t judge me for needing to hide during days-long anxiety attacks, curled up in bed with my laptop watching endless rounds of Say Yes to the Dress on TLC. I’m not failing anything, but I’m not succeeding, either. I round out the semester with a C, a handful of Bs, and an A. It's at approximately this time that my fanfiction “career” begins to take off. I’m somewhat of a persona non grata cum hero in one fandom due to a certain level of drama I half-instigated half-escalated because what else do nineteen year olds do. My other fandom is Battlestar Galactica. Starring this dude: Who also spends many an episode looking like: Also there’s this guy: If you’ve known me for any amount of time, you can identify these fine men as Bill and Lee Adama, the dynamic clusterfrak father-son duo of BSG. If you’ve really known me I’ve probably made you watch BSG and ruined your life with them. (Sorry Mira.) I like to explain BSG by saying that it's show that is about mediocre people who come together at the end of the world and continue to be mediocre in a way that is heartbreaking and incredibly compelling – the show begins with a nuclear apocalypse, and things only get worse from there. At the center of the show is the Adama family. As the Commander of the Galactica and the last man standing of a decimated military leadership, Adama takes on the patriarch role of his crack team of ragtag fuck-ups. And this is Laura Roslin: If Bill Adama is the patriarch of the military men and women on the Galactica, then Laura Roslin is the vicious vengeful mother of the remnants of humanity. A kindergarten teacher whose role in the series transforms her from an inoffensive bureaucrat to a ruthless tyrant at a time that clocks in at just under three seasons. She is known for her affinity for airlocks and her fabulous red hair. She is, by her entanglement with with Bill, an Adama. (By “entanglement” I mean “he is desperately and quietly in love with her to the point of self-destruction.” Because being an Adama means none of your feelings are felt halfway!) I could go through all of the Adamas on the family tree, of which there are many, all varied and in various states of lifeform, but instead I leave you with this family tree I made and the wisdom that Caprica is my villain origin story. Please go watch it. Make SyFy regret their folly.
The Adama tree extends rather far (between the two main series, there are between thirteen to fifteen named members of the family, depending on how you look at it) each member having their own messy breakdown moments in their bathrobes before packing up all their emotional baggage to go kick some ass and save humanity. Or doom it. But mostly save it. One can see how this would be inspiring to someone in the throes of depression. After all, if they can manage to fight for the greater good after an episode spent crying and drinking on the couch, why can’t I? Why can’t I be a member of what I call the “hot mess life” or “messy bitch culture” and still do great things? And do any of us truly have our shit together, or are we just convincing ourselves and each other through carefully curated social media profiles and snapchat stories? Technology has brought envying your high school rival and keeping up with the assholes next door to a new level of ease. It’s right there on your timeline and Instagram feed. You see those life events and heavily-filtered pictures whether you want to or not, dammit, because opting out of Facebook is for the pretentious and the pariahs. And after a year of “do what you have to do to pay your student loan” type of employment, oh holy shit am I aware of how much good shit happens to people who aren’t me. Especially after the worst shit started to happen to me. I had the unfortunate and singular experience of my worst fears coming true this past April. And guess what happened? I got the fuck back up off the couch, took off the bathrobe, and… well, I didn’t save humanity, but I went to Disney World the first week in May with my best friend. Then we got an apartment in Brooklyn a week later and moved in June. Then in the beginning of August I at-fucking-last got a job in my field using skills I had worked hard to acquire (that fanfiction "career" I mentioned eventually turned into being able to churn out a thousand words an hour and being able to talk about old tropes and new ideas in creative ways) and finally I was the one posting the life event about my employment and spamming my friend list with pictures of my vacation. But guess what? I am still a big frakking Adama-level hot mess. And that’s okay. I’ve learned to embrace the mess that is mine. We all have some mess in our lives, and sometimes it clutters up our minds and chains us to our beds and reduces us to a heap of terrycloth and $5 red wine. And that’s okay. We can’t pretend the mess isn’t there. We can’t all get rid of our mess. Most of us didn’t ask for our mess. But – spoiler alert – we can learn to navigate it. And even if we can’t save humanity, we can save ourselves. |