this is me trying

"quitcher bitchin' and get on with it"

TW: Discussion of suicidal ideation.

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If I’m not mistaken, there’s a Taylor Swift song that shares this title. I must admit: at the time of writing this, I’ve not listened to it, but I trust that the track is undoubtedly a perfect display of Miss Swift’s talent. Moreover, I’d like to extend my thanks to Miss Swift for inspiring me — a non-Swiftie with no real knowledge of her as an artist or the stories behind any of her albums — to explore my own folklore to the tune of this title, which is to say that my use of the title is, of course, pretty self-explanatory.

This is me trying.

Photo courtesy of Jason Thompson on Unsplash.

For whatever reason, I feel like I’ve written about this before. Maybe it happened in a dream, but I never remember my dreams, just like I never remember whether I expressed a thought to another living, breathing person or if I’ve just been talking out loud to myself. I do that a lot. Honestly, I talk to myself more than I talk to anyone else, so you’d think I’d be able to remember the difference — but these things kind of blur together at this point, you understand. Anyway, I know I’ve talked to myself about this on several occasions, but I’m fairly confident this is the first time I’m sharing it with someone else, so here’s to hoping that it makes as much sense to you as it did to me when I spent the night pacing around the basement and ranting at the wall.

I told the wall all about my childhood in the church. I do that a lot, too. This time, I ranted about growing up Pentecostal and how Pentecostal Christianity is, for lack of a better term, super performative. In my experience, Pentecostals place a huge emphasis on having a direct relationship with God (whatever that means, I still haven’t the foggiest idea), and our leaders taught us to do so through the Holy Spirit. In the churches I attended as a kid, folks had various methods of communing with the Spirit, including but not limited to:

• speaking in tongues

• crying

• screaming

• violently convulsing

• rolling around on the floor

• frothing at the mouth

• fainting

• crawling around on all fours

• belting worship songs (off-key) while trying and failing to suck the snot back up into one’s nose

• and, of course, giving the church cash money

— pretty much whatever said “I FUCKING LOVE JESUS” the loudest, I reckon.

Maybe I’m being a little mean, but man, you just had to be there. It was a lot — especially for me as an autistic kid. Never mind the sensory nightmare; I had a hell of a time trying to determine the purpose of the weekly performance. Everyone put on their very best show for the Lord on Sundays, and I guess the Lord’s little helpers (what’s the Christian theology version of elves?) got to decide whose was the most convincing — but what for, I wondered. What was the point of performing piety if it rarely ventured beyond the theater of the sanctuary? Think of it this way: we all know that somebody singing an acoustic rendition of Carry On My Wayward Son at the county fair doesn’t make ‘em the poster child of rock n’ roll, just like we all know that somebody proclaiming their love for Christ in church doesn’t mean they make a habit of hanging out with beggars, lepers, and whores.

Practice what you preach, or at least get real good at pretending, yanno what I mean?

I tried my best. As an undiagnosed autistic kid attempting to learn social cues to avoid being bullied 24/7, I took two very important lessons away from all of this:

1. Despite everything I’d learned about being “too emotional” from my dad, it just so happened that cryin’ and screamin’ in public was actually totally fine as long as you told people it was about Jesus. (Field note: you must specify that you “felt his presence” or “just got to thinkin’ about his good name.” Do not, under any circumstance, tell people, especially not other church people, that Jesus made you cry. Though results may vary, I can pretty well guarantee that the conversation will not go in your favor.)

2. Despite everything I’d learned about being a good person from my Mama, it seemed that nobody actually had to live in alignment with the values they claimed to have. They just had to look like they were, and that worked well enough.

I think it’d be dishonest of me to attribute all of my commitment issues to this weird part of my upbringing, but it certainly didn’t do me any favors in the “getting shit done” department (where all the tortured poets also hang out, I hear. How neat.) If anything, my experiences in the church laid the foundation for my poor creative hygiene and lack of discipline, and spending too much time on social media has only made matters worse because it encourages a similar sort of passive entitlement: I mean, shit, if I talk like a writer, and I act like a writer, and I post well-edited pics of my laptop and a cup of coffee, surely I should be making like a million bucks by now, yeah?

Earlier this evening, I wanted to sit down and work out an essay idea that’s been bugging me, but I was so overstimulated I wanted to peel my skin off. So, naturally, I decided to do the responsible adult thing and go lay down in the yard. I told the crickets singin’ by the fence and the fireflies blinking in and out of sight about how I think my therapist might be ghosting me and how often I’ve been thinking about dying lately and how I feel like I have no fucking clue what I’m doing. With dirt under my fingernails and a bug bite blooming red on the skin just above my ass, I pulled out my phone and, like the content-addicted fiend I am, opened YouTube. This was the first video in my recommended feed:

“Quitcher bitchin’ and get on with it. Sorry if the language is offensive, but sometimes, you gotta get a little salty with it. Sometimes you gotta take yourself to the tool shed, give yourself a whoopin’.

There was a time in my life when this advice would’ve pissed me off. But these days, I think I need to get a little salty with it. I think I need a (metaphorical) ass whoopin’. There was also a time in my life that I would’ve welcomed a real, fist-to-face ass whoopin’, too, but I told my therapist I’d stop doing dumb shit to punish myself and cope with my anger, and although she might be ghosting me, and I can be a lot of bad things, I am not a fuckin’ liar, alright? But I’m also not the kinda guy that backs down from a fight — or at least I don’t want to be, which is why I think I need to (metaphorically!!! jesus christ don’t send the cops to my door again) whoop my own ass.

Last night, I found myself in the familiar spiral of suicidal ideation. I find myself here often — so often, in fact, that I have the numbers of my tried and true crisis hotlines listed in the notes app on my phone.

I’ve contacted hotlines many times to keep myself distracted long enough to stay alive, but I’d never used 988 before. I’d heard through the digital grapevine that some folks had reservations about it for fear of being involuntarily committed. I am also opposed to being hospitalized against my will, which has deterred me from reaching out for help in the past — but last night, the ideation felt different. More deadly, somehow. This spiral didn’t feel like circling the proverbial drain or standing over the sink with three bottles of pills in my hands. It didn’t feel like it would leave much room for maybe. This one felt like an ultimatum, like my post-traumatic stress dragged me to my knees on the edge of a cliff and demanded that I finally make my fucking choice.

Shit, or get off the pot.

Be better, or jump.

Who are you kidding? I thought. Just jump.

Across the room, bundled up in a blanket and sleeping soundly, my partner let out a little dream-induced laugh, the sound of his voice echoing off the wall and drifting directly to my ear.

I texted 988.

The counselor, whose name I learned was Megan, said she was glad I reached out and asked if I could tell her what’s giving me such a hard time. I told her as much as our limited interaction would allow: about my chronic pain and fatigue, about my severe dissociative PTSD, about how the combination of these things makes me incapable of working a “normal” person job and how that makes me feel worthless. I told her I think I was born feeling like a burden. I admitted that my partner and his mother are just about the only thing keeping me from killing myself most days and that, while I know my death would destroy them, losing me couldn’t be any worse than helping someone as sick as me stay alive.

Back in the day, I’d regularly see poor or otherwise less fortunate folks in our community come to the church in search of material assistance: a donation to keep the lights on, a benefit dinner for their sickly uncle, a team of big strong men to help them rebuild a broken part of their home. Sometimes, if the church was feeling particularly generous (or in need of some good PR), they’d oblige. But most of the time, people asking for help would hear the age-old instruction: go and pray about it. Because obviously, if you believe hard enough and pray hard enough and give God the tithes he’s apparently due, he’ll descend from the heavens to heal your dying dog, or fix your front porch, or magically remove the black mold growing like a weed under your kitchen sink. If you perform your dedication to your desires convincingly enough, you’ll get everything you want.

And if you don’t? Well, you just didn’t have enough faith.

I think this is partly why I’ve struggled in recovery for so long: I grew up believing that every bad thing that befell me was my fault. I’ve been out of the church for almost ten years, yet this belief, this idea that I possess some fundamental and irrevocable wrongness that serves as the root of all my suffering, for which I am solely responsible, still affects how I see myself.

I mean, I thought I wanted to get better so badly, but I’m still sick. I’m still a danger to myself, constantly dangling my feet over the edge of that cliff. Does that mean I’m not doing enough to “fix” it? That I don’t actually want to be better, since I’m still so fucked in the head? And if I can’t do something as “simple” as figure out how to be a functioning human being, how could I honestly believe that I’m capable of being successful at literally anything else?

I texted with Megan for an hour and a half. Toward the tail end of our conversation, she asked me about how I could keep myself safe during future episodes, whether I have professional support to navigate my complex trauma, and what I thought I needed to be kind and considerate of myself. I assured her that I’ve been seeing a therapist. I usually have someone hide my medication and any alcohol in the house so I can’t mix or misuse them. I don’t let myself keep any sharp objects in my desk, and I’ve thrown away a lot of stuff in the last couple of years to minimize the risk of serious self-injury because I’m self-aware enough to know that I cannot guarantee my safety when I’m struggling and alone.

“I am hearing that deep down,” she said, “you know you are worth the love and support you are getting with the people you have now.”

There was a time in my life when this would’ve pissed me off. When I would’ve welcomed a fist to my face to avoid confronting the feelings it stirs in me. When I would’ve taken this as an attack on my identity because my identity is so tangled up in the story about my worth I was conditioned to believe.

“You’re really, really good at this,” I said instead. “Thank you for saying that.”

Later, after we’d talked for a while, and Megan had successfully talked me down from the edge of self-destruction, she thanked me for my kind words and wished me joy, peace of mind, and all the wonderful things. She thanked me again for reaching out and for the work I’m doing to help myself.

The chat ended. I sat in the dark in silence for a long time after that. Now, suspended somewhere between grief and the relief of knowing somebody out there believes in me, I feel a strange sense of calm. I think I understand what Megan meant. Despite how heavy everything feels, I can make peace with the fact that I’m getting on with it, and I can promise — myself, someone else, the wall — that at the very least, I’m trying.

I’m really, really trying.

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My YouTube history is, admittedly, a bit of a fuckin’ mess this week, but these were the gems amid all the chaos:

• Broke Mine Too by Devon Again

• Easy Way Out by Low Roar

• enough for me by Molly Frances

• Doomed by Mothica

• green to blue by daniel.mp3

• Killer by Phoebe Bridgers

• Reverence by ExistStrategy

• The View Between Villages by Noah Kahan

Y’all, this is very quickly becoming my favorite recurring “segment,” mostly because it encourages me to read more of other people’s work, and holy smokes! You folks are so fucking talented and cool and funny and smart. I reckon my “recent reads” list is just going to get longer and longer every week — and what a good problem to have, don’tcha think?

• I’m not a regular writer, I’m a cool writer by

  Amanda!

• Regarde l'objet by

  Clementine Morrigan

• Being Good isn’t the Point by

  Jeremy Mathew

• I Swear I Don't Wanna Be A Billionaire I Just Want Unlimited Arizona Green Teas by

  Delise Fantome

• i don’t know what i’m supposed to be by

  d.

• I Have Tried to Write This Story Seven Times by Ella Fox-Martens for

  elle nash
  ’s Witch Craft Magazine

• Inner Child. In...(errr)...security. by

  Colin Mortemore

• The Pillars of Personal Philosophy: What I Believe and Why by

  Corey Sweet

• Woman behind a paywall by

  Joy Sullivan