On an unlikely Thursday, two Summers
back I stepped out onto the bustling sidewalk at the corner of North Houston
( NoHo to the locals ) and Broadway and made a conscious decision… well rather,
lost a debate as to whether or not I would walk directly into oncoming traffic
when the crosswalk lit up.
I’m conveying this without the slightest hint of heightened drama or hyperbole, I literally stood there
staring at the traffic signals changing and remembered on several occasions I
had half-joked that if I were ever to leave my job it would be through a 4th
floor window but I had missed my chance at anything so glorious. Now here, at
ground level, I simply went back and forth, subtracting and adding the
consequences of such an action, numbly bereft and completely beside myself.
I’d been down and out in the past,
utterly heartbroken, routinely betrayed, nearly homeless, subject to all
manner of depression, disappointment and hardship but this was something
entirely new. I felt outside myself, ironically, the third person in my
perspective. Disassociated entirely with the scene, with the reality I was
likely leaving this place I’d thought of like a homecoming, my destiny made
manifest, forever more.
The old trope of the down on his luck kid who moves to New York to follow his dream of becoming a famously successful (insert here) may be as old and historically documented as the city itself, the streets are littered with the downcast, disenfranchised and disheveled. People who imagined coming to Manhattan would fulfill them in some crucial way but for exactly one-tenth of my existence, I did indeed live and work here, healthy and vibrant, content in feeling I had finally found a place to contribute and call home. Now that had come to a sudden inexplicable end.
I recalled four years earlier, in
May, a bit of a dark omen. Following an interview for my position, I’d been
dropped off near my accommodations next to a rather large unsightly pile of
black garbage bags on the sidewalk as if to say, “This is where you get off,
buddy.”
I also recalled the one time I
attempted to bring my dog, Pathos into the office it not working out, because
he was very upset by another aggressive dog near my desk and I could do nothing
to calm him down. Apologizing to the head of our department I said I would take
him home, referring to the whole mishap as a “failed experiment”. The look of
annoyance on his face convinced me that my dog was not the only one who fit
into that category.
The lyrics from a song I’d been
listening to at the time, Cold Fame by Band of Skulls,
echoed back to me prophetically, perhaps mockingly:
“I know my place… but it don’t know
me.
I know my place… but it don’t know
me.”
Snapping back into my skull briefly, the cold rationale and justifications for proceeding with ending my life presented themselves.
“Just wait for something bulky and
fast to cross the intersection, a tour bus or Metro, a garbage truck or an
impatient taxi driver. No shortage of those on this street. Wait for them. Hold your breath.
Sprint. Close your eyes at the last minute if you have to.
This will go away.
Hell, you have until the end of today
until your life insurance policy is canceled”.
Suddenly, I’m standing at the
platform in Prince Street Station biding my time as the southbound N Train makes its way
down the tunnel. Grabbing a column I sway towards the yellow paint.
“This will be easier, less chance of
it going wrong”.
Now I’m at Exchange Place looking
back at the island from the other side of the Hudson River in Jersey City, considering the choppy dark depths of the water.
“Last chance. You always loved this
view. Great way to call it a day”.
Now I’m in a parked SUV, sitting in
a supermarket parking lot, quietly trying to explain to my wife what just
happened. Trying to make any sense of it at all, trying to comfort her and
assure her that I’ll find some way to fix it, that somehow we’ll bounce back
from this and figure out a way to remain in this place where we’ve come into
our own, a place we delighted in exploring and working. Despite the high cost of
living and harsh urban climate, we felt completely in our element and had long-term goals to
move to Brooklyn or Astoria.
6 months pass. We don’t bounce back.
It’s Christmas Day and we’re driving back to Houston in a modestly packed
U-Haul moving truck (we left most of our furniture), crammed into the cab with our
two dogs, quietly watching the beautiful northern countryside unfold in reverse
as we drive back to a hellishly humid, historically unhappy place, we vowed
we’d never return to.
As we finally make our way into
South Houston at around 11:30 at night the back tire blows out on the trailer
carrying our Mercury Mountaineer and we’re forced to roll the truck off and
follow behind it at 45 miles per hour to complete the journey. We later find
out that one of the new flat screen televisions we’d had the movers carefully
place in the cab had been completely impacted on the right side of the screen,
making it unviewable.
A year passes. No one comes to our
rescue. Not even me.
Where one door closed, another did
not open in its place. It simply remained locked, irreversibly closed.
We both take on empty service jobs,
simply to pay the bills, living check to check, struggling worse perhaps than
we had been prior to our move to New York. Our son takes the move badly and
struggles to fit in in an environment completely different than the one he had
known, falling into near-constant trouble with school authorities and starts to
dabble in drugs.
Geez. What a fucking downer, right?
Why am I even writing this?
Am I even alive? Maybe I just left
some key part of me right back there at the corner of Broadway and NoHo and
this is just a morbid attempt to take inventory.
The truth is I’ve always believed in
something that extends past my hand, something we cannot see or hold.
One Love above all.
We all struggle to quantify it into
something tangible: Belief in science or religion, the supremacy of personal
status or the rebellion against it. The accumulation of power, sex, wealth,
fame, comfort, convenience. All desires funneled into what we think we so
desperately need to be happy and whole at this very moment.
Above all, there is only love. Not
admiration, infatuation, accolades or achievement. You can offer me nothing
substantial that will last past this cycle but your love. I can give you nothing
in return but my own. If you’re reading this know that the quiet still part of
you that would allow itself to simply be accepted, understood and acknowledged,
is very much recognized by that part of myself.
Yes, in a very self-aware way, I fully realize that sounds
like some transcendental, new age hippie bullshit, but it is oddly
what has kept me here. Regardless of what you may be facing, you have a worth
and value that goes far beyond your mistakes and failures, your triumphs and
wins. Someone needed to dodge oncoming traffic so that they could be here at
this precise moment to tell you that very thing.
Just as an obtuse thought
experiment, humor me and put your hand out. Touch the screen on your monitor,
phone or tablet, like a senile retiree reaching out towards their television
for the healing touch of a boisterous televangelist to receive empty blessings of
healing and financial stability.
Nothing happened, right? But at the very moment, you felt foolish or silly doing so, I did the same. Holy shit, that
was real! We both just did that. A simple validation is all it took to complete
an undeniable action. An inescapable fact that flies in the face of all our
doubts and misgivings. Sure, it may equate to nothing more than a cosmic fist
bump across your smart device, but we did it. A small thing really… but “a
thing”, nevertheless.
Being able to reach out and still
touch the screen daily to some measure is what has kept me grounded and present. If I
caused you to smile, ponder or reflect in a significant way with anything I’ve
shared or conveyed then we have connected and that, I suppose… is enough.
Because that’s all there really is.
So, for whatever time I have left I
guess we’ll be sharing a moment, recognizing that our lack of self-worth can be
countered in the value we place in others, in recognizing their very best
qualities above the chaos and routine shit show we witness daily in our
personal lives, workplace, news feeds and media. A sincere thanks to you for
allowing me a moment to vent about mine. I know this was heavier than usual. I sincerely hope you’re doing well and if
you’re not that’s okay, neither am I but we are both still here. Still
perfectly capable of reaching out.
Touch the screen, it’ll sort itself.
One Love.
Zachariah (Mettā Pathos)
To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire, and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.
