I just reskimmed Allie Brosh's last two posts (on Hyperbole and a Half). What brought this on was a friend of mine linking me to a post she made on the Hyperbole and a Half facebook page promoting her book. She'd been working on this book for some time before falling down the rabbit hole of depression and getting diagnosed and working through some of it to muster up enough energy to work on the rest. So now it's complete.
The way she promoted the book was painful to read. It ate at me. It made itself into some kind of tapeworm or something and lodged itself in the pit of my belly. I am uncomfortable and a little upset/cranky, but not totally able to pinpoint why.
I want to like it, just to signal-boost Allie Brosh, because she's a brilliant, talented person who's going through a rough time, and I also want a piece of that book pretty badly, but like, I don't know. I'm kind of stuck in my own feelings at the moment.
For me, I'm still kind of there, you know? Where she is. I'm not exactly depressed, but I've been there. I've been to a place where I've wanted to not be alive (not necessarily to kill myself, just not to be conscious or aware that I'm taking the wheel of my life and letting myself veer off the cliff). I don't know.
"For the longest time, you feel like there's no point. There isn't really a glimmer of hope. There's no more possibility. You're a conductor on a train heading down one set of tracks and there's no way to switch them, and you're barreling top speed towards someone tied to these goddamn tracks. For one excruciating second, as you're leaning out of the side window of your little conductor's compartment, you're close enough to look into the eyes of your would-be victim, and you see that she's you.
"And you're still in that one second. The thousand milliseconds in that one second are so long, that you're still in that instant where you recognize her, you, on the tracks, immobilized, screaming with all of the power you can muster, into a piece of duct tape across your mouth. You see yourself struggle and flail, but you also recognize the knots on your hands, the same knots you learned to tie at camp, except with lanyards and beads.
"You know this brief moment where you take everything in visually and your brain processes this information faster than you know, reaching conclusions you don't realize you've reached, is coming to an end fast. You know, but you can't take your eyes away. It's all inevitable, and must somehow also be predetermined, since there's no switch and the knob to slow the train down to a stop's been broken all this time. You can't move in any of the roles you have.
"That's what it's like. You see where you're heading, you see yourself already there. Already flattened by it. Hell, you feel like you're already flattened by it, and if it's inevitable anyway, might as get a headstart on it, you know? Nothing matters, since you'll just end up dead at the end anyway. You're done. It was all over before it all began. Throw in the towel. Just give up. Resign. There's nothing left.
"And yet, there is. Because as meaningless as everything is, as lost and broken and resigned to your fate as you are, there's still this lit spark in you that says it's not enough. It's not over. It's not done with. You thought you threw in your towel, but you've still got one last fucking rag stuffed in your back pocket. Like fuck. You're almost angry, righteously so, because no, you fucking haven't given up, and there's no way to stamp out that goddamned spark. You can't ever truly believe it's over.
"Find that spark. That one spark can and will ignite your whole being, long enough so that you can create meaning from your life. Yeah, you're heading down those tracks, and that split-second's almost over, but wow, dramatic much? Life isn't a split-second of recognition that you're fucked. It's a goddamned, long-ass, painful process, with steps and time, and back-breaking effort. People work hard to make things move. It can be so easy though, but it's not. There's just something in you that will always need to talk the talk. Walk that fucking walk. Struggle until there's really no hope left, but even then, there probably still will be.
"We've been evolving for so long, that what's left of us can't truly want to die and disappear. We've survived too long, been too successful. Our survival instincts are too strong at this point. You're not done. It's not over. It'll never be over. And yeah, that's a life-long sentence. But that can also be an assurance that you have all the time in the world to try to change the course of those tracks. Time's frozen in that one instant, and you've got so much time that you can jump out of the conductor's cart, undo those lanyard knots, rip off the tape from your mouth, and pull yourself back into the train.
"It's not over. There's no it to be over. There's no objective it. You make what you will. You'll always be able to create your own meaning, subjectively.
"Which, babe, is why you'll never be done. You can't be done until you're involuntarily done. Until you're actually dead, which will happen with or without your own misguided conducting. Might as well make the most of it."
That's what I want to say to her, you know? To Allie. I don't know. Maybe it'd help, maybe it won't. Because I mean, I've been somewhere like where she is/has been, so I know how hard it is for anything to make it through the foot-thick steel walls that we've built to simultaneously protect and isolate ourselves. Maybe this is all just super offensive. It is for my own benefit that I write this, anyway, for some momentary catharsis at the very least. I don't know. I'll just keep struggling anyway. I don't know how to die.
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