even if

Since the first of June
lost my job and lost my room
I pretend to try
even if I try alone
~Sufjan Stevens

For the past month or so I have felt increasingly emotionally paralyzed. Which is at least a change from the quiet, persistent mental agony that has been going on since June; but it troubles me.

I’m certain it stems from two things. First is the upped dosage of antidepressants – far from being "happy pills," antidepressants stabilize your emotional state, so it reaches a plateau of non-ill-being. Again, this is better than suffering constantly. But it leaves you feeling a bit dead.

Second is that, as my sister pointed out on the phone this weekend, blocking memories and emotions from traumatic experiences is one of my primary coping mechanisms. Sometimes she’ll bring up something painful that happened anywhere from four months to twenty years ago, and I’ll have forgotten about it completely.

In fact, my memory has been getting worse and worse. Not so much as far as my job is concerned (in fact, the job is going remarkably well – I got a raise last week!! Hooray!!!); but as far as the events of the summer go, I can’t remember much of them. And I have a scarily far-reaching memory. I can remember moments from when I was eighteen months old. When I was working at Ann Taylor and putting new client information into the computer system, for mailing lists or shipping addresses, occasionally I would hit a wrong button and everything would vanish; but within twenty seconds I could enter everything back in, remembering birth dates, social security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, and all but three or four digits of their credit card numbers. I would only have to say, "And can you verify your credit card number one more time please?" and they’d never even know anything had gone wrong. My coworkers used to look over my shoulder as I did it and mutter in my ear, "That’s freaky, Sarah."

But I can’t remember things from this summer. I forgot that my sister had come to visit shortly after I lost my job. I forgot a lot of things that were said to me during and after the losing of the job. I’m forgetting names of people who worked and lived there, whom I saw and spoke with every day.

And it’s bleeding into other areas too. Sometimes I wake up and forget what day it is, or I forget that I signed up for the GRE, or I forget to pay bills, or I forget to write to my grandparents, or I forget to fulfill minor social obligations. This weekend I forgot to pick up my antidepressant refill, remembered only after the pharmacy had closed, drove around frantically looking for one that was open later, cried when they couldn’t help me, and cried when they could.

I’m forgetting everything.

So, getting back to the original point, which I had also forgotten, I tend to block memories from difficult experiences. I also block emotions. So, in the aftermath of grief and loss from this year, I’m feeling next to nothing.

It’s been surging toward an eruption. I don’t think the numbness is going to last too much longer. I think I’ll be relieved when it breaks.

It’ll be nice, when it does, to care again. The only things I can focus on much are work, and my TV shows. I don’t care anymore about being single, or dating, or finding someone, although there are certain indications of certain guys beating their chests at each other around me. I don’t care about my future. I don’t care about my hobbies, or my passions.

I’m tired. I’m tired from the struggle to find or hold onto faith, hope, love, and joy, which seem to be running between my fingers like Presque Isle sand. I’m tired from the effort to keep my head up, and keep trying. I’m tired from the effort to pretend that I’m fine. I’m fine, and I’m not fine at all, and I don’t care either way, and whatever is wrong with me is almost inarticulable (despite the above articulation), because I don’t know exactly what’s wrong, and I’m indifferent to it. It’s my indifference that bothers me the most. I’m not indifferent to that.

But then there are little moments – like today at McDonald’s, when, tired and sad and lonely and ready to buckle down with a few pieces of paper and process my problems, I was beginning to sit down when an elderly couple called over, "Hey, lady – do you want to come eat dinner with us?" So I sat down with them, and listened to parts of their life stories, and was amazed to discover that such a spry, alert, humorous couple are in their mid-nineties, and celebrating their seventy-second anniversary this month. Those are the moments that simultaneously assuage some of the sadness, and deepen it, and give me hope. And at the very least, it was so lovely to have total strangers ask me to eat with them.

And there are other moments too – like my raise last week, or today when I caught my reflection in a storefront window as I walked past on my way to drop off office mail, and realized that after a gawky, awkward adolescence, in which my mouth bristled with braces, my hair was odd and my pants too short, I have become a serene-looking, lovely young woman, all grown up.

So I know I’m going to make it. Growing up isn’t all peaches and cream – I don’t have enough money to shake a stick at, I’m single and far from family, and life has snapped a few vicious curve balls this year – but adolescence was no vacation either, and I don’t believe in life without struggle. And this, on the whole, is much better for me than I might have otherwise chosen for myself. Even if I don't understand how. Even if it's often difficult, harsh, or sad. Even if I spend most days trying not to lose myself.

Even if I try alone.