“If I’m not in my body then where am I?”
“Five feet to the left and unhappy.”
- Mistress America (Noah Baumbach, 2015)
Facebook’s memories function is an interesting beast. It reminds you of small moments you wouldn’t remember otherwise — nights out and in, catchups with friends, viral videos that are now a blip on the collective radar. They’re seemingly meaningless, most of the time. They serve as a reminder that everything’s becoming more cyclical, the markings are being recorded forevermore. The real memories don’t need prompting for the most part, their date permanently ingrained in your brain. One of those days fell yesterday, where I remembered (as well as being reminded by Facebook) that it was a year since I gained acceptance into a new degree at a new university, and a new beginning as a result.
The year and a half preceding that moment isn’t something I really talk about much. Truth be told, I don’t remember a lot of it, except getting progressively more depressed and frustrated at everything. Memory is interesting that way. It can be a weapon to taunt you, holding onto those painful moments you wish to forget that continue to haunt you. But it’s also built to protect, removing other moments of sadness that don’t belong in your future. All the way through high school, feeling extremely out of place; I was told that university, a place of independent learning, was where I would thrive. It was proving to be incorrect. It was a horrible, neverending cycle. I was unhappy with where I was and what I was doing, feeling powerless in the situation. For the first time, I didn’t have the answers. That lead to feeling unmotivated and detatched and constantly weighed down, a darkness that started remove everything else. Few things I watched or read made me feel anything except indifference. For the first time, nothing could connect with me. But the worst part was yet to come. One day, the words went away. I couldn’t write anymore, something that tore me open. Writing, being able to articulate what moved me and how, was my way to escape, both in the present and the future. It was what I loved, what lit up everything else. Delving deep into something was release. But writing was also my hope of getting to a place where I was happy. If I could write well, I wouldn’t have to continue on the path I was on. But as the days where I stared at a page or a computer screen, feeling completely vacant, became endless, fear started to become reality.
May 7 was release. It was the first crack in the darkness, the first glimmer of the possibility of being happy. I’d fought, fought so hard. I’d sat in front of my computer the night before second year of uni began, trying not to cry, wishing to not go back because it meant going back to being unhappy. I finally decided that I had to do something, and resolved to start doing it there and then. May 7 was release, but it was only the beginning. Its been a slow process since then, and one that’s only kept moving. The darkness has been chipped away, with moments of hope and love and understanding. Today I was watching Mistress America for the first time since I saw it in cinemas, another experience that tore a large part of the wall down, and has only lead to better things since. Exciting things are happening, things I’m ecstatic to share when the time comes. The words are returning, falling together and flourishing, able to articulate what I feel. They feel like love, like hope, like power. For the first time, they feel like me.
