We Need More Stories Where Nothing Works Out, and Here’s Why

[Content warning for swearing, sexual assault, medical trauma, and references to suicide]

“I’ve never been afraid of hard work.” I told my father that day. The phrase was practically dug into me like a familiar, worn trench in my vocabulary.

“I know you’re not,” My father said. “I just want you to know that it’s okay if you can’t do this.”

For years, I had wanted nothing more than to go to the New York University of Film. I had spent most of my time growing up filming my friends on an ancient, clunky camcorder. I would stay up countless nights editing footage until three in the morning, then head to school at six. I read books about film and cinematography ravenously like a feral creature who subsisted solely on movie studio trivia. I could give you a rundown on any film, any director — any film critic, even — with articulation that was comparable to classical literary analysis. I had a lot to say — and, as anyone who also grew up dirt poor could tell you, I had a lot of good stories to tell. After years of being ignored and looked down upon by my wealthier classmates, I cobbled together a scheme to make people finally listen to me. I wanted to tell stories in a way that might actually reach someone, and I thought that becoming a film director would be the best way of doing that.

My father was not as certain as I was.

“You really think you can pull this off?” He asked again. “It’ll be a lot of work.”

I groaned. We were both starting to sound like broken records in stereo. We had been following the same unspoken script the whole day — him saying “come home,” and me saying some reassuring variation of “over my dead body”.

“Dad,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’ve got this. BCC has a transfer program and I’ve done the math. I’ll do two years here, transfer for the other two, and then I could end up with an NYU degree at half the cost! I can make all the connections I’ll need at NYU, and then- Ba da bing!”

“-Ba da boom.” My father replied instinctively, using a tone that would be more appropriate at a funeral. “Just… if it gets too hard, you’re always allowed to change your mind. Got that?”

“Yes, got it,” I said, pushing him out the door. “I’ll change my mind if it gets too hard. But you know how I am, dad. I’m not afraid-”

“-of hard work.” My father finished the phrase. “You really are my kid. Maybe that’s why I’m so scared.” His stubbornness finally subsided like a wall had come down. He reached out with burly arms and gave me a hug; his hugs were like getting crushed on both sides by a brick building.

We said our goodbyes. As soon as he was gone, I immediately unpacked, organized, and cleaned my new apartment. I prepared my class supplies with labels and indexing. I was ready — or at least I should have been; nothing can prepare you for everything.

It didn’t take long for me to make new friends.

To this day I still wonder, was that my first mistake?

I went to a small get-together in early October. I was promised that we would watch scary movies, eat ice cream, and not much else would happen. A couple of students there were drinking, but I was a straight-laced kid who preferred soda.

Next thing I knew, I was waking up with a salty taste in my mouth, looking up to see everyone watching a strange home video. The screen flickered with AV colors, a surreal window where I witnessed my own flesh and face in a state of total disassociation. The recording was of me. I put my clothes back on and immediately asked for a shot of the hardest liquor on hand. I walked home like I was sleepwalking. That was the first time that I was raped.

The second time was a couple of months later. I had finally told my roommate about the incident. In classic party-girl fashion, she suggested that I blow off steam with her own personal method — by getting shitfaced and partying all weekend until the bad feelings went away.

“One night isn’t going to kill you.” She had said, though sometimes a part of me wishes it had.

Early on in the night, I decided that I was too drunk and I needed to go home. I later shared a cab with a guy I met at the party. A friend reassured me that he was a good guy, the fare would be cheaper if we split it, and his house was on the way to mine. As I slipped into the cab, I also inadvertently slipped into sleep.

Suddenly, someone was yelling at me and pushing me out of the vehicle. I scurried out of the cab, flustered, panicked. I looked around. There was only a single trailer in the middle of a blizzard.

My assailant called a different cab for me when he was finished. I had to use my jacket as collateral to pay the driver.

Life started to speed up and slow down in an unknowable blur. I went to the hospital for a rape kit, joking with the nurse about how I wished that the guy had just killed me instead. My parents burst in through the doors while I was getting my throat swabbed, both of them screaming at me with such incomprehensible emotion that I cannot remember what they had said. The nurse told them that I was going to be involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric ward miles away for suicidal thoughts. I watched my father break.

Nobody visited me during that week except for my grandmother. The nurses eventually forced me to take a medication that I had never heard of, and within the next hour my tongue was swollen; it felt like some invisible force was prying my jaw open and off of its hinges. I later learned that I had gone into anaphylactic shock. My grandmother watched as I writhed on the floor before anyone helped me. I remember seeing the shadow of a long needle on the wall in front of me, feeling the metal drive deep into the meat of my rear end — and then darkness. I slept for days after that.

My roommate threw a party in my apartment while I was hospitalized. My parents told me to stand up for myself, so I scolded her.

Afterwards, strange mishaps started occurring. My things would end up defaced while I wasn’t looking. People whispered when I walked by, their words laced with slurs. I would often find threatening, anonymous letters in my coat pocket. I couldn’t go online without finding another hateful message or thread targeting me.

At one point, a stranger came up to me in the cafeteria and slapped me.

“You think you can just ruin people’s lives?” She shouted, “him and I went to high school together; he would never do something like that! You just think you’re better than everyone else because you’re pretty, but no one is falling for your manipulative little bullshit tactics.”

Someone cheered.

I said nothing. Instead, I went to the restroom and splashed cold water on my face. My cheek still stung. I looked in the mirror, and a stranger with my face looked back at me.

This is a weird way to find out that people think I’m pretty, I thought. Another thought occurred to me there: I had only told my roommate about the assaults.

Whenever I went home, the same people who aggressively harassed me on campus would be chatting with my roommate and sitting on my bed. They would collectively acknowledge my entrance with cold, dead silence, staring daggers at me.

I decided I felt safer sleeping outside after that.

A couple of weeks later, a friend offered to let me crash on his couch. I didn’t know him super well, but we both liked each other well enough. A mutual friend reassured me that he was a good guy, that staying with him would be cheaper than a hotel, and that his house was relatively close to mine.

He led me into a finished basement and locked the door.

A month later, a mutual friend of ours found me downstairs; He had heard me crying through the floorboards. Our friend gently convinced my captor to let me go, and it worked. As my unintentional hero drove me back to my apartment, he caught me up to speed on everything that I had missed.

Apparently, no one had even realized that I was missing. My phone had one missed call from my parents, and nothing else.

I withdrew from college after that. I had a collective GPA of 3.9.

Now I cannot even look at a camera without becoming reflexively sick. I don’t trust anyone and I’m afraid to leave my house. My dream is dead and I will never become a movie director. Life is terrible. It may never get better. The end.

You might be thinking “well, why the hell did I slog through a story like that? If that’s where all of this ends, then what is the point of dragging this essay on further? The story must not end there.” And you’re right. My story hasn’t technically ended yet.

A lot has happened since I left college. Some of it was good, some of it was bad. I’ve met people who I love more than anything, and I’ve also had my heart broken more times than I can count; I’ve seen people live and I’ve watched people die. These are all parts of my life, but they are separate stories. But as for my college story? The events from it are over and they objectively led nowhere. People made choices and things happened — such is life.

Movies often have a hard time reflecting real life. I used to love movies because of the contained way in which they told stories. Now, I want messy stories, or stories with lukewarm endings — neither triumphant nor tragic. I want stories where nothing works out. It could be useful — not just for me, but for others in similar positions. Stories are supposed to offer a framework for situations that we might encounter in life; stories can teach children how to spot danger without experience, and they can offer adults a fresh perspective, even after they’ve seen and experienced everything (like five major economic crises and a global pandemic, for example).

Am I saying that stories need to be messy to be good? Absolutely not.

My college story didn’t need to happen, but it happened anyway.

Now I carry it with me like a brick that I can’t put down, like a vendetta that I might chuck through a window, or a weapon that I might brain myself with someday. I carry this brick through every good and terrible thing that happens. It’s useless to me, but I’m stuck with it.

I am not the only one, either. There are many people out there with their own bricks. I’ve met them at meetings, in hospitals, and in the waiting rooms of therapy clinics. They all have faces and names. They are often relatable and endearing characters - but life isn’t a movie. You can’t always derive meaning from meaningless suffering. Sometimes we just end up taking the safest hiding hole that life offers us, and I think that’s okay. Not all stories are satisfying.

Some stories can be satisfying, but I hate those kinds of stories now. I think the trouble is that I was tricked somewhere along the way into seeing “satisfying” and “realistic” as the same thing. For example, success stories are satisfying; but after a thousand success stories, I find myself thinking irrational things like “I’m going to succeed if I work hard” - without thinking about the countless people who failed, regardless of work. And after a thousand wild horror stories, I still catch myself hesitating around dark alleyways - when I know very well from experience that the people I’m with are more likely to be a threat. Sometimes I wonder why everyone is thriving while I’m not, or why everyone has had it worse than me - often at the same time. I tell people “you’ll get through this” when we all have these goddamned horrible bricks, never knowing if I can even put mine down, myself. I’ve placed the outliers at the top of the bell curve, and then wonder why my own experience doesn’t ring a bell.

Exceptional tales can offer exceptional responses, sure; but if we only compare our lives to what is exceptional, then we cannot prepare ourselves for what is real. Life is nuanced, sad, and often unsatisfying. Sometimes, life just sucks. We rarely get the endings that we deserve.

I don’t know what kind of ending my story deserves. Most likely, it’ll be a tragedy. I want to kill myself almost every day, and I don’t know if that will ever change — but it’s the “almost” part that gives me hope. At the same time, I’m afraid to hope for anything. I think about suicide in ways that don’t concern or surprise me anymore; it’s as if the thoughts are nothing more than a stubborn, harmless habit. Maybe staying alive is just another habit, or maybe not. I’ve heard that it’s possible to heal after trauma; all the doctors and self help books tell me that it gets better. A thousand sterile, hopeful articles have offered me artificial encouragement — more as jargon than as actual stories. It feels like an empty promise.

Everything feels empty.

I couldn’t look my father in the eye the last time that I saw him; I was afraid that he would see nothing but emptiness staring back.

“I’m proud of you.” My father said suddenly.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you’re still here.” He replied.

My father sat next to me on a park bench. We both stared ahead absently. There was a construction site across the street from us; it looked like someone had started laying the foundation for a brick wall, but it was impossible to tell how long it had been since anyone last worked on it.

That would make for an interesting filming location, I thought. Some habits die harder than others.

I glanced at my father. He was just as burly, but his posture was softer. He seemed to be in no hurry to end our visit, and neither was I. We sat in silence for a moment, like a record that had reached its end.

“Everything could still get better,” He said. “but it might take a lot of time and hard work.”

I’ve never been afraid of hard work.