tumultuous times :(

i had just been dumped, and it was clear to everyone that the cat was about to die, and there was nothing good on tv. suffice it to say it was a tumultuous time in my life.

when i say there was nothing good on tv, i guess i more mean that there was nothing that i really liked watching. there was plenty—plenty!—of television that i intellectually knew was Good, and that i Should Be Watching and in many ways that was worse, because in order to keep up with the cultural conversation i would spend days lying on the couch staring at shows that were well-structured and well-acted and well-shot but just not necessarily well-liked by me, personally. i would wake up out of a daze, having just had a season of “mean politician” or “women…in prison!!” projected in my direction and mentally check off a box, think to myself “okay well i accomplished something today, i guess laundry and the gym can wait, also going outside” but deep in my heart i felt nothing, nothing at all—even when, thanks to my diligent watching, i found myself successfully keeping up with the cultural conversation (posting on forums, etc.). i should have been proud of myself for keeping up with the cultural conversation since it moves so quickly these days, like a cheetah or fast-moving river (3 m/s in some sections of the amazon!) but no. if i felt anything, it was merely the general distress caused by the tumultuous times.

it’s hard to know what to do with yourself in a tumultuous time. do you fight against the tumult, or lean into it? due to my sense of pride i tried to stay strong, but it was difficult. i realized i could cry at the drop of a hat. fortunately people don’t drop their hats very often, but it was still a risk. i found myself putting frowny face emoticons at the end of all of my texts, even the ones that weren’t sad, because i was sad. the vessel of my being was not enough to contain my woe so it sloshed over the sides, spilling out into every human interaction i had. “could i have a slice of pizza and also help me help me oh god please help me?” i said to the guy behind the counter at my favorite pizzeria. he gave me the pizza, and a dr. pepper he didn’t charge me for. maybe he misheard me. i don’t even like dr. pepper that much.

when i say it was clear to everyone that the cat was about to die, i really mean everyone. me, my roommates, my neighbor, my milkman, my vet, my god, even my e-quaintances on the cultural conversation message boards from thousands of miles away could tell something was up. clear to everyone. to the cat itself most of all, probably. it called us in one by one to say some parting words and bequeath unto us its worldly possessions. it was a cat, so the parting words were mostly “meow mew meow” and the possessions were mostly our own socks that it had stolen out of laundry baskets over the years, but it was really the gesture that counted more than anything. and to be fair it was nice to have the socks back.

but the problem with the cat dying—or rather, one of the problems (there was also the smell, the fact that the situation forced us to confront our own mortality, the inevitable rise in the local mouse population)—was that it would never find out how “mean politician” ended. we always watched it together and even though it wasn’t my favorite i did it for the cat, who i was pretty sure enjoyed the show. of course it was impossible to ever really know how the cat felt about anything, and so impossible to really know how best to care for and love it, but my gut told me that watching this particular prestige drama was a decent enough bet. and anyway i couldn’t deny it was a little fun to watch fred overwater connive his way to the top of the d.c. food chain. such a wily little fox, that fred!

we had a pretty good feeling, the cat and i, that fred wouldn’t end up getting away with all his misdeeds, but we couldn’t be sure. and how could the cat possibly die in peace with so many plot threads left untied? so i opened up a new blank message on my email server and drafted a very polite message to the subscription streaming service that distributed “mean politician,” asking if there was any way for the cat’s sake that we could get a sneak preview of the remaining episodes, if they even existed at this point. i sent the draft to all my friends so they could proofread it for grammar and tone, and once i’d incorporated all their edits i sent it off. i crossed my fingers. i held my breath. then i got uncomfortable so i stopped doing those things, and before long a response showed up in my inbox.

Dear Sir and/or Madam,

Thank you for your inquiry regarding “Mean Politician.” We always love hearing from our fans. Seriously!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We do have the scripts for the remaining seasons all written out and we would love to share them with your cat so that it may die in peace—if this is, in fact, the case.

Unfortunately, however, we have no proof that your message isn’t an elaborate ruse to get our scripts so that you can shoot your own Seasons 5–6 of “Mean Politician” and release them under a different title, like “Bad President” or “House of Cards” or maybe “Columns of Marble, Heart of Stone” (because like columns on a government building, and also he’s mean). Since “Mean Politician” is one of our most profitable ventures, this is a risk we are unable to take.

We thought about simply requesting that you send a note from a vet confirming that your cat really is dying, but then it occurred to us that such a note could easily be forged. Or, worse yet, you could have a vet in on this whole scheme. Maybe this is just the influence of producing “Mean Politician,” a television show about a mean politician, but some days it feels like anyone in this town can be bought for the right price. Even a veterinarian—the most noble kind of doctor.

So while we want to let ourselves be vulnerable and open up to you, we’re just so scared of the worst possible outcome, of the potential pain, that we say no. No no no. No to you and no to your cat and no to the corrupt vet you might have on retainer. Never.

Oh god. What have we become? We’re so sorry. You work so hard to build a wall to protect yourself, and then you realize that the wall isn’t just keeping things out—it’s trapping you in, too. But it’s too late. It’s too late.

Hugs n kisses,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Subscription Streaming Service ®

so yeah, that was a no go. i had a tough time breaking the news to the cat, both from an emotional standpoint and a logistical one, with regard to the human/cat language barrier and everything. this only added to the tumultuousness of the times in which i found myself. if there were a scale for times’ tumultuity, which there isn’t, this would probably be a benchmark on it, in much the same way diamond is on the mohs scale of mineral hardness. perfect 10.0.

here are other reasons the times were tumultuous: the radio kept playing the same bad song, i got a negative performance review at work, i was developing an allergy to my favorite food (lentils), i was slowly coming to terms with my own internalized racist and sexist beliefs—beliefs i never asked to have, but that were insidiously instilled in me by a society built by and for people who looked like me, on the backs of people who didn’t—but i didn’t know how to change them, we had just elected a secondhand copy of “twilight: new moon” as mayor and it was doing a terrible job, i had a sunburn and a pimple in the same spot on my shoulder so it hurt double. that’s not even everything, but i won’t bore you with the details.

when i say i had just been dumped, i guess i don’t really mean anything at all. there had been this picture of a girl that i drew on a post-it note and i stuck it on my bathroom mirror and i told it all my secrets and feelings. it had been great at first: she was there for me every morning, every night, when i brushed my teeth and when i brushed my hair. as i looked at the reflection of my own big dumb face next to her lovely crude pencil smile, i understood what people meant, really meant, when they said “my better half.” i wasn’t alone anymore, and that was awesome, and i had someone (something) to kiss, and that was awesome too. but it wasn’t destined to be awesome forever. things always change, and usually just when you’re finally starting to hope they don’t. after a couple months the sticky part of the post-it note started losing its stickiness, so she would flutter down off the mirror and onto the edge of the sink, or the floor, and i’d have to bend down and pick her up and stick her back. sometimes i couldn’t find her for a day or two, and when i did find her, i had to be so careful to make sure she didn’t fall down again.

i used to love how she always smiled. but her persistent happiness made it impossible to ever really know how she felt about anything, and so impossible to really know how best to care for and love her. the fact that she was a drawing didn’t particularly help either. she probably didn’t know how to love me, either—though come to think of it, i wasn’t even sure i knew that.

i tried explaining all this to her one morning between stages iii and iv of my daily facial scrub. she didn’t say anything. i said, “do you ever worry about these kinds of things?” she didn’t say anything. i said, “maybe i’m crazy to have ever thought i understood enough about the world, or myself, to be in love.” she didn’t say anything. i said, “but maybe that craziness is what you need! maybe loving someone is so impossible that without a healthy dose of insanity you’ll never try! help help oh god help please i don’t know what i’m doing ahhhhhhh help.” she didn’t say anything, and fell off the mirror into the trashcan.

i wanted to give her space so i let her sit there. i went to work and sat at my computer but i could only think about her. i typed “girlfriend” into every cell of the spreadsheet i was making. my boss got mad, like always. when i finally got home, the trash had been taken out. “where’s my girlfriend?” i asked my roommate, grabbing him by the collar and shaking him with the desperate passion in my voice. “you have a girlfriend?” he asked. “she’s small, yellow, square—” “oh, you mean post-it paula!” “what?” “we all call her post-it paula. she’s…your girlfriend? what does that even mean?”

all this time and she’d never even told me her name.

i never thought i’d meet someone in real life who was as hardhearted as the fictional character fred overwater. i lay in my bed, wondering if “lay” was the right form of the verb to use in that context. it was 5:30pm but i felt so tired. the thing they don’t tell you about tumultuous times is that they’re not just tumultuous, they’re also very exhausting. my body felt like a ziploc bag full of wet spaghetti, limp and bloated and thoroughly unloveable.

i posted on the cultural conversation message board about all this, hoping someone could give me some words of comfort, but the thread was deleted by moderators since it wasn’t about the cultural conversation. i drafted an email to my subscription streaming service, but i moved it to the trash as soon as i finished it. no way could they help me on this one. then there was a knock at the door. i looked at the clock and it was 5:38am — either i’d fallen asleep for twelve hours and eight minutes or just misread the clock earlier. the milkman was waiting on my stoop with two quarts of one percent. he smiled at me as i took the jugs out of his hands. they were cool against my palms.

“have you ever found yourself in a tumultuous time, milkman?” i asked. “you can call me peter,” he said, blissfully unaware of the huge emotional impact the simple act of telling me his name had on me in that moment, “and yes, i have.” “what was the sitch, exactly?” “well, there was a time when it looked like milkmen like me weren’t going to have jobs anymore. once grocery stores started selling milk there didn’t seem to be any reason anyone would need milk hand-delivered to their doorstep every morning. i fell into a deep depression—or tumultuosity, you might say. i wept so much that everything in my house got soggy: the bedsheets, the couch cushions, the walls. my tears got into the milk and made it watered down and salty, which only exacerbated my fears, because who would buy milk that was (a) from a milkman and (b) disgusting?” “wow, yeah, that sounds pretty bad. so what happened?” “well, it turned out all my worrying was for naught. i learned that if you put the word artisanal on something, pretentious idiots like you will buy it right up no matter how expensive it is. i don’t understand it myself. but that’s just the thing—tumultuous times defy logic. just when you think there’s no more hope, humanity, in all its wonderful unpredictable strangeness, will surprise you.”

it was beautiful, what he said. but before i could respond, he fluttered down onto the floor. it’s hard to stick post-it notes to containers of milk because of the condensation. i looked towards my roommate’s room, expecting him to have some snide remark at the ready, but then he fell off the doorframe and floated down to the floor too. i sat down on my artisanal couch (a bargain at $5400) and looked around at the post-it notes littering the floor. everyone i knew, or thought i knew. everyone i loved, or tried to love. so much so yellow—glittering like worthless gold, shining like a cold, dead sun.