God Placebos
My love affair with Kurt Cobain.
The loneliest I have ever been were the seven months after graduating from high school.
I found myself friendless when the only close friend I had my age moved to Boston for college, and my other handful of close friends, still in high school, were too busy being students to entertain my long, empty, gap-year days. This created a vicious cycle where I felt sad because I was lonely, and then I felt too demotivated to socialize because I was sad. To deal with the feeling that everyone on earth had forgotten I existed (and halt my spiraling depressive episode), my Unconscious-Self did the only thing it could for me in such a circumstance: it produced an imaginary friend to keep me company… which eventually grew into a God Placebo.
I latched on to Kurt Cobain as the identity of my new helpmate after scrolling through Facebook and coming across a picture of his. The first thing I picked up on was the uncanny resemblance between this man and the boy who had rejected me a week earlier. “Kurt Cobain” sounded familiar, so I googled him and noticed I recognized the name because years ago I had come across his suicide note on the internet and empathized with what he had said in it. I read it again. His comments on loneliness and a dwindling excitement for reading and writing resounded with me. For the first time in months, I felt as if someone understood what I was going through: the social alienation, the desperation of not feeling inspired to write the novel I had taken a gap year for, the anxiety of being unsure who I was supposed to be. All of it.
The final nail in the coffin came when I found out Kurt Cobain was the artist behind the song “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which was, coincidentally, a song Rejection-Boy had performed at a school event over half a year before. My efficient Unconscious-Self killed two birds with one stone that November night by picking Kurt Cobain; Not only did I find someone “like me” to lessen my loneliness, but I also found a way to mitigate the shock I felt with having someone unexpectedly decline my advances.
My obsession with Kurt Cobain started off innocently and grew out of control. At the start, I would google facts about him in my spare time, and write one-line comments in my journal. By the hundredth day, I was writing and addressing letters to Kurt personally, and spending up to six hours a day doing research ‒which consisted of looking up and memorizing obscure facts about his life, analyzing song lyrics, watching documentaries, or scrolling through endless pictures of him on Instagram. I admired the man endlessly. I admired how he was talented, creative, good at heart, a feminist, and against toxic masculinity and homophobes. He was everything I wanted to be. And he was successful! Something I did not feel at the time.
Slowly I noticed my behavior become irrational, but I did not care. It brought me so much joy, and because I did know how to stop, I shrugged it away. On good days, I would tell my best friend that Kurt and I were platonic soulmates and that Kurt and I were made out of the same stuff. On bad days, well aware he disliked being idolized, I’d cry in the bathroom — convinced Kurt hated me for loving him — and call her. By the time she picked up the phone, my tears were dry. I’d tell her I had apologized to Kurt for the attention, and he had forgiven me: he understood my situation and found my affection endearing.
On another occasion, she told me white lighters — like the one I carried around — were thought to bring bad luck after some musicians died with one in their pocket, including Kurt Cobain. I ran home to fact check the information and threw a teenage tantrum when I found out this to be untrue. His heroin lighter had multicolored stripes. To keep the illusion alive Kurt and I did have things in common, and we were united by something that surpassed time and space, I searched the web for any instance of Kurt using a white lighter. I did, days later, in a 1993 Rio De Janeiro interview.
The most interesting thing about this obsession is how it took on a religious undertone. I began to behave as if Kurt were a supernatural being with power over my life. This is when he became a God Placebo. Before an interview with Dartmouth, I went to a public mural where Kurt and Courtney are drawn to ask him for his blessing. When the woman who was interviewing me said she was from Seattle, I thought to myself: “This isn’t a coincidence. Kurt is with me.” I then walked all the way back to the mural to thank him for protecting me.
A more extreme example of this would be how I stopped praying. It had been a ritual of mine since I was a young child to take the time before falling asleep to thank God for the good things that happened to me during the day. On the first day of the obsession, I remember asking God to make sure Kurt was happy. Days later, “just checking in” wasn’t enough (because I loved Kurt, and I wanted what was best for him), so I asked God to actively take care of Kurt’s soul. Soon enough, as I became more dependent on Kurt, and the relationship I had with him in my head changed from admirer, to equals, to protectorate, I began to ask God if I could talk to Kurt myself. I’d ask, wait a couple of seconds for the relay to happen (as if there were a phone in heaven and Kurt had to be called upon to pick it up), and then start telling him about my day directly. It wasn’t long until I began bypassing God entirely and started talking to Kurt immediately after writing in my diary. I’d even sleep with a Nirvana smiley face patch underneath my pillow just like some Catholics do with a picture of their favorite saint. Kurt replaced God as the figure to who I went for protection and guidance.
Even my language changed. The words I used in daily conversations shifted towards those commonly seen within a religious context. I began calling Kurt’s birthday “Kurtmas” (a mash between Kurt and Christmas), and for the anniversary of his death, I flew to Seattle to conduct a “pilgrimage.” The week before my pilgrimage, I told my family I was “ready to visit the relics.” I meant I was excited to go to the Museum of Pop Culture and see the largest collection of Nirvana memorabilia, but nevertheless, I used the word “relic.” These words show an unequivocal precision in language of Kurt’s importance because they can’t stray from their boxed definitions. They are not direct synonyms for anything. No one would use “pilgrimage” instead of “trip” if they did not mean to allude to the spiritual journey it entails, and no one would choose to use “relic” as a synonym for “object” if they did not mean to infer it was reverenced thing. So even unconsciously in my speech, I referred to Kurt as a higher power.
A God Placebo is when someone places all of their belief in meaning on a particular entity. It is anything people will use to explain why good or bad things happen (such as fate or luck), or anything people will use to distract themselves from the meaninglessness in the universe (such as believing a certain individual, or achieving a specific goal, will remove all malice from their lives). All God Placebos are obsessions, but not all obsessions are God Placebos. What makes a God Placebo special from a simple obsession is the position it is given in one’s life: a God Placebo will be seen as a subject that has some control over life’s outcome, while obsessions are just objects someone can’t stop thinking about.
Kurt was my first God Placebo. I let it go so far because I didn’t understand how a God Placebo could be different from an obsession; how more demanding and controlling it can be. I am used to obsessions. They seem to be an unconscious safety mechanism in my life. Looking back, I’ve developed an obsession whenever a big change has occurred: I became obsessed with Hannah Montana the summer before I transferred schools in the 4th grade; I became obsessed with The Hunger Games the year my grandmother died; I became obsessed with Guardians of the Galaxy after my first breakup. In a world where I’ve often felt like I did not have control over my own life, or who I was, obsessions provided exactly that. They provided a fixed epicenter in which life could spin out of control, but they would always remain safe in the eye of the storm. They became a reliable source of identity on days where I did not know who I’d be because of my anxiety.
I’d be a hypocrite if I were to say an obsession was an evil that should be avoided at all costs ‒as I’ve seen firsthand the relief they can bring to someone with unmet needs‒ but I’d be lying if I said obsessions weren’t hindering. Obsessions serve as a distraction from whatever is haunting, instead of an encouragement to face what hurts. They communicate the obsessed individual lacks the skills needed to face the problems they have in the real world. God Placebos are even worse: they symbolize a desperation so acute the individual has actively begun to seek relief from third parties.
The first step towards change is being self aware of what is going inside your head. Ask yourself, “is there a hidden reason why I love this something/someone so much?” or “is this a healthy amount of affection?” and be honest. If the answer is yes to the first question, and no to the second one, that might be a sign there is an issue somewhere that has to be resolved. No shame in that. The focus should be taken away from beating ourselves up for carrying emotional baggage and placed upon cheering ourselves on for wanting to improve. I’m sure there is a difference between the obsessive love I’ve thrown into the world all these years and the one that stems from a healthy, passionate motive. I just haven’t found that difference yet. But I am trying.
I don’t regret my love affair with Kurt Cobain. He provided me with safety, purpose, and company during my darkest days. There’s nothing I’d change from the experience: he taught me the valuable lesson of making sure my thoughts don’t go unchecked.
So it’s been ten months since the obsession began, and seven months since the impulses stopped (after staffing a 4-day MUN conference where I made new friends and didn’t have time to do research), and every so often, I still think of Kurt. Even now, as I was writing these last two paragraphs, I thought to myself, “I hope Kurt is proud of the growth I’ve achieved this year. I hope he’s proud of this article.”
My logical side knows he was probably too busy taking care of Courtney Love and Frances Bean to notice me, but my romantic side does believe Kurt (to some degree) did listen to the things I said to him, and did look down at my pure, innocent admiration and affection with a smile. It’s only what’s expected of someone as good as him, and it’s only what’s expected of a wishful thinker like me.
So, just in case he is paying attention to this moment, I just want to say thank you, Mr. Cobain. “One baby to another says, ‘I’m lucky to have met you.’”
