“Everyone became anxious, and no one understood anyone else; each thought the truth was contained in himself alone, and suffered looking at others, beat his breast, wept, and wrung his hands. They did not know whom or how to judge, could not agree on what to regard as evil, what as good.”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
Preface
I wrote this short story while I was studying at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the spring of 2019. It is narrated by a girl who I hope you will relate to and that, even though the story has an objective ugliness to it all, the subjectivity of the character’s experiences bring a feeling of understanding to the ineffable words of depression and anxiety.
Below is a list of ideas, literature, and works of art that inspired this story. These are written in no particular order of importance.
- Sarcasm, Intelligence, Knowing > Sincerity = Defense.
- The psychology book White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts and its research on obsessive thoughts
- Turtles All the Way Down by John Green. “The parasite believes itself to be the host.”
- The subreddit forum r/intrusivethoughts
- The drawing Double Heads Drawing by George Condo
- The video “It All Adds Up” by David Choe
- The song “Duckworth” by Kendrick Lamar
- The short story Good Old Neon by David Foster Wallace
- Ironic self-fulfillment
- The painting Untitled (Black on Gray) by Mark Rothko
- In the painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights, by Hieronymus Bosch, the third panel depicts people who had lived an inward life, referred to as Homo Incavartus in Se.
- Matthew 7:1-2 “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged. And with the measure you use it will be measured to you.”
Ugly Chairs And Other Unwanted Thoughts
I have been feeling quite alone these past couple of days, and I don’t really know how to get help. I mean, I’m not that dramatic and worthless. I have people around me that would help if I asked, but no one really understands where I’m coming from. And even if I tried to explain, it would mostly come out in this non-linear and fragmented way where every realization is so tethered to one another—that one realization has a whole host of thoughts attached to them—and if uninterrupted in the middle of my explanation, one realization wouldn’t be fully understood and explained until each and everyone one of the realizations that have come before has been explained, detailed, and put into context with everything I am thinking in its entirety. The second I open up one thought, it then branches out to open up even more thoughts and from those ones even more. At times, these connections don’t even happen as planned, sometimes tethering themselves in new ways that I hadn’t quite thought of yet, as I explain it to someone . I end up running out of time with people before they can understand because I can’t get to all these pieces at once. And there are things I see that I feel like everyone else is numb to, so if I were to share the small pieces individually without all the connections, I’d come off as judgmental. But at times, my loneliness is so strong, so persistent, so unending that I try to make the effort anyway.
I hate that I’m about to go down this, but to briefly explain as much as I can, the worst place for me and my loneliness these past few days has been in my art class. The other day the class, maybe fifteen of us, all circled around and had to share our paintings in front of each other, and present what we had been trying to express in our most recent work. Everyone—I could tell—was asleep when someone else was talking—impressive, even to me, since we were sitting in those cold, black, metal, uncomfortable folding chairs everyone hates but accepts as a formality in movable seating that subtly irritates you and gives unrest, but at extended periods of sitting, irritation goes from being in the back of your mind all the way to the only thing on your very mind, and you begin the cycle of slowly sliding down the chair and then having to adjust your posture to sit upright again to then slowly sliding back down again to a bent-over state that could only be characterized as defeat. I truly believe I am the only one listening, because if anyone else were, they would notice how egotistical, self-absorbed and desperate they are to get the class’s attention. It’s some weird, perverted competition they all participate in for the most deep and insightful, and original work of art or idea or whatever it is that they must share about themselves. I’ll listen as one of my classmates will say something grandiose in the hope of getting attention but also watch as it goes right over everyone's heads because they, the ones listening, have already begun searching in their heads for what is a better and far more interesting thing to say than what’s come before. I watch as one classmate after another tries to outperform the other for the most eccentric personality, and this positive feedback loop pulls the whole class further into a lull, repeating the process: original posed statement, the class searches for a more interesting statement, and then a new statement, more insightful and grandiose than the last, that then extends the competition deeper, where everyone tries harder to stand out, repeating over and over again until the discussion is so rooted in self-absorption and far from where we started in the beginning that by the end of the class time, everyone is asleep! And to see such a large portion of the group participate in this competition makes it painful for me, even lonelier that I’m the only one awake. For example, someone yesterday—Ethan—was presenting this painting that was filled with randomly placed grey abstract shapes on top of an all-black background…it was honestly one of the most banal paintings I had seen in a while. (I’d like to say before we get into this: this ordeal was made worse by the fact that abstract art hasn’t ever made any sense to me, like why not just say it how it fucking is instead of obscuring the image so much the viewer can’t even tell what they are looking at. Maybe it is because abstract artists make something so confusing to purposely disorient the viewer so they, the artists, are immediately seen as trying to grasp something so complex and deep that no average mind can understand it, essentially faking vulnerability so they can do without all the risks of being vulnerable with people but still get all the benefits like gaining attention and praise. Fuck them.) Anyway, Ethan rambled on in his dreary voice about how he was digging deep into the horrors of his life, describing in some pompous, cliché way how sad life is and how he can only let go of his pain by expressing himself on the canvas. Ethan fits this realization I have about abstract artists, but it is a little more obvious for him than most abstract artists. His deception is much more shallow. As he kept talking, my teacher actually entertained this and congratulated Ethan for being vulnerable—which I completely disagreed with. He doesn't even seem afraid to share...can you call that vulnerable then? Being vulnerable must be one of the hardest things a person can do and it’s thrown around like a participation award for anyone who opens up their mouth. The girl that was sitting next to me—I don’t remember her name because I forgot it mere seconds after she introduced herself to me at the beginning of the semester—had been gasping at everything Ethan had been saying. “I feel too deeply at times,” he said as he shared his supposed greatest fear with the class. Gasp! You must be kidding me, I thought. He had just said he was a victim of the very thing he was bragging about. It was so apparent what he was doing that I think the girl sitting next to me actually knew he was being phony too, but she wanted to get Ethan’s attention by acting like she was interested in what he was saying, most likely because she liked him, which is exactly what he wanted in the first place, to create some moody persona so he could get petty affirmation. He continued on about his “hard” life as my classmates were captivated by the possibility of them having the chance to talk about their own self-proclaimed problems. I couldn’t bear to sit around it. How could no one else see it? What's so hard about your life? You live in the best part of the world in the best place. And being dark doesn’t make you a good artist. It just makes you a selfish person who can’t think about anybody else but yourself. And why would that girl know a person is insecure and dying for attention but still like them for it? I mean, that is fucking weird.
Jeff, my Dad, calls this my “anger problem” when we talk about this stuff over the phone, which really isn’t the best thing to say to someone when they are mad. Also, in my opinion, it really isn’t a problem since he and my therapist are the only two that hear about these thoughts I have. And now, I’d say it is even less of a “problem” as I don’t share as much. I’m supposed to talk to my therapist about this stuff, but I gave up. I know that people are beating around their inability to be vulnerable by masking it with some mirage or persona they have created—for Ethan, this mirage was the deep, dark, and brooding artist—so why do I need to explain it to a therapist? And if I say any of these judgments in front of my therapist, I can tell she thinks I’m being defensive and participating in this mirage game I myself have identified. She hasn’t come out right in any way to tell me she thinks this, but I can pick up on it. For example, anytime I try to bring up people being phony for attention, she begins to look at me with these neutral but disapproving yet saddened eyes. And then she does this thing where she raises her hand while spinning her glasses as if she is objecting to me, then noticing I notice, she glances at the clock, then back at me while sitting in her ugly, cube-like, beige cushioned armchair with dark reddish brownish small squares that are in no particular arrangement. She also kind of assuages the anger and pain by diverting the conversation to something about me, which she sees as a subtle way for her to hint, but also confirms to me that she thinks I avoid talking about myself by talking about everyone else around me. (I had a therapist once before this actually that was much less discreet and would respond to me when I would talk about this kind of stuff by telling me that everyone has their own individual truths, and that just because I feel someone desperate for attention doesn’t mean that that’s entirely what is happening in someone else’s truth.) I know this isn’t the case, but it ends up opening this door for me where doubt can creep in. I’ve thought about this so much I’m going around in circles—maybe I am avoiding being vulnerable by judging others, in this case, how Ethan acts all deep to really hide, I hide in a much more elaborate and nuanced way. Instead of being angry, I end up feeling lost. Therapists always make you feel this way, that you are fencing with them even if you are not trying to. And at some point, you’ve been fencing for so long, they fade away, and in place of them, they have placed you before yourself, and you are fencing inside this endless hall of mirrors of fencing yourself where no one can win because one fencer mimics the other fencer, and after enough time you eventually forget which fencer is you. And I know why she thinks I’m fucked up and defensive, because my mother left me when I was young, a wet dream for psychoanalysts. I’d like to add that I have gotten over it, as much as a person can, but Jeff insists I have to continue to go to therapy because of my supposed “anger problem”...well, that and also this one instance a couple of months ago where I told Jeff I was suicidal in an argument, which I am not! The only reason I said it was because while I was telling Jeff, yes, my Dad, all of the things that upset me, he started to laugh and tell me I was overthinking things, so I decided to tell him, “It’s not going to be so funny when I kill myself.” Which I am not going to do! I admit I’ve had this nasty idea when I get trapped in this lonely state that I should kill myself. Not that I’m so tortured by being alive every day and need to escape, but I’ve thought about maybe if I did, people would pay attention to what’s happening, like a gunshot to wake everyone back up. I wouldn’t do it–though I have been thinking about it a lot—I just think, at times, how difficult it is to get people to understand and have this back and forth about truths and what’s the problem with people wanting so much attention, that killing myself would get it across to everyone how damaging their constant narcissism is. And if I say any of this to my therapist, then she’ll start talking about certain prescriptions I should be taking, or instead of seeing her every other week, I should be seeing her every couple of days, as if I wouldn’t notice that she is telling me she thinks I am unstable by her doing that. So I’m not going to tell her how I’ve felt lonely these past couple of days because the reason has to do with people and how they try so hard for attention and a whole host of other things I don’t have time to recall or explain, but for her, it has to do with me. I could try to explain all this too—I know she thinks I’m avoiding talking about myself and that I am not really suicidal—but talking to her about this feels exhausting, like I have to craft some sort of concise argument to convince her of what I see rather than just talk. I don’t need any more doubt, especially on the few things I do feel somewhat, if it wasn’t for her, certain about, like fake Ethan being fake deep for fake attention.
And after Ethan finished—sorry, I know you don’t know this word and are going to think I’m obnoxious for using it, but I truly can’t use any other word—pontificating, the class then went around and made comments about the abstract art—which I had already decided was a ruse and not a piece of art—and gave feedback, which was really just another domain for people in the class to compete and garner attention for themselves by saying something interesting. I know this because I realized this a while ago about myself in high school, actually. I was the girl—who everyone has had a class with—that would interject their opinion anytime they were given the opportunity. I remember one time I was in my physics class. It was the beginning of my sophomore year, and the class was mostly seniors. My physics teacher, Mr. Jensen, was teaching us about the process of nuclear fission; the splitting of the atom. He had asked the class a question, “what does an atom split into?” I quickly and confidently answered, “neutrons and protons,” and out of the corner of my eye, at the same time I started talking, saw a couple of my classmates exchange something under their breaths and snicker to themselves. I asked Mr. Jensen, “what makes up protons and neutrons? Can you split those into even smaller particles?” He told me how great my question was and pulled up a video called “Cosmic Eye”. He told us it demonstrates the infinite scales of the universe. It showed a woman laying on a grass field. At first, it was really zoomed in on her face, and as the video began to play, it kept zooming out away from her. It zoomed out to the entire grass field she was laying in, then to the whole country, then to the whole Earth, then to the solar system, then to the Milky Way galaxy and further and further until it finally zoomed out to the entire cosmic web. But then, it reversed and began to zoom back in the way we came. It zoomed back to the woman, then zoomed into her eye down to the cellular level, and then to the DNA and electrons and the atomic nucleus, then all the way down until we saw the one femtometer wide quarks. And I asked him if there is anything smaller, and he started to talk about how some string theorists believe to have discovered an even smaller particle: preons. And I asked what makes up preons. Mr. Jensen replied, “you can stop right there. It’s turtles all the way down.” I understood what Mr. Jensen was saying but everyone else seemed confused. A thought then came to me, and like an idiot, I spoke it out loud, “what about in the other direction? What is bigger than the visible universe? Is there a multiverse? Are there an infinite amount of multiverses? Are all those individual universes, our universe, really just a tiny atom constructing some much larger universe? There must not be a smallest or a biggest part of the universe. It must spiral infinitely in both directions.” As these thoughts escaped my mouth, I heard my classmates behind me laughing, and when I turned around, I saw one of the seniors spiraling his hands in circles towards his head. I could tell it was about me—I could feel it. After noticing this happening, I looked for it more and noticed it a few more times over the year. It didn’t come to me right away, but I thought about this for a while, why my classmates would have laughed at me. I concluded that I must have been doing the very thing I hate now, to make such an egotistical, pathetic, self-consumed, and embarrassing attempt for attention and praise—trying to show everyone how smart you are—while also not knowing at all what you are doing, so blindingly unaware, that others can see this and find it humorous how desperate you are. Myself speaking up that day had less to do with my curiosity about nuclear fission or my fascination for the smallest subatomic particles and had more with my desire for people to see me. Since noticing this desire, I have watched myself closely for this and have gotten pretty good at sensing when I’m speaking up for attention. I don’t even share what I think anymore because I’ve gotten so good at filtering out anything interesting and pedantic I have to say that I end up saying nothing at all. I can feel how I jump for these things. I’ll be close to sharing a thought I have in art class, and then I shut it down after, even in the slightest, feeling that I’m saying it to get attention or impress someone rather than actually being vulnerable with the class.
See, I don’t know who I can talk to. The art class is supposed to be the most vulnerable place where I can share these things but turns out to be the least. And Jeff, who views me as the insane one, can’t listen to me long enough to hear me out, which is why he thinks these realizations are “a problem.” I don’t have any friends anymore because no one sees the way I do. I can’t talk to my two roommates about it because they are just as fucked up as everyone else in the world. Like my roommate, Emma, spends more time talking about herself than anyone I know. For example, the other day, I was at our apartment reading on the couch by myself, sinking into the cushions because of the lack of support the used piece of furniture now has—there is a depression in one of the cushions from being crushed by the repetitive weight of someone sitting there that when sat upon you fall right to where the springs are, because of this I place my feet on the depressed cushion and sit at the other end where this is still some filling in the cushion left—and then all of the sudden, Emma came blasting through the door, all the meanwhile in my head I kept repeating, please don’t talk to me, please don’t talk to me, and without myself even looking up, she sat down next to me and asked what I’m reading, which she had asked with so much momentum that before I could respond, she was talking about the book she herself was reading at the time. And then, in like an inescapable run-on sentence, moved on to talking about her whole day. And the things she talks about are so incredibly shallow and superficial yet they come out of her mouth so fast and unhinged that I almost can’t keep up with them. After unloading, she then asked me how my day was, but when she asked, it was in such a way that you have no chance to actually say anything—by her standing up from the couch and looking down at her phone at the same time she asks such a question to say to you that your day really doesn’t matter. My other roommate, Elyssa, is mostly out of the picture. She and her boyfriend spend all of their waking and sleeping hours together. It is actually quite unhealthy. You can tell she is manipulative, too. I can relate, sadly, because of all the bad past relationships I’ve had. I’d give you an example, but I’d rather not branch out to this thought. Also, I feel kind of bad for her boyfriend even though I’ve never talked to him. You can tell she “likes” him mostly because he’s so spineless and quiet that she gets to control whatever he does. What makes all this worse every day for me is Elyssa is subletting a room in our apartment that my best friend, Rachel, once lived in but now moved out of state after graduating from college a semester early—a never-ending reminder of how far away my best friend is now. Rachel is someone I could talk to about all of this, but her being so distant has made it difficult. We used to talk about this stuff all the time together, bouncing off one another, but since she had left, things have died down. It wasn’t an intentional decision to put the space between, but it just kind of happened. Rachel called me for the first time in a couple of months the other day and it was while I was walking out of my art class—still folded up and defeated from those horrible, cold, black, metal folding chairs and Ethan’s self-absorbed, trite presentation—and when I saw that she was calling I felt for a second lighter, finally someone that would understand me, I thought, that’s why she must have called me because she knew how horrible I had been feeling these past couple of days, like the cosmic universe saving me from all of this, saying that don’t forget you still have Rachel in your life. But as we began to start talking, I could hear something different in her voice. She was so level and steady with everything she was saying, like almost a different person. I asked her about her new job, and she told me how she was “really happy with her job” and how her coworkers were “really nice people” and how she had made “a couple of good friends” with her coworkers and how her boss had given her a promotion and how she could see herself working there for at least a couple of years. And while she was talking, I began thinking about all the things I had been struggling with over the past few days and started entertaining—unintentionally and certainly without wanting—the thought from my old therapist about how everyone has their own truths and how I may not be right. When Rachel asked about how I was doing, I didn’t feel comfortable telling her how I was feeling anymore. It’s not that she is a bad friend or that she wouldn’t listen, but some part of me feared the reason we didn’t talk so long after the last time we talked was because of everything I had said—though if I brought this up, Rachel would never have admitted it. I only get to talk to her so often, and the last thing I wanted was to completely drag her down with all this through the phone again. And what would have been worse is to get into all of this and for her to realize I’m a constant negative and judgmental person in her positive, stable life like my therapist and Dad had already decided. So instead of talking about myself, I kept asking about her life, and she told me, rather unremittingly, how she really liked her new place and the new city and how this guy she went on a date with “seemed like the right choice.” It wasn’t that I didn’t want her to be put together, it was just this feeling like catching up somehow became a formality for us and everything in life had somehow become the same way, formality, for her at least. I kept hoping she would say something that would make this go away, but with each word, I felt us growing further apart—I could tell—and I know all too well how pathetic and self-pitying this is, but on the phone, after I had tried to be so reserved and dry the whole conversation in an effort to not bring her down with everything I see and the loneliness I had been feeling, as I was about to hang up, I began to get this deep pit in my stomach from realizing that being quiet wasn’t working either—I still felt more afraid that we weren’t going to be close friends anymore—and I couldn’t hold it in and in a last-ditch effort began crying on the phone and apologizing to her for our last phone call, how I dumped everything on her, and how I was such a negative person in everyone’s life. She then told me not to apologize, but I knew I had already fucked up and I started fucking apologizing for apologizing. She asked me, “what’s wrong? Just tell me?” I weighed out whether I should tell her about Ethan and his obnoxious attempt for attention and the girl who kept gasping over him and then everything else tethered with that thought, like my Dad thinking I am some suicidal, unstable, and insane person. I hung up on her because I didn’t know what to say. I could risk going down all these branches with her, but I didn’t know if we had enough time. And I realized if I started, I might not get to all the reasons why I feel this way, and even if I did, she’d think I’m selfish, which maybe I am, for how long it would take to explain it all and all I wanted was to still have her in my life.
I decided after this I would keep my own truth to myself moving forward because I can’t even explain it fully. I end up feeling so doubtful of myself when I try to include other people in all my running thoughts. And this is why I have this nasty idea sometimes that I should kill myself like that might be a big enough pushing point to make Jeff and the therapist and my roommates and Ethan and the whole art class finally see the truth—how they couldn’t argue with me about truths—that their insidious lives were what was insane and damaged enough to cause this to happen. Or how Rachel would stand at my casket and think about how she would have wanted to be there for me more or instead of thinking of how negative of a person I was she would remember all of the good times we had before she left me. And it’s certainly not in some self-loathing or attention-grabbing way, but I can’t think of a more effective way to be understood.