Enough said. 

Gemma Correll is a brilliant cartoonist. Read her 11 Illustrations showing how it feels to live with depression. Number 5 is my life. 

More funny animal names can be found here. I died laughing when I read them. 

Pictures like these show up in my Facebook newsfeed all the time. I'm sure they do yours too. Sometimes we pass them by without a thought. Sometimes we like them so much we share them for all our other friends to see. Probably mostly we read them, feel warm and squishy for a second and a half, and then keep scrolling. 

I very rarely share pictures like this. I didn't even share this one. But I often take snapshots of pictures to keep in my camera roll, a place I scroll through far more often than I scroll through my Facebook wall. Granted, most of the snapshots are of comics or funny one-offs like this one: 

I have a thing for dinosaurs

But every now and then, something other than comical will invoke a reaction and make me want to save it for later. Maybe the reaction is motivation. Maybe it's resolve. And sometimes the reaction is as a simple as feeling like my flailing hand has been grasped and I just might be saved from drowning. 

The truth is, I'm struggling. I didn't realize how well I had been handling major transitions in my life until waves of depression began to roll in, growing in altitude and strength of undertow--and I found myself helpless to stop them. My safest places started flooding and my frantic efforts to save them only compounded the damage. As it stands today, I am sitting on the roof of my mental house, my ears burning with the white noise of falling rain pounding the waters all around me, trying to shield my eyes as I wait and wait and wait.. and wait... and wait....for the clouds to part and the sun to come out.

When I came across this picture, I felt nothing as I read it. And yet the words were for me. Say goodbye to gossip. Yes, I will: I've already quit a job I really wanted because the gossip was out of control. Say goodbye to people who hurt you. Yes, I must and have, though it hurt like hell to do it. Spend your days with people who are always there. Yes, I should, and it means so much to me to have a dear friend who repeats these words like a banner over my head, "I'm not going anywhere." 

I felt nothing as I took the screenshot to save it to my phone. The storm was raging inside my head that particular moment, making the words blurry and meaningless. And yet I pressed the buttons, feeling that in the moment the action was frivolous but instinctually knowing that later the picture would speak to me and I would hear. And in performing the motion--because I performed the motion--a thought flashed in the darkness like a beacon, unbidden: I'm going to be okay. 

I'm going to be okay.

This was before he realized I was snapping his picture.

I ran into Mikey at his office. It was about noon and he had been there since nine o'clock. "I have a sixty-six percent coffee shop ratio," he told me proudly. 

"What do you mean?"

"I know sixty-six percent of the people who walk through that door," he replied, gesturing through the doorway into the main part of the coffee shop.

"How do you know it's sixty-six percent?" I asked him, ever the question asker. 

His answer was as interesting as always: "Because I know two out of every three people who've walked in," he said, a wide grin on his face. "I not only know their names, but they're people I have stories with." 

That is Mikey. 

Mikey keeps his own mug at the coffee shop.

"I've thought about bringing my Oscar," he said and pointed toward the mantle, between a blue vase and a yellow dish. "I just want to leave it there for awhile and see if anybody asks about it." He doesn't care one wit about showing off an Oscar--Mikey's in it for the storytelling. 

"Did I ever tell you how I got that Oscar?" he asked me, proving my case in point. "Stan [Bogest] and I used to get together to talk about film-making. When he passed away, he wrote in his will that I should inherit one thing."

He doesn't really say any more, but I know Mikey well enough to pick up the implication. The Oscar represents the passion for film-making they shared. 

With a steady stream of coffee and energy drinks, Mikey is always in motion.

As I sifted through the photos I caught, Mikey talked to someone I couldn't see. When he was done, he was beaming--again. "Brooke is my Muse in Nebraska," he said in general. I didn't look up or respond, but I heard Mikey say to his other listening companion, "You got the reference." 

"What is that?" I finally asked, as one often does with Mikey.

"A Muse in Nebraska is based on the idea that in the middle of nowhere, your muse is whatever you can find." He went on to describe several things Brooke inspired him to write. I smile wryly, looking at what I know I've already chosen to write about. 

I love high fives, and Mikey is a high five-giver. I'm jealous of Chris.

Later, I fact-checked the film-making part with Mikey. He responded instead with: 

I first worked for Stan in 1999 on an Indy film

Later he was co- executive producer on my pilot

Then he became my CFO

Stan the money man

Every question to Mikey is just another opportunity to tell more of the story. After looking at the blog post preview, he wrote,

I would further describe Stan, as in my Facebook note, but that's up to you
I'll let the Storyteller tell his story in his own words:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/michael-e-hayworth/hollywood-legend-passes-in-memoriam/10152851261284236

Photo Credit: Michael E Hayworth "Oscar, Right Next to the Idea Box" Used with Permission

They say to dress for the job you want, not the job you have. If that's the case, I got my cat-fur covered sweater. I've got my glasses, I haven't brushed my hair for days. . . . If I sit here long enough in my butt-shaped dimple on the sofa of the local coffee shop, someone will give me an advance on my first novel, right?? Like Paul Varjak in Breakfast at Tiffany's!! Sure would be nice for someone to set me up in a decorated apartment. . . .

. . . But then I'd have to put out. 

But then I'd meet my own charming but flawed male prostitute! We'd fight, I'd give him $50 for the locker room, and then we'd look for his cat in the rain together. . . 

. . . Thus completing the cycle of crazy cat-ladyhood. The end.

Disassembly

The problem is not that boys like to take things apart—

it’s that they don’t use all the pieces.

I submitted to the straight edge and found my spine was missing.

I floated above wasps making love to the air.

The sound had no meaning, the moments were ordinary

before we began eating the bread in our hands meant to feed the dawn.

In the words, I named all my pieces—in the words, I fell in a hole,

salivating like a dog at the whistle

and sweating out in painful ecstasy the pulling of me apart.

The fulcrum was the ache in my gripping fist.

Tongues of fire around each wrist cast no light on the dark waters.

The problem is not that I am in pieces—

it’s that I learned to love all of them.

I dreamed I got two variegated carnations, a word,

and an envelope with everything I wanted inside.

When given a box, boys will pick and choose what to play with

and leave the rest like scattered seeds that will never grow.

May 2014


Poem copyright Kirsten Hollingsworth. May not be copied or posted without permission.
Photo credit: Female Robot by Caroline Davis2010 CC BY Cropped from original

There is a story in every line and every curve of this body. It is the body of a man who snores so loudly because he sleeps so deeply because he works so hard every single day. The muscles of these calves are tight with daily hours standing on cement floors. The chords across these shoulders constantly hum with the tension of worrisome thoughts. And anything that catches the attention of this man, documentary or show or audiobook or overheard conversation, catches him as raptly as any animal hearing an interesting sound.

There is only one place this body emerges with freedom and lightness of being. One place where the lies fall away, and this body tells only the truth of what it’s made with and not also how it’s coping.

This body has been a soldier and stood at attention. This body has been a church member and stood reverently. This body has been in the company of friends and reclined into the cushions. This body has been a lover and—well, you know. But every moment it passes through, it has passed through to get to the next moment with a rigidity meant to make the energy last. The lines of this body tell the story of this. But there is a moment where this body pauses for the sake of living in the moment, where energy is not conserved but created. It is a moment where the body lives in peace simply for the sake of existing.

This is my husband, listening to the siren voices of a group of incredibly successful bicycle frame builders. There is no other time I have ever observed him looking so comfortable and in his element. 

The co-ed is sitting on the edge of the fountain, legs crossed, her elbows on her knees.  She is staring down the koi fish. She knows that if she doesn’t turn in her paper on women in the Beat generation, she won’t get an A in the class—but she’s questioning her major. Female retrovirus researchers are sexy, right?

An auto mechanic watches the successful local artist dig around the pockets of his careless cargo pants, looking for a dime. He wonders what it’s like to have a passion for something in life. A kid at seventeen and forty years of grease under the fingernails is all he has to show the world. At least his son is a doctor who drives a classic car that runs well.

The backslidden Christian soccer mom runs into her son’s coach. She wishes she hadn’t gotten married so young, hadn’t chosen the ambitious pastor hopeful who gave her three children and then put it on the backburner in the name of the Lord. She can’t remember the last time she saw her husband wear athletic shorts and a t-shirt that showed off his pecs and biceps.

A high school student sits with his heels on the edge of the chair and taps his notebook with the tip of a pen. He can take the sponsorship this summer and make a name for himself now, or he can take the academic scholarship and compete after he graduates. If only his dad hadn’t died right after he promised to go to college. Now the choice doesn’t really feel like a choice.