By Vanessa Willoughby, Contributor, Emerson College '09
Holly Golightly: You know those days when you get the mean reds?
-Breakfast at Tiffany’s
-Breakfast at Tiffany’s
It’s a feeling that breaks the boundaries of specificity, an aching, heavy wave that cannot be captured by the clever insight of a psychiatrist or a psychologist or a therapist. It’s an uncomfortable, skin-tingling state of cyclical melancholy, not a beast or a monster, but a vulture eager to pick and pick and pick until you are nothing more than bones to hold an empty soul.
*
The mean reds can appear out of nowhere. They are cunning and prey on the unfulfilled hearts of twenty-something suburban girls who dream of big cities and soul-mate romances that make sappy writers jealous. The mean reds strike without warning, all lightning bolts and crackling thunder—it’s tough to say when they will pack up and leave. They can be caused by a laundry list of grievances, including but not limited to: stormy weather, bad hair days, bad breakups, lack of sleep, lack of employment, lack of faith, paying the bills, forgetting to pay the bills, hysterical parents, non-responsive parents, narcissistic parents, shitty friends, selfish friends, too much alcohol, not enough alcohol, failed first dates, broken first dates, etc.
The mean reds can make you wail like a newborn baby or they can make you feel absolutely blank, a blank slate, a blank face, a broken toy jammed with leaky, gut-shedding batteries.
*
Your boyfriend says that you need to “work on your thighs.” When he says this, you laugh it off with an uneasy smile. You hadn't realized that your thighs needed any kind of work. Nowadays, you rarely pay attention to your thighs, as you can pinpoint the abundance of other problem areas of your unrelenting body, a small, stocky body that has endured the obsessive vigilance of constant calorie-counting, the consequence of fearing the dreaded freshman fifteen.
When you were a freshman at college, you vowed to go to the gym at least every other day. And you did.
You vowed to keep a food journal, where you tracked every single crumb that passed your lips. And you did.
You piled on the layers when you exercised, taking pleasure in the buckets of sweat that soaked your clothes. Each droplet of sweat equaled another lost pound, another lost insecurity. When you eventually returned home for the holidays, your father, who usually joked about the multiple bags of Cheetos and cookies you could greedily gobble in one sitting, told you that you looked skinny and wondered how much weight you had lost. You couldn't help but smile. Oh, I don't know, you said. Ten? (It was closer to fifteen.)
It was a victory. Short lived and quickly forgotten, but a victory nonetheless.
*
These days, not many people notice the scars on your left arm. In the past, you were ashamed and made sure to cover them up by the way of long sleeves or stacks and stacks of bracelets. But one night at the bar, there is one woman who notices and her eyes cannot help but linger on those faded reminders of your adolescent trauma. These days, you never feel the urge to cut and sometimes you don’t remember why it was such a reflexive reaction in order to cure the pain. You were thirteen the first time you pressed the sharp edge of porcelain glass to your wrist, the first time you thought that slicing skin would release the rush of volatile emotions that had anchored its tentacles in your mind. You had split straight down the middle and journal entries confirm that you had lost yourself to the ether of self-loathing. You were thirteen the first time you wanted to die and you didn't know why.
(This is all an elaborate lie, a way to protect your ego. You have betrayed your impressive streak of self-mutilation sobriety, because last year, you bought an X-Acto knife on Amazon. You never used it, only wanted it for comfort like a childhood souvenir, a family heirloom that was never to be taken out of its sacred hiding place, a museum piece meant to silently admire.)
*
Every day is routine. You wake up, go to work, come home, maybe exercise if you find the motivation, watch TV until you’re ready to go to bed. You wonder if this is a pathetic preview for the rest of your life, the old hamster wheel of white collar, 9-5 existence. Nine times out of ten, you are too poor to even splurge on a night out at the movies. Some weeks you don’t eat dinner because you have to choose between gas money and a trip to the local grocery store. Every day you fantasize about running away, disappearing across state lines like some kind of wild-eyed fugitive. You think about who would really miss you and you can count the number of people on one hand. You are no one, nothing, another dumb lab rat scurrying back and forth through the same damn tunnels.
*
The mean reds are hardwired in your DNA. Your parents don’t want to believe that such a mental ailment could have cursed the family tree, but it’s obvious. A dirty little secret. If anyone asked your parents, they would deny such obvious history and write it off as blasphemy, as they feel it would be an indictment of bad parenting, of carelessness, of personal weakness. But the mean reds don’t care about the self-righteousness of your parents and they sure as hell don’t care that you have managed to pull yourself up from the black tar pit of bottomless depression. The mean reds are familiar with your mood swings, your tics, your unshakable quirks. The mean reds will take and take and take until you have nothing left to offer. The mean reds transform you into a stranger, some separate entity that operates without the consent of your confidence and consequently, color all of your choices and decisions thus far into an accusatory disgust harbored by your peers.
These mean reds will surely pass, but the question is and always will be, when?
*
The mean reds can appear out of nowhere. They are cunning and prey on the unfulfilled hearts of twenty-something suburban girls who dream of big cities and soul-mate romances that make sappy writers jealous. The mean reds strike without warning, all lightning bolts and crackling thunder—it’s tough to say when they will pack up and leave. They can be caused by a laundry list of grievances, including but not limited to: stormy weather, bad hair days, bad breakups, lack of sleep, lack of employment, lack of faith, paying the bills, forgetting to pay the bills, hysterical parents, non-responsive parents, narcissistic parents, shitty friends, selfish friends, too much alcohol, not enough alcohol, failed first dates, broken first dates, etc.
The mean reds can make you wail like a newborn baby or they can make you feel absolutely blank, a blank slate, a blank face, a broken toy jammed with leaky, gut-shedding batteries.
*
Your boyfriend says that you need to “work on your thighs.” When he says this, you laugh it off with an uneasy smile. You hadn't realized that your thighs needed any kind of work. Nowadays, you rarely pay attention to your thighs, as you can pinpoint the abundance of other problem areas of your unrelenting body, a small, stocky body that has endured the obsessive vigilance of constant calorie-counting, the consequence of fearing the dreaded freshman fifteen.
When you were a freshman at college, you vowed to go to the gym at least every other day. And you did.
You vowed to keep a food journal, where you tracked every single crumb that passed your lips. And you did.
You piled on the layers when you exercised, taking pleasure in the buckets of sweat that soaked your clothes. Each droplet of sweat equaled another lost pound, another lost insecurity. When you eventually returned home for the holidays, your father, who usually joked about the multiple bags of Cheetos and cookies you could greedily gobble in one sitting, told you that you looked skinny and wondered how much weight you had lost. You couldn't help but smile. Oh, I don't know, you said. Ten? (It was closer to fifteen.)
It was a victory. Short lived and quickly forgotten, but a victory nonetheless.
*
These days, not many people notice the scars on your left arm. In the past, you were ashamed and made sure to cover them up by the way of long sleeves or stacks and stacks of bracelets. But one night at the bar, there is one woman who notices and her eyes cannot help but linger on those faded reminders of your adolescent trauma. These days, you never feel the urge to cut and sometimes you don’t remember why it was such a reflexive reaction in order to cure the pain. You were thirteen the first time you pressed the sharp edge of porcelain glass to your wrist, the first time you thought that slicing skin would release the rush of volatile emotions that had anchored its tentacles in your mind. You had split straight down the middle and journal entries confirm that you had lost yourself to the ether of self-loathing. You were thirteen the first time you wanted to die and you didn't know why.
(This is all an elaborate lie, a way to protect your ego. You have betrayed your impressive streak of self-mutilation sobriety, because last year, you bought an X-Acto knife on Amazon. You never used it, only wanted it for comfort like a childhood souvenir, a family heirloom that was never to be taken out of its sacred hiding place, a museum piece meant to silently admire.)
*
Every day is routine. You wake up, go to work, come home, maybe exercise if you find the motivation, watch TV until you’re ready to go to bed. You wonder if this is a pathetic preview for the rest of your life, the old hamster wheel of white collar, 9-5 existence. Nine times out of ten, you are too poor to even splurge on a night out at the movies. Some weeks you don’t eat dinner because you have to choose between gas money and a trip to the local grocery store. Every day you fantasize about running away, disappearing across state lines like some kind of wild-eyed fugitive. You think about who would really miss you and you can count the number of people on one hand. You are no one, nothing, another dumb lab rat scurrying back and forth through the same damn tunnels.
*
The mean reds are hardwired in your DNA. Your parents don’t want to believe that such a mental ailment could have cursed the family tree, but it’s obvious. A dirty little secret. If anyone asked your parents, they would deny such obvious history and write it off as blasphemy, as they feel it would be an indictment of bad parenting, of carelessness, of personal weakness. But the mean reds don’t care about the self-righteousness of your parents and they sure as hell don’t care that you have managed to pull yourself up from the black tar pit of bottomless depression. The mean reds are familiar with your mood swings, your tics, your unshakable quirks. The mean reds will take and take and take until you have nothing left to offer. The mean reds transform you into a stranger, some separate entity that operates without the consent of your confidence and consequently, color all of your choices and decisions thus far into an accusatory disgust harbored by your peers.
These mean reds will surely pass, but the question is and always will be, when?
“Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work -- the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside -- the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once.”
–F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Crack Up”
–F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Crack Up”