“Just be myself?”
You should see how many selves there are in my psyche.
Some of them are fucking murderers and they are trying to kill me.
Like, I’m surviving them.
I’m living with them, y’know?”
– Jenny Slate, Stage Fright1This standup special is available on Netflix and well worth your time.
Since the age of 11, I have been in therapy eight times. Four times were motivated by a moment of crisis, each unique. Three times motivated by moving to a new place, where I sought to close out a chapter in my life, or several chapters, and strove to begin anew. Once, at 32, was for ongoing maintenance. I’ll get into each of these experiences below.
I began seeing my current therapist, Lauren, almost immediately after my health insurance kicked in from my new job, about a month after I moved to Southern California in September 2022. It’s the first time that I have seen a therapist exclusively over Zoom. I wasn’t sure how I would connect with this experience, or if I would feel it to be limiting. As I’ll discuss below, face to face is not an orientation I am most comfortable with, and Zoom or FaceTime require that we diligently stare at each other’s face unlike the ocular forgiveness of sitting in a room together. But our time together has been incredibly productive. Over the past several months, I’ve moved from framing my relationship to food as being disordered, to understanding that I have lived with, and have been controlled by, my eating disorder since I was 11. (Spoiler alert: Age 11 was a formative time.) While readers of this site will know that I have been working through my suicidal ideations intentionally for years, I have come to understand it in new ways since working with Lauren. We are exploring my anxiety and anxious attachments. Language is important to me, and Lauren has responded to that, giving me language and framing to understand myself. She describes my outlook and personality as melancholic.2I asked Lauren to describe her use of melancholic in relation to my diagnosis. Lauren (and I) both struggle with the need for a diagnosis as largely being for health insurance purposes and continuing our sessions. I’m sure she has her feelings about the DSM V, as do I. But those are stories for another time. Melancholic, in Lauren’s description, paraphrased – “Melancholics see the dark easier than other folks, they sit in the dark of life, they are empathically connected to the feeling of loss, the ache of grief, and they live in the ache. Those with unhealthy connections to melancholy (which she says is not me), isolate, brood, feel that no one understands them, have perseveration (getting stuck on emotions, thoughts, or actions.” I can see myself in all of these traits.
One of the most powerful takeaways of my time with Lauren so far, is that together we have begun to define The Workplace, which is my brain, and the characters, or voices, or aspects of my psyche that live and work therein. There is a tool in psychology called Internal Family Systems (Lauren shared with me the version pictured below), but I didn’t know that when I first started speaking about aspects of my mental illness as particular voices or characters. I’ll introduce the Workers fully later (they are identified just below the image, with their particular focus area, and how I picture them). But I think there is value in exploring the genealogy of how I got here, and in so doing, maybe understanding when and why The Workplace recruited new staff.
The Workers:
The Manager – Eating disorder – Ron Swanson meets Anger from Inside/Out
The Reaper – Suicidal ideations – Cartoon Grim Reaper
The Supervisor – Social anxiety – April Ludgate meets Violet from The Incredibles but blonde
The Bookkeeper – Financial trauma – Uncle Howie (my dad’s second older brother)
The Workaholic – Internalized Capitalism – Me
11 – ??
I’ve told this story before, and you can read it more in depth here. At age 11, full of emotions I didn’t understand, I had an extreme reaction to a relatively benign punishment and my first suicidal thought emerged. Through images of knives in the kitchen, The Reaper, who you will meet shortly, came into my life. I told my mom about these thoughts, and I started to see a therapist. I remember almost nothing of these sessions nor for how long I saw him. This was also the only time my therapist was a man. But that’s a story for another time.
12 – Karen
As I was preparing for my Bar Mitzvah (the ceremony in the Jewish faith honoring a child turning 13, and becoming an adult in the eyes of God) I began to develop stress-induced migraines. The ceremony includes reciting Torah portions in Hebrew from a lectern in the synagogue in temple — in front of family and friends. I was so nervous and embarrassed about having to speak Hebrew in front of all these people, especially all of the girls I had a crush on (who I hoped would come for the party afterward). This may in fact have been the work of The Supervisor, who you will meet shortly.
The two women in charge of preparing us for our Torah portions were Tamar, the wife of the Rabbi, and their daughter, Amyra. The Rabbi was a gruff, direct, and somewhat loveable grandpa. But there was little loveable about Tamar, and nothing loveable about their daughter. Amyra was sarcastic, mean, and lacked even a shred of sympathy for what all these 11- and 12-year-old kids were going through. I dreaded our weekly meetings and her cruelty at my failings to improve my Hebrew pronunciation or memorization. I was terrified of having to practice singing in Hebrew in front of Tamar.
The first time the migraines came on, I was in seventh-grade science class, and I thought I had looked into a light for too long. A white dot formed in the middle of my vision and slowly expanded outwards. After 45 minutes or so, I lost my vision entirely. I saw an eye doctor and then a neurologist who sent me to get an MRI. I was diagnosed with migraines. Over time, the ocular hallucinations would be replaced by debilitating headaches that would keep me bedridden for two to three days at a time. As part of my health regime (including medication taken as soon as a symptom would emerge), I began seeing a psychotherapist who worked with me on stress management, grounding, and visioning techniques.
Unfortunately, my health regime did not include discussion of the possibility of not completing my Bar Mitzvah. It would have pleased The Supervisor to have been an option, to not be social and subjecting myself to the perceived judgment of my peers and crushes. But we’ll get to her soon.
Hebrew school runs on a traditional school year calendar, and in June there is a graduation celebration recognizing everyone who had their Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, thus culminating their yearslong Hebrew school education. My birthday is March 30, and my Bar Mitzvah was March 18 (I think). On March 19, I said to my parents, “You know I am done with this now, right?” They said, “Yeah, we know.” And that was that; I did not return to complete the Hebrew school year or attend graduation.
The migraines lingered, and then lessened, and then I did not have one for over 20 years. Whether they started again in 2018/2019 resulting from the stress of my doctoral program is something I have only recently been asked to consider and is not yet confirmed medically. My potential migraines, this time, are manifesting as olfactory hallucinations making me think I am smelling smoke, which shows that my brain has no shortage of creative ways to torment me. Though smoke is a common olfactory hallucination, I wonder if it is particularly relevant to me, and particularly tormenting. But that’s a story for another time.
25 – Emily
At age 25, I was three years out of undergrad and as long into my first staff position working (sort of) as a video editor in advertising and animation/design. I was also about three and a half years into my first long-term relationship. I forget, or have repressed, the exact circumstances, but bad things, traumatic things, were going on in my family of origin. My dad’s abuse, his narcissism and compulsive lying, is triggered by his insecurities and perceived failures when it comes to money, as well as his need to please his father, who instilled in him the belief that his finances marked his success as a man, a father, and a husband. His father, my grandfather, had recently passed away, so pleasing him was now never possible. I am just realizing that connection now. I guess that will be a story for another time.
A few years earlier, beginning over Thanksgiving of my senior year in undergrad, continuing through spring break, escalating until graduation, were among the worst times of my life and most difficult for my family — at least that I was aware of because I was now an adult. It was what I call a “Matrix moment” for me. A moment where I woke up to reality and saw the world in a way I could never unsee. There was no going back from that moment. But that is a story for another time.
At 25, something happened, and it was because of money. My then partner pushed me to go to therapy. What was going on was too much for me, and too much for her to hold; she knew we both needed for me to receive professional support. I was open to therapy, but felt shame to look into it, or to ask for therapist recommendations from friends or coworkers. One of her kindest moments that reminds me why I loved her so much was when she put a post up on Facebook asking for recommendations for therapists. She’d been open about her experiences with therapy in the past, and she knew that people would likely assume the recommendation was for her. We got a few recommendations, and I started to see Emily.
Emily helped me create a financial budget to re/gain a sense of control over my financial life and future that my dad had systematically betrayed and worked to control. I created boundaries with him and began to work on healing the damage to my finances before I could even think about healing the damage he caused to our relationship. After my dad violated these boundaries and the work I’d been doing, I stopped talking to him for a period of months. This was a burden my mom had to hold largely alone, and that caused an unusual strain in our relationship. It was difficult for us for a long time, but she and I moved through it in a way my dad and I did not at the time, and have not since.
Unrelated to why I initially started going, this stint in therapy contained at least two incredibly profound moments that I have carried with me and think about often. In one session, my therapist asked me a question, I forget what about. I sat thinking and preparing to respond. Maybe 10, 20 seconds went by. As I opened my mouth to start to speak, she apologized and interrupted me: “Do you know that you weren’t breathing just then?” I did not realize it, but that comment brought me into my body, and now I do notice when my thoughts or my emotions stunt my breath. I know that I often hold my thoughts, my emotions, my breath in check; sometimes letting them out can be overwhelming, just as it can be freeing, and I am afraid of what the release may bring. Mostly, that they, that me, will be too much for you. If I say the thought, or express the feeling, and you see me, and you know me, you will leave me.
But now I tell myself to take a breath when I feel myself holding it. It’s the first release.
The second moment: I was working with her to create more balance in my life and to be more intentional in my relationships outside of my partnership. I told her how I was struggling to feel connected to my friends V and J, who I cared about deeply, but because we forged our friendship while studying abroad, being back in NYC and in post-college life and routines, I didn’t know how to re-create that connection. She asked me to describe how we spent our time together in Italy. I told her we would take trains to new cities, walk through small streets to ancient monuments, explore museums, and sit in cafes drinking coffee and watching city life pass by. Then she asked me how we spent our time together in NYC. I said we usually went to Lil Frankie’s, a pizza place on the Lower East Side with pizza that reminded us of our favorite takeout in Florence. “So you sit across from one another and share a meal. You do not explore, or journey together,” she said. I said, “right.” She pointed out that there was a quality difference in how I experienced relationships shoulder to shoulder, a shared journey toward unknown but exciting horizons, and how I experience relationships face to face in the known, reminiscing rather than exploring.
I am more comfortable shoulder to shoulder than face to face. My mom has always commented on my wanderlust. She’s the only person in my life who was surprised I stayed in NYC as long as I did. She knew that even NYC would never be enough for me. No wonder I am drawn to the metaphor of the horizon in my work.
27 – ??
As my relationship with my long-term partner began unraveling, I knew I needed to be in therapy again. I needed structure to process, and I needed a professional because I was struggling and ashamed to open up to my friends. I had never really talked about my relationship with anyone other than my partner, not even much with Emily. I thought we could get through anything together, in dialogue and partnership. And then we couldn’t — in part because my partner was losing interest in salvaging our relationship, and because her attention was given to someone else. I went to a disastrous in-take with an older white woman who came highly recommended by a mutual friend. This is a story for another time.
But thankfully I tried again. Because after this in-take, and before my next therapist came into my life, The Reaper, who I will introduce you to soon, made his epic return to The Workplace.
27 – Lily
I’ve told the story of the reemergence of my suicidal ideations before. It was in grand fashion: it seemed easier to jump out of a fourth-floor window than to accept that my partner was in love with someone else and that I was too insecure, misguided, and scared to end the relationship. My therapist’s name was Lily. I started to see her to work through several concerns I needed to process: the reemergence of The Reaper; the reality that earlier in the year my anxiety had settled in my stomach like a bowling ball and I had stopped eating for a month, losing more than 25 pounds; and my understanding that I would rather be miserable in my relationship with my partner, because I thought that this was love, than be miserable without her. Several months after my partner and I opened our relationship, I had sex with someone other than my partner for the first time in my life. Lily helped me process the feelings that emerged from this experience. She helped me process how little I thought of myself and how I had let myself lose myself because I liked who I was with my partner. I had been seeing Lily for about six months when my partner finally left me — paying me the kindness I could not pay myself — sobbing at her feet in our bedroom, begging her not to. I processed this for another six months with Lily.
Since that moment, The Reaper has been a near daily presence in The Workplace. He is usually subtle, a calm voice chiming in without pressure or authority, but ever present.
One of the moments I carry with me from my time with Lily was an intentional shift in language. Y’all know I love intentional language, and Lily’s word choice here was a gift. When I would describe certain interactions with my partner, I would often say, “I instinctively feel/respond/react…” Instinctively. Instincts.
One day, Lily said to me, “What if, instead of thinking about these re/actions as instincts, you thought about them as habits. Instincts are natural, ingrained, inherited. Habits are learned. Habits are repeated patterns we grow comfortable and familiar with. Because habits are learned, they can be unlearned. We have control over our habits. That doesn’t mean unlearning is easy, but it’s a process we can engage in.”
The shift from seeing myself as instinctual to habitual was life changing. I think about that often.
“Any little misstep
I’ll be at your doorstep
Talking ’bout forgiveness
Giving you my heart back
Just so you can break it
One more time before I say
I gotta stay away”
– MUNA “Stayaway”3This song is incredible, but please do both of us a favor and listen to the unplugged version in the Tiny Desk Concert that starts about 5 minutes into the video.
30 – Brynn
I lived in NYC for 12 years — eight years longer than I expected. I spent four years in undergrad, five years trying to make it as video editor and building a life with my partner, one year post-breakup living in the shadow of who I was and what my life looked like without her, one year with Occupy Wall Street waking up from The Matrix, and one with Occupy Sandy helping rebuild lives and communities after Hurricane Sandy.
When I finally left, after three years of interrupted attempts, I moved to Minneapolis while I waited to hear about grad school applications, and then to earn money to pay for my MA program and live in Costa Rica for a year. I knew that I needed to be in therapy to process and grieve New York City, and to process and grieve the relationship that had ended about three years prior. I was haunted by this relationship and by my former partner; I dreamt about her more often than not, and it was taunting.
I began to see my next therapist, Brynn, who was a masters student building her clinical hours for her licensure. This process was life changing, and culminated in a six-page letter to my former partner. Before leaving New York, I had begun a writing project. I sent letters to friends to say things that had gone unsaid, or that were lingering, or to clear the air. The series was called, “Hey, I miss you / Hey, I’m sorry / Hey, thank you.” And I wrote in that format, reflecting on our friendship or relationship and striving to hold myself accountable. For the most part, the letters were received as intended, with love and compassion. I wrote them so that I could leave NYC feeling like these relationships would sustain the distance of my absence.
I now utilized this format to say things to my former partner — as much for me as for her. I did not ask for or expect a response. She did not directly respond to it for four years and a week. But that is a story for another time.
So I’ll watch your life in pictures like I used to watch you sleep
And I feel you forget me like I used to feel you breathe
And I’ll keep up with our old friends just to ask them how you are
Hope it’s nice where you are
– Taylor Swift “Last Kiss”
32 – Julia
When I came back to Minneapolis after my MA program and life in Costa Rica, I wasn’t expecting to stay more than a few months while I looked for work and figured out where and what was next for me. I ended up being in Minneapolis on/off (mostly on) for about three years, thanks in large part to the generosity of my besties, Caleb and Mariah, who again opened their home to me. When it became clear I was sticking around, I worked to build a life for myself. I started volunteering with the Sexual Violence Center as an advocate and crisis counselor for victim/survivors. I picked up several part-time jobs so that I could focus on volunteering and then launching this website.
Though I only saw my new therapist, Julia, consistently for about six months, and infrequently for another few, this was one of the most transformative relationships in my life. When I started seeing her, I was focused on mental health maintenance, rather than focusing on an acute experience or a particular event. I felt unstable in my life, precarious, partly from being in a new long-distance partnership that was as life-giving as it was anxiety-inducing.
Julia was in an office building on the south shore of Bde Maka Ska, and her window offered an incredible view of the lake. Every session, whether it was a frigid Minneapolis winter morning or a gorgeous spring afternoon, I would walk to the edge of the shore, and one park bench in particular. I would take a photo and post it to my Instagram with a song lyric or book quote that was resonating with me that day. #therapyfridays4Scroll back aways in my Instagram @revbrett and look for the bench. was a running project for months and one that seemed to resonate with friends near and far.
The Reaper, of course, was present for me in our time together. As was The Supervisor, The Bookkeeper, and The Workaholic, all of whom you will meet more fully soon.
35 – ??
When I started at ASU to begin my doctoral program, I tried to get into therapy. I went to ASU’s Therapy Training Center, where masters students work to acquire their clinical hours for counseling or social work licensure. It was not a good experience and I stopped after a handful of sessions. There isn’t much here or a story for another time, but what is notable is that I did not have an ongoing relationship with a therapist when the pandemic started. This was a gap with incredible consequences, which you can read more about here.
39 – Lauren
When I moved to Southern California to start a new job and a new life, I knew that as soon as my health insurance kicked in, I wanted to start seeing a therapist. Again for general maintenance, but also because I had not worked with a professional to process the breakup with my long-distance partner, the isolation of the pandemic, the difficulties of my doctoral program, the intensity of my mental illnesses during this time, and the omnipresence of my suicidal ideations, The Reaper, who I will introduce you to very soon.
Black hole opened in the kitchen
Every clock’s a different time
It would only take the energy to fix it
I don’t know why
I am
the way I am
– boygenius “Not Strong Enough”
I have been seeing my current therapist, Lauren, since November 2023. The number of breakthroughs I’ve had have been astounding to me, especially because we often meet only every other week. Maybe that gives me more time to process or I spend less time trying to fill the space of a weekly meeting if nothing particularly salient feels necessary to center. In the past, I have found myself rehearsing on the way to therapy, practicing, or running through what I want to say or how I will initiate a discussion. And, especially well into seeing a therapist, I found that I would sometimes be giving undo weight to an experience because I needed to fill our time together. I focused on something more intensely than it actually impacted me, and ended up unpacking something that didn’t really have very much packed to begin with. Maybe sometimes I was avoiding something more tricky.
When I started at ASU in 2018, one of the first things I did with my health insurance and student perks was to see a nutritionist. I spent November 2017 – June 2018 living with a kidney stone that doctors expected I would pass naturally. Nearly seven months after diagnosis, with two trips to the emergency room (in two different states), daily 5 a.m. alarms to take medicine to help it pass and hopefully prevent an attack that usually came on first thing in the morning, and a complete rearrangement of my life and habits to ensure I was never far from a bathroom, I finally had surgery to remove the stone. The weeklong recovery was among the most physically (and emotionally) traumatic experiences of my life, second only to my knee surgeries. When I got home after the surgery, I sat on the toilet for over six hours because it was the only position that wasn’t excruciatingly painful. At one point, exhausted and unbearably uncomfortable, I fell asleep leaning forward with my head pressed against the wall. Between the surgery itself and the stent that was put in (extending from my bladder up through the ureter where the stone was stuck and up to my kidney) I was peeing blood and blood clots, which was uncomfortable at best and blindingly painful at worst. They didn’t tell me right away that the surgery, while successful in removing the stone, was procedurally difficult because of the narrowness of my ureter (the tube that releases urine and stones from the kidney into the bladder); I suspect some lasting physical damage or trauma to my body. They didn’t tell me that one of the medications they gave me would make my vision so blurry that I could barely see the bottle let alone read “blurred vision” as one of the side effects on the label.
As I sat on the toilet afraid to move, not understanding what I was experiencing, and being told it was “normal” (when my bestie and housemate Mariah called the emergency nursing line for me), I thought, “I should kill myself.” As I recovered enough to move from the toilet to laying on the couch for days, cared for and by Mariah and Caleb (other bestie and housemate, married to Mariah, whose ceremony I officiated), I thought, “I should kill myself.” This was the only time in my life when something other than my emotions made me think that dying was the way out.
This is all to say, I never want to have another kidney stone, though I know statistically — due to biology and heredity — the chances are about 50/50 (or worse). So, I made an appointment with a nutritionist to see what I could do to limit the probability. When I described my eating habits and history with food, particularly what motivated my becoming “mostly vegetarian” at age 11 and even more so at 17 (“I was overweight and wanted more control over my diet”), the nutritionist asked me a life-changing series of questions. She asked me if I had ever been in therapy, “Oh I love therapy;” she asked me if I had ever told my therapist/s this story, and whether we had ever discussed my habits of “disordered eating.” I hadn’t, but as readers of this site know, I love language, and while I struggle with the concept of labels, sometimes labels are liberating, and this framing, disordered eating, gave language, definition, illuminating my experiences.5For a deeper dive into my thoughts on labels, check out this earlier editorial – On Processes of Becoming: A Tale of Three Taylors
Throughout my doctoral program, I put disordered eating in conversation with my suicidal ideations, with my anxiety, and with the realization/acceptance that I also live with depression. I put these in conversation with my history of chronic pain (in my knees and joints since I was 20, and now in my kidneys/bladder). I came to frame my mental illnesses and my disabilities as definitional parts of who I am, while also recognizing that I am not defined by them.
Lauren and I are unpacking my disordered eating in ways I have never done with a therapist, or really anyone. When I explained the depths of my struggles with food and my relationship to eating, the toll that the act of preparing, buying, or eating food takes on my mind and my body, Lauren was explicit in making a shift in language. She knows my appreciation for intentional language. She did it both subtly and dramatically in conversation. She was synthesizing things I said and repeating back to me. She did not say “… your disordered eating…”. She said, “… your eating disorder…” I heard her say it, I let the words and phrasing sink in. I did not call attention to it in that moment. I sat with it for the week and pointed it out in our next session. I asked her if it was intentional, she sort of smiled and said yes, and asked how it felt.
I said it felt right.
This is how we came to identify and name, The Manager, who might be the longest running employee in The Workplace.
The Workplace
At 11, I was on the verge of puberty. Throughout middle school I had been one of the three tallest boys in my classes, and I was starting to put on weight. I had friends who were considered fat for our age and bullied by others, and I compared myself to them. I’d be lying if I said I never contributed to their bullying. I was beginning to become interested in girls, and I compared myself to the sporty boys and the cool crowd. I ran with the nerds; we liked comic books and Star Wars toys. (I still do.) At recess we didn’t play football or basketball, we pretended to be the X-Men. I always chose to be Beast; he was smart, fit, and agile, but also had girth. Something about that felt realistically aspirational, despite him being covered in blue fur.
Even at 11, I was afraid of being fat — afraid of what that would do to me socially, and how it would impact how others, especially girls, would perceive me. I assumed rejection; still to this day, the idea of rejection is devastating, though I think I handle it pretty well in practice. I have had a lot of practice. So, I told my parents that I was going to stop eating fast food, red meat, and pork. Chicken and fish felt healthy to me, and at that age I couldn’t imagine what a completely vegetarian meal would even look like. I also did not want to make things hard for my mom, who did the shopping and the cooking. She often ate chicken when the rest of us had red meat, so now we would eat the same thing. Six years later I was in a World Religions class in high school. We were going to be visited by Hare Krishnas who would talk to us about their sect of Hinduism. We were given one of their pamphlets on vegetarianism and it detailed the abhorrent conditions and horrific processes of a chicken-processing plant. (I will spare you the nauseating details, but reach out if you really want to know.) I went home and told my mom I was no longer going to eat poultry.
This is how I came to become “mostly vegetarian.” Or pescatarian if you wanna be a dick about it.6You can read more about my experiences with this particular label in my article – On Processes of Becoming: A Tale of Three Taylors
But seeking control over my diet is not my eating disorder. Restricting food is my eating disorder. Being paralyzed by the thought of eating food that I think will make me fat, particularly carbs or sugar, is my eating disorder. Being paralyzed and incapable of walking the few feet from my living room to the kitchen to figure out what to have for lunch, or looking through my pantry or fridge and feeling overwhelmed by having to figure out what foods won’t make me feel guilty, is my eating disorder. Not thinking that food is a worthwhile or necessary use of my money, or judging food items as too expensive to spend money on, is my eating disorder. Not eating a meal (usually lunch) if I do not bring something to work or have a very specific plan for what to buy and knowing exactly what it will cost (The Manager collaborates with The Bookkeeper sometimes), what time I will go get it, and where I will eat it, is my eating disorder. Avoiding social gatherings that involve food (such as a potluck), if I do not think there will be something I will be comfortable eating, or not being able to walk into a food-related event without arriving with someone else because I do not want the attention of people seeing me select food, or call attention to what I am eating, or ask me if I have tried a particular thing, or why I haven’t, is my eating disorder. (Sometimes The Manager also collaborates with The Supervisor.)
The depths of the negotiations, considerations, articulations, debates, critiques, and struggle that I go through when it comes to food is my eating disorder. And the voice I hear for all of this is The Manager.
But I was supposed to be introducing you to The Reaper.
And somebody’s listening at night
The ghosts of my friends when I pray
Asking, “Why did You let them leave
And then make me stay?”
– Julien Baker, “Rejoice”
I pinpoint my first suicidal ideation to age 11. I have written about that moment before. I can’t say for sure who came first, The Manager or The Reaper. Maybe even The Supervisor. I don’t know if it matters. But they have certainly been coworkers for a long time, though I did not realize that they knew each other or were active co-conspirators of my mental illnesses.
The Reaper does not usually see food as part of his portfolio. The Manager is effective and efficient, so The Reaper does not meddle or contribute when The Manager is working.
The Reaper has his own extensive portfolio. It is The Reaper that whispers, “You can always kill yourself,” as the solution to any and all experiences that cause anxiety, insecurity, or the prospect of the unknown.
The Reaper tells me that abandonment is inevitable, that disappointment should be expected, and rather than move through it (because ultimately, what is the point?) I could instead avoid it. I can always just kill myself.
The Reaper lay dormant for the better part of 15 years, through much of high school, undergrad, and the first five years with my former partner. But when he awoke, when I was 27, he did with such ferocity that rarely a day goes by now that I do not hear him whisper in the back of mind (as I often say, usually from behind the stove, sometimes on the back burner, and thankfully only extremely rarely, from the front burner). But The Reaper is so present in the operations of my mind that I cannot remember the last time I was able to see a future for myself, a future that doesn’t eventually end with my death by suicide. My death a burden to strangers, because, he tells me, who else would even be around to notice or care?
But interestingly, I find comfort in The Reaper’s voice. In his presence. He’s one of my oldest friends. It is The Reaper who helps me find balance. The Reaper brings me from the brink of the unknown back to a place of stability where I can act from within my capacity. If the unknown is a state of complete lack of control, and death by suicide is an act of complete control, I find compromise in the middle; it is from there that I act.
But The Manager and The Reaper are not alone in The Workplace. As I have mentioned herein, and discussed previously, how you think about me, or how I think you think about me, how I want/hope/need you to think about me, is the work of The Supervisor.
I bet
it never ever occurred to you,
that I can’t say “hello” to you,
and risk another “goodbye.”
– Taylor Swift, “I Almost Do”
The Supervisor probably clocked in around when I was age 11, as well. It was certainly her work that resulted in my developing migraines. I think that I am most embarrassed to tell you about The Supervisor. She is the voice of my social anxiety. She is the one who tells me that I am embarrassing, that other people will laugh at me, talk about me behind my back, and think I am worthless or insignificant. She tells me that I am not worth people’s time or energy. She tells me I should stay home or that I should keep my mouth closed. She tells me that I should not put myself out there or try to meet new people because they will eventually realize who I am and what I am and they will leave me. The Supervisor encourages me to relive conversations or repeat on loop in my head things that I said and focus on how awkward I sounded, or debate whether I was unclear or misunderstood. The Supervisor tells me that if I don’t try to connect in the first place, this eventual abandonment can be avoided. The Supervisor does not care about my degrees or my accomplishments; she doesn’t care about the connections I have forged and maintained or the beautiful times in my relationships.
The Supervisor’s voice inhibits me at parties or social gatherings, telling me it’s easier to sit in the corner and not engage for fear of being embarrassing, boring, or awkward. For fear of giving people even more reason to not be interested in me or to talk about me behind my back.
The Supervisor reminds me that there is no shortage of ways I can and will be disappointing to others. She also sets unrealistic expectations for friends and partners and lovers so that I am easily disappointed and quick to abandon. To always need to feel like I can run away.
The Supervisor likes me to be alone.
I think it is also The Supervisor who fixates on people I feel connected to, or am interested in, or excited by. I think it is The Supervisor’s voice that encourages me to be clingy, needy, impatient. The Supervisor wants me to be alone. But she also loves the validation of communication and connection with others. But maybe more than anything, she loves the inevitable crushing disappointment when I am abandoned and rejected. Because, well, then she was right all along.
The Supervisor and The Manager love to collaborate, and do so regularly.
And The Reaper is always ready and eager to provide his solution to it all.
You know how I get when I’m wrong
And I can feel myself becoming
Somebody I’m not, I’m not, so
Emily, forgive me, can we
Make it up as we go along?
I’m twenty-seven and I don’t know who I am
But I know what I want
– boygenius, “Emily, I’m Sorry”
There’s also The Bookkeeper and The Workaholic, but I think they are stories for another time. I don’t understand them yet. I haven’t given them space yet. I don’t know if I can, or if I am ready. Maybe that’s exactly why I should start writing about them, to process them through writing, but I am not ready. For reasons.
They are newer to The Workplace. The Bookkeeper came on board sometime in my early 20s, and The Workaholic in my late 20s. When I picture The Bookkeeper, I see a combination of my dad’s two older brothers. My dad is the third of four brothers who all look like very similar derivatives of their father, but my dad is the roundest in features of them all. My dad’s older brothers are weaselly versions of him, more pointed and sharper in their features. His younger brother was always the kindest of them all, and his features are a blend of his older brothers. I have rarely ever seen myself in any of them.
As for The Workaholic, I actually only picture myself.
~~~
I am not sure if you see it, but in their own way, each of the workers believes that they are protecting me. They work so hard to keep me “safe” from the world, from being hurt. They don’t see their own actions as harmful. But abusers rarely do.
When I told Alex (one of my best friends and regular editor of my writing for this site) about The Manager, this was our conversation:
A: Do you have feelings about The Manager? Like are you trying to get them to pipe down?
B: The goal is to make him retire.
A: Excellent. He is probably tired.
B: Don’t sympathize with The Manager! He’s not our friend.
A: I will engage with The Manager however you feel is appropriate. But I was thinking this character is part of you/your brain so I wanted to treat him with kindness and love.
Alex is habitually kind and perpetually operates from a place of wanting to understand. She knew what I was supposed to be doing before I did. And she was right. This is the whole purpose of this thought experiment. To name the roles and identities that make up my psyche, that make up me. To understand their needs and what they think they are serving, how they believe they are helping me. To develop habits of kindness and care and understanding to show them, which in turn I show to myself.
The Workplace is not separate from me. It is me. The workers are not separate from me. They are me, regardless of their voice or their appearance. They are me, and I am them. In trying to understand them, I am trying to understand myself. I don’t know what it will mean or look like for The Manager or The Reaper or any of them to retire. I don’t know if it’s possible.
I wonder what it will look like for us to walk shoulder to shoulder oriented toward a shared horizon. Of course death is eventually on the horizon, that is inevitable, but despite The Reaper, it does not have to be the goal. And between here and there, there is life. And I am working to shape what that means and looks like out from under the shadow of The Workplace.
Nothing turns out like I pictured it
Maybe the emptiness is just a lesson in canvases
I think if I fail again
That I know you’re still listening
Maybe it’s all gonna turn out alright
And I know that it’s not, but I have to believe that it is
– Julien Baker, “Appointments”
~~~
Written by Brett S. Goldberg / Edited by Alexandria T. Ward & Carrie Morrisroe
~~~
