“…Maybe it’s all gonna turn out alright / Oh, I know that it’s not / but I have to believe that it is…”
– Julien Baker “Appointments”
~~~
Today is my 37th birthday. Birthdays are interesting markers for people like me. I spend a lot of my daily energy struggling with thoughts about not particularly wanting to be here anymore. Birthdays are moments when I feel both connected and disconnected from people who I care about. Today, like you (I hope), I spend in isolation. Social distancing and spatial solidarity have come rather easy for me, as it is logistically not that far off from my usual routine and life lately. But it has been emotionally and psychologically difficult nonetheless.
Today I expect to hear from friends new and old; every contact will be so appreciated and much needed in these anxious and troubling times. They will give me hope for a day when things will feel very different than they recently have.
But it is not hope that keeps me going; despair is what moves me. Despair has saved my life on more than one occasion. Hope—false hope—has nearly killed me more than once.
~~~
On utopias
For decades, another world is possible has been the rallying cry of radical and revolutionary movements, including the anti-nuclear and anti-globalization movements of the 1980s and ’90s and recently of movements such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Extinction Rebellion. Another world is possible is a statement of purpose—both prescription and threat, utopian dream and call to action.
In contrast to common usages of the term, utopia is not synonymous with fantasy, an idyllic but impossible future. Such a conception has developed as a way of demeaning and delegitimizing ideas, projects, and radical movements that have the audacity to question the status quo. Utopias, whether described in works of fiction or laid out in the manifestos of social movements, articulate imagined fulfillment in order to highlight what is missing or lacking in our world and in our lives. As opposed to the flights of fancy some choose to paint them as, utopias act as road maps or blueprints offering us guidance for change and action. Utopia must then be understood as a process, as a way of being, as the means rather than the ends.
In Frederic Jameson’s Archaeologies of the Future (2005) he recognizes that utopian imaginaries—utopian stories, dreams, road maps, or blueprints—are produced by actual people—thinkers, writers, artists, activists, and revolutionaries—who live in the real world. As a result, our utopian visions are limited by our experiences, as well as by what we are able to perceive with our senses. Connecting this concept to the impacts of racism, Minnie Bruce Pratt, contributor to the anthology, Feminist Freedom Warriors (2018), asks, “…what does it mean to be a writer when the imagination—your tool—is contaminated? Polluted. Your tool is damaged by racism?” (p. 81). This question must be asked of all forms of oppression, inequity, and violence.
The utopian dream that another world is possible—despite having sparked numerous movements and revolutions—has yet to be realized. Perhaps we have been imagining this “another world” only as the end result of our revolutions. Maybe if we begin to see it as the means, as our ongoing way of being in the world and interacting with one another right now and every day forward, another world is not only possible, it is within our capacity.
~~~
On hope
It would be naive or maybe egotistical of me to think that I can redefine commonly used expressions of feelings, in this case hope and despair. Yet, that is what I am seeking to do. In order to understand how we do utopia, how we make another world, I want to complicate hope and despair. In this section I am going to try to do that utilizing two influential books. With this new understanding, I will then try to show you how I have been applying these understandings in my own life, how I have come to understand despair as saving my life while hope has made me miserable.
There are two books that have been instrumental in reshaping how I understand hope and despair: Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (2004), and the collection of interview’s of Feminist Freedom Warriors: Genealogies, Justice, Politics (2018). Solnit defines hope rather traditionally, in contrast to both faith and despair: Hope is grounded in what is known to be possible whereas faith is mystical, a belief regardless of fact or material reality or possibility. Despair is painted with a broad and dismissive brush as simply the absence of hope. Solnit idealizes a simplistic, arguably naive form of hope. In turn, despair is minimized as merely the absence of hope. Despair is thus deprived of any revolutionary potential or use. Additionally, Solnit does not consider the implications of negative, undesired, or unintended outcomes on our experiences of hoping. What becomes of our hope, or our process of hoping—for a specific outcome, or a general glass-half-full outlook—if it turns out to be a false or failed hope?
What if despair—with the benefit of hindsight and experience, aware of the possibility for negative or undesired outcomes—is not the absence of hope, but rather a form of critical hope? Despair as critical hope is informed, experienced, and cognizant of the range of possibilities for the future, both utopic and dystopic, ideal and unwanted. Despair in this reading is not despondency (which I would argue is the absence of hope), nor is it inaction; but it is also not the privileged, potentially alienating, and idealistic hope centered in Solnit’s text.
The scholar-activists who contribute to Feminist Freedom Warriors—Black and Third World feminists of color—provide hope from the margins. Theirs is a critical hope that is the product of generations of struggle, having experienced both the fruit of collective labor and the failures of hope’s idealism; the realization of visionary projects and the subversion, repression, or shortfalls of others.
Each feminist freedom warrior teaches us that hope and despair are in struggle with, not against, one another, in relationship and community, driving the perpetual projects of utopia and revolution. Despair recognizes that our imagination is contaminated by racism, sexism, colonialism, hetero-patriarchy, hegemonic masculinity, ableism, etc., and despair as critical hope enables refusal at the point of contamination. Whereas Solnit sees despair as the absence of hope, Feminist Freedom Warriors, while not engaging these concepts directly, provides a holistic and nuanced framework that understands despair/critical hope as productive and generative.
~~~
On heartbreak
The beginning of May will mark the one-year anniversary of the end of my last relationship. We had been together for nearly four years, and it was a long-distance relationship. It was not an easy relationship; distance, differing communication styles, and mutually precarious work situations resulted in varying schedules and availability across multiple time zones. The breakup was devastating, though, because of the distance, my life did not materially change much in the day-to-day.
Every heartbreak is unique, just as each relationship is. Every time one of my relationships has ended—mutually, at my initiation, or at my partner’s—I have experienced feelings of regret, of sadness, of disappointment, of longing for the future I had worked to construct and hope for with them. But I have also felt relief, felt happiness, felt closure. When this relationship came to an end, I felt a lot of things, but I also felt something new; I felt honest. When I look back upon the relationship, I look back feeling that I brought my full and honest self; that I did not hold back who I was, or mediate myself out of fear of being rejected. I felt most myself with this person, and I felt most accepted for who I am by them.
I still feel that way with them. Now you may think that would be reason to be even more heartbroken, and you might be right. But for the first time, my heartbreak was not compounded by regret for not being true to myself, or disappointment for not trying harder or trying differently.
I had been myself, and I am proud of that. It took work, and I want to recognize that.
But perhaps this seems to go against what I said earlier: The breakup was devastating.
The past year has been amongst the loneliest, most difficult, most despondent years of my life. As someone who struggles with suicidal ideations, I often have difficulty picturing the future. That is not to say that I do not think or expect to have a future, but it is to say that I often cannot picture what it will look like. But what I was able to picture of my future was that she would be in it. And then that had to stop being the picture.
~~~
On communication
Since our relationship was long distance, and maintained largely over text, social media DMs, or phone calls, we knew we needed to make an intentional shift in the way we communicated so that the relationship would feel different. But we also knew that as each other’s best friend, the idea of cold-turkey disappearing from one another’s life did not feel right. So my now former partner and I agreed upon a regimented and intentional communication schedule. For a number of reasons, our regularly scheduled phone talks (weekly for the better part of six+ months), became the highlight of my week, and honestly my life. The summer was particularly challenging for me, living in a college town in the desert where I felt isolated. When our communication hit rough patches and became less consistent, it was difficult to not become resentful. It was difficult for me to not project my unhappiness, my loneliness, my despondencies onto her and her absence from my life.
These phone calls gave me hope. I had hoped, as I have hoped in the past, that my love would be enough to make someone come back. I have believed, had to believe, that I could love someone into loving me.
I could not. Not this time, and never before.
After about six months of consistent communication, our intentionality broke down. Our weekly phone calls became monthly and some of our text messages became clipped and more often contained ambiguous tone or subtext. After a few months of this we recognized that it was important to have a check-in. This was our third or fourth check-in in which we carved out intentional time and space within our phone call to talk specifically about how this all had been going for us.
During this check-in I feel that I once again put my honest self forward and spoke my truth, which consisted of recognizing that not much had changed for me, and that I would want to try again if she did. I knew this would be difficult to navigate; picking back up a long-distance relationship for an indeterminate amount of time before being in the same place for more than a vacation is a difficult reality to commit to.
After a long talk, I asked a straightforward question: Do you only see me as a friend, and is that how you want to see me?
She said yes.
It was not the response I had hoped for, though it was the response I expected. I felt sadness move through me like a wave, from behind my eyes down through my chest, into my stomach. I carry anxiety in my stomach like a stone. But this time, my sadness did not settle into anxiety in my stomach. It moved through me and then was gone.
Afterward, I felt only relief.
My hope was gone, and I was free.
Despair settled in. Despair that this relationship was truly over.
Despair that allows me to grieve, to work on moving on, and to begin to heal. Despair is saving my life.
~~~
On friendship
I have been working on this article in fits and starts for a long while. Sometime in the fall I picked it up and wrote that “I was not surprised to do so under the ever-present specter of death. We live in a world in which many of us do want to live.” When I wrote those words, the news was still fresh and details were scarce; but what I did know was that I had lost another friend and comrade. I have still not heard definitively what caused Kitty’s death, whether they died by suicide, or drugs, or illness. I hope it does not come off as flippant, but it kind of doesn’t really matter. Capitalism killed Kitty. An uncaring and harsh world killed Kitty. A world that quite simply did not deserve them.
Though I had not seen Kitty in six years or more at the time they died, they are someone who looms large in my memories of Occupy Wall Street and the last few years of my time in New York City. Kitty seemed ever-present in the community and the movement and certainly in Liberty Square itself. Without having to try very hard, I think I could place Kitty at every day of action, every General Assembly, and every Spokes Council in which I took part. Their rage was always punctuated with the brightest fuckin’ smile. They were in a constant state of resistance and revolution, and every moment was engaged in with love for the community, for their comrades, and I like to think, with love for the possible future we were fighting to build.
That kind of light is unimaginably hard to sustain in a world of such darkness. I can’t say if Kitty felt hope, or if or how hope failed them. I do not hold out hope for a world that may be able to support, sustain, and love someone like Kitty. In this regard, I am despondent.
I despair not only because I know that Kitty is gone, but because I know that I had not done enough for them. This despair does not fuel my despondency. It drives me; it moves me to keep going. While I struggle with and against suicidal ideations, I know that while I am here, I will do my best, for myself, for my community, for people like Kitty.
~~~
On life
“Keep on pushin’” Curtis Mayfield said … “Be a force for good,” Coltrane said … That ain’t having hope; that’s being a hope. Courageously bearing witness regardless of what the circumstances is because you is choosing to be a kind of person of integrity to the best of your ability before the worms get your body.” – Dr. Cornel West
I have written before about my struggles with/against suicidal ideations. Since I wrote that article, the thoughts have been more present than ever, which gives me plenty of opportunity to work to understand them, and myself. I have come to understand that when I think about killing myself, it is an act of control. You may think that suicidal thoughts emerge from desperation or from despair. But despair has brought me from the brink more than once. While hope’s promise has pushed me to the edge.
When I think about killing myself, it is an act of course-correction when I feel out of control. The thought, well I could just kill myself, is a recognition that if nothing else, I have control over my body. I could choose to not be here. That is my choice. Recently, I came to the realization that I regularly make the choice to live. I shared these thoughts with a dear friend shortly after they came to my mind. She told me that she thought it was a helpful and inspiring way to think about it.
Maybe it is. Maybe it is my way of trying to find less despondency in what is often my default mental state in a world on fire (both metaphorically and not), a world that is dying, a world that is so utterly exhausting. By reframing my despair I am able to make it something productive, something that moves me, inspires me, drives me to keep going.
Today is my 37th birthday. A year ago, I never could have predicted the circumstances under which I now mark this occasion. But that can likely be said about many of my birthdays. I lived much of the last decade year to year at best. Sometimes it felt like day to day. Over the last 37 years, I have lived at least three lives, loved four women, and called five cities “home.” For the last 18 years of life, my knees have sought to limit where I can go; for the last two years my kidneys and bladder have determined where I can stay. I struggle with anxiety, disordered eating, and suicidal ideations. But I also find joy easily, laugh loudly, and fall in love quickly. I am proud of where I am, and who I am. I feel all the feelings, all the time.
Today, as I mark my 37th birthday, I take a moment to recognize that I am still here, and that is no small feat. And while I am, I will work to not fall for false hope, to embrace the learned experience of my despair, and to strive to let despondency pass through, and not take hold of me.
~~~
Written by Brett Goldberg / Edited by Alexandria T. Ward and Carrie Morrisroe
~~~
Works Cited
Jameson, F. (2005). Archaeologies of the future: The desire called utopia and other science fictions. London: Verso.
Okazawa-Rey, M., Davis, A. Y., Bannerji, H., Pratt, M. B., Mama, A., Hernández-Castillo, et al. (2018). Feminist freedom warriors. (L. E. Carty, & C. T. Mohanty, Eds.) Chicago: Haymarket Books.
Solnit, R. (2004). Hope in the dark: Untold histories, wild possibilities. New York: Nation Books.
