Richard Clark Writes

One Massive Brain Spiral and the Anchor That Saved Me

Last week - that was the one. The worst week of my life, probably. 

Last week was three full weeks after my father died and my marriage ended. It was almost a month later, when everyone forgot about it.

To me at least, that’s the stage of grief that’s the worst - when you have to start dealing with stuff again. And you tell yourself: you have to kind of start moving on. Live life as if it were normal. 

Let me tell you something: that is not how it worked for me. 

It wasn’t quite depression. I had just spent a week in San Francisco with some of the most welcoming and fascinating people I have ever met. The residue from that stuck with me. I was living off of that for a lot of the week. Still: That Monday, I found myself alone in my apartment for the first time in a while, just unbearably aware of how different my life had become. I meditated on words like: Alone. Gone. Never.

I had naively predicted that everything would emerge with the spring season, and that I would emerge with it. That life would hand itself to me, finally, after all of this, because damnit, I was owed that much at least. Instead, my mind spiraled a bit too far inward. 

There was a lot of obsession - just completely unchecked. It was an infatuation with social normalcy, only social normalcy kept turning its back on me. Every interaction felt awkward, loaded, disastrous.  But I craved the interaction. I craved the risk, the satisfaction, the reassurance.

I spent a lot of time alone, in my room, catching up on writing assignments. Maybe that was for the best. 

I confessed these things to some of my closest friends this week, and they prayed for me. One of them prayed that I would remember and hold fast to the one constant, when everything else shifts and changes. So, I needed to hear that. 

Because that was the thing the day before, on Sunday, at church. When I surround myself with all of these people - these people who have nothing to do with me, but everything in common. I felt okay, finally, that Sunday morning. I sat down in the pew and I just sighed this huge sigh of relief. I was a little bored sometimes but I was so at ease. So calm. 

We all shared the same anchor - maybe it holds us down, maybe it holds us steady. Maybe both. I don’t care so much. Because He holds me, consistently, without giving slack. He is sometimes not so real to me. But coming out of this week when everything felt wrong and awful and pointless, here was the point. Here was my foundation. 

So I guess I’m kind of ready for a new normal. This anchor holds me stubbornly to an island, and that’s pretty annoying. But that island rises, slowly and miraculously, out of the water. As it expands I can see visions in the distance. Some of these visions might be mirages, but some of them are real. I know one thing: it’s all coming into view. 

Lessons Directly or Indirectly Offered Up From My Forebearer

And now, allow the tone to change. Allow the winter to slowly change to spring and for the flowers to bloom and for the beauty that was hidden by frost to become evident to my eyes. 

Allow death to cast a dark shadow and then relent, only to provide contrast to life and to provide more color, more hope, more depth, to life as it is and was and will be. 

Allow for loneliness to give way to anticipation, for anticipation to give way to exhilaration. Allow for fond memories and restless hope. 

Allow for surprises. Allow for friends to go far beyond what is wise and reasonable. Allow yourself to do the same in response. 

Allow yourself to ponder the sadness, the hurt, the pain. Allow yourself to consider why. Allow yourself the questions. 

Allow for attempts at friendships, conversations, and deeper relationships that test the limits of expectation and comfort. 

Allow for self-conscious, ambiguous writing, because it’s better than giving up, deleting, going to sleep allowing for nothing. 

Allow for miracles, for light, for redemption, for salvation, for sacrifice, for charity, for allegiance, for goodness, for beauty, for ancient cliches. 

Allow for pain, and allow for what’s next. 

What Happens When

So the other day I took a test and found out I’m an Ideaist or something like that. It means I sit around thinking about patterns, possibilities, contingencies. I like to think it makes me smart, but more accurately, it makes me worried and anxious and severely paranoid. It makes me an obsessive. 

In every single area of life, this holds predictably and depressingly true: work, play, relationships, family, the life of the mind. If you knew the stuff I sit around thinking about, planning out, you would be shocked. Your primary question would probably be something like, “Why are you even going there?”

It’s that old “what if” question - I project myself into future and nonexistent situations, I plan the phrases and cliches that I will repeat to myself. I start planning the things I will be anxious about at that point. I plan my anxiety. In 2014 I plan to worry about whether I need to make more friends. For now I just worry that I will lose them all. 

If I ever become successful, I worry that, in the immortal words of Drake, “I might be too strung out on compliments, overdosed on confidence.” For now I just hunger for that stuff - way too much! 

Anyway - nights like tonight are nice, because my friends let me talk and then they mainly tell me not to worry about it. And then they give me reasons! 

These Blessed (Cursed) Nights

Pretty much every single night these days I’m still up around this time (1am right about now). I lay in bed for one or two hours, experimenting with different techniques. I watch a television show until my eyes are closing, then I turn it off and start listening to a podcast. Then I switch to a more sedate podcast - This American Life always lulls me into a slight daze. After a while I give up for a bit and check my Twitter feed again. Then I listen to another podcast. Sometimes, at around two or three I give up and watch another television show. I eat a lot of snacks. 

Because. I think about my dad’s imminent mortality, and all that it implies. I think about how I am alone now, how I am technically married but how that doesn’t really mean anything anymore except for a limitation. And how it will probably always mean that, even after it’s technically not a limitation. Anyway. We’ll get to that some other night. 

I’m just trying to drown out the thoughts and the worries basically. What I really should be doing is praying more. I really believe that. But every single night, I swear this is true, I forget. And I just shoot for the distraction. Every single night. 

So for the most part, this is written with you as my intended audience: for my friends and family, for my colleagues, for my acquaintances who saw this link on Facebook and clicked through, getting perhaps a bit more than you bargained for. Some of this is just for myself - I am not completely convinced, but I think there may be something to the idea of just getting this stuff out of my brain. The whole idea of writing, or art, or punching things as an outlet. 

But also this stuff is a prayer to God. I keep distracting myself from life, and sometimes that’s okay. But He’s a part of it - he’s causing it. So sometimes, late at night, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to get out of bed and pay more attention.

A Reason for Being

If I fancy myself a writer, I need to be able to feel as if my life is characterized primarily by writing - not simply thinking about writing and ideas. This is a common problem with self-proclaimed writers, almost to the point of being a cliche. It’s a trap. So this is part of a plan to write a little every day. Sometimes it will be for other websites. Sometimes it will be for this. 

Oh, but there’s another thing: there is so much to write about, to ponder aloud, to grapple and grasp, that an unhindered venue is becoming sort of an obvious thing. And I don’t mean in general, I just mean in my life, right now, as I write this. So much weirdness, oddness, sadness, transition. 

Is it a self-involved effort? Yeah. But I find help in the writings of others, the honest recounting of the experiences of others. In the midst of some of the ordeals around me, I find real, actual help from those who are self-involved enough to think maybe their story will help others. I have so many friends who are inclined to tell their stories. I have so many who are struggling and sharing that struggle. I am so appreciative of that. 

And I have other friends and acquaintances who are private. I get it, but I feel bad because I can’t help them and keeping it close certainly isn’t helping me. I don’t know how they do it. I know why, but not how. 

So I’m going to open up a bit here. I hope you get something out of it.