You Don't Have To See Me

I walked through Times Square wearing a real British red, a slim pillar box of a woman, standing out amongst the dim greys and browns of winter. Or so I thought until one person after another jostled me, tourists pushing through me towards the bright lights, red not enough to shine a light on my existence. You don’t have to see me, but why can’t you acknowledge my existence? If a stranger walks through me and you don’t even notice, how can I even expect you to be the beacon I always assumed you were? I ask too much, I know.

First it was Kurt. No wait, go back. First it was my father, dangling into dust with Joy Division playing in the background. Then it was him, the one who cloaked himself with the role of father, and moved his family around like chess pieces on a board, simultaneously playing you against one another and most often against yourself. A few weeks after his departure Kurt blasted himself into oblivion, leaving me clutching my cassette tapes and crying into my diary, abandoned. Alone. Invisible. Then the boy I was in love with, but had never spoken to, moved away, and my diary talks of broken hearts and depression, of sadness and also of longing. Longing to be seen, growing steadily up, a flower in need of light, gasping for air, breaking free from the Girl Guide knots in the ropes that were containing her.

Freedom is an ocean that swells unexpectedly, dragging you off to places that nourish you, but sometimes also break you. It’s a learning curve, freedom is.

Walking against the crowds in Times Square, invisible in my red coat, brought me back to that year, 1994, when everything was either amazing, or the end of the world. I had yet to learn to temper my emotions, let them trickle down the slide rather than cascade down the mountain, avalanche or ball of fire. 1994 was a year of turning heels and turning backs, and of wandering down the soft slopes at the base of the mountain, wishing I could just fall right off the face of the earth. I hid beneath ripped jean, long hair, and oversized sweaters and music that tempered my wild thoughts. I still listen to that same music, the lead singers long gone into voids of drugs and depression and events they didn’t manage to control, but the music still speaks to me. I would walk home from school, shaking off the dank grimness of the monotonous and constant taxing demands on my brain, my Walkman carrying songs that spoke to me alone, that made me stand out and stand up. Music gave me visibility; music gave me purpose. I could be me, all of me, without all of the boxes and the cloaks and the expectations.

I took steps to solidify my existence amongst others, choosing to weave in and out of the path ahead, rather than plod along, unseen and unheard.

But there is always something that suddenly makes me even more conscious of the space I take up... So I pack myself into a smaller box, hide in the shadows, and revel in this ease of traveling through time in low visibility. There is something safe about walking through people, knowing they don’t see you, passing you by without even an acknowledgement of your presence. This invisibility serves me well, I don’t leave a visible trace, but you know I have stopped by. I think... Do you? Have I left an invisible mark on your life? Do you remember my face? I remember yours. I always remember yours.

I used to sit in class and look ahead stoically, willing the teacher to pass me by. It worked most of the time, my will forcing my body to become invisible, folding myself into a tiny space where no one would notice me, where no spotlight reached. I walk through the streets and wonder why I am always the one who has to move out of the way, but I never stand my ground, so used to moving, creating space between myself and the other, space being a protective cover, space meaning I don’t have to interact. I battle with this need for space, for cover, and the same need to be heard and seen: and as neither ever wins I hide behind my words. This, my voice; these, my words. They are strong and powerful like me, but often indirect, metaphor, for what the reality is. Words have longevity. You may forget my face in an instant, and forget how my fingers felt on you face, my voice in the wind now, but my words will stay with you.

I’m still 1994, but I’m also 2018, still hovering between the space and the spotlight, finding a place that is me. Do we ever find our real place? Are we meant to have a place? I do not accept my place amongst you, I do not accept the role, the cloak, or even the mold that you play upon my being. For that I will always stand strong and teach the same to my children, for that I will never back down.

I’m not transparent: I’m hued. Each flicker sends ripples of effervescent sparks your way, each shake a wave of golden, yellow, warm orange rays. One turn may block the light, another may be a beacon. I vow to not hide behind myself anymore, and I pledge to stand taller, to not move out of the way when I’m on my path. You don’t have to see me, but you must acknowledge my presence, and the presence of all of us around you, all of us so used to fitting into smaller boxes, hiding behind the light, moving out of your path. We all belong, we all have light to share.

I walk through the city gardens, eyes straight ahead, pushing my children, scanning the surroundings for invisible dangers. I tell my eldest to run with the butterflies, to enjoy the freedom that comes with space and youth, and I whisper to myself to hold my head high.

No more boxes for me, and only space for my offspring: space to run, and space to hold hands with others. We all hold our heads high, searching the sunlight rather than the cracks in the pavement.

Can't Stop Now...

I’ve been spending more time on Twitter recently, keeping up on midterm election news, finding out who the person who spat on me is (I told you in my last post I would never forget his face), and just in general looking for some hope in the pile of stink that this country keeps digging up and throwing all over itself.

First of all, an update on the spitter: apparently he is just another Nazi boy who thinks it’s OK to harass people and spew hatred everywhere. I saw that look I have encountered in others in his eyes when he walked past, so I wasn’t that surprised really…  Despite what the city tries to tell us, Sacramento is full of racist cops, Neo Nazis who are consistently called “Conservatives” by the press (who then always go on to vilify Antifa and anyone who appears to protest against Nazis), and people who pretend to be all “peace and love” until you accidentally step on their lawn, at which point they will call the racist cops to come and flush you out. In any case, let me just say that it wasn’t the police who helped me find the spitter’s identity, I actually found out via Twitter, and I am grateful to the groups of people who are actually really looking out for the community. They are also the ones who made me aware of the Nazi, sorry I mean “Conservative” rally this weekend at the Capitol, so I didn’t take the kids there as I would normally do.

I also came across a tweet written by a man who had been brought up in the UK by one British parent and one Dutch parent, and who had suffered so much abuse growing up because his peers didn’t consider him “British” enough. He detailed some really horrid bullying and more, so much so that he felt as an adult that part of his identity was missing, and that he was unable to find it again. It reminded me of something that had happened to my sister and me during our first year or so living in The Netherlands. We had moved away from England, away from our extended family that we had always lived very close to, and were getting used to living in another country where everything was different, including the language. We learnt to speak Dutch very fast, but the first year was a lot of trial and error, and a lot of learning by ourselves. I was 10 when we moved there, and my sister 8, and we had also been through some very recent trauma. We would often be sent out on our bikes to the local supermarket by our stepfather who was home with our baby brother and who spoke less Dutch than we did.

There were two boys who would follow us on their bikes, trying to knock us off, yelling things at us, basically being mean kids. They couldn’t have been more than a year or so older than me, and they just acted like real bullies. The type you are always on the lookout for once they have harassed you once or twice. One day they cornered us down by the canal where the bike path navigated its way on the embankment, above the water but slightly below the main road. One of the kids spat on us, and they called us names, pushing us around, mentioning the word “taal”. In Dutch the word “taal” means language, but it is also the name of the subject of Dutch language at school. At that time the only way I had seen it used was in terms of it being a school subject so I had no idea what they were talking about. It was only later that it dawned on me that they were bullying us because we didn’t speak the same language as them. Kids get these things from their parents. The only way an 11 or 12 year old would have been pushed to bully two younger girls because they didn’t speak the same language would have been because they heard their parents or siblings talk about other people in a derogative manner.

In any case, my sister and I ended up having enough of it one day when they actually followed us home, and we raced into the house as fast as we could and our stepfather came out and yelled at them in English. They never came near us again.

All my sister remembers of those guys is that they kept spitting and spitting at us, huge wads of spit. I remember the mix of fear and incomprehension: what had I done to deserve this? Thing is, when I think about it now I know that this was one experience of xenophobia in my life; there have been others but I am able to pinpoint them to a time and/or a place for the most part. I have not had to live day in day out with being treated like a lesser being because of my skin color. But having experienced it like that at such a young age helped my resolve to fight all the harder against injustice, racism, bigotry, and white supremacism in general.  

These past few years have in general been terrifyingly triggering in many aspects for me. It’s hard to feel 100% when every day you wonder what current event is going to unearth a ton of old shit that you spent so long trying to bury far away in the ground…

The election results were better than I hoped for (not as good as my wildest dreams, but still, better than what I thought would happen). It has been wonderful to see so many women elected, so many immigrants of children of immigrants, people of color, LGBTQIA people, representing all of us, not just a small percentage of white USA. That is huge, and I think a great overview of how hard people have been working to create a better world for everyone. I just worry so much that all of the people who have done the bare minimum these past few years (i.e. vote) will assume they don’t need to do anything else because we are OK again. We are NOT OK. And a large amount of the population will tell you that they have never been OK. My kids will never be OK in this country the way it is now. We can protect them as much as we can but it’s impossible to avoid the hate that is so rampant around us.

One tweet I read last week that has stuck with me said “Voting doesn’t get rid of white supremacy”. Another tweet (I’m sorry, I can’t remember the name of the person who compiled it) listed every single person in office who was openly a white supremacist and who had ties to white supremacy, and that list was scary. Scary because these people are considered normal, these people were elected to supposedly look after this country in the way the people want them to look after it. Scary because these people don’t represent a majority, but for some reason they still manage to get a majority. So, no, voting doesn’t get rid of white supremacy, (and somehow it seems to allow white supremacists to be legitimatized over and over again), but it does however help to make a difference, as we can see from Tuesday’s elections. The only way to get rid of white supremacy is to fight it from the core, and those protecting that rotten core (a large amount of white men and women) are currently hanging on strong. I don’t understand how a person can pertain to have certain values and standards, and then go on to vote for people like Steve King or Ted Cruz, or back people like Brett Kavanaugh. Is it fear of standing on their own two feet and looking at the world the way it really is rather than the one they have always lived it? The easy way out? Just not giving a shit? Reluctance to relinquish power? Greed? All of the above and more? I don’t understand it. But white women (and that includes myself): we need to step it up and get these ridiculous percentages of other white women to stop voting for people who will never have their backs. Honestly, how could 50% of white women have voted for that disgusting Ted Cruz?!

This means that we can’t stop fighting, not today, not tomorrow, not even when the first woman becomes president. The core is so very deep, and it resides under all of us. It’s OK to feel uncomfortable now and again… Many of us live with that feeling. These past two years have been a huge wake up call to so many people, an eye opener to what we have let slide, what we endure, what we sit on and hide. Now is the time to step it up and really go for it. This means denouncing the spitter who thinks he got away with degrading a woman, it means voting in every election you can vote in, it means standing up whenever you see injustice or prejudice or violence against another person, and it means unearthing your own prejudices and getting rid of them too.

I’m already dreading the next restrictions that are heading our way, the next immigration hammer to fall this week. More gaslighting, lies, hatred, and doctored videos coming from the White House. We aren’t OK. But we can continue to fight to be OK.

No More Minimizing (This Is NOT Normal)

Some random asshole spat on me today.

I wanted to shake people and yell about how violating it felt, this man walking towards me, and spitting in my direction, making me feel so helpless. Then I started to think that I was probably overreacting. In the grand scheme of the world , a man, coming in the opposite direction, who deliberately walked as close as possible to me when he passed and then, also deliberately, spat at me, is not the end of the world. It’s disgusting and made me feel like a worthless piece of shit, but he technically didn’t hurt me, so I shouldn’t really complain, should I? I mean, I should, and I am, but at that moment I just felt so small. Just seconds before I had been walking home with so much confidence, my two eldest at school, and a day full of activities with my baby and partner laid out in front of me. And then suddenly I was shaking, tears welling up in my eyes, and that cold fear rising in my stomach, the one I recognize from my childhood. I hesitated, wanting to yell and show my anger, but apart from that person there was no one around, and I was afraid he would turn around and punch me in the face. I had caught a glance of his eyes in the second that he passed me, and his look was enough to tell me he would have no qualms punching me in the face.

I should have trusted my instincts when I saw him approach half a block away. I know I should always trust my instincts. They don’t usually fail me, but I sometimes fail them.

Years ago, I must have been about 20 or 21, I was walking to a friend’s home, just a few minutes down the street from mine. I still remember the scene vividly, playing out in slow motion in front of me. I could see a man approaching from the opposite direction, amongst other people, and for some reason my gut told me something was off. He was walking fast, and the moment he was about to pass me by he punched me in the face, so hard that my head snapped back and smashed into the lamppost that was right behind me. I turned around, stunned, as he ran off, turning round and cackling at me. He obviously had some kind of mental illness, not that I am qualified to name what, or maybe he was just an asshole with violent impulses, who knows. But I ended up with a black eye and a bump on the back of my head. No one even stopped to help me, and I just stumbled to my friend’s house and burst into tears trying to explain what had just happened to me on a busy street in broad daylight. She asked me if I wanted to go and report it but by that time I was just overwhelmed and for some reason had already minimized the assault, and stupidly never did report it. I don’t know why I minimize things like that. Fear of being in the way? Fear of being seen as stupid, silly for making a mountain out of a molehill? Fear of actually having to explain how I felt and how this person made me feel?

I don’t trust many people. I may come across as kind and caring, and that is absolutely genuine. I may share stories about my life with you, listen to your stories, and you can trust me with your secrets. But unless you are one of very few I don’t trust you. It’s not personal, my trust was violated when I was very young and when these types of things happen they reinforce why I don’t trust. And they happen too frequently. We walk the streets on the defensive, a natural cloak that we don every time we leave the house. Our eyes constantly look, judge for danger levels, and move on to the next, crossing the street or turning back whenever our instincts through up a flag. It can’t be just me can it? I’m sure we all do it. I doubt I’m the only woman walking these streets who has been punched in the face and spat on by random men. I’m sure for every woman who reports being spat on or harassed there are dozens who just go home and live with it in silence.

And trust me, I am not scared of much. I had no issues closing at bar on the Lower East Side in NYC by myself at 4am, or jumping over the bar to drag drunk idiots out by myself. But it’s been 20 years and I haven’t forgotten the face of the man who punched me. I won’t forget spitting guy’s face either. The imprint is marked permanently into my memory, which is quite insane if you think about it, as I literally only saw their faces for a few seconds. I’ve been through a lot worse too, which makes it all the more strange to me why these type of incidents still stand out so strong in my mind. Maybe because they are just so random? Difficult to categorize as assault?

I keep imagining if the kids had been in the stroller and he had spat on them. What if the spit had actually landed in my face where he had directed it? Does this person go around assaulting women on his daily walk? Does he live in my neighborhood and is he just one other thing I now have to be worried about on my often rollercoaster-like school runs and grocery shops? Does he actually live in my building?!

As is the case for many women I have been verbally abused, harassed, assaulted, and just treated like excrement more times than I can even count or remember. We minimalize it and internalize it because it is so normalized in our society that we feel guilty even talking about it. But we must. Yes, I feel completely humiliated by the fact that a man spat on me and I just stood there shaking, but if I don’t talk about it I will make it into something less than it was. I shouldn’t have to walk around being worried that someone is going to spit on me! No one should.

(I posted about this on Nextdoor and forwarded the information on to the police department. If it happens to someone else and they report it too hopefully they will apprehend the man and make sure he doesn’t do it again. But for me it is just another thing to be on the lookout for when I go out by myself with the kids, on top of everything else).

Fragments (You Are Not Alone)

Last Wednesday, October 10th, was World Mental Health Day, and this year I only really had time to mark it online in passing by reposting an essay I had written a while ago. But mental health awareness and the ramifications of untreated mental health issues are always on my mind. I don’t really have a choice in the matter. Mental health conditions, suicide, addiction, PTSD, and anxiety have all been part of my life from a very early age, through close family members, myself, intergenerational trauma, and usually a bit of all of that mixed together. Everything is boxed off separately, a contained “issue” that we deal with, and seal away. But in reality it is all linked, interconnected, and if we don’t talk about it, and seek some kind of help, it leaks out at some point.  

Leaks out, combusts, explodes. I’ve been through all of that, and it’s never very pretty. Most of time it just gets boxed back away again, because dealing with the layers trauma creates means you have to actually start peeling them back again. That’s scary. And trauma has this way of making you feel like you are all alone, no matter how silly that may sound. You can read so many similar stories to your own, but still you are alone, throwing the same battered ball against your box of hidden memories. My methods of “dealing” with events has either been to drink copious amounts of alcohol, or withdrawal. As the latter is no longer possible, I resort to withdrawing myself, which in itself is actually not always unhealthy; it is a method of self-protection that has served me very well all my life.

At the beginning of this year I started to withdraw myself from everything that was causing my anxiety to skyrocket. One area at a time, I began to refocus on what matters the most to me, and to take myself out of the race that people everywhere seem to think we should be in. I spent the summer reading and writing, and spending quality time with my children, especially as two of them started school just recently. I also “quit” one job, and started another, allowing myself to go back to focusing my writing on what matters to me, and not what matters to businesses, which is often soul sucking and tremendously boring. I also ended up deleting most of my social media channels, and kind of just going back to basics. I haven’t been writing too much online recently but have more than made up for that offline with about 10 projects in the works. I don’t know where they are going, or what I am going to end up doing with them, but they are all cathartic, as I have found the more I reduce my online presence, the more I feel ready to expand my offline work. Next week I will post a story about being visible/invisible that many of you may relate to, and it is one of many short stories I have written this year.

Circling back to the subject of mental health, the importance of consolidating trauma and pain, as well as sharing it in a way that will help you as well as others: this is something that has been on my mind a lot this past year. The growing emergence of the #MeToo movement, the suicides and accidental overdoses of some of my favorite artists from my teens, as well as my beloved Anthony Bourdain, and then the triggering current events where again and again abuse and assault victims are picked apart and vilified are absolute proof that we need to start listening. And when I mean listen, I mean really listen. Not every survivor is able to talk about what happened to them, and we need to listen to that too. Listening, sharing, and moving on doesn’t always mean providing graphic details. Sometimes we may just be able to share that something terrible happened to us and that we may need help. Listening means hearing between the lines and holding out a hand.

At the end of September I participated in the Out of the Darkness walk here in Sacramento. It was the first time that I joined one of the AFSP’s (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention) walks, and it solidified the points I have been trying to make to myself for so long now: there is no reason to hide away anymore. You are not alone. Over 1,000 people gathered together for the walk in Sacramento, and I’m sure hundreds if not thousands participate in the walks all over the country. There are different honor beads available at each walk, each color representing a person you may have lost or someone who is struggling. I found that it was a great way to see why people were walking without having to ask any questions. And it made me feel like I was less alone: there were other people wearing gold beads too, and other people wearing purple, and green, and teal. It felt like everyone was holding your hand, because they understood your pain, and you understood theirs.

I may have passed some of these people on the street or in the grocery store before, and never would have known how they had also suffered due to the suicide of a loved one, or because of their own struggle. Mental illness and trauma are often invisible, and when they are visible we shy away out of fear or disgust, unable to reach out and provide some kind of help.

A few weeks ago I was helping my eldest navigate the public toilets in the Capitol Gardens when the homeless lady who had been washing her face there started yelling and shouting obscenities. I had no idea whether it was directed at us, at a voice in her head, or at someone she thought she heard outside, but my first thought was to hold my daughter close and to tell her not to worry. She is extremely sensitive to these type of things and I could see that she was on the verge of having one of her own panicky moments. My next thought was to grab my phone and wonder if I should call someone, but nixed the idea immediately because Sac PD have a tendency to shoot before they think, and the woman wasn’t actually harming anyone. She suddenly stopped shouting and left the space as if nothing had happened. We saw her sleeping on the grass the next day, her belongings next to her. How can a country treat people this way? How can we, as individuals, let this happen? Who knows what this woman is going through, forced to live on the streets, possible voices going through her head constantly, and then also having to face the physical dangers of being a woman alone on the streets. There are so many people like her, victims of a society that refuses to acknowledge that mental health is a real thing, and not a stigma, or something to shove under the carpet. (This one story is part of a much larger issue in this country, one that I have written about before, and am currently writing about again).

I know that what I can do is continue to talk about all of this, whether it be for myself and/or for others. Depression is one of the leading causes of suicide and suicide attempts in the US, and there are approximately 12 people who perform some kind of self-harm with or without suicide intention for every death by suicide. If we don’t shatter the glass every time someone puts a new pane in, these numbers will only continue to climb. My children will never know their grandfathers, and both my partner’s and my father will never get to hold their grandchildren or hug their adult children. But I know for sure that there will be no holding back when we talk about mental health, pain, and trauma in our household.

It took me a long time to learn that there is no shame in sharing the mental load of life with others, and I’m still very much a work in progress. But I have come to the conclusion that the more we share, the more we help ourselves. No one should have to live with pain, trauma, sadness, anger, mental illness, illness, or anything for that matter, alone. It doesn’t matter how we communicate, but it does matter how the message is received and what the receiver does with it. Put the phone down, look into someone’s eyes and ask them sincerely how they are today. Listen to the response, and hold out your hand. It may be a simple gesture, but it’s a gesture in the right direction.

At What Point Will You Start To Give A Shit?

I continue to look for inspiration in every corner, and for the hope that I know exists around me. It’s hard not to look at everything that is happening around us and find that hope, but without it there would be no drive to dig out the crap and plant new seeds.

August 26th, 2018, Women’s Equality Day

Today was one of those days when I felt a pit of despair open up in front of me, while I watched the world fall into it, gasping faces smashing into broken bricks, sawn off branches. We are on the brink of collapse and so many refuse to acknowledge it. I went to a rally this morning, with the kids and my camera as usual, and listened to some inspiring and remarkable women talk about their visions and what they are doing to make our lives better places in general. I listened to the passionate voice of Desiree Rojas, who I find to be one of the most inspiring and intelligent people I have heard speak in a long time (also, look up #BoycottDriscolls for an important campaign to participate in).

I listened to Magali Kincaid, whose family is similar to my own, mixed with young kids, and thought about the hard work she is doing to make sure our collective kids have a proper education without discrimination. And I looked at the crowd, saw faces that I often see at rallies and protests, and wondered why the steps weren’t packed with people listening, resisting, speaking up. Why do people turn up for the women’s march en masse but fail to show up for smaller but equally important events? Where are the banners every time the people who are courageously occupying the streets around the ICE building downtown get ticketed and harassed by the police? Why are people not calling out the increasingly violent Sacramento PD scare tactics and hate crimes that are literally happening in their streets and backyards? Is it an inability to believe, or just a purposeful blindness? If you close your eyes you don’t have to get involved kind of deal?

A politician dies and all day long people are praising the good he did, and I have to keep asking myself if this was the same guy I wrote about back in 2011, because I can’t seem to consolidate the two. Have we set the bar so low that nowadays one warmongering politician’s crimes are forgotten because he said a few good things in his later years? I don’t know, maybe people forget too fast. Or maybe I have seen too much to believe that things are going to get better with a few tweets and a couple of marches.

A few days ago my 4 year old daughter came up to me and out of the blue asked me “am I white mama?”, pointing at her skin. I sat down with her and told her that while her skin tone looks white she is half of mummy and half of daddy and therefore a mix of white and brown, of English and indigenous Mexican. I then added that all over the world people of different skin colors lived together, and that we are all different and similar at once. We are all beautiful, we are all human. While I was having this conversation with her it reinforced to me just how harmful the phrases “I don’t see color” or “kids don’t see color” are. I take my kids to political rallies and marches all the time, teaching them to always stand up for their rights and the rights of others, and we talk openly at home about all of the issues this world faces, but I guess I was taken by surprise at just how observant my eldest daughter is. I shouldn’t have been but I was. I assumed we would have to have that conversation after she started school in a few weeks, but I suppose I should have anticipated it earlier. The next day she proudly told me her full name and added “I’m white and brown half of mummy and half of daddy”. Of course I wish we didn’t need to categorize ourselves in terms of race, but unfortunately that’s a thought only white people, including myself, have the luxury to have.

Wednesday September 8th, 2018

Today was the 6 month anniversary of Stephon Clark’s death, shot in the back multiple times by two Sacramento PD officers. Nothing has changed here in Sacramento. Yesterday Sheriff Scott Jones (Mr Neo Nazi) basically asked his supporters to come out and “counter protest” the BLM protest at the convention center. We walked over there with the kids wondering why the sound of two choppers was drowning our voices and why busloads of cops in riot gear were pumping each other up behind the hall. Turns out that they decided to surround the small crowd of protestors as an intimidation tactic. The entire scene felt ominous: the sheriff’s police officers appeared as tormentors, oppressors in front of a peaceful protest. I told Cesar afterwards about how I find the words “they put their bodies on the line” overused in white feminist activism, but how black women are constantly really putting their bodies on the line for all of our rights. Every time the leaders of the BLM Sacramento movement go out into the streets they are risking their lives. We need to do better in supporting them on the ground, I know I need to do much better. One of the women from the local BLM chapter received a death threat yesterday through the sheriff’s supporters. Can you imagine continuing to fight for our collective rights every day even when you know your life is in danger? By the way this is the same sheriff who wanted to keep profiting from federal ICE money. People voted for him again, so it’s obvious where the sentiments of the majority of this city’s inhabitants lie... Sacramento will never be the “most diverse” city they keep trying to pretend it is, and I will never trust Sac PD. They aren’t even capable of enforcing bike traffic violations (it IS illegal to ride bikes on the sidewalk, apparently people here never got that memo), but they are pretty trigger happy when it comes to spraying bullets into the backs of innocent black men and women, and providing ICE with a list of detained immigrants, even if they haven’t been charged with a crime.

A few days ago I was catching up with a very old friend of mine, who is originally from Brasil but now lives in Germany. She told me how anxious she is about the upcoming elections in Brasil, specifically the neo-fascist candidate Bolsonaro, which I readily admitted to not knowing much about (we rectified that during our conversation thankfully). It reminded me of how I felt before the US elections back in 2016, and I surprised myself by still wondering how these people arrive in such powerful positions with the help of their country’s population. It shouldn’t be a surprise, I mean look at what happened here. It scares me for Brazil, a country only beginning to live with democracy, going through steep learning curves. A quote stood out to me in one of the articles my friend sent to me “Bolsonaro visited New York last fall, where he was enthusiastically received by Shannon O’Neil at the Council on Foreign Relations. O’Neil had no qualms about discussing policy with a Brazilian neofascist, but, as John Ackerman noted in an article in The Nation, she was quick to warn of the supposed danger to US interests of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who will soon be sworn in as Mexico’s new president.” The fear of the left is something this country will never get rid of. My despair does not come from an irrational place, there are very real reasons for feeling like giving up sometimes.

But every time I feel on the brink of giving up I read something that shakes me back into place, I watch my children play and ask questions that I know I have to answer truthfully, because while my life hasn’t in any shape or form been easy, I was still born with privileges that they may need to fight for. Because one thing we will never lie about is where we come from, who we are, and what we are fighting for. Changing the world doesn’t mean fighting policies with lesser evil policies and hoping for the best. Changing the world means ripping the institutions from the ground and replacing them with a system that isn’t governed in majority by older white men who think they are entitled to rule over everyone else.

(I don’t even want to get started on Kavanaugh and why people continue to disregard, disbelieve and criminalize women who come forward with their sexual assault and abuse stories. My TMJ has been playing up badly again, and I have been waking up with bad headaches these past few weeks. It suddenly dawned on me, after reading the current president’s disgusting tweet on survivors and their parents (I can’t go back and reread for my own peace of mind and mental health), that it was all too triggering for me. I have never talked to anyone about the full extent of my personal experiences, and most likely never will. And the more stories I read, the more disgusting reactions I see, the more I want to hide in my corner and curl up and disappear. I have overcome too much to let disgusting predators cause more damage to my mental health, but unfortunately, whether I like it or not, they are. I was going to write a whole blog post about it, but that bar that stops me from talking about it also stops me from publishing words about this subject. This is why I am happy I still keep a private journal... Anyway, yet another reason why the rot MUST be dug out, including all areas it has touched, even slightly, and it must be destroyed. There will be no real rebirth unless we have burnt the rotten core of these systems and people to the ground.)

Main sources of inspiration these past few weeks:

I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness - Austin Channing Brown

Reyna Grande’s A Dream Called Home

Michelle Alexander’s new NYT Opinion Column

Heart Berries: A Memoir – Terese Marie Mailhot

Book reviews are on my website right HERE.

Breathe.

My brain is tingling with phrases that bump into each other, colliding, exploding. I write as fast as my fingers can tap, grab ahold of a pen and scribble words on the pad, hoping I will remember what I wrote and why I wrote it. The rational side of my mind tells me to keep the phrases short. Don’t cross the 1,000 word threshold. Put everything in the first paragraph. People only read for the first few seconds and then they skim. But the more dramatic, emotional, sometimes irrational, side wants to ramble. Punctuation is my friend, the adjective my sidekick, we roam hand in hand through a cloud of nouns, falling in love every few steps.

A few months ago I realized just how tired I was of writing for others. Of creating content that is a filler for a website, of puff pieces whose only role is to drive you to a website, a product, a deal. The money is OK when you can get the work, and if it isn’t a ghostwritten piece even better, but, in all honesty it’s terribly boring. I’m picky nowadays, I only take on projects that have my name attached to them, that pay properly, that are somewhat interesting, but still I am restless. I can write 2,000 words in one go on my phone while nursing a child, but for an 800 word puff piece I spend hours hovering over one word. I’m just tired of writing things for other people and watching my own work slip into oblivion.

Which is why I am also tired of seeing exact phrases I have written or said to someone reappearing in their work without being quoted. To be honest I doubt people even realize that they do it, although the paraphrase should be your friend if you are going to lift other people’s work... I finished my thesis nearly 20 years ago but the fear of plagiarism still worries me, I always double check my own work before I publish, even though I know full well it is mine. Sometimes I feel like people are not so worried about plagiarism anymore though. Words, photos, ideas, all ripped from someone else, copyrights removed, new names stamped on them. We put it out there for others to read or see, with the hope of touching another human being, making them feel something, but at the same time are we also putting it out there for public use? Is it my own fault for being kind and nowhere near ruthless enough? I don’t think that should be considered a fault or a downfall, and I am certainly not going to change that about myself.

I have therefore been taking some time this summer to renew my faith in myself, left a little unstable by multiple online and offline distractions, little children who need my attention, and a constant clash of anxiety and determination fueled by the state of this world, and the world that my children will be living in. Stepping away from social media (apart from Twitter which I’m not very good at anyway), has carved away some of the anxiety and the blurry landscapes, and I have been delving into projects that have been waiting months, or even years, for me to touch and complete. I have been walking miles and miles every day with my three children, looking for art, for smiles, and learning moments for us all. We have been discovering other parts of the city together, and I have fallen back in love with my photography. I have been reading and writing, playing and laughing, and in general feel like I have a better overview of what I want to do with my work and my talents nowadays. First of all I am unique. Second of all, I am not a marketable entity and the idea of marketing myself, even after all these years, makes me feel like an absolute fraud.

My blog views have taken a nosedive since I stopped sharing on social media, but that is what it is. I refuse to let social media rule my life and my work. My writing speaks for itself. I doubt I will enable my Facebook profile again, but I will post on Instagram as it’s a great place to keep up to date on new book releases, and share what I have been reading too. I’m working on a new, much longer, collection of poetry, on a collection of autobiographical and semi-autobiographical short stories, and also on having the content I love writing published rather than the puff pieces that people want to see written. If people can’t read more than 1,000 words anymore, and they click through after the first paragraph, that’s their prerogative. I don’t write for those people. I write for me. I write to make a change. I write to make myself heard amongst the riot of voices surrounding us all. I write for you, if you have made it this far, and I write for my partner and my children.

I shall finish this now because I let myself get distracted by the new Interpol album and the book I am currently reading (Beneath The Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengiste). Both are brilliant, and inspiring. The quote at the beginning comes from a journal I started in 2011 right after I quit a job I hated and was at a crossroads in my life. It can also be found in Home, my first poetry collection. And it still holds today. It’s so important to live, and to also do what we can to be the real change in this world. There is so much more to all of this than just us.

5 Years

I’ve been thinking about this day for a few weeks now… Do I celebrate it? Is it really an accomplishment? In the grand scheme of things is it really that important? I do this a lot, grind things down in my head until they are just a speck on my path, barely noticeable, one hop and they are behind me without a trace of recognition. But today I listen to those voices who know me through and through, those who have known me sober and drunk, those who have listened to me ramble on in the late hours of the night, and those who have reached out to me in the early hours of the morning. I will listen to those who have stuck by me, and who I have stuck by over the years, despite everything. Because their voices are the ones that are telling me that this is something to celebrate.

I’ve been completely sober for 5 years now. Five years and one day ago I was doing shots of Herradura Reposado after my shift at the restaurant. It’s quite fitting that my last drinks were tequila and Heineken in a Mexican club in Queens, rather than my usual Guinness and Powers in one of my regular Irish pubs… I won’t ever forget that day, or that night. It was a wonderful night.

I wrote the below a few months ago for another site, but it ended up not being used (which in hindsight is perfect, for many reasons). So I have edited it a little and am using it for my 5 years of sobriety celebration post. I am very much aware that during these past 5 years I have been pregnant three times, and breastfeeding, and that the next 5 years will be more telling when it comes to my sobriety, but 5 years is 5 years. (David Bowie just started singing in my head). I’m going to celebrate my own strength, because some days it takes a lot of it. Other days it’s easy. Sometimes I feel like I have had many lives, all connected together by a rope that was handed to me before I was born. That rope is threaded with hope, determination, and a lot of luck. I’m going to celebrate life, love, and happiness, and I’m going to celebrate a life that has never stopped being amazing, even when it wasn’t.

~~

I was a walking paradox through my late teens and well into my 30’s. It was either abstinence or a full on 23-hour month-long party, the last hour of each day left for sleeping and sobering up before going at it again. I could go a year without drinking and then BAM, there came a 6 month binge. Life is always fun when you happen to be the life of the party, but it wears thin after a while. Some people have this innate ability to jump in and out of partying and maintain a healthy lifestyle (physically and mentally), but I’ve always been all in or all out. With alcohol and all that it entails.

I used to blame everything and everyone but myself. It was a cop out really... My childhood was messy. Well kind of. I never went hungry to school or had to run from machete-wielding murderers (this is what I do, I normalize stuff: whatever happened to me I internalized and normalized it). But in a nutshell I had a father who was an addict and who killed himself when I was 10, and a stepfather who was an alcoholic. And a ton of other stuff behind all that that I’m only just allowing myself to start processing correctly. Basically I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t keeping some kind of feeling or thought hidden away, or conditioning myself to hide my feelings and put on my game face. I used to blame my love of alcohol on the lack of stable, responsible and healthy father figures, and the normalization of booze and drugs from an early age. I used to blame my fear of a proper relationship on the fact that I had never seen one while growing up, well not a healthy one anyway. And sometimes I would even let myself believe that I was somehow predestined to be an alcoholic, because that’s just what we did. We use something to level the ground over everything else.

But after a while blaming everything but yourself gets old. I had to learn to let go and put it all behind me, all of that booze-soaked guilt and blame. I may have felt like I needed alcohol to navigate all of the areas of my life, but I had to teach myself that I didn’t.

I was a very shy child, plagued with a lot of anxiety and lack of confidence. Of course not everything was bad, I have some good memories, but a lot of them involved being hidden away with a book, hiding away somewhere, or just being away from home. Somehow once I was able to get my mother and stepfather to agree to letting me go on a school trip to Prague: I bawled my eyes out when I came home as I didn’t want to leave the cocoon of that trip. It was one of the first times that I felt like I belonged anywhere as me, and that I could be myself. I always felt I had to play some kind of role. I was very good at hiding all of my anxiety and worries though, I learnt to carry the weight on my shoulders. I still do. It’s hard to let go. Alcohol was a great way to lift the weight for a while (until it all inevitably fell right back down with a wallop).

I was born in England, lived in the Netherlands for a bit, but ultimately grew up in France. I come from a very much working class family, but my mother is a bit of a technical genius, and worked her backside off to give us a better life than we may have had if we had stayed in England. She moved to California in 2000, but I didn’t because US immigration is a very long and heartbreaking process, and, anyway, I was happy with my life at the time. I stayed in France, partied my way through Israel for a year, and then London for another, and randomly secured a job in NYC in 2005 with a temporary visa.

I’ve never gone out looking for the party. I just walk into it. I meet people who are into the same things as I am and connect with them and that’s it. NYC was a haven for people like me, and we grew, and wilted, together, rose together, and pulled each other down. It was OK when I was single, the only person I had to be accountable for was me. No one bothered me when I went out drinking for 3 days straight, and no one bothered me when I went sober for 3 years. I learnt how to function drunk, but I also learnt to live without alcohol, until the next stumble. Working as a bartender was amazing, sober and not sober, and I lead a pretty wonderful, although not always sustainable, life. Too many stories, many pretty incredible, others dark, others just ridiculous. But it was often good. And then sometimes really bad. Depression and alcohol rarely mix well. When I was depressed I would black out and never know how I made it home. Life of the party, not so much, more like the dying party of my brain cells. But it wasn’t always bad, or always good; it was my life, and all in all I was happy most of the time. I do have a few regrets: I used alcohol as an excuse for not working harder at my writing career, and for not being more honest with my feelings for others at times. It’s easy to pretend you aren’t good enough for something when you are too hungover to care.

I’d never been pregnant before, not that I know of anyway. And then suddenly it happened. Aged 35, living the rock n roll lifestyle, bartender, restaurant manager, party person... I knew I was pregnant as soon as I missed my period. And I knew right then that the party had to end. I went sober at 5 weeks pregnant, cold turkey, gave my cigarettes to the homeless guy across the street from work, and I’ve been sober ever since. Five years, longer than I’ve ever been sober before, and I know that I can never even entertain the idea of a drink again. My children will never know drunk Jade – I bet when they grow up they will look at me and roll their eyes when I tell them some of my stories. I know that most places tell you to never say never, but I have to tell myself this, or otherwise I will create loopholes for myself. I can’t let there be a loophole between me and a bottle of Powers.

People often don’t understand it though. When you say you don’t drink you see the raised eyebrows, the thoughts behind people’s eyes. You can hear them wondering “is she some kind of health-addict? An alcoholic drug addict? One of those sanctimoms?”. “A glass of wine at home won’t hurt you though, right?” “Like you never drink, ever?! How do you do it??”. “Can I drink in front of her now?? Is my glass of champagne going to cause a relapse??”

I don’t explain why I don’t drink – I don’t feel like I have to. No, I’m not going to watch you drink your wine and then start downing shots of whiskey like there is no tomorrow. I go to bars. My partner drinks (although not that much anymore), and while I have to calm my controlling tendencies, it doesn’t make me want to join in. Sobriety is easy most days, hard some days, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss that tingling sensation that happens when you are a few drinks in. But I never stop at that tingling sensation. I go for the full up until 6am rearranging the world lock-in central mode. And for my own mental health, for my kids, and for my partner’s well-being, that isn’t an option.

But if someone asks me about my sobriety because they are worried about their own drinking, or out of concern, or just because they would like advice, or because they feel isolated because they don’t drink either, I have no problem talking about it. My journey is my own, but if I can help someone else while I am traveling along it, then I feel like I am doing something good with the second chance life threw at me. 

I’m still anxious. I still sometimes look longingly at the whiskey on the shelf at the back of the bar. I still remember the fun times but also the awful times. And I will also be very honest when my kids when the time comes, about how I was exposed to alcohol, and also what my relationship with alcohol is like. I want them to grow up understanding the differences between healthy and unhealthy relationships, with people and everything else (food, booze, drugs, clothes, money etc.). And in the meantime I’m still over here navigating my own ups and downs in the healthiest ways I can think of: writing, reading, and listening to music. I admitted to having a drinking problem to myself a long time ago, it just took a life change to give me the incentive to quit for good.

Maybe one day when I’m 90 I will sit back and have a few shots and a packet of cigarettes. Until then I hope that I can keep myself on the straight and narrow. In the 5 years that I have been sober I have been pregnant 3 times, and constantly breastfeeding. Now I need to see how I do the next 5 years sober without those barriers… But I am now at a point in my life where I believe in myself, in my strengths and in my weaknesses, and I believe that I will be OK. I will be more than OK.

Your Visa Is Denied

I went to Niagara Falls once. I actually saw those amazing waterfalls from the Canadian side: water crashing down the side of a mountain, the spray more a steam, soaking you, like heavy condensation. And the noise! I wonder if that noise just becomes part of the background after a while.

We drove up to Canada in early June 2006, it must have been June 1st as my TN visa expired on the 3rd. 12 years later and June 3rd is still engraved in my memory, an anniversary laced with dread. We stayed at a hotel near the Hard Rock Cafe, having driven up from New York City in the company BMW, loaned to us for the occasion.

We hit a storm about halfway into the 6 hour trip. We had been speeding down the highway, making great time on the empty roads when the rain came down. Vertical sheets of water struck us from all sides, the type of summer storm that comes in with a bang, and leaves as suddenly as it arrives, blue skies in its wake. My friend and manager, who was driving, navigated it like a pro race driver, only the whitened knuckles gripping the steering wheel blew his cover. We still made it to Buffalo in good time despite the Pennsylvania storm hiccup.

We had a laugh, and we saw Niagara Falls. It was an adventure. I just wish I had been able to appreciate it rather than stress out about whether my visa would be renewed the next day or not. Too many experiences marred by an overhead, looming anxiety for something I had no control over. I have to search deep into my memory for the sound of crashing water and the mist rising from everywhere, coating everything is a glistening humidity. But I don’t need anything to remind me of that ball of angst that had taken up residency in my stomach, because it’s still there, it will always be there as long as I live in this country.

The next morning we drove up to border control. I handed my papers over: passport and visa, diplomas and work papers, and the border patrol official sent me to the office and denied my visa. Just like that. I didn’t have an evaluation of my French university diploma in English, not from an INS-certified university in any case. Funnily enough no one had asked for this the year before when I arrived in NYC from the UK. The visa had been issued without that piece of all-important paperwork then. But that was a moot point, I was told that the NYC had made a mistake and that I would not be granted a new visa unless I provided this evaluation.

Denial.

They let me back into the US as there were still two days left on my visa. We decided to move forward, as we were already at the border, found a Kinko’s that had an internet café section, and evaluated the situation. Remember, this was 2006, and we didn’t have smartphones, and it was a Sunday. We had really thought that we could just get this done over the weekend without missing any time at work. I can’t believe how naïve I was. We looked up the best place to get the evaluation done in the nearby vicinity (Toronto University was our only choice), and after a few phone calls I purchased an $800 flight from Rochester NY to Toronto (literally an across the border hop), booked a hotel room, and printed out a map of where I needed to go the next day to get that important piece of paper. And then I was on my own.

I was so lucky I had recently been approved a line of credit, because if I hadn’t had that extra cash there is no way in the world that I would have been able to afford any of that. My yearly salary was $34,000, and I lived in NYC. I was lucky to have a few dollars left at the end of the month, let alone $800 to fork out on a 30 minute flight.

Coming into Canada was a breath of fresh air, the passport control manned by smiling individuals who said “welcome home”. Maybe I should have just stayed in Toronto. I remember it as colorful, warm, like a smaller version of NYC.

I ate at the hotel restaurant, alone, too nervous to read or write, longing for a drink, but replacing it with a packet of cigarettes instead. I needed to keep a clear head. I had an early night, stomach in my heart. In the morning I took a bus to the university, and paid $320 to fast track my evaluation, begging them to do it within a few hours rather than a day or two. There was no guarantee I was going to make my flight back to the US later that day, no guarantee they would be able to find the time to do it.

I drank coffee in a little cafe, en terrasse, unable to enjoy my second time in Canada in two days, a country of which I am a citizen thanks to my father, but have to this day only visited three times. That day luck was on my side as I received a phone call a few hours later, picked up my evaluation, and headed back to the airport with my heart pounding in my chest.

When you fly to the US from Canada border control is in the airport before you board the airplane. I was practically waved through, new visa in hand, although the weekend had cost me well over a thousand dollars... My manager and friend, the one who had accompanied me initially, fought for me with the company and managed to get them to reimburse half of the flight but they honestly should have paid for the whole thing. The visa I was on was a TN visa, a temporary visa available to Canadians and Mexicans who do jobs that an American can’t. So for example, as someone who speaks multiple languages fluently my company could have written up a really good job description of why I was providing necessary work that someone else couldn’t do. But no, instead they had my job title down as something they deemed to be technical work only I could perform. A job title that had nothing to do with what I actually did do. Luckily for me no one asked me about my job that time, they just stamped the visa and let me through. My visa was denied the day before, and on the following day I was waved through, safe for another year… Nothing really made any sense at that point, but it didn’t really matter.

Being on a TN visa at that time required that I leave and come back once a year to renew my visa. The company I worked for hired many non US citizens, which is pretty normal for that industry. This meant that they had a set quota of H1B visas a year that they could request and if they could get away with another type of visa that’s what they did. With my Canadian citizenship and the fact that my mother was already sponsoring me for a green card some person in HR assumed a TN would be fine. I don’t blame the immigration officials for what happened that time around, they were only doing their job. I do blame my company for not providing me with the correct tools to renew my visa correctly. If you hire someone from abroad you do your best to ensure they can renew their visa properly. We aren’t talking about a small agency here either. I still remember the nightmares I had for years running up to June 3rd, wondering if I would have to stay in Canada and work from the Toronto office, have my best friends pack up my apartment, break my lease, look after my cat...

When your visa is temporary so is your life. How can you contemplate things like marriage and children when you don’t even know if you will be allowed back to your now home in a few months? How does it feel when the company you have been working 12-18 hour days for turns its back on you because they can’t be bothered to deal with something like getting you a more permanent immigration solution? You manage million dollar accounts but they can’t even foot an $800 flight bill? It’s funny because at the time I was annoyed, frustrated, and upset, but I just assumed that this is how it had to be. I was lucky to be in the US, lucky to finally be able to live in the same country as my immediate family. With hindsight I can see just how messed up it was. If a large corporation can’t navigate the immigration process correctly, then how can you expect the everyday individual to do so?

The following year I bought my own return ticket to Toronto, making sure I did it a few days before June 3rd, just in case. I stayed in a hotel by the airport, worked in my room on the Monday and went back to catch my flight on the Tuesday.

There was no waving through this time. The official sat me down in his office and left me for 30 minutes, and came back and sat there, staring at my documents and then at me. He had me explain in detail what type of technical manuals I wrote and asked me to provide technical words that he wouldn’t know. My brain felt like it had melted, zapped by anxiety, and I bumbled my way through a lame example involving a how to install a toilet manual. Even now I cringe when I remember, feeling 1 foot high beneath the gaze of this man, lying through my teeth, knowing that my luck had most likely run out. It hadn’t, I was finally let through to board my flight back home. On my third renewal I was told I needed to start thinking of a more permanent status, and by that point my nerves were frayed anyway. I couldn’t do it anymore. Miraculously my company had decided to file for an H1B as I suppose I had finally proven my worth, but the following year the TN specifications changed anyway, it became a 3 year visa and was renewed by the company attorney with USCIS without me having to leave the country.

When I finally left the job in 2011, completely burnt out, it also meant that I no longer had the right to be in the country. Six years on and I was still just temporary. I stayed because I didn’t want to leave, but at this point I wasn’t even temporary anymore, I was residing in the country without legal paperwork. By that point I didn’t even care anymore, my green card application seemed to still be years off and it just felt easier to blend into the shadows and live my life that way.

The more I write about immigration, the more I remember events that I let myself pass away as “normal” or “just part of the process”, when they shouldn’t have been. I have started keeping tally of certain numbers as I remember them. There may of course be moments that I have forgotten over the years too.

• Visas denied: 2 (one tourist visa on the grounds that I had too many ties – family – in the US, and one TN)
• Times I have been told I would be deported by officials: 4
• Amount of money spent dealing with immigration processes: thousands, both for me and for my mother
• Times I have been told I am banned from re-entry for a year: 1
• Amount of tax paid in the US: thousands and thousands of dollars (including the time when I didn’t have a visa or green card)
• Times I have been yelled at by officials until I cried: 5 (that I vividly remember, it could be more)
• Times I have been sent for secondary interrogation on entering the country: more than 20
• Times I have been threatened with the immigration judge: 2

It drives me mad when people sit around talking about the “right” and the “wrong” way to do things. There are no “right” or “wrong” ways when it comes to dealing with the US immigration system. The company I worked for had no issues fudging the truth to avoid having to do the paperwork for a more permanent working visa for me, the system was broken a long time ago, and it’s just getting worse and worse today. I suppose I could have paid someone to marry me, or married a friend, like so many other Europeans I know have done, but I was so afraid of adding even more attention to my immigration case and being denied. And if I married I lost my mother's sponsorship too. I was stuck.

While this administration and the media focus their attention and rabid rage on the poor, the refugee, the asylum seeker, and the person who is simply looking for a better life, instead of focusing on real immigration reform that everyone will benefit from, the system will remain completely broken. There ARE ways of fixing it, but it’s clear that those in power have no intention of actually doing that.

More of my Immigration Stories can be found here.

Talk To Each Other

Our son, Ludo, is named after Chef Ludo Lefebvre, someone my partner and I find super inspiring, refreshing, and absolutely hilarious. We would never have discovered Chef Ludo without Anthony Bourdain. Watching them together on The Taste was something that we looked forward to every week, especially after our first child was born and my partner was working 80 plus hours a week as a line cook while I was at home with the baby, learning how to consolidate my old life with my new one. Ludo and Tony, these were people who had been to the bottom of the barrel and back, who had been inspired to push on and be someone they wanted to be. It’s funny because people automatically assume that I chose our son’s name as I am the one who was brought up in France but it was actually my partner’s choice.

I have to stop falling asleep reading books on my phone. I did it again on Thursday night, waking up around 5am uncomfortably aware that my phone was wedged between me and my 11 month old. As I automatically went to look at it one of the notifications on the screen caught my eye: Anthony Bourdain has died, committed suicide. After that the battery on my phone died and I fell back to sleep, a sleep that was full of dreams of Anthony Bourdain on stage in what seemed to be Sin-é, of me being trapped in a basement searching for my children, my significant other having also disappeared. They were anything but restful, peaceful dreams. All day Friday I would stop in my tracks as waves of sadness crashed over me. Another one gone.

I’ve recently found myself talking about how I used to hesitate to talk about suicide, abuse, addiction, and mental illness. Not because I was embarrassed about having been witness to all of this from an early age, but because I didn’t want to see the pity in other people’s faces. I would dread the question of “where is your father?” followed by the embarrassed “I’m sorry... How did he die?” whenever I would meet someone new. Sometimes I would divert the question, sometimes I would say “drugs”, sometimes I would whisper “uh I’d rather not talk about it”. But I couldn’t often bring myself to say “he took his own life”. Concern often translates as pity and I still can’t stand being pitied.

Nowadays I tell the truth. My children will never know either of their grandfathers because they both took their own lives many years ago. And no suicide helpline or medication would have helped them: they had made their decision and went through with it. I’ve talked about this before, and will continue to talk about it as often as needed: suicide causes approximately 800,000 deaths a year worldwide, and it’s still surrounded by major stigma.

Every time a celebrity takes their own life I see people asking “why?”; I see others blaming their loved ones for not being there, I see people saying that there is always a new day or some other cliché along those lines. Reach out to someone, they will help you! Of course not everyone who suffers from mental illness commits suicide, and not every suicide is the direct cause of mental illness, but in any situation suicide is usually the last resort in a long road of resorts.

A while back when I went to AA and NA for a while, someone I met there would text me every day to ask me how I was doing. It surprised me and lifted my spirits, and gave me that extra boost to get through another day without resorting to the bottle. Actually setting foot into a meeting room was a huge step for me, but I wasn’t ready to talk about anything right then. That daily check in helped me immensely. They really cared, and they didn’t even know much about me! It also made me realize that I did that a lot with my friends, the genuine check in, and how important it was. It also suddenly dawned on me that people counted on me to be there for them, but I couldn’t always count on a lot of people to be there for me unless I explicitly asked them to be. Over the years I have become more selfish, isolating myself a lot more, maybe too much. I know that I don’t reach out to my friends as much as I should anymore, especially as I now live so far away from everyone, although I do think of them all frequently. It’s something I need to make more of an effort with again. But nowadays I also know who will be there for me too.

All that to say that sometimes the effort of reaching out to ask for help is too much to do. Sometimes the despair is so grand that we don’t know which way to go to reach the exit. Sometimes we do not want anyone to try to change our minds. And sometimes we talk openly about what’s going on and hope that someone will notice what we were doing. And often that is misconstrued, viewed as someone being too “open”, saying “too much”. So basically reaching out and asking for help is not an easy task, and often when people try it’s ignored or just not even noticed.

What I am basically trying to say is that we need to accept that suicide is a real issue and that anyone can or may choose to end their lives at any time. That doesn’t mean that we need to accept that suicide is inevitable. But we can’t expect people who are already suffering to do the extra legwork to tell US that they need help. We can’t expect that throwing out a few phrases like “we are here if you need us” and “call me if you want to chat” people who actually need help will see them and respond. It’s just not that simple.

We can however look beneath the thin exteriors and be aware of what may be happening underneath them. Is a friend drinking too much? Or has a friend disappeared, and you rarely hear from them anymore? Is someone often angry for no apparent reason or withdrawn? Is a family member working themselves into a hole, or no longer interested in anything they used to be interested in? It doesn’t hurt to grab their hands, look into their eyes and just ask them if they are OK. I know there are many times in my life if someone had done that I would have broken down immediately and admitted that I was heading towards rock bottom. But we often shy away from doing that, afraid of being wrong and making a fool out of ourselves, afraid of embarrassment, of making a mistake. Sometimes we create boxes around ourselves, and become afraid of entering someone else’s box, overstepping our own boundaries. But if your gut tells you something isn’t right, what do you have to lose reaching out and saying “hey I’m worried about you?”

Let’s keep talking about this altogether. For every person who commits suicide 20-25 more attempt it. Talk about it with family, with friends, talk about it openly. Teach kids that all emotions are valid and to never feel they have to hide their feelings. Talk about happiness and sadness and how emotions can get all mixed up. Let people speak, even if they have to take their time to find the words. Read between the lines. Hug people hard, hold hands, tell people how you feel about them, and let them know you care. If we all stop for a minute and reach out maybe we can all make a difference in someone else’s life.

I may not have been able to save my father, and people like Chris Cornell and Anthony Bourdain had probably already made up their minds a long time ago, but just a caring word and a strong hand in a time of need may be a real lifeline to someone.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the insanely high numbers of people who are living on the streets in the US, and how these numbers are only increasing. These people are at a huge risk for attempting suicide, but fall through the cracks all of the time. We need to talk about these people when we talk about suicide, just as much as we talk about celebrities.

Places to contact for more information and help:

Samaritans (UK)

Samaritans (US)

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

The Path is Never Clear

Memorial Day weekend used to be tied to the warm Rockaways sand, a sense of full freedom, nights walking the warm streets of Manhattan, serving drinks to rowdy three-day holiday party people, dancing to Pulp on the rooftop. I wish I could put my feet in the sand right now, and listen to the ocean, my children learning to appreciate and love her power as much as I do. One day we will be there again, an ocean or a sea, and this time it will be for good again.

There are days when I feel on top of the world, strong, powerful, capable of creating skyscrapers with my own bare hands. And then, the days where each footstep is wet mud, triple the weight and half the length. I try so hard to keep everything running at least the right way down the road (even if half the time we are swerving from side to side at 100 miles an hour, or creeping along in slow motion, hugging the outer lane). I try so hard that when a crack appears in the road I hop over it with my eyes closed and pull everyone forward. Or I did.

That has always been my technique: move on, keep on moving on. But I think it’s time to take more than one step back, examine the cracks, and trace them back to the fault. A crack may be a voice, a Lou Reed song in the dark, an outfit that looks frumpy. A crack may be a moment of weakness, eyes welling up with tears, an article I happen to read, a mean-spirited comment. It could be anything, my mind rewired in my younger years to see simple actions as threats: a full cup as a cause of fear. A song as a premise to a night of no sleep. The first day of school a punishment. The shopping bags that made my hands hurt, eyes on the next resting place, 20 more steps, keep on moving, you can make it.

It’s funny how some roads remain so strongly imprinted in your memory. They have probably changed dramatically over the years, but in your head you see each step, each corner, every mountain top. Some roads reappear suddenly in other places, where they should be out of place really, but instead blend in. To others they are just a street, a path, but to you the concrete is drowning in words, cascading feelings gushing down towards the overflowing drains.

An image of myself keeps flicking strobe light style in my mind. A hand brushing invisible people aside, the word “bor-ing” hanging from my lips, lit cigarette in the other hand. People still bore me in general, constantly running after something, after someone. Bandwagons aplenty line the street, only to break down, lose a wheel or two miles and miles from their destination. It’s OK, there is always another one to jump on, as long as you don’t mind crushing a few others in the mass race to something shiny, something new.

What happened to us? When did we forget the importance of every minute spent with loved ones? When did we lose the ability to stand still in a summer rain storm and appreciate the intense collision of water falling and heat rising? When did we stop appreciating the view with our eyes, instead searching for the perfect shareable moment, hashtag nofilter, sponsored, I’m so original? Yes, bor-ing. Having shrugged that strange need to share, instead keeping these moments for me and for us, I feel lighter, more days on top of the world, fewer moments of struggle. Instead I actually want to go further down that path, complete anonymity, disappear and reappear on the other side of the world, doing something more important than just waiting. Because waiting for something to change is even more boring than watching people clamber over each other to reach a non-existent summit.

I like to write short stories about the beach, running away, and starting over somewhere else. Some of them are online right here, others are still running around my mind and on the endless papers stacked on my desk. While running away from life in general is not something I entertain nowadays, running away from the race is.