Problems in the Year of the Rat
I feel sad, not depressed, if one can appreciate the difference. Depression is being sad about nothing. In fact, it is an inability to feel anything, including sadness. It took me almost a year to stop feeling like that. But in the year after that depression, I continued to focus on stabilizing my life, not rocking the boat. This kept me in a holding pattern wherein I adopted some unhealthy coping strategies. Even though I was no longer technically depressed in 2007, I started a daily marijuana habit that for the most part has ruined the magic of smoking that drug and eroded some of my personality and cognition. I put myself $25,000 or $30,000 dollars in debt in six months (“Disgusting! The audacity!” as Derek, practically seething, put it on the night of my birthday), a loan which John gave me money for, and which nobody but our therapists and we knew about. Now that John and I are doing a “trial separation,” we recognize the need to transfer that loan elsewhere. There is no one better than my dad to assume the loan, but unfortunately it couldn’t be a worse time to ask him to help. On several occasions leading up to this Kauai vacation, my dad has complained to me about the high costs of the trip and reneged or “forgotten” some of the generous details of his original offer: to take me, Derek and our significant others to this beautiful place and host us and our friends at Ellen’s home. He let me know that it is a difficult time for him financially. (Why didn’t this come up sooner, say when I was planning this audacious trip?) In any case, I am extremely reluctant and broken-hearted to discuss this loan with him. I will have to reveal my irresponsibility, my pathetic, insatiable need for retail therapy which was the worst self-sabotage I could have ever laid out for myself in a time when I should have been thinking about positive recovery. Now I am stuck in my life like every other fucking idiot with massive amounts of credit card debt: in indentured servitude working at a job that I have finally admitted to myself and others I HATE, that is no longer “cool”, that is killing me, that I believe almost killed me in 2005 and prolonged my breakdown at least as much as Dr. Inan’s svengali-style polypharmy did. Yes, the most painful yet clear realization I have made in Hawaii that is I need to leave this job. But I guarantee everyone who matters to me, whose support I need most, won’t let me leave this job. My parents will cite the bad timing, my rationality and what about the additional money that a big upheaval will entail. They will assure me that if I just stick it out a little longer, if I figure out a way to stop spending money I don’t have to make myself happy, and stay an indentured servant at Playboy for the who knows how many years it will take to pay off my sin, it will be so much more rewarding than quitting, moving to San Francisco, whatever (all immature, impractical and ill-conceived plans that won’t necessarily result in Success, Independence, and Calvinistic Productivity, which I’ve noticed are the three cardinal virtues in this family). What about the way a change of scene can give new perspective, calm and rejuvenate? People have opined that it was stupid for Lizzy to move to Hawaii to get away from things that were bringing her down in Chicago. What’s so wrong with that? What is the point of success and independence if you aren’t happy? I guess I was supposed to have had the foresight to stay “happy enough” at Playboy to muster the temerity and drive to leapfrog to something else. Instead, I bought West Elm furniture and three pounds of weed. Given all that fuck-up, I’m not even sure I can let myself leave this job. But I know the Monday I get back, when I am supposed to be at my desk 9-5:30, which Aaron pretty much said I have to do for appearance’s sake and if I want to keep my job, I’m going to feel not unlike how Hef said he felt the day he married his first wife: that life, for all intents and purposes, was over.