Thoughts travel into my head like luggage toppling into a carousel. I don’t know what strange, underground system of conveyor belts these suitcases come from. But here they are—popping into existence—each one looking like it belongs to me.
And I have a habit of unpacking…well everything.
My family travels a lot. Growing up, I was extraordinarily fortunate to get to visit a number of foreign places. Johannesburg. Nairobi. Venice. Klamath Falls. These opportunities were fundamental in helping me form a conception of, not just the world, but myself.
So as a fledgling, young fifth-grade graduate, we took one of these trips. A flight to London. While Daniel Radcliff was walking the streets of Leicester Square to promote the new Prisoner of Askaban movie, I was taking a jet-lag nap, spinning circles around the London Eye (this particular chance to travel abroad may have been slightly lost on me.)
It didn’t help that the neurons in my prepubescent brain had started wiring themselves into pathways of least resistance that I would follow for years to come.
I was allotted an allowance for this trip. A fixed number of Euros to buy whatever I wanted. What an exciting prospect! The joy quickly faded as I promptly unpacked the shit out of what that meant.
First of all, how do I know what’s worth buying if I haven’t seen all my choices yet? This gift shop has some pretty cool t-shirts, but what if the next gift shop has even better t-shirts. Maybe I’ll hold onto my money, just to be safe. Unless…what if the gift shop tomorrow has worse shirts? Is there even room in my suitcase for more shirts?
While these thoughts ran circles in my brain, we rode circles in the Tube. Cafe to Museum. Museum to Castle. Castle to Tour. Tour to Restaurant. The city flew past in a gray haze, and I was too in my own head to appreciate it. How could I enjoy the current moment, if I accidentally made the wrong choice. All future moments would be ruined, and consequently, I could never be happy again.
The spiral continued on and on. So while the subway commuters ate their ketchup soaked egg sandwiches on their way to Buckingham palace, I had a royal breakdown. Tears. Whining. Maybe if I inflicted my pain on those around me, it wouldn’t hurt as much. Maybe the world would realize the pressure it had been placing on me and readjust accordingly.
It didn’t. And while no one can really blame a grade school boy for throwing a tantrum on the London Underground, the same can’t really be said for a college aged drug addict screaming about shadow people on the Seattle Light Rail. People generally don’t want to watch strangers unpack their dirty laundry in front of them.
So I tried a different route. If these spiraling thoughts only happen when I’m thinking, then logically, I should just stop thinking.
Drugs are great for that.
More generally, the idea was: why not just always choose the path that will make me the happiest in this particular moment? Fuck long term satisfaction, give me that dopamine. If I’m out of heroin, it looks like I’m doing Vicodin. Out of Vicodin? Try Xanax. What if the TSA finds the meth pipe I forgot to take out of my luggage…well, they have drugs in prison, right?
A foolproof plan, if only I didn’t underestimate how much of a fool I could be.
I traded one spiral for another. Years of abuse sent me on long, strange trips further and further away from reality. The world slipped away. Eventually, I found myself at a major crossroad (specifically the intersection of NE 45th and University Way.) No money. No home. The only option I had left at my disposal, the only thing I could do to make myself happy at that moment, was to go to rehab.
Not because I wanted to get clean. Definitely not.
I just wanted somewhere safe to sleep.
Fortunately, the treatment center I ended up at tricked me into staying longer. An entire year. Unfortunately, I now had to figure out how to make really hard life choices without the aid of drugs. Square one. A fifth grader’s mind in a twenty-something year old’s body. All this baggage that had been on layaway was now tumbling down and piling up along the carousel of my head.
Now what?
I knew the answer. I think I always did to some extent. It may have been too simple to believe at the time: I could just…let these things go.
Most of these thoughts, they weren’t mine. I wasn’t responsible for getting them off the conveyor belt. How could I be expected to unpack all that, all the time? How did I ever believe I could control my future by carefully analyzing every single choice as it presented itself to me. I’m not psychic, and I’m not good at combinatorics. I’m human.
Back in London, after my first existential crisis on that subway, I found the perfect thing to spend my money on. Not a T-Shirt. Not a Union Jack key chain. No. I bought a severed arm.
Plastic, just to be clear. A gag gift from some haunted history attraction (presumably commemorating all the limbs lost to the Black Plague.) Maybe there was a cooler gift to be had at the next gift shop, but at that point, does it matter? I owned a severed arm, and I was going to make the best of it…
This is not to say I’m a master of my thoughts. I’m not. Not even close. But I have learned that I don’t have to try and control everything to be happy all the time. It’s okay not to be perfect. Because, if I were somewhat of something even approaching perfect, there would be so many missed opportunities. So many paths I’d never get to travel down. So many sights I wouldn’t get to see.
Life’s a trip, pack light and enjoy.
That was great.
My last halloween costume was a trench coat, sketchy sunglasses, plastic gun, toilet roll dynamite stick, and a ridiculous bomb worthy of Spy Vs. Spy.
I got a lot of laughs.
This was years before 2001 of course.
Love, love, love this new style of writing.
We must learn how to metaphorically pack/unpack several times throughout our lives (depending upon what phase of life we’re in). It’s okay to learn as you go.
One of the most common reasons people came to see me as a therapist? Anxiety. Most common cause of their anxiety? Feeling out of control. Once we learn/adjust/understand what is and isn’t in our control, everything changes.
That severed arm, though. 😉