Inglorious Emotions - July 22nd, 2021
It’s like my perfectionism has faded and been replaced, entirely, by the malaise of confusion.
We have decided to establish a scholarship in my dad’s memory for OSU College of Education students. In lieu of flowers, please consider a gift to my dad’s scholarship fund. Gifts can be made to the OSU Foundation at osufoundation.org or mailed to OSU Foundation, 4238 SW Research Way, Corvallis, OR 97333. Please indicate that the gift is in memory of Mike O'Malley.
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I feel guilty about how many people want to help. Because I don’t think I know what it would look like for that to happen. I think when people tell me they want to help me, it means they want to be there to make me laugh, they want to be there to hug me when I start crying, they want me to collapse into them in sadness and grief — to be overwhelmed by all that I’m feeling, and for that overwhelmedness to manifest in a limpness that they can provide solidity for.
That’s a beautiful thing — and it’s been central to my ability to get out of bed for the past three weeks. People are gentle, they are kind, they are eager to pat me on the back or give me a hug or let me cry with my head on their shoulder. (Not that I’ve done this last one, but I’m sure every single person reading this would let me do that. Thanks for that.)
For the people who’ve spent time with me these past three weeks, I think there’s some confusion. They read what I write, they see glimpses of the ferocity of my emotions, but for the most part, I think I seem pretty normal. Not normal, but perhaps a bit different than the dude in these essays who is in shambles. I still do things they’ve seen me do before: I still laugh, I still work out, I still play pool, I still make jokes.
But there is another thing beneath all of that. Or maybe next to all of that. It’s something that is glorified for men, and fetishized when we talk about the way that someone like me is supposed to handle grief.
“You’re going to be angry.”
Yes.
“You’re going to be really angry!”
Yes.
“And it’s important that you let that anger out.”
Not necessarily.
It’s like there's a ten-foot-long rat gnawing on a cage inside my chest. And it’s better that it eats at me, and that I let it eat in the gym or on these pages than if I let it out of its cage fully.
People want to be helpful until they see how scary things are. I know that.
Rage is cool when we see it manifest in the ways we’re accustomed to. But once it’s out of its cage, it’s difficult to control. I lash out at people I love, I lash out at myself. And if it’s unleashed — if I really “feel that feeling” — I know that destruction will ensue. And I know that no one who sees it will say, cheerily, “I’m helping Emmett!”
For as long as I’ve played sports, I’ve reveled in them as an outlet for a (mostly) appropriate degree of rage. The other day while playing basketball, in an effort to be normal, I tried being that person I’ve so long been — the sort of dude who says “Get your head out of your ass!” when someone throws the ball out of bounds.
So I did exactly that. And, as has long been the case, the dude who I yelled at shot back with something like, “Oh chill out, man. What’s your problem? It’s just pick-up!” (For those people not in-the-know, there’s really not a more annoying thing you can say when you voluntarily show up to a competitive environment where everyone is sweating and playing hard, but that’s sort of beyond the point. It’s also of-note that no one who’s good at basketball has ever said “it’s just pick-up!” after throwing the ball out of bounds.)
Typically, this sort of interaction would prompt me to say something like, “Damn, bro. How are you going to be trash and a dumbass?” (I’m aware that I’m probably not coming across super well here, but that’s probably not unique to this anecdote.)
But this time, I felt rage starting in my chest moving down my arms and realized I was another comment away from blacking out with anger. So I just didn’t say anything back. The stakes were so clearly different than they have been in the past — the muted and manageable anger I’ve long used to push me through things turned boiling hot. There was no middle-ground, no moderation — I was either going to be silent or let loose some uncontrolled violence. I don’t know what I’m capable of doing right now, and I’m scared of finding out.
What a melodramatic thing to write down and re-read.
“Depression is anger turned inwards,” my dad used to often say. But where else is there to turn that anger? It is not something that should be expelled onto others, and it is not something — when it is this pointed — that can be released. I flipped out the other day and was told maybe it was “good to get it out.” But nothing got out — it was just visible for a few minutes. And then it hunkered back into its cage.
I think my prevailing experience with anger at the moment is that it’s confusing. It gets directed in surprising places, and for surprising (and often entirely opaque) reasons. I’ll see an old couple and start squeezing my opposite bicep. I’ll sit down at a table at a restaurant that I’d been to with my dad and mash my teeth. I’ll see someone my dad didn't like and my shoulders will shiver.
I get angry thinking about the fact that this is my one life. I get angry thinking about the things I didn’t do the past few years. I get angry thinking about the way I spent my time. I get angry at my dad for not taking better care of himself. I get angry at the person taking too long to scan their items at the grocery store.
I get angry thinking about the kids I hope to have that won’t meet my dad. I get angry when the microwave beeps. I get angry about the way mass death is treated as political calculus. I get angry when someone sits at a green light for a split-second too long. I get angry when people who didn’t know my dad try talking about him. I get angry when I’m brushing my teeth and I can’t brush them hard enough.
I get angry when people try to give me answers to the questions I’m asking. Isn’t that stupid? (Don’t answer that.)
I really wanted to write a good essay about my rage. That’s what this was supposed to be. But the last couple of days make up the most intense spell of exhaustion I’ve ever experienced. And trying to describe the rage that explodes from within me even though I feel like a vegetable most of the day is a deeply frustrating endeavor. (“How am I supposed to tell people that I punch things as hard as I can randomly throughout the day, but also that I’m currently trying to write this essay from the floor of the living room that I can’t get off of?”)
—
I’ve been reading more the past day+: A Year of Magical Thinking (Didion) and a friend’s thesis on losing her dad. Both were great, both put words to ideas that I know have been ping-ponging in my head. More than anything, they helped validate and expand things I hadn’t quite put words to yet.
It’s like my perfectionism has faded and been replaced, entirely, by the malaise of confusion.
“An essay every weekday,” I said. But what if they’re bad? And what if I’m just avoiding the bigger questions, the bigger projects, by trying to give myself a checklist every day?
It’s like i keep having to remind myself that this really is a big deal. I have these moments where I say, “Emmett, just fucking wake up; Emmett, just fucking write; Emmett, just fucking move around a little bit.” And it’s so hard. And then I go, “Wait, no, I was told this is okay. I was told this is how it is.” But that doesn’t seem right either.
Is it funny that my thoughts are less coherent now than the day he died?
Here are some quotations I connected with today:
“Confronted with sudden disaster we all focus on how unremarkable the circumstances were in which the unthinkable occurred, the clear blue sky from which the plane fell, the routine errand that ended on the shoulder with the car in flames, the swings where the children were playing as usual when the rattlesnake struck from the ivy.” (Didion)
Similarly:
“There was a level on which I believed that what had happened remained reversible. That was why I needed to be alone.” (Didion, again)
On what I think I’m starting to do now (in addition to watching Talladega Nights this afternoon):
“In time of trouble, I had been trained since childhood, read, learn, work it up, go to the literature. Information was control.” (Didion, again)
On the continuation of fears, new and old:
“This study of 4,486 recent widowers in the United Kingdom, followed for five years, showed ‘significantly higher death rates for widowers in the first six months following bereavement than for married.’” (Didion, again)
On the loneliness of it all:
“I wanted more than a night of memories and sighs.” (Didion, again, citing a poem)
On the inner turmoil, the cycle of guilt:
“I am constantly allowed to and encouraged to think about my father’s death, about my own grieving, and about what makes me different from peers around me who have not yet experienced the death of a close loved one. Because at the time of his sickness and death I felt so different and so alone, I used this alienation as empowerment. I’m so strong. I’m so mature…” (from my friend’s thesis)
And again, on cycles of guilt:
“Geoffrey Gorer, in his 1965 Death, Grief, and Mourning, had described this rejection of public mourning as a result of the increasing pressure of a new ‘ethical duty to enjoy oneself,’ a novel ‘imperative to do nothing which might diminish the enjoyment of others.’ In both England the United States, he observed, the contemporary trend was ‘to treat mourning as morbid self-indulgence, and to give give social admiration to the bereaved who hide their grief so fully that no one would guess anything had happened.’” (Didion, again)
On my inability to comprehend time:
“Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.” (Didion, again)
On the reminders I have to set to check my delusions:
“The recognition of this thought by no means eradicated the thought.” (Didion, again)
On all those moments in the last three weeks of my dad’s life that I keep replaying in my head:
“Phillipe Aries, in The Hour of Our Death, points out the essential characteristic of death as it appears in Chanson de Roland is that death, even if sudden or accidental, ‘gives advance warning of its arrival.’” (Didion, again)
On the denial defining my life:
“If I did not believe he was dead all along I would have thought I should have been able to save him.” (Didion, again)
On the last two days:
“The moments when I was abruptly overtaken by exhaustion are what I remember most clearly about the first days and weeks.” (Didion, again)
—
There will be another good essay soon, he promises himself.