Regarding Things That Have Recently Happened and Things That
Are Soon Expected to Happen; Considering Being in the Middle of a Linear Seven
Hundred and Thirty Days
I have never much been a believer in New Year’s
Resolutions. The public resolution has always seemed, at best, a format for
platitudes and pipe dreams to masquerade as real commitment. Yet I enter 2016
with the biggest resolution of my life: to get on a bicycle and ride it from
America’s East coast to its West. But I suppose, then, that it is not truly a
New Year’s Resolution at all.
April, 2016 will commemorate my fifth anniversary and my
final days living in NYC. It is likely that the legacy of New York will be as
my greatest teacher. I feel no shame in admitting that I have never not found
the city to be terribly difficult. That difficulty has been an inspiration, a
source of growth, and an unyielding frustration. It was depression, in many
ways that brought me to New York. I have, I suppose, for most of my adult life,
been a man (foolishly) on the run from his own internal thoughts, ever chasing
the notion that external stimulus could (can) quiet the internal turmoil. And,
though I never really felt like New York was, or would be, my home, I feel a
certain sadness, regret, and shame, that perhaps the dominant force, at this
juncture, in my leaving, the same as it was in my arriving, is depression. I
have learned. I have grown. But I am still (and still, likely foolishly) a man
running from himself.
Depression is an interesting beast. It is difficult to
self-diagnose whether the chemical imbalances are naturally occurring,
cyclical, or somehow resultant of external stimulus: disappointment,
frustration, failure. My experience is undoubtedly hereditary. For me, one of
the key symptoms is a crippling self-absorption, loneliness, and indecision
that makes honest introspection seem impossible, the realization of the depth
of the suffering trailing its genesis like a cruel and haunting apparition.
In my time in New York, I have made my family as a member of
the city’s robust and giving service industry. Suffice to say, I am deeply
indebted. It is a family that I love, but it is a love that is not without reservations.
Late nights and strong drinks can be, and have been, great fun. That fun, for
me, was accompanied by a looming fear that I would lose any sense of
moderation, and of my very self, to the siren’s song of fun nights and easy
money.
That fear – the fear that I would lose myself to my industry
and the lure of overindulgence – was, at a point, overwhelming. Not, perhaps,
overwhelming in and of itself, but as a product of my youth and inexperience
and of my own shortcomings. I did not know how to balance what I had or who I
was. I overcorrected. It is enticing, in hindsight, to point to my overcorrection
as the genesis of a protracted struggle with depression in various forms and
intensities. But, life is life, and it is unfair to life and its difficulties
to redact it to fit the narrative post-hoc. That said, my fear of my work – and
my industry, and thus family – was accompanied by a deep sense of loneliness
and isolation. It is no less easy and dangerous, in food and beverage in New
York, to feel that any resistance to overindulgence is itself isolating.
Balance can be had. But it, as with most things worth trying to accomplish in
life, cannot be achieved without difficulty and continuous effort.
In 2009, I was at the nadir of my mental health. I had
graduated college in the wake of the economic crisis. I could not find work. I
felt deeply and utterly worthless. Among the keys to managing my struggle at
the time was discovering, through his commencement address,
the work and life of David Foster Wallace. Being able to connect with another
consciousness that was self-aware and brutally honest about its struggles, its
struggles so seemingly similar to my own, helped me feel less alone at a time
when I felt paralyzed by solipsism.
Years later, having fallen back down into the same abyss, I
found myself in a movie theater in Portland, OR, watching The End of the Tour –
a film depicting a week of DFW interviews conducted on his book tour for
Infinite Jest in 1997. There, again in the experience of the life and words of
David Foster Wallace, I had an experience anamnestic of the feelings that
precipitated my move to NYC almost five years earlier: a shining of emotional
light on the internal soul, a wakening to the depths of my own depression; an
epiphany. I was alone in a movie theater, in a city not my own, weeping openly
and intensely.
Depression is crippling and cruel, and for me, it is defined
by a sense of loneliness and emptiness and worthlessness that is deep and dark
beyond articulation. And yet, that unspeakable feeling is surpassed in its
cruelty only by its consequences – the difficulty in fighting through it to
reciprocate love, and to behave with commensurate dignity.
Lo, in the fourth quarter of 2015, I returned to New York
from my Pacific epiphany overcome with the sense that I had to confront my
mental health in earnest, which battle would necessitate a divorce with New
York, and with my life there. I felt prepared to confront my demons, but
overwhelmed with the task of emotional account-keeping in the wake and long shadow
of depression. In a moment of mild intoxication, on the roof of one of my
favorite Brooklyn bars, in conversation with a dear friend’s friend, the idea
of a potential solution emerged. She had biked across the country, and described
her journey in a way that seemed eminently doable, and “entirely mental”, perhaps
the most enticing prospective medicine for a man at war with his own
consciousness.
I am hesitant to make any claims about my voyage as noble or
courageous or even particularly interesting. I have committed myself to doing
something big and difficult because I feel like I need to. I am afraid of the
alternative. I hope that if I can do this thing, and find better life balance,
I won’t need anti-depressants, which is a reality I feel I must increasingly
confront each time I awaken to the realization of my mental health struggles. The
journey was borne of my own fears and shortcomings. But if there is a lesson to
be learned, it is that it is very easy to look at things that appear big and
difficult as though they are impossible. To be incapacitated by the fear of
tomorrow. Do not be. Keep moving.
My chorus in the months after making this decision became
“How does anybody do anything ever? They just do it.” This is what makes what
you do, your own struggle, day in and day out, unique and special. This thing, my
personal journey, is no more special than that. The achievability is, in a way,
the very point. A thing can be done. All that it requires is your doing it.
