My hands were guilty of doing wrong, capable of hurting others worse than I could ever hurt myself. I was an addict fraught with the desire to relieve the collection of pain within me anyway I could, even if that meant crawling on the bathroom floor like a monster on the hunt for blood. Some days I thought it made me a soldier. At an early age I learned that to fight off depression was to wield the sharpest weapon you could find and protect yourself from the person that was you.
I didn’t say this in support group today, not when Lacy sat in front of our fucked up group of ‘troubled souls’, prying with those blue that said they were better than you. I suppose in some ways she was. Our depression put food on her table, not her life on the line.
Without a tan or a renewed will to live, a couple weeks back I had come from the Cape where my mother lived, a place us townies like to call heaven. It was then when my support group looked at me like I had crossed some line. Honestly? I had crossed many lines in this lifetime, jagged ones, long ones. Some that were so achingly wonderful that, like the addict I was, crying out with relief, I would cross another. There was a curse in my blood, one that made pain feel like pleasure and happiness feel like you had to sell your soul to keep it.
My mother didn’t understand that, coming to believe that depression was a stain. I heard her unsolicited voice now, It’ll come our dear. Soon, it will be better. At first I thought her and her husband, Carter Feely, were solving a wine fiasco on their couch, but then my mother’s voice followed up the silence. She asked if I was still there and I replied, “I am today.”
There was the loan shark who called herself my therapist, promising if I just shared my damn emotions— as if ripping through steel was an easy feat— I would finally feel better. Upon asking to see her PHD, seeing her qualifications and judging that her mental aptitude was statistically better than mine, of course I liquidated my assets and spilled them at her feet. The Three Brothers diner tipped me just enough to pay for her help, but I never saw a damn penny return from my investment.
Rich people always asked the wrong questions. “Where do you think it comes from?” and “How can I help?” Money couldn’t buy them the cure to depression and private schools didn’t teach them that experience was more valuable than understanding theorists like Socrates, Kierkegaard, or Solomon. They might have been masters of death, but dying was different from death– Hence, why no one ever asked, When did you start to become afraid of it?
Life experience had taught me many things because I had replied, “Ah, Lacy. Are we teammates here or not?” You couldn’t trust a person who controlled the odds. If I muttered one wrong word, I’d find that residential treatment wasn’t much different than a life long sentence in prison and though I didn’t gamble much, I could bet a singular mention of suicide would slaughter my odds.
For many years my pop was my teammate, fighting alongside me even though we waged different wars. His in the battlements of Drang Valley, mine in my own body’s betrayal because apparently lacking the happy cells meant I was constantly wrestling for them. But what ashamed me most was that my pop had a reason to be sad when I didn’t; still he managed to understand me all the same. It was a couple years back when he attended a trial group by the VA association, making its way from DC to New Haven, for folks like him. Our ultimatum was: If the trenches grew too dark and the climb felt too impossible, it would be okay if you didn’t get back up.
It wasn’t healthy, but it was our fucked up version of hope.
The days we sat in the living room, clutching books to be seated anywhere but in truth, was when the fire would crack, pop, sounding like gunshots in the ears of a soldier. Nearly jumping out of his battle weary skin, my pop would look at me with a mix of devastation and humiliation, a carefully concocted shame, and say, “They didn’t get me, kiddo. They didn’t pop your pop.” No, they didn’t, but some days I wondered if he wished they had because Pop would remain as pale as Dunn-Edwards Spooled White, and almost as pale as the ghost of a capable father who was left behind in 1975.
Yeah, I used to paint quite often, able to associate colors with the word peace. Creativity made me think contentment could exist because to paint was to put yourself on a canvas, look at it, and be capable of admiring what stared back. I imagined now, picking up a paint brush was like asking pop to pick up an M-16 and not shoot himself.
Coping wasn’t easy. At first it came in the form of mindless sex, then it transformed to the serious contemplation of drowning while I bathed. However, filling and draining and filling the tub was a strain on my mother. From where she sat on Feely’s wallet, unable to tell the fluff from the Ralph Lauren couch cushions to Feely’s capital, my mother was in my ear, talking over the devil, and complaining about the spike in our water bills. She only paid our utilities, but she claimed the divorce was just as taxing. “Kaia, it’s not healthy for us. He was the one who fought in the war, but we became the soldiers to bring him back to life.”
What my mother didn’t know was that this was insensitive and my pop would rather put his life in the hands of the communist government of South Vietnam rather than his ex-wife. She didn’t know that I had started bathing in my long sleeves— impotent to strip down or bear witness to my own skin— in order to manage the pain that tormented my insides. Respite felt like the angry red and tenderness of my skin. Bathing in burning water was my only rival against the boiling torment of my self-hatred. Starting from the scars on my skin, I had learned to fight pain with pain.
I mean, to evict depression was to lose a piece of yourself trying right?
To me, Yale didn’t sound like coping. It didn’t sound like anything but my mother’s voice, “Make better choices than me.” Infused with her regret, my mother’s words told the story of receiving her diploma with a baby and a marriage on the horizon. It was my pops’s enlistment that came in the same shipment with my mother’s wedding dress. My mother had her sights set on what the ceremony would look like, but my father was forced to picture the months without her. Being two at the time, Grandma Rubie said the tears that day started with joy and ended in sympathy; it was obvious the marriage was destined to be as ruined as the man who would return.
My mother fucked the marriage too though. Despite the name brand cookies and Coke she bribed me with, I didn’t fail to notice the same man returning every Friday night or the sounds which came from the mother’s bedroom. “He’s just here to fix the sink.” The shower. The stove. The washer.
I was young, but I wasn’t fucking stupid. Even Yale saw that, because being a painter meant I could get an image to pop, make it hurt, make you feel it as I felt it. When I wrote my essay on train tracks, it was visceral, it was absolutely my one way ticket to damnation, but it was just good enough to get me into the ivy league for writing.
There, I registered my mailing address as Feely’s estate in the Cape, putting it beneath my name as if it were my home and the scent of the sea still clung to me, reluctant to let go. I wasn’t one for easy admissions, and trust me, by no means was this an easy one, but somewhere in my heart, I knew I was reluctant to let go. I clung to the moments that felt like a slip in reality because when you were depressed you’d cling to anything that felt like a safety net.
The summer before I would start at Yale, I gave into my mother’s lawless prescription of the sun and the sun and my pop gave me the keys to his Opel Corsa, telling me to hang in there kiddo. It was my sick and twisted, fucking depraved mind, which conjured up the image of my father’s legs danling three feet above the floor. I said, “You phone alright? You don’t forget about me, Pop.”
Driving wasn’t the difficult part, it was consciously keeping the weight of my hands equally distributed and my head on straight. My left hand would ever so slightly pull— left, left, left— fuck. Fuck! I was a fucking coward and calculating the distance between me and concrete wall, desping myself for being so powerless against the thing I wanted most in this life.
For a long while, I had been dying. It wasn’t until recently that I fantasized about being dead.
The coward in me managed to pull onto Walter Road with heart in my ass because everything felt out of place here. Looking around, I couldn’t imagine how the home owners felt or if they realized they had uncovered heaven long before finding the grave.
There was my mother, rushing to the iron gates, buzzing me in, flying towards me on wings, wrapping her arms around my body when I flinched. Actually flinched at her touch for what was supposed to be a hug felt like an added weight, knowing this woman loved me when I could give her nothing in return and as little as a tomorrow.
My whole life I had spent dangling by some thread, willing myself to let go, praying hereafter would proffer the girl after me with a fighting chance. I was so tired, drained of anything but disappointment for myself and in the world for failing me before I was born.
I knew hope was a rare thing, but it had found me on Contuit Dock in Harwich Port, 1990.
It was still light when the song “Lightning Crashes” by Live, played in my ear. Sagged against a stubby post, a book propped between my legs, a glass of iced tea at my side, I could have wholeheartedly told you the magic ended there. But drifting on a cloud of perfection— the kind that makes you sit up straighter when all you’ve ever tried to do was shrink— was a boy on a rowboat. Later, I would learn that his name was Tucker James Young and despite bearing no resemblance to a scrapper, in the matter of three small months, he had somehow fought his way into this heavy heart of mine.
Drifting between the sunset and the sea, I pictured all the things perfect boys like him did: jog eight miles in the morning, instill a healthy dose of fear when they spoke, run a stressed hand through their hair only to make it more perfect. Fuck. What didn’t they do? Want to kill themselves?
He was the kind of boy you wanted to spend every moment with, regardless that he bristled with a boy-ish energy or had a diet of chicken and broccoli you were forced to abide by— for fucking breakfast, but being with him made it sound wonderful, easy, even. He was a mechanic with a penchant for fixing broken things and a rower who would face any tide. In the end, he was my best friend, my hero, my love. In the beginning, he had asked for my name.
There were many things I could have said like, poor girl, patient Herringbone, I miss you— this one followed my mother’s staticy greetings. “Hi, I miss you.” No shit mama, I missed me too. Instead, I took a sip of iced tea, swallowing my insecurities and all those names which defined me.
“Kaia Herringbone,” I said because that was my name. I just didn’t know who it made me.
“I didn’t know I had a neighbor like yourself.”
“A neighbor like myself?”
“Yeah, I mean, Hell look at ya. An old soul reading… Tender Buttons. You appear to be independent. Pretty— fuck girls hate it when we— I mean you are. Jesus you are.” He laughed. Tied his boat and got too close to me when he reached for my hand. “Tucker James Young.”
Though he wasn’t looking for my hand, rather the book I held. The big prick lost my page and was flipping through the chapters, appearing to have lost something of importance. “Ah— here.” He pointed. “Hope in gates, hope in spoons, hope in doors, no hope in daintiness and determination. Hope in dates.”
Before the word hope was always associated with ‘less’. Now it had taken on the memory of him walking me to Feely’s doorstep, watching me unlock the door and step inside like he needed me to be safe. “Stay outta trouble will ya? I’ll be seeing you tomorrow, Kaia.”
“Sure thing, Tuck,” I said, knowing that was a promise I would struggle to keep.
The next evening a bucket of stones appeared alongside the boy wearing a backwards cap and gingham boardshorts with a smile only the devil could hate. And although my sweat stains felt like crimes beneath my armpits, it had been the only worry I fostered about as we skipped stones well into the night on Nell Beach.
In the long run, those stains would be the least of my concerns and the reason I suggested jumping from the pier. The little light of stars seemed to collect on his damn near perfect smile as he ran beside me— nearer, closer, almost there— it was the first time in my whole life jumping into dark depths didn’t feel so fucking terrifying. My exhilarated screams were proof of that. The way my head bobbed up for air was as shocking as when he kissed me.
Over the next few weeks, we would seek each other out, climbing through windows and cutting through brambles to get to each other. Through high or hell bush, I remembered myself saying, later wishing life gave us the choice for more hours in the day when all I ever wanted was to be rid of them. I bargained with my exhaustion to hold out a little while longer.
Eventually, fireworks ignited the Fourth of July when we all huddled around a campfire on the sprawling lawns of the Young estate where I met his mom—Georgia, and his father— John. To say the least, I was shit at treating parents like adults, stuttering as I called them Mr. and Mrs. Young. “Tucker James teach your Kaia love some manners.” And maybe it was that missing piece of me which had grown hollow in the absence of feeling, but I didn’t understand when Tuck pulled me into arms and his parents laughed. Besides, it didn’t matter what I lacked, because for the first time in my life, I was in the presence of three smiling people and that did something to me. I felt it deep in my bones.
Later that night, his parents had gone to bed and Tuck managed to filch marshmallows and crackers for me, starfishing himself on the grass before pulling out a bottle of his fathers brandy instead of the stupid chicken breasts I assumed he had on his person at all times. I learned I didn’t like alcohol, but I liked Tuck enough to try it— Hell, I liked this stud of mine enough to do anything.
Almost enough to stay.
We were painting his guest house when I was faced with fear, tasked with keeping my hand on the roller steady. Thornton Sage for the window panes. Ivory Lace for the walls. Up and down, up and down—thump, thump, thump— when my father called and habit had me picking up the phone. It was instinct to make sure he was okay, to make room for his pain despite my own. The guest house made space for silence and the silence made room for my mistake in introducing the existence of my father to the boy who never asked what I could spare.
It all happened so quickly after that. Why didn’t I talk about my family? I don’t know because maybe this was my first shot of living a life without legacy? Was it selfish that I didn’t want to be defined by my father’s PTSD or my mother’s ignorance? Talk to me. Let me fix it. Tuck mouthed, wiping a stray tear as I held the phone to my ear, hearing only my panicked heartbeat.
I couldn’t. Admitting things was a different type of knife to my skin, one that made me feel heavier rather than clean of my self-hatred. I picked up the roller brush and in an act of desperation, flung it at the wall. Frustration sparked off me. Anger came off in waves of sheer wattage and for some reason Tuck stood up. “Would breaking something else work?”
I watched as he opened cupboard after cupboard, wet Ivory Lace coloring his hands as he revealed platters, chalices, crystal glasses from Baccarat, Waterford, Yeoward. They were expensive, they were of the same luxury that Feely boasted in his estate, but Tuck didn’t treat them with that same delicacy. He didn’t treat me with the delicacy I had felt from my pop. Instead he handed me a glass and said, “Go crazy, baby. Start wherever you’d like.”
I began to hit the right wall, aiming for the same spot I had hit moments before. The crystal exploded like water splatting on concrete, a loud crack— I was hungry for more, needing that aching feeling to vanish, the shame, the disappointment, the hatred and fear. Before I knew it, my face was wet with pent up emotions, the last cabinet held a single glass, and I had broken what was not mine.
Our first fight was what this was and a part of me knew I should have been sorry, but the bigger part of me wrestled with my self-control. I was an addict, doing everything I could to not pick up the shard of glass, not to crawl back to my next fix of razors, let it slide over my skin, hit a nerve, a vein, a composite of all my guilt, I could—
Lying was easy when people didn’t have a reason to look for one. In his eyes, picking up a glass was the kind of danger your parents warned you about. In mine, it was the kind of danger your school counselor pulled you aside to speak about.
“I’m dying over here, Tuck. Truly, this is it for me,” I cried out beneath my boyfriend’s covers weeks after. We had just returned from a weekend in Vermont after seeing Switchfoot play at the Spruce Park grounds. There I was, sitting atop his shoulders, feeling for the first time that the distance I had left to climb wasn’t much. For hours it poured rain and my stud, who had a penchant for fixing things, warmed my body by handing me two beers, then two more, keeping my insides warm as the summer storm lashed out above. Ridiculous or not, it was the first time anyone had ever taken care of me, even paying for it with a hangover. “It’s over for me, baby. There’s no coming back from this.”
“No coming back from that? What about my goddamn tattoo?” He pulled back his shirt to reveal the lyrics in “Only Hope” by Switchfoot: I know you’re my only hope. “My mother will kill me.”
“Tattoo?” I gaped, sitting up and paying my dues when my headache splintered in four directions. “When did you—” He tackled me, throwing me onto the floor to pin my wrists to the ground. Shame had my eyes averting to check my sleeves, that they were still in place, that they hadn’t moved, because Tuck hadn’t seen me naked yet. Sex wouldn’t just be giving myself over to him, it would be revealing the darkest parts of myself, the jagged lines where my depression made itself known. I wanted to give him every part and fractured piece of me, but knowing my stud was made to fix things, the damage on my arms was permanent, it was irreparable.
“Kaia, baby, what are those?” He stilled on top of me, confusion washing over his face.
He meant the lines I had crossed in so many ways. The ridges beneath my long sleeve.
“Track marks.”
Lying beneath him, the weight of my admission, the weight of my reality and the world and the sheer contortion of pain on his face fell over me. I was glued to the ground feeling all too similar to my pop waiting for a gunshot in the dark. I knew it would be quick. Any moment now— but the pain in my chest never ceased, nor did the steel blocking my airways when I realized two things had the possibility of killing me: my mental illness and my guilt for letting this boy down.
My Tuck was crying now, his forehead pressed against mine as if he could mentally will my pain away, lighten my burden as my entire fucking world was caving in around me. I wanted it gone, but he didn’t know how to do that for me. Whatever had been holding me together for seventeen years splintered and spliced when he said the first fighting words anyone had ever offered.
“It’s okay. It’s alright,” he said more to himself than me. “It’s okay. Day by day until it’s hour by hour. We’ll climb it together, baby—together—fuck. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Because decimating my body, I knew, would decimate his heart.
Somehow, and I wasn’t fucking sure how, but we had managed to make it back to his bed, where I took his arms around me. Lying awake, he held me together as we hoped for a better tomorrow, praying for dreams, but knowing we wouldn’t find them. Young girls like me were supposed to have dreams. We were supposed to be planning the future.
Therefore, I’m sorry Pop. I’m sorry you survived the trenches of Vietnam and I crumbled inside my own. I’m sorry that the world failed us both before it gave us a fighting chance.
I’m sorry Tuck James Young. I’m sorry that depression stole my heart before it had the opportunity to meet you. I wasn’t built for a pedestal, yet you made one for me anyways. I’m sorry I was long lost, before you ever found me, Stud. I knew you were my only hope too.
Ah, and I’m sorry for myself. I’m sorry you were made to mature with damage rather than age.
‘What happens tomorrow?’ my therapist had asked. “I’m here today.” Because what else could I have said? From the very beginning I knew tomorrow wasn’t a promise I couldn’t keep. I gave her the Only Hope I could.
