Sad Boy Attends Author Events - One

In which I consider how mental health plays a part in engaging with those around you.

Hi, Y’all! Glad You’re Here—

Every time I go to an author event, I briefly imagine it as my own. This is possibly narcissistic, definitely something I should speak to my new therapist about, but it’s just one of the many ways I’ve tried to manifest my own success over the years. When one of my dearest friends, Annie B. Jones, invited me to an event celebrating the release of her debut, Ordinary Time: Lessons Learned While Staying Put, I reminded myself that this was the time to set my narcissism aside, to make sure my sole focus was on celebrating my friend.

The event was on a Saturday evening, at the Paxton House, which is this really fancy historical property that looks like a rich racist probably lived there in the fifties. It was April in Georgia, my skin sticky, my knitted red top already damp at my lower back. I can’t tell you how much I missed this, the overwhelming warmth of the South. As I walked up to the front porch, I was greeted by several of Annie’s relatives, people I know to varying degrees from years of forcing myself into the lives of others. Most of these people hadn’t seen me since my move up to Philadelphia the summer before. They all asked how I was, asked about my husband, all of the things polite people usually inquire about, and I smiled and gave vague answers that didn’t really reveal much of anything. The last thing I wanted to do was tell people that my life was falling apart.

There’s this movie called Rachel Getting Married starring Anne Hathaway as a recovering addict who returns home for her sister’s wedding. Throughout the movie, everyone gets so frustrated because she keeps making everything about her—but really, she’s just desperate to be seen, to be heard, for someone to show they still care. This was the sort of thing my Momma used to do back in the day, showing up to birthday parties or my high school graduation high on pills or cocaine or meth, make a little scene, then leave once she’d gotten her attention. I used to hate this as a kid, didn’t understand why she couldn’t just let a moment be about me. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve finally been able to make sense of it, but I’ve worked hard to not fall into this same song-and-dance.

As I walked inside the Paxton House, I saw a line of people, all waiting to sign the ‘Guest Book’, which was the back pages of a copy of Ordinary Time. I recognized pretty much everyone, but because I didn’t want to keep answering the question of ‘how are you?’ with ‘I’m fine’, I kept my head down, waiting my turn. When I was next in line, I picked up a pen, wrote something silly and sweet, then made my way to the kitchen, to the food, which is where I always tend to drift during parties.

A few weeks before this, I was sitting on the bathroom floor of the apartment when I decided to put a plastic bag over my head. I’d been having a panic attack while laying on the tile floor, and because I didn’t think the panic attack was ever going to end, I decided to go ahead and end it all. The plastic bag wasn’t mine, but Hank’s, whose apartment I was in, and the bag was one he’d gotten from the gas station when he went in for snacks a few days before. I grabbed the plastic bag, all wrinkled up and sad, and put my head inside, holding it tight at the back of my head, so as not to let any air in or out. I held my breath for a moment, since that seemed like the thing to do when attempting to deprive oneself of oxygen, but then my body took over, gasping for air, a great inhalation that was tainted by unexpected debris—crumbs of cream cheese and chives crackers, my least favorite flavor.

I choked on the cracker crumbs, thinking to myself, choking on this flavor is NOT the way that I want to die, and then Hank was upstairs, busting the door open, attempting to save my life.

This was all I could think about, while walking around this fancy house.

At some point, I spotted a woman I knew from high school—she’d been a teachers aide in my eleventh grade math class. I’d spent the entire year rolling my eyes and dismissing her every time she offered me help, and every time I had seen her since, I’d felt this overwhelming guilt about treating someone so badly, all because I didn’t know the difference between cosine and tangent. My recent brush with death had me convinced I needed to walk over and apologize, which I did, interrupting an already ongoing conversation she’d been having with someone else. The woman laughed and turned back to the group of people around us, asking if everyone knew me. There was a man next to her who I did not know, another teacher from my high school, and Nancy, one of the women who worked at The Bookshelf and who I’d befriended several years before. They all asked how I was, and I said good, and I tried to be funny, like I always do, rambling on about my life, how Philly was, how I’d just quit my job at UPenn, where I was being mistreated by my coworkers, how I was going through a divorce—and then I realized what I’d said, saw Nancy’s face (Nancy, who had come to adore both me and my husband, Tyler, and who I knew hadn’t heard anything about our marital troubles). I tried to recover, telling a silly anecdote about a time I picked up drugs for my Momma, and then I realized how inappropriate this story was in front of the tiny child I hadn’t seen standing to my left, and I quickly walked away.

In Annie’s book, there’s an essay titled ‘When Staying True Means Leaving’, which ends with the lines ‘Sometimes, to stay, you have to leave. It might be the best, hardest thing you ever do.’ The essay is about Annie deciding to leave her childhood church, but I remember reading it on a trip Tyler and I took back in October, a trip where we discussed trying to shift our relationship from husbands to friends. It was the first of many conversations about the ever-changing nature of our relationship, but I remember reading that line in the essay and wondering if it might also apply to our marriage. Ordinary Time reflects an experience that Annie and I had shared for a long time—that of staying. When I look back on my life now, I often wonder if it was stupid to leave our small town, all of our friends, our gym, my job, all of the things that had offered me stability for the first time in my life. If I had stayed, would it have saved our marriage? Would everything have been better? I started to regret this move as early as August, when some of the main reasons we moved here—work opportunities for me, a way to grow as a couple—felt like they’d all but dried up. But I was going to be unhappy no matter where I was. I think I needed to leave, if for no other reason, to learn that lesson.

I felt so embarrassed to have revealed my separation through this silly conversation—I’d even made a joke about this being the end to my starter marriage, which was a joke I used to make when divorce seemed like an impossibility.

Eventually, everyone congregated to the front porch. There were rows of foldout chairs, all of them already taken, and I stood at the back with Annie’s husband and parents, listening as she gave a reading from her book. She looked so beautiful, one hand holding open her heavily marked copy while the other rested at the top of her belly, where a little human is growing inside. A year before this, she and I had been sitting at Sonny’s BBQ talking about our lives—our last Sonny’s dinner before my move—and I remember what was going through her head. That conversation is private, but what I will tell you is this—Annie deserves all of the goodness that’s coming her way. As I stood behind her husband, him happily documenting this event on his phone, all I could think about is that conversation, and where she is now, and how the only thing that mattered in this moment was her. While I’ve always envied other writers for having this moment I so desperately want, I have never once been jealous of Annie B. Jones.

When Annie was done with her reading, she announced that she would happily personalize anyone’s copies of Ordinary Time. I was the first in line, and I watched as Annie looked down at her book, wrote a note I tried not to read, and then she handed it back to me and said, sincerely, with intention, “I love you.”

I don’t think I realized how much I needed to hear those words.

As Annie signed copy after copy of Ordinary Time, I watched the faces of the people in line. I listened in on the various conversations people were having about Annie, about how much they loved her, were in awe of her, were inspired by her. One of the things I have always loved about Annie is that she is a genuinely good person—she is honest and kind, straightforward, funny, interesting and intelligent, gorgeous, and the kind of person who allows everyone their own spotlight. She’s a woman of faith, someone who I’m sure has asked herself in moments of hardship, ‘What would Jesus do?’ At the risk of being blasphemous, I have asked myself in times of hardship, ‘What would Annie do?’ In this moment of hardship, I tried to be as ‘Annie-like’ as possible.

Towards the end of the evening, Nancy found me. I’d been standing by the cookie trey when she confronted me, asking, “What’s all this about?” I asked what she meant, playing dumb, and she slapped my arm. “You know what I mean,” she said, “What’s going on?” And so I told her. I told her that this move had been hard, that all of my dreams had fallen apart and that Tyler and I had grown apart and that I didn’t know how to explain all of this to all of the people who kept asking about my life. I missed Tyler so much, had barely spoken to him since moving out in February. I was sad that the things I was pursuing up in Philly had not worked out for various reasons beyond my control. I felt like a failure for bragging to everyone about how I was going on this big, grand adventure, only to fall flat on my face and let this life I had worked so hard for all fall to pieces. When I was almost to the point of tears, Nancy pulled me in for a hug, told me it would all be alright, and because she’s never lied to me, I believed her.

The opening essay in Ordinary Time is called ‘The Art of The Goodbye Party’, which is about how Annie has learned the ways in which to celebrate those who head off to adventures far from home. At one point, she talks about setting any feelings of pain or jealousy aside, to make sure that she’s doing the important work, of celebrating her friends. When the evening was over and everyone else had left, I stayed behind, a little too long, to selfishly get a solo goodbye. Annie hugged me and we went to the front porch to get a picture together, me holding her book. I briefly thought about all of the things I wanted to tell her, about all of the things going on in my mind. But then I remembered this wasn’t my moment, that I didn’t want to be like my mom or like Anne Hathaway—I wanted to be like Annie. I tried my best to set aside whatever was happening in my life, whatever wishes I had for my future, so I could celebrate all of the good happening in Annie’s. I wasn’t perfect—I will always suffer from main character syndrome—but I did my best to make sure that none of that bled out so far that it touched Annie’s joy. I hope I did alright.