No One Asked for This

by Cazzie David

  June 10—Wine Country

  We had lots of wine and downtime where we all kind of just waited for the trip to be over. Romy and I were getting along really well. Making it to the end of the trip allowed me to pretend that maybe I was also coming to the end of my heartbreak/mental break. My brain was allowing room for other observations and thoughts and the fucking songs finally stopped being stuck in my head. It gave me hope that the more time that went by, the more things I’d be able to think about again, until one day those other things could fully take over the noise. So, you know, time and “trying to let it go.”

  Yep, I thought to myself. “She’ll be fine.”

  June 11—Flying Home

  As I stood in line to board a sixteen-hour flight with my newfound sense of acceptance and relief, I got a call from my manager. She asked me if I was sitting down; I said no. She asked me if I was with my family; I said yes.

  She told me they were engaged.

  And I laughed.

  * * *

  Thanksgiving

  I had recently gotten back home from inpatient mental-health treatment. You’re probably thinking, Uh, Cazzie, you already wrote about this in another essay. No, that was when I went for anxiety; this is when I went for everything else. It was a last-resort type of thing. Therapy felt like it was for the norms, for solvable issues about boys ghosting you, mild childhood trauma, or depression from the routine of life. Anytime my therapist tried to give me advice now, I would just shout back, “HA, TELL THAT TO MY SELF-WORTH!!!!” I was like a spirit who had unfinished business and therefore couldn’t pass over to the other side. I just stayed around haunting myself. My mom didn’t understand why I felt I needed to go. When she asked me why it was necessary, I told her:

  I have obsessive negative thoughts every moment of the day.

  I have uncontrollable rage that’s making me feel invincible.

  I need constant reassurance that everything is going to be fine, like I’m a child.

  I need constant male approval.

  In the past few months I’ve spent more time crying than not crying.

  I have relentless self-loathing and crippling self-esteem issues.

  I’m addicted to my phone.

  I’m terrified of death but I also have daily suicidal thoughts.

  I’m embarrassed by my own existence.

  I can’t stop hitting myself in the face for all of these reasons.

  It’s truly shocking I’m not on medication, but I don’t want to be, so I feel this is my only option because I’m not coping.

  She told me to go and wished me luck, even though I could tell the fact that I was going was even more embarrassing to her than it was to me. I knew it wouldn’t help all that much, as I’m incapable of being convinced of anything I know not to be true. But at the very least, I’d be forced to exist without my phone and maybe catch up with my brain, which I’d left somewhere in my bedroom last spring. Plenty of visionaries (tech bros) have gone away to find themselves and then come back and changed the world, so I tried to think of it like that. But instead of changing the world (or helping build a self-sustainable drug village), I’d just be able to survive in my own.

  It’s still hard for me to believe that with all of my embarrassment issues, I managed to drop myself into what felt like the most embarrassing place I could possibly have found. But I thought maybe that would be a good thing. Like, embarrassment exposure therapy. I’m not going to say much of the actual work we did, partly because, like Fight Club, you’re not supposed to, but mostly because if you knew what I did there, I’d have to kill you because it was so humiliating. The only reason I would never recommend this place to anyone else is that I wouldn’t want them to know the mortifying activities I was forced to take part in on my path to “achieving inner peace.” If my dad had any idea, he’d disown me, convinced I couldn’t be his blood if I was capable of participating.

  The therapist I had there tried to pin all of my embarrassment issues on my dad, which was funny.

  “So. You’re very codependent, yeah?” she said in her thick Castilian accent. She was referring to my paperwork, which consisted of nearly one hundred questions regarding every detail of my life and reason for coming.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You say you don’t like to be alone, that you hang out with people all the time so you don’t have to be with yourself. You let this boy walk all over you.”

  “Yeah, I guess I am codependent.”

  “Why’d you let this boy walk all over you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I know. It’s because you idealize the men in your life. You think they’re so great, you let them do whatever they want,” she said confidently.

  “No, that’s definitely not true.”

  “Well, you idealize your father.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  She turned a page in my file. “You wrote right here, ‘My dad is the greatest person on the planet and he is too good for this awful world.’ ”

  “Right . . . well, he is.”

  “You see? You idealize him. No one can be the greatest.”

  “I see why you would say that, and for most people you’d be correct, but my dad actually is. I don’t think that just because he’s my dad. People who don’t have him as a dad think it.”

  She looked at me skeptically, but purposefully, so I’d know she was looking at me like that. “He has flaws. Everyone has flaws,” she retorted.

  “Yes, but they are innocent and don’t hurt anyone.”

  “They hurt you . . .”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at the prospect of any of the issues I had being my dad’s fault. He was the only person who didn’t give me issues! How simple and misguided.

  “You say you have a lot of shame. Can you pinpoint when this started?”

  “Yeah, actually . . .” Please hold for a tragic acting-class monologue.

  “When I was, I think, four, my mom made me take this dance class. There was a big recital at the end, all of our families came, and it was on this huge stage. The dance number started and everyone ran out onto the stage, but I couldn’t move. I stood on the side holding on to the curtain for dear life until my teacher physically pushed me out there. I saw everyone in the audience, froze and immediately began to cry. I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it was exactly one of those scenes they put in the beginning of a movie to show a moment in time when the main character was humiliated as a child. Anyways, after it was over, I was still kind of crying and I remember my dad pulled me aside and whispered into my ear, ‘You couldn’t go up there and dance because you’re COOL. It means you’re cool that you couldn’t do that!’ He said it was the moment he knew we were exactly the same. That always stuck with me, like—you’re cool if you don’t do anything that’s embarrassing.”

  “Mmm-hmm . . .” she said with a Told you your dad fucked you up look on her face. Pfshhh. Ridiculous.

  The stupidest thing out of the hundreds of stupid things about having to go to one of these places is that no matter how you frame it, the real reason you’re going is that you have momentarily forgotten how many people have been on this earth. To go away and focus solely on your own peace of mind, you must be so consumed by your own experience that you ignore the fact that billions and billions of people have come before you and will come after you (if not for the Earth warming), and it barely matters that any single one of us are one of those billions. If you were truly aware of this, you wouldn’t be able to pay attention to how bad you’re doing and how much you hate every part of yourself because you would know how fucking meaningless it is. But I guess the only way to work on not hating yourself is through doing something that in turn makes you hate yourself that much more.

  And it did seem to work. In the weeks since my return, my friends noticed I was lighter, more tolerant, less angry, not crying. I had basically reached enlightenment—you know, for me. Thanksgiving was right around the
corner, and I hadn’t seen any of my family since I had gotten back, but I was looking forward to implementing my newfound acceptance of flawed people around my favorite flawed people in the world.

  My cousins and I were set to fly to Martha’s Vineyard to spend the holiday with my mom and my sister, who was flying up from New York. I was going because I had to but I’m pretty sure everyone else ended up making the decision based on wanting “fall vibes” for the holiday. Holidays in Los Angeles tend to feel like everyone is just pretending it’s a special day. The only thing that allows you to tell it apart from any other is the lack of traffic and the abundance of people outside taking their dogs for a walk.

  Barely anyone is on the island in the fall because it’s cold, every store and restaurant is closed, and it’s almost impossible to get to. It is a hell of a journey. A six-hour flight to Boston, followed by a connecting flight on a small rickety plane that’s so ancient, every time you enter it you have the full awareness that it could go down from a mild gust of wind. Without fail, every time we land safely, I’m surprised.

  My mom was waiting for us outside the gate, which you can see from the runway. My mom always starts wildly waving way too early. Even before we get off the plane, I’ll see her through the plane window moving her hands to and fro like she’s holding up a lighter at a Led Zeppelin concert. Once I step off the plane, I always give her a small gesture so she knows I’ve spotted her, but she doesn’t stop even then. She continues to wave until I’m right in front of her face and she has no room to wave anymore. It’s so embarrassing, but I was trying not to get so embarrassed anymore.

  Whenever you arrive somewhere you haven’t been in a while, it doesn’t matter how much progress you’ve made as a person; the insecurities you last invaded the space with are there to greet you with open arms, like nothing has changed. Everything smells, looks, and feels the way it did the last time you were there, that it makes you feel the same too. The energy is so palpable, it makes your past problems your current ones and your current ones your past ones, to the point where you feel like the person you were talking to morning and night the last time you were there, the only person getting you through the day, is the person you are still talking to, even though that person is gone.

  The holidays are hard if you don’t have a family. But they’re also hard if you do have a family . . . who is crazy. My mom’s house on the island fits all of us: two cousins, my sister, an aunt, the husbands and young kids of said cousins and aunt. It’s sufficiently big, but no house could ever be big enough for my family’s personalities to inhabit. If I’m 100 percent Jewish, I’m certain every one of my other family members is at least 150 percent. Three Jews had to have made each one.

  Every day, my entire family gathers in the kitchen from nine a.m. to noon. Not me; I’ll wait for them to leave. But my room is the closest to the kitchen so I can hear everything they say from the moment I wake up until the moment they finally leave. I’ll lie in bed angrily listening to the mumblings of their conversations, most of which are about how I’m sleeping.

  “Is Caz awake?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Should we wake her up?”

  “Probably, or she’ll sleep the day away!”

  “She could sleep until four if we don’t!”

  I’ve never slept until four. It’s a frustrating rumor they perpetuate for reasons I don’t understand. The latest I’ve ever slept in on record is maybe twelve. I can’t figure out why my family cares so much if I’m up or not. There are plenty of them to entertain one another. Even though I am awake and just refuse to get out of bed, using any excuse to remain under the covers. In the past, that meant I’d look through all of my apps over and over again until I felt mentally ready to see a surrounding that wasn’t my bedroom. It was too soon to fully fall back into my addictive habits, so I was still checking them but allowing absolutely no refreshing. I vowed I’d let myself get only half as addicted, which, according to my screen time, was still very addicted.

  When I was at that stupid, embarrassing mental health place, I was so desperate for internet access I tried to bribe the cook there for the staff Wi-Fi password. All technology was banned, but I had snuck my laptop inside the secret pocket of my suitcase. By the fourth day, I was feeling so anxious to know what was going on that I wrote “wifi pw?” on a Post-it note and stuck it to a twenty-dollar bill and passed it to the cook during dinner. He was always so depressed, probably because he wanted to be a renowned chef and instead was cooking tasteless health-conscious food for a bunch of rich, broken people. I thought that at the very least, it would have brought a smile to his face, but he looked at my Post-it and put it back on the counter, expressionless. It was for the best he didn’t give me the password. I knew the circle of events that would follow: I’d find out more things that would enrage me, text all my friends for reassurance, go on Instagram to try to obliterate what I had seen that angered me, filling all of the space in my mind I had specifically come there to make with empty moments from other people’s lives, a combination of people I don’t like and my friends’ friends whom I’m obligated to continue following forever because they followed me and are my friends’ friends, and my friends’ friends can’t think their friend’s friend is a huge bitch. Which I am.

  I eventually adjusted to having no internet, but the only way for me to do it was to pretend I was living in a time when phones didn’t exist and had never existed and that I was essentially living in the days of yore. If I remembered I lived in a world with other people who had phones, then I would have anxiety about the things that were happening back home I didn’t know about, which was pretty much just as bad as having anxiety about the things I did know about. So for the remainder of my time there, I decided I lived in a horse-and-buggy town with no horses or buggies and just twenty deeply depressed people.

  My mother burst through my door. I hid my phone under my pillow and pretended to be asleep.

  “Caz.”

  “What.”

  “When are you getting up?”

  “Soon. You literally just woke me up.”

  “Do you want me to make you breakfast?”

  “Not at this very moment. Thank you, though.”

  “So let’s say ten minutes?”

  “I’d rather not be tied down to a scheduled breakfast right now.” What am I talking about?

  Every time my mom enters my room or I hear someone mention how I’m sleeping, I add fifteen minutes to the time I’ll spend in bed before coming out. I don’t know why. There is obviously something wrong with me. But it’s just too highly anticipated, them all sitting in the kitchen awaiting the last face to be up in the morning. I can’t bring myself to do it for the sole reason that every member of my family makes such a big deal of it when I come in, saying things like:

  “Wooo, she’s up!”

  “Well, good AFTERNOON!” (It’s eleven!)

  “What a surprise! Look who decided to finally get up!”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you awake this early!” (Suuuure you haven’t!)

  I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction. Whenever the family reunites, everyone somehow forgets it’s been ten years since I was a teenager. And when everyone treats you like a teenager, you follow suit and become a teenager. Cazzie the teenager . . . classic grumpy morning Cazzie. They love to tell stories from my teenage years of trying to get me up in the morning for school or flights. Everyone has a story. CONGRATULATIONS, YOU WERE ALL SO ANNOYING WHEN I WAS A KID THAT I REFUSED TO OPEN MY EYES AND JOIN YOU IN BEING AWAKE! The attention given to my sleeping habits only made me an angrier version of my teen self, but I vowed I wasn’t going to get angry anymore.

  What ended up helping my anger the most wasn’t the program, meditation, or therapy. For a while, I was stuck in a bad habit of punching my steering wheel every time I got in the car. One day when I was at a red light, I started banging my head against it (as one does . . .). When I stopped and looked up, I made t
he most uncomfortable eye contact I’ve ever had in my life with a pedestrian. The incident made me feel like such an idiot, it kept me from doing it again, making me think of the Joan Didion quote: “It was once suggested to me that, as an antidote to crying, I put my head in a paper bag. As it happens, there is a sound physiological reason, something to do with oxygen, for doing exactly that, but the psychological effect alone is incalculable: it is difficult in the extreme to continue fancying oneself Cathy in Wuthering Heights with one’s head in a Food Fair bag.”

  “CAZ!!!!!!!!! THE COFFEE IS GETTING COLD!” my mom yelled from the kitchen. I could hear them when they whispered in there; yelling was so far past unnecessary.

  “MOM! STOP SCREAMING!!!!!!!!!” I screamed back, louder than she did so she would know how far a scream went in this house.

  No answer. But a minute later . . .

  “CAZ!”

  I got up before my mom sent in someone even more crankiness-inducing, like my uncle Mike. If he came into my room, there would be absolutely no hope for my mood to uplift for the rest of the day. The only person I’ve never minded waking me up is my dad. I think it’s because he does it without really caring if I get up or not, like there are more important things to care about in the world than me seeing the morning light.

  Fortunately, by this time some of my family had dispersed, so entering the kitchen was less emphatically received. I still tried to be inconspicuous, hiding my face in my hoodie as if it were an invisibility cloak. My mother was sitting at the kitchen table organizing vegetable seeds into pill containers.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Your behavior is unacceptable. You are in such a crappy mood,” she said.

  “I’m in a crappy mood because I was woken up in an abrupt and harsh manner.”