It was archaic, how they treated mental health. Antidepressants, anti-anxiety meds, antipsychotics—none of it had changed since the 1950s, and then, suddenly, boom.
It was when celebrities started coming out as sad that the world really took notice. People loved it. It’s okay to feel sad, these familiar faces said. I’m just like you, ignore the mansion. I never understood why no one said, Fuck off, I don’t need your permission to feel my feelings. I didn’t need your permission to accept my stretch marks, and I don’t need it for this either.
It all made me so angry. I was sad before it was cool, I wanted to yell. But I wasn’t online, so I couldn’t.
* * *
My second year of college, I met my boyfriend and moved in with him. I’d done the living-with-girls thing, and it had been super fun, but now I wanted to see if I’d be more suited to living in sin.
I quickly learned that living with a boy is not that great. Once that weird spell that makes you want sex all the time wears off, and you have to think about what you’re having for dinner for the next million nights, it loses its charm. I thought it was what you’re supposed to do, because it is what you’re supposed to do. The world is full of people doing things they think they’re supposed to do, and no one questions it. But I’d made my bed (not literally, I made him do it), and I had to lie in it. Awake mostly. To distract myself from the fact that I was somehow already living in a loveless marriage without being married, I studied really hard. I studied the shit out of weird pointless subjects that would guarantee I would never find a job.
What do you mean I can’t get a job? I’m an expert on nineteenth-century homoerotic gothic literature.
I did try working in an office, after graduating, but it did not go well for any of us. I lasted two months, which was two months too long for all of us. I was hired to bring the tea, but instead I brought the doom. If I’d been medicated it might have gone better, which was why I wasn’t medicated. I wanted it to go wrong. I wanted the world to know I couldn’t do what they did. I did try, and I should get credit for that. Two months is not nothing. But I stopped, so give me credit for that too.
After all that, I wanted a job that would wreck my body the same way the world was already wrecking my mind. I wanted to not think for a while.
When I saw the ad for the shelter job, I didn’t even have to interview. I just showed up and Debs showed me around and said, Still want the job?, and I said, Hell yeah, and that was it. It was a shithole, miles out of town, and I’d have to get up stupid early for essentially no pay, but in exchange I’d get to have my thoughts drowned out by a bunch of rowdy dogs and minimal humans. It was exactly what I needed.
I didn’t tell the boyfriend this was my plan because he might have asked if my plan still included him, and I wasn’t sure I knew the answer.
* * *
Today is trash day at the shelter. Exciting! We keep our trash right by the entrance, which I think says it all. Drive by at the right time, and you might see me jumping on it all to flatten the garbage down, so we can cram even more into the bin. It’s one of the things I look forward to all week. Melissa said, Maybe we should move it somewhere people can’t see it, and we said, But they’ll still smell it and we’d have to haul it back out there every week, so we kept it where it was. We wanted the world to see us for what we were.
Melissa pulls up next to me, and I can hear her radio, and it’s that boy band again. You don’t know you’re beautiful, she’s singing, and I feel sad for her. Debs doesn’t insist that we smile on the job, but Melissa does anyway, no matter how she’s feeling inside, and we can’t tell her not to because that would make us monsters. Which we are, but mostly when we’re alone. All we have to do is to not mind picking up dog shit and maybe getting bitten and sometimes dealing with annoying people, and in exchange we get to be around dogs, who are soft and warm and mostly not assholes.
Melissa started a few weeks after me, so I’m her senior—in my mind, anyway. I think her ex-husband was abusive, but we don’t talk about it. She has a kid who looks like him, which sucks for everyone. I don’t hate her.
When she sees me, she leaps out and says hi and asks how my weekend was. This is our relationship, nice and small-talky, no real emotional contact. I just want to come in, do my job or pretend to, and go home, where I can make myself feel better having ticked off functioning enough to do a job on my list of goals. Then I’m free to spend the evening doing the kinds of things a not-so-functioning person does, like lying on a coach facedown, turning my head now and then to see what’s on TV, then turning back to face the cushion.
Melissa always asks about my weekend, and I never know what to tell her. I usually feel oddly defensive about it—people can be so fucking nosy, even sweet people, especially sweet people—so I say something like, Good, thanks, and if I’m bored, I’ll ask how hers was, because people like to talk about themselves. I’m always waiting for her to say she thought she saw me at the supermarket but then I hid from her, and why would I do that? I have a recurring nightmare that Melissa sees me out in the world and drags me out for something like a coffee when all I wanted to do was buy the largest bag of potato chips I could find, and I have to stab us both with a plastic Starbucks fork.
But today I tell her everything. I tell her how my family and boyfriend threw an intervention and how it didn’t go well and now I’m single with no intention to mingle. I happen to know that Melissa has the Christian Mingle app on her phone, which I can’t believe is a thing. I know this because I look at her phone every time she leaves it in the break room. If she didn’t want me looking at it, why would she leave it around unlocked?
Whoa, she says, her eyes bulging. I don’t think she even knew I had a family or a boyfriend, even though we’ve worked together for years. She probably just assumed I was a spinster, given how I act around the shelter, shushing people and scowling like a grumpy librarian. I once shushed someone in a bookstore and my boyfriend walked off, pretending he didn’t know me, though he barely had to pretend.
I didn’t mention what the intervention was for. For the drinking? she said. I laughed so hard I peed a little, then pretended I had some important dog business to take care of and ran off.
I couldn’t tell her the real answer—that they felt they had to intervene because I wasn’t showing any signs I was going to get with the program and get medicated anytime soon. So now I have no boyfriend, no family, just this job, these women, and a bunch of dogs who don’t know me from a table leg or a tree. It’s enough to make you want to kill yourself, but we’re a no-kill shelter.
We have dogs here that are older than Debs’s kids, dogs who will probably die here, though not because of us. We do have to put dogs down sometimes, though only if they’ve attacked another dog, or us, more than a few times. Sometimes Debs gifts those dogs to the police, though, because she thinks the dogs are her kids, and if one shows a natural talent for something—even if that thing is attacking people—she feels it should be encouraged. And the police like Debs, because she’s a not-unattractive woman who lives alone, if two kids and twenty-odd dogs is alone. Sometimes they bring us dogs, sometimes we give them dogs; it’s the best relationship we have with any men.
I once heard Debs tell a police officer that dealing with dogs is like dealing with human beings: it’s messy and people get hurt. I think he thought she was flirting, but I knew she didn’t do that shit, as she called it. We try to minimize the hurt for everyone, she said. That’s why she lives out here, away from people. They think we’re here because of the barking, but really we’d be here anyway. We live in the shadows, I said once when I was a bit drunk and weepy, and Debs said, You don’t know shit about shadows, and I went quiet. Debs has that effect on me. She calls me out on my bullshit, and I let her.
6
My every waking thought is about this Christmas pill. I feel like I’ve been seen and I wasn’t ready. Like I’ve been waiting to b
e seen for years, and when they finally caught me, I was off taking a dump.
I need to get my thoughts on paper. Make some sense of it. Paper has never let me down. So, on my break, I make a pros and cons list. I’m not sure where to begin, so I start to draw a penis, but then stop myself. Then I start drawing a vagina, but that feels wrong, so I make it a flower, and then I get mad at the world for always making it about the penis. Then I start worrying that Debs’s kids might barrel in and see what I’m drawing, and I start to sweat.
Pro: This pill is like a reward. I deserve a reward! Like you’d give a puppy. Only I don’t need one every time I pee where I’m supposed to. Just once a year is fine. Then again, my life is already full of rewards. Sleep is my reward. Jerking off is my reward. Pissing people off is my reward. Just because you can’t Instagram it doesn’t mean it’s not a reward.
Con: My days as a bad example would be over. I’d never again hear the words Things could be worse! You could be Janet.
I doodle another vagina flower.
Con: Medicating my feelings goes against everything I believe.
Pro: I don’t believe anything, not really.
Con: My sadness is something I’ll have forever. This is as much of a life as I deserve.
Pro and con: If I don’t give in, my mother will never speak to me again.
Con: If I give in, Melissa will be excited. She still gets excited about things.
Con: I work at the most miserable place on earth. I have a right to my sad.
Con: I’ll be like everyone else.
Pro: Don’t worry, it won’t last.
Pro: I won’t have to make any more lists, so I can devote my break time to more important things, like eating a Twix.
* * *
A week later, my mum phones me up to tell me about this new pill she thinks I would like, like it is a new yogurt she just tried, because she’s done that too. (Are you really calling me on the landline to tell me about a yogurt? I said, regretting answering, after it rang and rang till I was sure someone had died.)
I don’t tell her that two other people have already told me about this pill; she doesn’t need to know that at least two other people also think I’m a pain in the ass. I don’t tell them that my doctor called me in to tell me about it weeks ago.
And I certainly don’t tell any of them what I already know: that I’m considering the idea that this pill—this temporary pill—really was made for me.
* * *
According to the pamphlet, after two weeks of taking the pill, you should start to feel like your edges are coming off a little. They’re still there, but they’re baby-proofed. When a Christmas commercial comes on the TV, you should no longer want to throw something at it, just calmly leave the room or switch the channel.
By week three you should feel like you can cope with the coming holiday drama. Like it might all be a dream anyway. (If you feel too dreamy, tell your doctor at once.)
By week four you should be ready to surrender to the season. You should have accepted its inevitability and be actively making plans.
Week five takes you into December, and it’s supposed to be plain sailing from here on. Christmas is definitely happening now, and for once you’re an active part of it. You’re no longer fighting, you’re shopping. You’re one of those people who’s just happy to be there—on earth, in the store, on the couch.
Secretly, I was looking forward to the surrender.
* * *
For years, with the boyfriend, I had to do the two-Christmases thing. It nearly killed me. His family wasn’t as bad as some people’s—my own, for example—but I couldn’t do it, even the years when I did do it. I had to drink to get through it all, which wasn’t fun because it meant making sure I was drunk enough not to care but not so drunk as to be rude to anyone or sick on anyone. It kind of spoiled the fun.
I was used to drinking as a way of getting through things—school, meetings, sex—so it wasn’t that hard. It loosened me up, got me close to being as comfortable in the world as normal people probably always are. The hard part was pretending I wasn’t drunk the whole time—that this was just my natural state. Which was hard when my boyfriend knew that wasn’t how I was. But then he liked me drunk; sometimes I think he preferred me that way. I’m surprised he wasn’t sneaking pills into my food. Full-on gaslighting me, to save me the trouble of gaslighting myself.
I have a problem trusting people, but my bigger problem is letting people who aren’t trustworthy into my life. It’s safer to assume everyone’s an ass and let them surprise you.
I was the one who led my boyfriend here. Led him astray. I was the one who took his hand and led him to the bedroom, who said, Stay! Forever, maybe! Let’s make—well, not a family, quite, but something. And we tried. People think I don’t try, but I really do. This is me trying.
He’s a boy, my mother said when she sensed we were having problems. You need a man, she said, not a boy.
I’ve had men, I wanted to say. This is better. Safer. (I didn’t say that, of course; it would have been telling her too much.) But she was right: it wasn’t his fault; he was just a boy. How we thought we could do it, I’ll never know. I don’t know how adults do it.
Sometimes I want to tell him I’m sorry for wasting his time. Other times I want him to say he’s sorry, for wasting my time. It’s okay, I’d say. I would have wasted them anyway.
7
I’m taking my break. Debs doesn’t give a shit if we have breaks or not, but there are laws apparently, and she tries to follow some of them to make her feel better about the ones she ignores. So here I am, eating a Twix, reading Valley of the Dolls.
The staff room’s up behind the office, away from the rabble of the kennels, but you can still hear them all down there, demanding I remember they don’t have a home. Sometimes I wear my ear defenders when I’m on break—the only time I don’t have to—just so I can read a few pages in peace.
It doesn’t always work, though. Such as now.
Melissa pops her head in. Ooh! Is it a horror? she says, eyeing my book.
Yes, I say, because it is. Then she starts telling me about some movie about a doll that murders everyone. I’m Team Doll, I tell her, and she laughs.
No one leaves anyone alone anymore. It’s like everyone read the same think piece about the epidemic of loneliness and started bugging everyone all the time—and not just taking their elderly neighbor a casserole either. Is anyone even making casseroles anymore? Does anyone even know what a casserole is?
I’m not supposed to wear my ear defenders if I’m near the office, in case the phone rings. I never answer the phone anyway—at work, at home, anywhere. If a pay phone rang in the street I might, because it would be the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me. At work, it’s sure to be someone asking if we have space for another dog. We don’t, but Debs won’t turn a dog away. She keeps saying we need more kennels, but really we need fewer dogs, which means that what we really need is for humans to be less shitty. No one ever calls to say, Hi, we got a dog from you a while ago and he’s amazing, or, Hi, my mum died and left you all her money. Sure, people donate food and treats, mostly at Christmas. They bring us shitty blankets and old dog coats and toys from their dead dogs, and we take them and thank them and then have to boil-wash them to get the sadness out so our own dogs can use them for their own sadness. It’s nice, but it’s not enough. It just reminds me of the struggle it takes to get us all to Christmas.
I have my cell phone on vibrate. It’s a problem. Not for me but for people who’re trying to contact me. People need to contact you, Janet, the boyfriend used to say. What people? I’d say.
Oh, sure, in the beginning we would text. I may even have sent him a dumb heart emoji. I most definitely never sexted him, though, or sent him a picture of my boobs or worse. The closest we ever got to having phone sex was when he was away for work and asked
me what I was reading.
I do use my phone—I’m not from the Dark Ages. I text, mostly, and I watch videos of Keyboard Cat, the only cat I like, and wonder what he thinks of us all now. I just don’t use my phone to call people, in the hope that people will return the favor by not calling me.
Melissa loves answering the phone. Even if it’s the school phoning to tell her that her kid is sick or bit someone again, she answers it theatrically, like it might be the queen calling. She would happily sit by the phone for an entire day if there’s half a chance someone might call. Her phone has a fluffy case, but it’s not pink, so I forgive her. Mine is black, with a lot of scratches and dents, like my heart.
So I’m on my break, and I’m trying to eat my Twix without touching it because I’m afraid I might still have dog shit under my nails from days ago, and Debs pops her head round the door.
Sarah’s in the bins again, she says.
For fuck’s sake, I say, cramming the rest of the Twix in my mouth and nearly choking, which is an unwanted reminder that I’m not good at blow jobs. I hate that I’m thinking about blow jobs or that they’re even a thing. Sarah is in the bins.
Sarah’s this overweight black lab with food issues and anger issues, like a lot of us. I quite like her. She waddles around with her big butt, snarling at everyone, like, What you looking at? Sarah has an annoying habit of getting out of her kennel and breaking into the food store, where she then eats everything in sight and keeps eating till she vomits, then just carries on. If you try to approach her, she’ll bite your face off, and I get it. We don’t have tranquilizer darts, obviously, so we have to use this stick with a hoop on the end to drag her off. Debs had to build her a special kennel that’s like Fort Knox, but Sarah still manages to get out. I’m never not impressed.
Sad Janet Page 5