Notes to Self

by Emilie Pine

  From the outside I looked fine: performing an image of success – book contract! funded project! journal! But in reality I was having a silent breakdown. A minor breakdown, as they go, but nonetheless a breaking down. I was working every weekend and, consumed with my job, I stopped returning texts from friends. The times my boyfriend suggested going for a bike ride, I would snap back that I was too busy. And though my work consists of activities that I love – teaching, researching, writing – the mounting pressure of constant deadlines was killing my love of them, and of myself. I stopped being just sad, and I started being depressed. I did not read depression as a danger signal, I did not step off the treadmill, and I did not get help.

  I thought that my depression was a sign of character weakness. I thought that if I could only stop wasting so much time being sad, I would be more productive. I worked longer hours to disguise the depression. Sometimes I was so tired and so sad that I would lock my office door, turn off the light and lie on the floor. I felt like I was being smothered with a blanket of anxiety. The smallest tasks felt like they would defeat me and I beat myself up for the tiniest mistake. I looked at other people, who didn’t seem to be drowning the way I was, and wondered how they did it. When a colleague told me that she began her research work at 9pm, after the kids were in bed, I didn’t feel pity for her – I was jealous of her discipline.

  And then last summer, at the encouragement of the research office, and because I’m such a good girl, I took on another funding application. As I agreed to do it, I told myself it would only mean a month’s work, overlooking the fact that I would have to work every day of the month without a break. When I told my family I was applying for another big grant they each said, ‘Don’t do it.’ And then, when I ignored that advice, they each said, ‘Well, I hope you don’t get it.’ And almost as soon as the application was underway, I realised they were right, it was a mistake. How did I get into this, I wondered, but it was far too late. I strategized and consulted and drafted and redrafted until I thought my brain would melt. And, of course, I kept doing my regular job too. In taking on yet more work, I was the architect of my own breakdown. But I was not alone on this road – the university was cheerleading me all the way to crazytown. Yay for the overworkers!

  IT ALL BEGAN TO FALL APART at the start of the conference season. I was travelling to a symposium in late June, the day was hot and I was distracted leaving the house. I was in the airport before I realised I had forgotten my jacket. Ordinarily no big deal, but I was flying to Norway and the weather forecast was ominous: cold and wet. As I stood in Departures, without any warm clothes whatsoever, what should have been a slapstick moment felt like a catastrophic mistake. In the throes of a panic attack, heart beating, sweat pouring, breath short, I phoned my boyfriend. He listened, then calmed and reassured me. He suggested I buy a jacket at the airport. I bought the warmest one I could find and I wore it, gratefully, all through the conference. Crisis averted.

  Two days later there was another hitch. My flight home was cancelled. Though it was only Friday afternoon, the airline said they couldn’t get me out of the country until Sunday. But that couldn’t be right, because I had to give a lecture in Frankfurt on Monday. I panicked again. At first, I tried cajoling the staff. Then I started to shout. I demanded to speak to the supervisor. She arrived but only told me, again, that there were no flights. Then I noticed the wedding ring on her finger and, guessing she might be a mother, I tried a new tactic: I showed her the picture of my nephew on my phone screensaver. I said he was my son, and that I had to get home for him. I had tears in my eyes. She looked at the photo, at me, then turned back to the desk and picked up the phone. As she rerouted me to fly out on Saturday I tried to keep the triumphant grin from my face. Crisis averted. Again. I barely slept that night. In the morning I took the first flight out, one of three planes I would have to get on that day. Traipsing around the airports of Europe was exhausting. But – and this was the thing – I actually felt happier than I had in ages. I was high on the hypomania of working, working, working. ‘Nothing can stop me,’ I thought, as I tapped away at my laptop first in Stavanger, then Aberdeen, then Schiphol. Superwoman.

  On Monday, still in a fug of tiredness, I flew to Frankfurt, gave my lecture, then flew home. The next day, though I barely knew what time zone I was in, I hauled myself back to work to finish the funding application. I pressed ‘submit’ with shaking fingers. I left my office and stood, momentarily confused, gazing down the shadowy and silent corridor. I was the only person left in the building. Obsessed with completing the application, I had not noticed the time, and though it was midsummer, the sky outside was dark. I realised I was hungry. I thought back and I could not remember the last time I ate an actual meal. At least, I consoled myself, it’s over now, I can go back to normal. Crisis averted – really and truly this time.

  But how many times can you avert a crisis before you admit it’s all one long crisis? The next evening I drove my car into a wall. I was on my way to pick my nephew up, to help my sister out, to give her a break from being a single parent. As I arrived at her house, I turned the car, but I was so spaced out that I did not see the gatepost. Suddenly there was the sound of scraping and scrunching as metal crumpled. My first thought was for my nephew, but, thankfully, he was nowhere near. Then I thought about the wall, and the car, cringing at the damage. Only slowly did I begin to wonder if I was alright. I was hugging the wheel. I was almost crying. And my whole body was trembling with adrenaline, trembling because I had confirmed what I knew. I knew something bad was coming down the track. I knew that I would break something. And now I had – I’d broken the car. And I was elated. Because I had thought the thing that would get broken was me.

  I may not have much empathy for others but, in fairness, I have none for myself either. I knew I was taking on too much and, at some level, I knew I was miserable. That’s not to say there weren’t plenty of times in the last two years that I was happy. But when you’re exhausted and depressed there is a strange divide. You know you should be feeling happy, you can tell yourself, ‘Now I am happy’, but the experience is somehow artificial, unreal. I stood on the edges of my emotions. And I stood on the edges of myself. And I couldn’t tell anyone. Because to have told anyone, to have said the word ‘depressed’ out loud, would have been the ultimate failure. I knew something was going to break. And I didn’t care.

  AT THE BEGINNING of the stress-bonanza years, I took a one-day ‘Mindfulness for Academics’ course. There were about twenty people in the room, and every one of us voiced the same issue: our jobs are too stressful. In hindsight, we needed less work, not more mindfulness. But since less work didn’t even feel like an option, we were trying to ‘fix’ ourselves instead, to be more resilient in the face of the onslaught. Really we were cannibalizing ourselves. Or the university was cannibalizing us, I’m not sure which.

  There is no mechanism for me to go to the people who run the university and say, ‘Hey, you know what guys,’ – and it is, mostly, guys – ‘it might be time to tell your employees to slow down.’ That memo will never get sent. In fact, I can’t even imagine it being sent. In acknowledging this, I don’t really blame the austerity-hit university for trying to turn its employees into revenue hunters and, as a consequence, sucking us dry. Well, okay, I do. But my mental health, it turns out, is my responsibility. I probably don’t need to tell you that, but I did need to tell myself. And once I realised that, I wondered why I would ever leave it in the hands of strangers to decide my value.

  After the car crash, I did not transform myself overnight. And though I am trying to be different, many of the problems I describe here still mark my life. ‘So, what has changed?’ a friend asked me recently. And here is the answer: these days I have a new to-do list. Actually, it’s not a to-do list. It’s more like a series of notes to self.

  I will value my ideas and my feelings. I will write every day because writing is one of the things that make me feel most alive. I will lecture on a
nd teach what I am passionate about. I will not hesitate to say the word ‘rape’ out loud just because I am wearing a nice skirt. I will call out misogyny. I will fight the internalised sexism. I will be kind to my colleagues precisely because I don’t know what, or how, they are feeling. I will eat breakfast. I will eat lunch. I will eat dinner (and not at my desk). I will pay attention to my middle-aged body. I will spend time with the people I love. I will be a daughter and a sister and an aunt and a partner and a friend. And I will ask my students what they would do, if they were not afraid. And I will listen to what they say. And I will remind them, with compassion, that the real failure is to not try.

  I am trying. And I am afraid. I am afraid to write about side-stepping and feelings and overwork and depression and breakdown because I am still convinced that admitting vulnerability makes me seem weak, not strong. I am afraid of confirming that I am young and cute and powerless. I am afraid of admitting to all the hard stuff, all the bad stuff, all the unlikeable stuff. I am afraid of exposing myself. I am afraid of being pitied. Of being resented. Of being shouted at. I am afraid of being the disruptive woman. And of not being disruptive enough.

  I am afraid. But I am doing it anyway.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Without Lisa Coen and Sarah Davis-Goff Notes to Self would not exist, and I would like to thank them for their vision and inspiration, and their editorial interventions. I am also very grateful to the friends and colleagues who helped me believe I could – should – write this book.

  In these essays, I have tried not to tell anyone else’s story, but only to tell mine as truthfully as possible. Inevitably, though, I have strayed into the stories and experiences of my family. A heartfelt thank you to my sister, and my parents, for their generous and gracious support despite my acts of trespass.

  And, finally, there would be no words without R.

  COPYRIGHT

  First published 2018 by Tramp Press

  www.tramppress.com

  Copyright © Emilie Pine 2018

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher.

  A CIP record for this title is available from The British Library.

  Tramp Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Arts Council, Ireland.

  ISBN 978–1–9997008–8–1

  Thank you for supporting independent publishing.

  Set in 11 pt on 17 pt Galliard by Marsha Swan