Nobody Cares

by Anne T. Donahue

  But who cares? Look at how many times you’ve failed. The two constants in life are death and failure. (Hopefully, they’re unrelated.) So yes, a lot of the time, things don’t work out. But goddamn it (you’ll say, vowing never to return to that specific clinic again), at least you tried.

  8. You don’t owe anybody anything

  Okay, fine: you owe your family and friends something (like respect and common courtesy), and you owe your employers two weeks’ notice if you want to quit. You also owe it to most people not to be a complete asshole.

  But if you’re at a party and you want to leave? Leave. On the worst date of your life? Get out. Someone you’ve never met on the internet is making their problems yours? Block them. At a bar and you no longer want to be? Be gone.

  This is what I remind myself when I’m at an event/place/to-do/gathering/party/most things and feel increasingly like I really, really want to leave. So then I do, and nobody’s bothered. The same rule also applies to: working for free, putting up with a person who takes advantage of you or your kindness, feeling obligated to do something you’ve been asked to do by someone with many demands who doesn’t even appreciate it, and so on. You don’t want to collapse like a dying star, so you need to take care of your brain. And a big part of that includes knowing when to say “Bitch, please” upon being asked to help someone you’ve met once dog-sit despite your severe allergies. No thank you! You owe them nothing.

  9. Keep your eyes on your own paper

  It’s hard when so-and-so is doing the thing that you want to do. And it’s worse when you realize you are rooting for them to fail because you’re jealous. Jealousy is a terrible feeling. Jealousy is how we morph into the worst, most petty versions of ourselves (and inevitably why we end up owing a few apologies).

  Never have I gone down the rabbit hole of creeping on somebody’s work or life or Instagram and come away feeling good. I come away feeling like an asshole because now I’m even more behind on a deadline, and I know way too much about a stranger’s life. But it happens, and we’re human, and it’s easy to think that if you can chart out someone else’s trajectory to the top, you’ll learn what it takes to be them — or beat them. Every time I’ve acted out of jealousy, I’ve told myself it was an act of control or reclamation. And every time after the fact, I’ve felt spectacularly unhinged and out of control.

  When I was a music journalist, I used my bylines as social leverage. I’d drop the names of publications I was writing for to an acquaintance who was in the same industry because I wanted to remind them that I belonged; that I was a good writer who was worthy of being sent out on interviews or to shows they might not have been asked to cover. It was all bullshit: I was profoundly unhappy — broke and struggling, mentally and emotionally. Other people’s accomplishments felt like personal threats because I assumed they were taking something away from me. I was defined entirely by insecurity and jealousy and spite. It was the worst.

  Being jealous does nothing. It turns you into a person who’s unable to feel genuine happiness, and tarnishes every accomplishment when it’s used to measure your sense of worth on a made-up scale. You hear about a friend’s promotion (in an industry that probably isn’t yours) and feel like you will never venture past your existing achievements. You hear someone from high school is getting married and assume that you never will. You discover the guy you worked retail with in 2006 has a new apartment, and you sit wherever you happen to live and actively resent the space you loved five minutes ago. And feelings like this will always come up; it’s just up to you to say “fuck off.”

  So, while I’d like to say you should just decide not to be jealous, and that we’re all in this together so let’s remember that and be best friends, I know that isn’t realistic because jealousy is immune to reason and logic. This week, I went through a stranger’s Instagram for a full hour, trying to piece together their dating history because I was threatened by how close they seemed with a guy I have a crush on. But then I reminded myself to keep my eyes on my own paper. If I feel myself slipping into a jealousy wormhole when I see someone else shining, I remember that to gauge my self-worth based on someone else’s accomplishments is a one-way ticket to bitterness.

  There’s a scene in Mad Men that I love so much. Ginsberg is salty that Don didn’t introduce his idea to a client and tries to reproach Don by saying, “I feel bad for you.”

  To which Don replies, “I don’t think about you at all.”

  Be Don Draper. Which is the only time in history anyone has given that advice.

  10. It doesn’t have to be perfect

  Nothing has to be perfect, other than brain surgery. (So to all brain surgeons reading this: I’m sorry. And good luck.)

  Just getting through the day can be an achievement, so expecting perfection is unfair to yourself and your work and your relationships (and even your hair). Mistakes are how we learn. Embarrassment is how we grow. Getting bangs is often how we scream for help. And if you are sincerely trying, you’re doing a lot more than most. Effort trumps perfection every time.

  And perfection is boring. There’s a reason we were all obsessed with Princess Margaret after watching the first two seasons of The Crown.

  11. You’re not alone

  You aren’t. You are not alone in whatever it is you’re facing. You have family, you have friends, you have strangers on the internet, you have the barista who was kind to you today. And if you do not have those, this is a reminder that there are people who will pick up the phone and listen should you feel entirely solitary.

  Reaching out for help is terrifying because it means admitting that you’re struggling, you’re vulnerable, you’re human. It is scary and awful, and I have faked choking on popcorn in a movie theater to distract everyone from the fact I was crying. I didn’t want to wade into what was really happening, and I didn’t want anybody to ask if I was okay, because telling the truth would mean pulling back the curtain on my carefully curated life-is-perfect façade.

  But you aren’t alone. And you can ask for help and still be tough as nails. Regardless of whether or not you were just crying in a movie theater. I promise.

  It Will Never Feel This Bad Again

  I am bad at death because emoting in front of people I care about is a nightmare. I hate when people I love want to hug me and say things like, “I’m sorry,” but I would hate it even more if they didn’t. I hate the look you get when somebody finds out you’ve lost someone, or the way you’re confronted with other people’s grief while grappling with your own. I hate the way jokes are received with a “So I guess this is how you’re dealing with it” half-smile grimace, or when it seems like someone is just waiting for you to fall apart so they’ll feel useful.

  After somebody dies, I want to cry by myself and late at night so that the next morning, I can blame my swollen eyes on lack of sleep. I want to shop for things I don’t need and order $75 worth of Pizza Hut to eat in bed. I do not want to talk about it beyond the hard facts: this is what they were sick with, this is how they died, the funeral is at 11. Please don’t attend; I don’t want to have to perform for you.

  But more than anything, I don’t want to face a world without.

  ~

  My nana died after a short battle with cancer when I was 17, and I wasn’t ready to lose her. I was already an emotional teen, and my nana was like a second mom who taught me the art of bargain hunting, introduced me to Colin Firth via Pride and Prejudice, and watched patiently for hours as I performed the entire soundtrack to The Sound of Music. She made my Barbies tiny pioneer clothes the summer I was obsessed with Little House on the Prairie and made the best bacon and eggs I’ve ever known. Until she got sick, I’d been lucky in having existed for nearly two decades without having to witness the realities of stage 4 cancer and what happens to somebody you love when they’re faced with it. She was given the news on a rainy night in October after months of misdiagnoses, and she died on Thank
sgiving weekend the following year. During the months in between, she’d get a little bit better, she’d get sicker, she’d try new chemo, she’d get sicker, she’d get better, she’d be on the up, she’d be violently ill, she’d eat again, she couldn’t anymore. And then she finally said no more.

  She scheduled our family’s Thanksgiving early, opting for the weekend before because she knew she wouldn’t make it to the actual holiday. Miraculously, she ended up being up and well enough to hang out, laugh, watch old movies, and eat. I remember walking into her room and overhearing her plan the details of her funeral with my mom, and promptly doing an about-face. I walked back to the kitchen and poured myself a big glass of vodka. My grandpa watched me suspiciously as I dutifully poured in a splash of cranberry juice before retreating to the basement. I lay down on the floor in front of Monsters, Inc. with my little cousin who, now 21, remembers none of this. At some point before he and my aunt and uncle left that day, my nana told him she was going to be with Jesus, and he went home and tore his room apart.

  Two days after our early Thanksgiving, she was moved to the hospice, and on a Thursday afternoon, I held back tears while giving her one last hug after spending most of my visit hiding out in her bathroom, trying to erase all evidence I’d been crying on the way over. Lying still in the bed, she quietly told me not to be sad for her, and I lied and said I wasn’t, even though I didn’t want her to die. I crawled into the passenger seat of our CR-V and cried all the way home. In the days after, I couldn’t go to work, couldn’t go to school, and could barely carry on conversations about the reality of her impending departure.

  On Saturday, my dad called from the hospice to tell me she’d passed. He asked if I wanted to come with them to my grandpa’s house, and, opting to turn off my emotions instead of processing my now Nana-less world, I informed him of my plans to go to a party. I wanted cigarettes and alcohol. And, oddly, I couldn’t cry.

  At the party, I chain smoked cheap cigarettes and made jokes about being the next dead relative when my friends told me not to smoke so much. I stood around awkwardly, not self-aware enough to recognize that my grief was obvious despite my lack of tears. I hijacked conversations with news of my nana’s death, unable to cry but wanting the void she’d left to be recognized. I went home around midnight and told my parents I’d go with them back to my grandpa’s the next day. The real Thanksgiving Sunday.

  I sat around while my heartbroken grandfather started giving her things away to my mom and her siblings, who talked about the upcoming funeral — five days away. I absentmindedly stared at more Monsters, Inc. with my cousins, clutching the Sound of Music record I used to make her play on repeat and wearing her watch, and drank more vodka, and only cried when I was by myself. Crying made me feel young and weak. I wanted what felt like this never-ending saga to be over.

  Nana’s funeral was packed wall-to-wall. And I cried hard and dramatically, completely unable to keep it together despite having known for the better part of a year that she was going to die. Death was the worst, and I hated the way it reminded me of how out of control I was.

  But the older I got, the more death became a constant. Friends lost loved ones, my family lost friends, and my dad and mom put our family cat down after 17 years. And there were some close brushes: when I was 18, my dad went septic after his appendix burst, and that same year Mom nearly bled to death after a complication post-surgery. In 2014, my Grandma Donahue died after years with Alzheimer’s, years of being unable to recognize me or my dad or anyone who loved her. And with every death, I taught myself to emote a little bit less, pushing the acknowledgment of loss down as far as I could, desperate for a sense of control over the uncontrollable.

  ~

  I came home from the movies on a November afternoon to find out my uncle Bill had been admitted to the hospital. He had a pain in his side, he couldn’t control it at home, and they were going to do some tests. I ignored the conversation I’d had with my friend Nicole a few days before — about how I had a feeling that something bad was going to happen — and told myself the tests would point to something easily treatable.

  Obviously, that wasn’t the case.

  Bill and Dan, my dad’s two brothers, have been my extended fathers since I was born. Uncle Bill, a retired captain of the fire department, and I spent our time going on adventures — visiting the fire museum he helped curate when I was a teen, road-tripping to Niagara Falls, or riding the school bus route he drove after retiring. Through my adult years especially, we met for eggs and bacon to talk about family, his photography, my writing, and mental health. A Virgo like me, Uncle Bill’s capacity for scheduling and planning and multi-tasking was something I aspired to: he’d talk to me about my goals and dreams in a way that made them seem possible. Regardless of where I was — emotionally, mentally, financially — he urged me to keep going, making it clear how much he believed in me. The last time we had breakfast, he told me how proud he was of how far I’d come. I thanked him and nagged him about road-tripping with me to Detroit. I’d begun to feel precious about our time together.

  For two weeks, we were met with nonanswers about the pain in his side — his symptoms changed, his fever spiked, he was non-responsive to antibiotics. During the first week, I hung out with him in the early afternoons while my aunt and cousins were at work, and I desperately tried to seem in control, talking to nurses and doctors about what they were giving him so I could pass along any helpful information to the rest of the family.

  Despite being stuck in a hospital bed, he was still so unequivocally himself. And while I’d been too young to spend much time with my nana when she was sick, I was old enough now to appreciate Bill’s friendliness and how he managed to make nurses laugh while battling high fevers and inexplicable infections. I was also old enough to feel scared and frustrated and sad and exhausted, particularly because we still didn’t have answers. On the Friday of that first week, he was sleeping when a bunch of his friends and my Uncle Dan and Aunt Sheila stopped by. I touched his foot and said goodbye before leaving, commanding him to get better because I didn’t know what else to do or how else to help. He sleepily thanked me and told me he loved me, and I smiled as I said it back, desperate for him to sit up and tell me that it was going to be fine, that he was fine, that it had all been a mistake. That night, he went into the ICU with a fever of 106, and we all waited, believing that if he made it through this, he’d rally and escape.

  And for a minute, he rallied. For another week, my aunt dutifully kept my dad and Dan posted with any and all developments. When they visited, hazmat suits were required to prevent infection. On Sunday, while I put up the Christmas tree, my dad told me he thought Bill would be back home soon.

  The next morning, Bill died. I thought back to our last moment together, wishing I had said “I love you” louder, more deliberately, and maybe so purposefully that it would’ve made some type of difference. I hated that my last mental picture of him was not the vivacious, enthusiastic, energetic man I knew, but a sick, frail person who still joked around despite clearly suffering. I hated knowing he’d been taken from me.

  ~

  Death is an asshole. Regardless of illness or circumstance or gut feelings, you are never ready to accept never seeing someone again, to have nothing left but last conversations and memories. You are never ready to be left with how sick somebody looked, or the way they stood up and hugged you despite how dizzy and feverish they were. You are never ready to exist without a person you loved and still need. Death is a constant, but you are never ready.

  When my dad told me about Bill, I demanded answers. I yelled questions as though my dad had something to do with it and told him to ignore any tears should he see them. My mom offered me a hug, to which I coldly said, “Absolutely not,” before closing my door and crying as quietly as I could. I picked fights with her all week. I went to the mall that night with a friend, told her the facts, drank three peppermint mochas (of varying sizes),
and felt no need to cry until I was alone in the car. And then I cried harder, thinking of the upcoming ceremonials, paranoid that my 17-year-old self would somehow hijack my angry adult approach to grieving.

  But there is a canyon between ages 17 and 31. So although I’d been a sobbing disaster when my nana died, I’d spent the last 14 years growing into Donahue traits: humor, honesty, and dry eyes in front of strangers.

  At the funeral home, church, and wake, I did what my Uncle Bill did best: talked a lot, joked around, avoided tears and spiraling into misery. Which worked since nobody in our family put their feelings on display that week. Only in quiet moments would we share amongst ourselves. My family and I took solace in each other, realizing how alike we were in our black humor, and how nobody outside of us could completely understand what we were feeling or why we’d rather make jokes about coffins than accept tearful hugs. We could acknowledge together how awful funerals are. If you’re lucky, death can bring together everyone left behind.

  The day after the funeral, I stayed in bed all day, ordered Swiss Chalet chicken, and watched a documentary series about serial killers. I cried for hours, but I still haven’t cried in front of any real person. It’s the only control over death I have. And I will take it.

  Because death has continued to throw its weight around. Friends have dealt with it, family members, acquaintances. But while it’s scary and awful and exhausting and terrible, it’s also comforting to have accepted that death will always be there and will always rip out your heart. It doesn’t get easy, and it will find surprising new ways of debilitating you. But what does get simpler is your awareness of it — the reminder that you have gotten through it before, and you will get through it again, and it will never, ever be as bad as it is in the moment you are battling through. It will never hurt the way it did when you found out, and the ache will never be as painful as when you realize those were your last words to them. It won’t be as painful forever.