Climbing The Stairs, Keeping My Teeth - Essay for Happy Endings December 2022

Every day we wake up and encounter a world of possibilities. It may not always feel like it though. We get used to the ins and outs of our daily lives and the things that once seemed novel and exciting can all begin to seem very humdrum. Unfortunately, the possibility of surprise and newness can manifest as dread. Too often surprise can feel synonymous with bad news. 

Perhaps you are out at your local bar cutting up with your friends and then boom surprise there’s suddenly a literary event happening and you're being asked to be quiet. Or, Like on the way here tonight boom - the unexpected, my partner and I got stuck on the bay bridge for an hour, what a fun surprise. I don’t mean to skew negative, at my heart, somewhere underneath everything I’m an optimist. I think.

I have this issue with intrusive thoughts. It’s fairly common, and a lot of folks deal with them, in fact, recent research has found that 90% of people experience intrusive thoughts at some point in their life. Many people that deal with this phenomenon experience thoughts of self-harm. They may be going about their day, not feeling particularly depressed or upset, maybe even feeling cute and capable, and then suddenly they’ll imagine cutting themselves or swerving their car into oncoming traffic. The degree of severity varies (I think, I’m not an expert) and unfortunately my intrusive thoughts can be particularly visceral.

Intrusive thoughts are usually a symptom of Obsessive Compulsive or Anxiety disorders but not exclusively so. Again, not an expert but I did some research. Perhaps it’s the writer in me that makes my imagination so thorough and violent at times. I most often have intrusive thoughts about stairs or curbs, I’ll be casually approaching a staircase and suddenly I’ll visualize, and to an intense degree feel, my teeth smashing against the cold hard surface. Concrete stairs, like the kind in parking garages, are the worst. Or honestly, the ones outside my apartment that I traverse several times evenly day. In my head, It’s bloody. It’s gory. It sucks. A shiver runs through my whole body and sometimes I have to pause and steady myself to keep from collapsing. 

These thoughts and the subsequent unease I hold have been with me for most of my life. (When I was younger I used to have these nightmarish fantasies of being smothered to death in a blank void slowly filling up with heavy itchy blankets. I don’t know why, I guess I’m afraid of too many blankets. One or two is plenty.) Perhaps these thoughts are a symptom of some neurological disorder or mental illness, but mostly they're just a pain in my ass. (Although I don’t have many intrusive thoughts about my ass which is too bad because my ass is pretty delightful.) 

The worst of these cerebral hauntings often surround emotional pain rather than physical. Imagine smashing teeth on some stairs but swap teeth with soul and stairs with every living thing you see. It’s honestly not just friends or loved ones who have this unintentional influence over me, everyone and everything can make me feel horrible from time to time. Folks I pass on the street show up in my mind saying the cruelest things that I’ve ever thought about myself, occasionally a stranger will do that mock “I’m going to punch you” thing that the bullies in high school movies do, and then laugh when I flinch. 

Everyone that I have ever cared for, loved, or respected has harmed me deeply, irrevocably, in my head without ever knowing the extent of it. Sometimes my Mom hates me, when I was a teenager during a particularly bad period of mental health I became convinced that my Mom and my friends would get together and talk shit about me. Convinced. (Honestly, this is hilarious to me when I’m feeling fine but as a depressed teen it was less so.) At my most tender, my partner thinks I’m a pathetic greasy needy worm (and not in a sexy way,) and my dog is repulsed by the way I pet her, etc.

The way my brain works unfortunately keeps me living in fear a lot of the time. Not in a way that prevents me from holding down a job or maintaining healthy-ish relationships, but in a way that bars me from ambition and risk-taking or ever feeling like I’m truly present in my life. I try less than I should because the chances of being hurt physically or mentally feel so immense. I have breakdowns while filling out job applications or submitting my work for publication because in my head everyone thinks I’m boring, useless, and undeserving of life let alone publication. 

 I often won’t realize I’ve had a good night until I’m telling someone else about it the next day, my life becomes more real in the retelling of it. I don’t always clock that I’m enjoying myself without effort. I’ll whisper “fix your face” when I notice that I’m grimacing through a pleasant conversation. Get out of your head is a necessary mantra for me to remember that I live here and not inside the damp, rat-filled catacombs of my fussy and melodramatic psyche.

I do so want to live here. I’d love to be here with y’all. I’m glad I’m here. And when I do let myself be real, when I get out of my own way, when I do climb the stairs, teeth intact, hallelujah, I want to let myself celebrate that climb, because it’s hard. I can be funny, I can be entertaining, and I can navigate the stairs but it’s rarely easy and I have to allow myself to feel proud of the moments I succeed, even when it comes to the smallest accomplishments. 

Our deepest traumas, real or crafted by our anxiety disorders, take up so much space in our brains, and when we succeed we unfortunately brush it off or chalk it up to just doing what we had to do. I’m afraid all the of the time, of everything, why shouldn’t I celebrate making it here, to this moment, with all of you? We live in a country where the idea of a participation ribbon is mocked as if participation isn’t extremely, soul-flaying-ly, difficult.

It’s been years since I’ve intentionally harmed myself. I couldn’t always say that. Honestly, I think I just got lazy, self-harm requires a lot of effort. There was a time in my life when I walked the line of existence, perched on the edge of a concrete staircase, and deeply considered allowing myself to fall. Survival is a learned skill and we need to trust ourselves and each other in order to live. 

So this is me promising to look each moment, each choice, each interaction in the eyes and say I’m so glad to be here. I could’ve opted out a long time ago, and as difficult as it can be to stay here sometimes, I’m choosing to stay. And my teeth are currently unsmashed, I’ve climbed and descended so many stairs today, and I’m telling you the truth because I’m choosing to trust you.