Link Search Menu Expand Document
Publications
  1. When I thought about …

When I thought about …

When I thought about Claire’s death, and her parents having to come down to the city to clean out her apartment, I thought about my parents having to clean out my apartment in Cortland if I ever gave in to my suicidal ideation. I don’t know if relating Claire’s actual death to my hypothetical death was empathy or theft. I think it’s probably a bit of both. But I do know one reason for not taking my own life is abhorring the thought of my parents having to go through my things, deciding what to keep and what to get rid of, crying as they worked through the detritus of my life. You collect all these things in the course of your life that have, on some level, meaning and/or worth, and in an instant, it all becomes junk.

Did Claire’s parents keep or throw away the green lipstick I bought her?

I spend large portions of my time coveting what my friend’s have and daydreaming how much better my life would be if I were them. I envisage the things I’d do differently if I was them and other things I’d appreciate more if I was them. When Claire first moved to the city, I asked for her address so I could send her packages and cards. It took a year or two before I googled her address to see exactly where she lived. Curiosity quickly evolved to astonishment. The price of a studio in her apartment complex was more than three times what I was paying for my apartment in Cortland. She was only about six blocks from Central Park. She lived alone with her pug and cat. She was going to graduate school and dating in one of the largest cities in the US. Even though I knew Claire to be a bashful person, I drew her into a fantasy of a woman-about-town, living life in a glamorous yet raw way, like if you mushed the shows Sex and the City, Gossip Girl, and Girls together. I pictured her walking her dog around the streets of Manhattan, and going to SoulCycle classes, and sitting in grad school lectures, and flirting with hot men on Tinder—the quality of men you could only find in someplace like NYC—and going to lavish nightclubs. I wondered how she couldn’t be ecstatic with life.

I blotted out Claire’s lived experience and only considered the one-dimensional conceit of the American Dream that, as a society, we’ve believed to be real and achievable. What isn’t there to love about living in the dreamiest city in the world? And then I question whether anyone looks at my life and does the same thing and wonders how I, too, am not ecstatic with life. This wasn’t fair to Claire, and it isn’t fair to myself, but I keep doing it. Why am I sad? Why can’t I just get over it?

Wherever you are, there you are.

Table of Contents