Giving Up (10 page)

who we really are
. When we do get into a fight, however, I feel the exact opposite way. It's as if all that tenderness and patience is an act, that the only thing we ever really do is fight, and that even when we're not fighting, all we're doing is biding our time until the next confrontation. And of course, since we can shift so quickly from cuddling on the couch to screaming in each other's faces, I end up feeling like I'm losing my grip on reality. Which, in a way, I am. The analogy I always use is that it feels like I'm a nun who keeps losing her faith and then finding it again, on a daily basis. Because, just like a nun, when I lose my faith, I lose it completely. When we argue I basically start mentally packing my bags. There is no hope for us. There never was. We were just going through the motions. We were never really in love. When we go into that hole, when it goes dark between us, it feels as though even in the most recent past, when we were being loving with one another, that I never really felt the way that I thought I felt towards James. I just wanted to believe that I felt that way, I thought. But then, once we made up, I realized the only real thing I have in my life, the only thing I could believe in, the only person I could count on, was James. ‘You're too much of an idealist,' he says. ‘How much of an idealist is the right amount?' is what I say. He's into nuance, the grey area. I'm more of a black and whiter, myself. I know that the world is really complex and that nothing is ever one hundred percent, that you can't ever really know the truth about anything and all that crap, but that's not really how it feels. For me, there's not a whole lot of complexity. There's zero nuance. The feeling I have pretty much all the time is that the truth is staring me directly in the face, like right up in my face, breathing all over me and looking deep into my eyes, and just like in real life, if someone is standing that close with their face pressed up against your face so that your noses are touching, looking you right in the eye, it's only natural to look away. It's exhausting to maintain eye contact with someone else, especially if they initiate the eye contact, all you can do is stare back at them and try to keep a straight face that denies them access, as you're basically held hostage by their stare, or you can give in and let them see whatever it is they think they can see by staring for so long. Either way, most of the time, if you're like me, you pretend that you don't notice them staring, and act as if you're lost in thought, even though you're not really acting at all. What you're actually doing by avoiding eye contact is saying to the person staring at you that no matter how penetrating and persuasive their gaze may be, you will never acknowledge the look they are giving you, and by refusing to make eye contact you are saying to the person looking at you that whatever it is they think they see, they aren't really seeing it, that whatever they think they know, or what they think they've just found out, they don't really know, and they haven't found out. By avoiding eye contact you are saying, ‘You may think you can see something, but it's not really there. It doesn't exist for me.' When the truth is staring me right in the face, I instinctually look away, but just like when somebody is staring at me, I can feel it no matter what I do. It takes way more energy to constantly look things in the eye. Looking away gives me a bit of control over what I consider to be a pretty intense and unrelenting situation, even though I know this is actually the dictionary definition of sticking your head in the sand. What can I say? Maybe there are advantages to sticking your head in the sand. What's the value in seeing things coming? When a nurse is giving you a shot they tell you to look away because if you can't see what's happening then you may not even notice the pain caused by the needle, but if you insist on watching you end up anticipating the pain, you imagine the needle entering your arm and piercing the fat and muscle, and the anticipation of what's about to happen is worse than the needle itself, or, to put it another way, if you know what's going to happen then everything gets worse. Which is why, when a painful truth is staring me right in the face, I prefer to look away. Even though it felt like something was wrong and that the reason I couldn't get pregnant was that I was barren or James was shooting blanks, everyone I talked to all said the same thing – they knew someone who took a year, two years, three years, somebody else had a cousin who had completely given up and then got pregnant while she was in China to pick up her adopted baby. ‘How long have you been trying?' they ask, and when I tell them that it's been more than a year, they wave me off and tell me that it's completely normal at my age to initially have problems getting pregnant. Despite all these anecdotes and words of encouragement I know for a fact that something is wrong. How do I know? Because I know. Because it's staring me right in the face. It should've been as obvious to me then as it's obvious to me now. Going to the doctor to have all these tests done basically allows me to confirm what I already know, because I can
feel
that something is wrong. Even though there was no reason for me to suspect I would be one of the six percent of women that can't have children, or that I might marry someone who falls into the percentage of men that for whatever reason can't make it work, I should've at least considered the possibility when I started thinking about having a baby that it might never happen for me. By now, all of my friends have kids. A lot of them are working on their second. If you were to look at a picture of me and my friends back when we were young, there wouldn't have been anything to tell us apart. We all looked the same, wore the same clothes, did our hair the same way, made the same faces, and struck the same poses. (It's kind of ironic that at precisely the age we think we are most ourselves, or that we are somehow unique and original, we are actually the
least like ourselves
and completely
unoriginal
.) I know it's crazy, but I feel like you can tell somehow, like you can see all my friends' future children crowding the frame like a bunch of unborn ghosts, while surrounding me you might see an empty aura, like a sad little halo, or something like that. I'm not religious. I don't believe we were put on this planet for a reason, or that something happens or doesn't happen for a reason. There's no plan for us. No higher power is watching over us. There's no such thing as fate. I know all of this. But when I think of everything that has happened over the past couple of years, and all that is still happening, I can't shake the feeling that I'm being tested by
something
. It's like everything is building up to a climax, and if I can just hang on and be patient then it'll all work out somehow. Sometimes, even though I know it's a complete fantasy, this theory is the only one that makes any sense. Otherwise, I think, everything that has happened to me and the problems I'm having with getting pregnant are just part of a chaotic swirl and don't mean anything at all and the reason I can't get pregnant is a total fluke and not because of anything wrong with me or James. When I look at these pictures of me and my friends when we were young it's hard not to project what I know now onto who we were back then, and when I look at all the photos they post online now, it's like I'm looking at the fulfillment of a prophesy that was made back when all my old high school photos were taken. On the night of the cat incident this is what I was doing – I was going down the social networking rabbit hole. When James left for one of his ‘breaks' I'd been writing an email to my sister about everything that was going on and how I was feeling. But as soon as I took a pause from my email, I decided to check Facebook. Like most people, I spend an hour or two every day torturing myself by going online and indulging in the most ridiculous shit. I tell myself that I'm keeping up to date on the lives of my friends, that I'm maintaining my social life by interacting through short public messages with the handful of my friends who actually bother to maintain an
online presence
. I tell myself that – as I scan hundreds of pictures of my friends – I am just doing what everyone else is doing and that keeping up this loose network of friends, family, and acquaintances, despite my deep ambivalence, is an essential part of being a functioning member of society. I want to emphasize that I'm sure a lot of people have a way better experience with Facebook than I do. It's more than possible that the problems I have with social networks are actually just my own problems, or that the problems I have with Facebook are simply an extension of the problems I have with myself. But even if that is true, it hardly helps me with the feeling I get after I spend any amount of time online. As I said, it starts out innocently enough. I might go online to do some banking or to check the movie times, but within a few clicks I end up on Facebook. I don't think about it, it just happens, and once I'm on Facebook I immediately start telling myself I should get off. I know what being on Facebook does to me, and as soon as I realize what I've done I tell myself that nothing good is going to come of looking at my friends' photos. Then I feel like an asshole because I can't just enjoy looking at pictures of my friends on vacation, or with their children, or read about their great careers or creative projects, without experiencing powerful feelings of envy, and for some reason, anger, and a whole lot of other feelings I can't even name. What kind of person am I that I can't just be excited and supportive of my friends, and be happy for them when it looks like everything is going their way? Why do I resent the way they tell me about the joy and successes in their lives? Would I really appreciate it if they started talking about their failures, or wouldn't I just find some twisted way to resent that too, and somehow, through some ridiculous logic, get jealous over their suffering, as if it was another thing they had that I wanted? At the very least I would probably think they were overreacting, or they were too full of self-pity to notice their problems weren't really problems at all, just the cost of doing business out there in the real world. By using a combination of these arguments, and others like them, I end up staying on Facebook as a sort of challenge, daring myself to go on there and feel nothing but good will and happiness for my friends and family, but this doesn't stop me from continuing to repeat to myself the entire time I'm on Facebook that I'll get off after I look at one more picture, or one more post, or link. I think, ‘After this album from Veronica's European vacation I will close down Facebook and go do something more productive,' but of course as soon as I finish looking at those photos I immediately go to another friend's profile to see if they've posted any new pictures. Each picture feels like an insult. I open up a picture of my friends having a picnic in a park to celebrate their daughter's second birthday and it's as if the people in the picture collectively reached out and slapped me right in the face as hard as they could. My friend is smiling into the camera as she helps her daughter open a birthday gift but she might as well be spitting in my face. Even though what I'm looking at is just one picture out of thousands, a completely normal and clichéd snapshot of one of the ordinary milestones that litter my friends' lives, that increasingly clog up all of our lives so that it feels like they're made up entirely of milestones, I feel as though I have been personally insulted by this image. They must realize, I think, as I scroll through reams of snapshots, how painful it is for someone like me to see them enjoying a life that I'll never know. There's no excuse for this kind of shameless showing-off. They post all these pictures under the pretense of sharing these moments with their
online community
but all they're really doing is putting themselves on display. There are pictures of them on sailboats, or on the summit of a South American mountain, or they're laughing their asses off at a wedding, or dancing up a storm at an
exclusive after-party
, but even though the subject of these pictures is constantly changing, the message is always the same.
Look at me
. In short, these pictures are telling us that our friends' lives are orgies of fulfillment, an unending stream of satisfying moments spent with friends and family in exotic and beautiful locations. Even though I know that it's all an act, that what they're actually doing is covering up for all the time they spend alone, or surrounded by strangers, or people they don't like at all and who don't like them, wasting away years of our lives in their sad little offices, eating their sad little lunches, or hiding away in their cramped apartments and run-down houses, even though it's obvious that they're trying to put out a different image of their lives, there's something about these photos that is so convincing that I can't help but think that maybe their lives really are as fulfilling as these photos seem to suggest. Maybe, when I'm staring at the photo of my friend with her husband and two kids in some picturesque vista, posing at the edge of a cliff somewhere in Ireland, overlooking a magnificent stretch of bright blue ocean, I'm not looking at a carefully composed lie, but the gospel truth. It's nearly impossible to distinguish between what is actually happening and what we want each other to think is happening. I've become so obsessed with trying to determine what's going on in these pictures that I end up analyzing them with the same focus and attention to detail that an art expert would use with a painting they've been asked to authenticate. The problem with this is that Facebook photos aren't masterpieces. With art, an expert can draw on their vast knowledge of painting technique and themes, history, and biography – even biology and chemistry – they can look at a picture until they lose themselves in the infinite possibilities of interpretation, and they can try to determine what the artist intended, and whether they succeeded, and, if they didn't succeed, why not. But a Facebook photo isn't really meant to be analyzed, that's why you end up scrolling through a bunch at a time, because on their own there's not really much to look at, it's more about getting information than anything else. Whenever I go to a gallery, which isn't very often, I always leave with a sense of exhilaration, a sense of possibility, a feeling that the world which often seems so limited is actually so full that it's literally swelling. But every time I spend an hour or two on Facebook I always end up feeling as though life is a narrow set of gestures with only a few combinations at our disposal. There is one thing, though, that Facebook photos and artistic masterpieces have in common, and that is, whether you are painting a landscape or posting a picture of yourself in front of the Eiffel Tower, you are always trying to recreate something from the past, only so you can change it or force it into a new shape, or obliterate it altogether so that once the dust is settled all that is left is this depressing present that we all find to be so inadequate. When an artist paints a masterpiece (or when someone takes a picture and puts it online), they are simultaneously representing all the artists (and posters) that came before them, while they are also showing us they are completely different from these artists (and posters), and the masterpiece (or Facebook photo) they've created is something totally original. On the night of the cat incident I found myself staring at a set of photos that a friend of mine had posted after her honeymoon in Africa. They were just like all the other Facebook photos that people take while they are travelling in Africa. There were photos of my friend posing next to various animals, mostly snakes and monkeys, and making exaggerated faces of sheer terror, as if they had something to be scared of. There were nature shots – snow-capped mountains, vast prairies, even vaster deserts – where my friend would be posed next to her husband and sometimes accompanied by people who must've been guides or drivers, or they might be standing in a small group or with another couple of tourists like themselves. My friend looked extremely happy and in some of the pictures her face was literally beaming with joy. And of course there were loads of pictures of them eating, seated at a table loaded with plates and bowls piled high, a mix of glee and disbelief in their eyes, or there were photos taken after the meal, where they were posed over the dirty plates looking ridiculously pleased with themselves. When I sat there in a deep trance trolling through the photos of my friends' honeymoon in Africa, I was struck by an overpowering sense of déjà vu. Even though my friend was under the impression that she was sharing a profoundly personal experience (a life-altering trip with the love of her life), she was in fact demonstrating how deeply impersonal this experience actually was. There was nothing distinct or unique or even peculiar about her photos of her honeymoon. Basically, in these pictures, she was always mimicking other pictures (that were essentially mimicking other pictures, all the way back to . . . what?). She could have been anybody. What I ultimately find to be the core problem that all my other online problems revolve around (or more like the root problem, since all my other problems stem from it), is the way that I am constantly scanning these photos, not for very long (although I do scan over the same photos multiple times and I'm sure in some cases I've looked at the same photo what must be dozens, maybe even hundreds of times), and that I never feel any love for the people in these photographs. If I were being totally honest I'd have to admit that most of the time, as I've already said, I'm feeling envy, sadness, longing, disdain, maybe a little desire (not much though), definitely a healthy amount of full-on rage, nostalgia so strong I actually have to lie down, and in my better moments I get all wrapped up in sentimentality that kind of resembles love and affection. But I can turn this affection on and off, like the way a kid feels about their pet, a feeling that's sharp but doesn't cut very deep, so even when I stop for a second on a picture of one of my oldest friends holding her baby in her arms, a look of pure bliss on her face, and I'm able to see through my own very complex fucking feelings that a picture like this brings up, and I have a brief moment when I'm capable of thinking about something beyond my own hang-ups, all that happens is a little flash of emotion that passes through me without any lasting effect. And these moments are rare. For the most part all that looking at these pictures of my friends does is bum me out. Instead of bringing me closer to them it creates a huge distance. I see all these pictures of my friends living their lives, and even though I know it doesn't make any sense I feel like they've abandoned me. That I'm all alone. It might be someone I see all the time, like Veronica, and I may have just hung out with her a couple days before, but when I go online and look at her profile and start scanning through her pictures I feel like I no longer know her in the way I thought I did and that we're not nearly as close as I thought we were. What's worse is that my friends seem less impressive online. For instance, I think Veronica is definitely the most beautiful person I know and possibly the most beautiful person I've ever met – I'm not exaggerating – but in all of her Facebook pictures I find that her looks are only average. There's nothing special about her in any of these pictures and some of them are even unflattering. But then the next time I hang out with Veronica, after looking at her Facebook pictures, I'm immediately reminded that she is in fact as beautiful as I thought and the pictures not only didn't capture her looks but actually distorted them, just like when someone tells you that your friend, who you know to be one of the nicest people in the world, is a complete asshole, and even though when you hear gossip like this and know it's a lie, it still somehow manages to leave a mark. I remember when Jen thought Damion was cheating on her. She was convinced. But after a while she admitted she'd been feeling depressed and insecure and that Damion hadn't done anything to make her suspicious. Actually, she conceded, lately she felt he was being clingy and she was thinking they might need to take some time apart. Give each other a little space, she said. And even though I know the reason they're likely going to break up has nothing to do with Damion cheating on Jen I can't help thinking about it whenever I see them. I even hit on Damion one night after drinking half a box of wine. Since, in my mind, he'd already been unfaithful (even though he actually hadn't been), I figured, in my drunken state of mind, that he might be open to something with me. In my defense, it was a couple of months ago, when things were particularly shitty between me and James. He was spending all his time in the basement, and while I was really trying to be supportive I knew that most of the time he wasn't doing any work down there. How is it possible to spend that much time working on something without producing anything? That's what I had asked him the same night that I drank three-quarters of a box of wine and hit on Damion. The thing is, I really don't care what James does down in the basement. I really don't. As long as he's happy, I'm happy. But whenever he spends any time down there, he usually comes up looking like crap, and then he just sits on the couch with a miserable look on his face. If I try to talk to him he freaks out. Every day we go through the same routine. Whenever I suggest that we get out of the apartment, even if it's just for a walk, he gets this panicked look on his face and then goes on about how far behind he is and how he feels like he never has enough time to work. Then I tell him that I think that if he did something different to break up his usual routine it might help him relax and be more productive. I explain that the only reason I'm suggesting we go for a walk is that I'm worried about how all that time down in the basement might be affecting him. ‘I know how important this is to you,' I say, ‘but what's the point of spending all your time down there if you don't even like it? Even if you were able to finish what you were working on,' I say, ‘I feel like you wouldn't be able to enjoy it.' Inevitably, when I talk to him like this, I end up offending him. I'm actually worried about him, and I know that most of the time he's down there all he's doing is brooding. James thinks I don't believe in him. His words. Maybe he's right, because I don't really know what he means when he accuses me of not believing in him. If he means that I don't believe it's his destiny to spend his life in our basement working away on something that nobody will ever see, then he's right. But I've never hidden that from him. It's extremely rare to succeed at what he's trying to do. I believe that he's more than capable – that maybe he's even talented – but whether he succeeds or fails doesn't really matter to me. Like I said, I just want him to be happy. So I guess in that way I do believe in him, since I believe that he's deserving of happiness. What I always say to him whenever he's freaking out and accusing me of not believing in him is that I love him. ‘I love you so much,' I say. ‘How is it possible for me to love you but not believe in you?' And he always answers, ‘I don't know, you tell me.' On the night that I drank basically a whole box of wine I decided to fight back so I told him that he was right. ‘I don't believe in you,' I said. ‘I love you, but I believe that you're wasting your time down in the basement, and you're wasting my time too.' This wasn't true. I know how much his work means to him, but, to be blunt, I don't really give a shit what he does in his free time. I didn't resent him for throwing his life away on an impossible goal, I was just pissed that he had to be so miserable about it all the time. It hurt that he didn't believe me when I tried to reassure him that I didn't care whether he ever came to anything or not, and he would constantly try to provoke me and start a fight, but I knew if I admitted to what he was trying to get me to say – that he was fucking things up between us – then he'd be completely devastated. He accused me of not believing in him, but he only did this because he was fairly certain that I actually did believe in him. He's like a little boy sometimes, a little boy who thinks he's in love and constantly breaks up with his girlfriend so she'll tell him how much she loves him and wants to be with him. James needed constant reassurance, and never suspected I might get fed up one day and do the opposite, so even though he'd been baiting me for months he was pretty shocked when I told him I didn't believe in him. He stood up and went down to the basement. I caught him completely off guard. He expected me to go on about how I believed in him more than anyone else, so when I told him he'd been wasting his time (and mine) for the last seven years, that he should've done something he was ‘suited for' instead of screwing around all day with no end in sight, it was as though I told him that his whole life was one big mistake. I knew what I said would hurt him, but I think I underestimated just how little he believed in himself and how much faith he'd invested in my opinion. So when I lied and told him I didn't believe in him, it was just as devastating as if I had revealed that I'd never loved him, or that I used to love him but had stopped years ago and had been faking it for almost as long as it had been for real. He was so shocked that he stood up without a word and went to the basement, and instead of chasing after him I went over to Jen and Damion's and got smashed off a box of cheap white wine and told Damion he had ‘strong features' as well as many other things that I now feel really shitty about. Ever since that night we have avoided the topic of James's work in the basement, but I could tell it was bothering him, and whenever we got in an argument over how he couldn't get it up I couldn't help but feel like what we were really arguing about was how I no longer believed in his life's