Stupid, Not Contagious
Since we're here now, we'd simply love some entertainment
Hello, Friends of Dames Nation!
Your Dames are having a real both/and kind of week: we’re glad to be back in the writing saddle, and also are feeling something that Dame Sophie calls (as a catch-all term that isn’t tooooo cutesy, she hopes) weirdsies, which tends to get in the way of our writing anything we feel good about sending to your inboxes.
We enjoy those bouquet of freshly-sharpened pencils / oooh look at all the 2023 planners!! feelings of September as much as the next Ms. Autumn Woman, but we’re also aware of the slippery slope down to fully embracing optimization culture. We love to improve things in our lives and tools that help us do so, but we can’t summon the enthusiastic delight necessary to write an issue driven by that delicious feeling of being so psyched to share some things with you all. So instead we’re leaning into talking about some things we are struggling with. Ok, things we’re kind of crap at. Not in a running ourselves down kind of way, more in an “ok, yes, we relish being good at things, but some things are just beyond our capabilities” way, whether that’s at the moment or in the long term.
Darling Dame Karen gets into some deep, soul-baring detail about her recent experiences with chronic depression, while Dame Sophie continues to struggle with disturbed sleep and has kind of snapped about it? If you’re a person dealing with Some Stuff (and honestly, whomst amongst us is not?), perhaps you’ll enjoy feeling a wee glow of solidarity with us, messy messes that we are.
Karen Feels Bad And Watches Movies
CONTENT WARNING: depression; movies about sex addiction, depression, alcohol and drugs
One of the signs that lets me know that I’m Having An Episode, as I call it, is starting to seek out movies in which people just completely fuck up their lives. It’s usually via some sort of addiction -- people don’t tend to make movies about just straight up depression because it’s very boring. Sometimes there’s a “before” section in which the depressed person slogs around in dumpy clothes, maybe lies listlessly in front of the television, but it’s usually a short section because again, boring. Depression looks boring, but in my experience, it doesn’t feel entirely boring, it feels desperate and furious and sometimes strangely freeing? When I’m Having An Episode, it’s momentarily exhilarating to put all of my daily coping mechanisms aside and give in to the belief that “this is how it really is.” Nothing matters. Nothing I do or say or think is important, everything is all FEELINGS and the feelings are doom, shame, and fear that the fact that nothing matters is finally going to get me, which leads to my brains short circuiting and feeling…not much of anything at all. The desperation and fury just converts to pure, calm nihilism.
(This is a theme that is excellently portrayed in Everything Everywhere All At Once via a character creating an everything bagel that is literally everything and serves as a repository for doom, shame, fear, etc. I’m not going to say any more because no spoilers, but I felt a great sense of relief after watching this movie and if anything I’m saying gives you any sort of recognition, I think you might too.)
The thing is, I don’t really act on any of these feelings because they are exhausting and overwhelming. I will absolutely “act out” but it’s not usually in a way that’s particularly dangerous to myself or anyone else, which is why I crave movies in which people are Burning It All Down.
I’m honestly surprised that I got in a viewing of EEAAO, but I think I could sense the fucking everything up vibes. An old “favorite” that I returned to last week is the third selection in good ol’ Lars von Trier’s Depression Trilogy. Nymphomaniac is a two-volume yikesfest in which a woman named Joe (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg as well as three other actresses who play her at different ages, mostly Stacy Martin who takes the teen - early 30s years) relays her life of nymphomania (she refuses to call it sex addiction and spells out why in a deliriously satisfying scene) to Stellan Skarsgård, a lonely hermit who finds her beaten up in an alley outside his home. I think part of the reason I stay so drawn to it is the portrayal of Joe includes her entire life, and I myself have been struggling with depression for as long as I can remember. Obviously I didn’t know what nihilism was when I was six years old, but I absolutely felt it and we’ve been a pair for a very long time now. When I’m being especially mindful, I refer to it as “the dog.” The dog needs to be walked, petted, fed, cared for, understood, and loved even though it drools, scratches up everything, pees on the floor, gets up in the night to make weird noises, etc. The dog is loyal and the dog is my responsibility and it needs me to take care of us both.
ANYWAY, yes, Nymphomaniac is extremely explicit, violent, raw and scary (and also often funny and there’s a lot of cool stuff about trees) and it makes my nihilism-wallowing brain make yippy little “yeah! yeah!” noises a la Beavis, which also gives me the opportunity to say “Settle down, Beavis!” to myself, which I do, a lot.
At one point in the movie, Joe (at this point played by Stacy Martin) has “found love” (with a character played by Shia LaBeouf, whose presence just added to the Probably Not The Greatest Idea Nihilism Watch of it all this time) but while they’re mAkinG lOvE, she suddenly goes numb and can’t feel anything at all. This time around, this part literally made me cry because here I was not feeling anything at all trying to feel something by glomming on to a movie in which all sorts of self-destructive, world-destroying things were happening and then I’m reminded of Nothingness in the face of the, well, everything everywhere all at once. Other bleak-ass freak-out go-to’s for me include Leaving Las Vegas, Heaven Knows What, Christiane F., and Taxi Driver. You may see a theme here lolsob and yes, I stay aware because it’s tempting to go down the substance abuse road when you feel everything AND when you feel
nothing, but I just don’t think I’m an addict, thankfully, because it does run in my family (it runs in all families, right? Seems that way). Also, I’ve never tried heroin which I think I’d probably love considering my fond memories of codeine cough syrup, overprescribed painkillers, and, you know, my whole deal. No thanks, heroin.
Anyway, I don’t know how to wind this up. I haven’t been able to write anything for TBD all week and was panicky and sobby about it a few times because that’s my “I can’t feel anything” fear. I’ve been a lifelong writer as well as a lifelong depressive and they both come and go in ways that aren’t entirely predictable and I still struggle with how to keep them working with me rather than against me. But now I’ve written a whole bunch and I feel better. I have some fun plans for the weekend and I watched The Knack…And How To Get It last night, which I think is a good sign. Thanks for reading.
Dame Sophie Should Stop Turning Her Insomnia Fury Inward (Part the Kajillionth of a Seemingly Infinite Series)
On good days – and I’m fortunate to have many more good days than not-so-good, or even garbagey ones – I know and feel and believe that I’m plenty good at a large number of things. Writing, parenting, relationship-ing, baking, folding fitted sheets, answering trivia questions, being funny and conscientious; I can do these, and do them well most of the time.
On less-than-good days, though, my thoughts turn abruptly away from my competence and instead focus with Eye Of Sauron-level intensity on the things I’m crap at. On balance, there are far more things in this world that I’m no good at than ones I can do with aplomb, and usually, that’s fine. I don’t despair over knowing I’ll never be athletic – no problem! I still have sports documentaries, the high-speed soap opera of Formula 1, and my darling Sixers to enjoy. I wish I could sing worth a damn, but my enthusiasm for music reminds me that I’ll never be without a tune to hum or warble, however off-key.
The trouble comes when I’m forced to acknowledge that I am chronically unable to do the following on anything resembling a consistent basis: keep plants alive on purpose; resist placing any old thing on any old horizontal surface within reach; faithfully use up all of the delicious produce I 100% intended to cook/bake with before they are reduced to evil-smelling piles of moldy goo in the fridge, etc., ad naus. These stick in my craw so badly because I want to be able to do them, and feel some free-floating obligation to be good at them, and at present, I cannot and am not.
The main thing that I’m terrible at (in terms of degree of unexpectedness, disruptiveness, and relentlessness) is sleeping. My most frequent, longing-suffused daydream is of sleeping for more than 3 or 4 consecutive hours any given night. I manage somewhere in the 7 to 8-hour total range nightly, but it’s all fractured by waking up several times in the middle of it. It’s not great! This isn’t a new thing, I have ridden the bucking bronco at this particular rodeo for so many years that my portrait decorates the corral wall. (Do corrals have walls? I think they don’t because they're outside, but I am not going to look it up; you get the gist, I’m sure!) I have a whole routine-slash-system, developed with the help of a professional sleep expert and fine-tuned with my headache specialist, and it usually works well, provided I follow it with the unwavering zeal of a Torquemada or some other pathologically obsessed person. Developing and maintaining this routine is one of the great works of my adulthood, as it mitigates the worst of my insomnia and helps keep my chronic migraines at bay.
Having just written that sentence I have to laugh-cry because honestly: what the hell? Of all the things I would like to devote my attention and smarts to, one of them has to be this? The nerve. Also, I just love to sleep! It’s one of my favorite activities, so when I can’t do it, and can see that it’s going to plague me for a couple of hours at some 3:30 AM or other…well, I really don’t care for that.
“You’re too old to throw a tantrum, so just get up and deal with it!!!” I say to myself, and then run through the mental checklist I’ve been using since we sleep-trained our toddler (who will be 17 next week ahahahahaWHAT) based on strategies from Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.
My little strategies work, and that’s great, but it’s so! damn! annoying! to have to deploy them on myself, and for this problem to remain a part of my nightly life. I’ve been saying sleep is something I’m not good at, but it’s not me. Or, it’s not all of me; if my consciousness alone were in charge, there would be no issue, she knows what she’s about. But she is not in charge, and there is and issue, and no amount of ingenuity, problem-solving, or skill-building is going to resolve this chronic problem. It either will or it won’t resolve, in its own stupid time, and all I can do are the things that work for me, and accept that the rest are out of my control. I don’t have a brilliant conclusion or insight to share here. I hate and resent and am so so very bored by this thing I have to drag around with me and deal with every single day! It helps a little bit to say (type?) it out loud! Not as much as I’d like, but it turns out I have limitations?? Again: rude!