nonfiction by sarah mullen

Anything But

I am fine. Fucked up. Insecure. Neurotic. Emotional. That’s what a therapist told me once. Therapists love acronyms, almost as much as people in recovery do.  As a little girl playing, I fell and skinned my knee. My mother kissed the scrape, held me close, and whispered “shhh you’re fine.” The words said over and over to her rose from her heart to her brain and then out of her mouth, hopping off her lips into my young ears. I listened to her heartbeat and tried to sync my breath as my flesh throbbed.  I’m fine, I thought. This hurts, but she says I am fine. 

I remember sitting on a deck around back my house. I knew I was in trouble; I don’t remember what I did. My dad came outside and sat on the ground next to me. “You were my peach. My peach has turned rotten,” he told me. That was all it took to make me cry. I wanted to be good, but I knew I wasn’t. My tears seemed to poke at something deep in him and through blurry eyes I watched his face harden. “Those crocodile tears won’t work on me,” he said. 

What does that mean? I thought. Are my tears as big as a crocodile’s?

One day I came home from school crying after being pushed out by a group of friends. My dad came into my room and held me as I cried into his lap. “You’ll be fine,” he said. I heard him whisper outside the door to my mom that maybe I should change schools. 

He said I would be fine, rang in my mind. Maybe this will help?

After school we stopped at McDonald’s for a cheeseburger and fries. We waited for our food in the playground, but when it came, I realized my mother forgot the ketchup. She told me to go ask for it. I walked up to the counter and stood there waiting for someone to notice me. When they finally did, I froze. 

Just say it, I heard.

I can’t, I replied.

Don’t be silly, the voice said. It’s no big deal.

I returned to my mother and asked her to do it for me. She went and quickly arrived with five red and white packets. “It’s not hard,” she said. “They’ll give it to you if you just ask them.” I wanted to believe she was right but the next time I found myself standing by the counter, the same cycle repeated. 

Be brave, the voice whispered.

But I’m not brave, I said.

“You were a sensitive child,” my mother told me. I was sensitive. I was also perpetually fixated on other’s thoughts. When I was called on in class to speak my ears got hot and my breath broke as I tried to answer the teacher’s question. When we went around the class, each reading a paragraph, I counted the people before me so I knew which cluster of words would be mine. 

Don’t mess this up, the voice warned.

I won’t, I thought as I read my few sentences out loud. 

As I grew, I was no longer accused of crocodile tears. When sensations festered, seeping through my skin, it was that time of the month, I was on the rag, I was just being a girl, or any combination meant to reduce my anger, pain, and frustration to my biology. 

They’re wrong, I thought. 

Are you sure? A voice asked.

I won’t cry, or yell too loud, or get too emotional, or laugh too much, I said. Then they will hear me. 

Maybe? It replied.

I tried personas on for size. If they did not quite fit, I jumped and shook my shape until it was molded by them. Like a pair of jeans fresh from the dryer, if I wore them long enough, maybe they would hold me effortlessly. No more studying or practicing or rehearsing. I would just be.

At a job in college serving tables, I worked hard to clear the dishes and strip the linens so I could go back to my room and finally rest. A loud sigh cleared my throat and my manager, a woman not much older than me, asked, “what’s wrong?” 

“What?” I responded, “I’m fine. Just finishing up.” 

“Then why the big sigh?” she prodded. 

You are giving me away, it said.

I’m sorry, I replied. I just held my breath for too long.

Swapping stories with my roommate at the end of the night, we laid on her bottom bunk and talked about her feelings for a boy she started seeing. “Maybe I am just being a crazy girl?” she said as she talked about jealousy she could not shake. 

“Maybe?” Maybe she hears it too?

I found a new code for when I did not feel fine. I called my friend, answering her hello with, “Can I just go full crazy girl for a minute?” 

“Yes,” she replied. It was safe to let my crazy girl out with her, but when the phone call was done, I would have to push her back down, and wait until it was safe to let her out again. 

Naming me won’t subdue me, the crazy girl said. It only makes me stronger.

From her place within me, she grew and grew until she was harder to trap. 

You called me crazy, she said. Don’t you know that term is problematic? Might as well be hysterical.

Maybe I will call you wild, I said. Whoever you are, you’re not tame.

Her interjections sharpened the tip of an arrow circling an unknown target within me. She was always ready, waiting.

Remember when he thanked God you were pretty because you have so much going on in your head? She whispered.

Yes, I replied. But he was wrong.

Is he? She asked. Remember when that guy told you to change your tampon when you told him his joke wasn’t funny? And he didn’t know but you were on your period? She was unrelenting. 

Yes, I replied. That was just a coincidence.

Are you sure? She asked me. I bet he saw me. 

When I took a drink of alcohol all stress from holding her back dissolved, and my awareness of her with it. I was fine. Fun. Intelligent. Noticeable. Engaging. I abandoned my need for inhibitions, stoicism transforming into passion. When the elixir wore off the next morning, awareness returned. 

You let me out, she said. Everyone knows.

No, I told her. They won’t know. I will make sure they won’t.

I spent hours and hours trying to piece together what had happened the night before. I played detective, investigating who I saw, where I went, what I said. Unhinged, she made me unhinged.

 I drank so much that I only endured brief moments of her. Medicated endlessly, she became immune. Her continuous presence merged with mine, inseparable, until I could not decipher between us.

I woke up one morning half drunk and shaking. I called the only person that came to mind, a woman I met through friends. All I really knew about her is that she played the nyckelharpa, loved blues dancing, and was three years sober.  “I’ll pick you up tonight and take you to a meeting with me,” she said. I agreed. The meeting was in the back room of a church, probably a Sunday school classroom for children based on the watered-down illustrations of bible stories on the walls. The tables arranged in a circle. A woman greeted me. 

“How are you?” She asked. 

“I’m fine,” She looked at me and smiled as she squeezed my hand, led me to a chair, and told me to sit. 

“You don’t have to share if I don’t want to.” 

I sat and listened to a woman speak while she twirled a chip in her hand signifying nine months of sobriety. 

“I would try to figure out why I drank,” she said. “Was the sky extra cloudy that day? Did I put on my clothes the wrong way? Did I really wake up on the wrong side of the bed?” Laughter filled the room with her self-questioning, and she laughed with it. 

Keep going. I want to know what made you drink. 

I imagined for a moment this was the key, a map out of the labyrinth.

You think there’s an answer here for you? The wild woman said. If you let me out, I will give it to you. The ink on the map disappeared.

I’m not fine, I repeated in my mind in my first days of sobriety. If I said it out loud it might ring true. I had to be fine. I walked into my first session in treatment and the therapist greeted me. 

“How are you,” she asked. 

“I am fine,” I replied. 

“Fine means fucked up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional. You’re in rehab. How are you really?” 

I cried in her office and told her how I was not sure. How I was afraid I would never stop drinking. I told her that I did not know how to exist in my family, job, community, and world. 

“So, what you have been doing is not working,” she said. “Well, this is a start”

I strung days, and then weeks, and then a few months of sobriety together. 

Maybe I can start over, I thought.

Good luck, the wild woman sneered. 

I met a man I found on Tinder after a closing shift at the coffee shop where I worked part time. I was exhausted and unprepared. As I walked towards him my blood pulsed, will he leave when he sees me?  He saw me and smiled before reaching out his hand. We sat for an hour of long pauses, and he jumped at the chance to fill the empty space. Why do you think this is where you should be?

“I should get going, I have an early shift.” I lied.

“Call me if you want to see me again,” he said.

I got into my car and drove away, my stomach unsettled. 

Who wants to get involved in what you’ve got going on? the wild woman whispered. 

For three long months I accepted that only he did. My new full-time job was rebuilding him. I helped him search for work, a new place to live, and even acquiesced to him staying in my dad’s garage for a month while I could help him get somewhere stable. There was no space for anything but his continuous crisis. 

I am not fine, I thought to myself.

This is as good as it gets, the wild woman told me. Be grateful.

No, it’s not, I yelled.

Feisty, she said. I wasn’t sure you had it in you.

“This is not working,” I said to him. This was not working for me. I said what I felt as I was feeling it.

I sat until I could not sit anymore. It was all too much, and I googled how to get high off cough syrup or any items I could find in my house. 

Do you think this is fine?  The wild woman said. Why do you even try?

You’re right, I told her. I put my phone away and cried myself to sleep. I woke up, went to a meeting, and shared that I was not fine, I was terrible. 

At three years sober a friend asked, “Do you ever want to drink?” 

 “No,” I told her. “I don’t think about drinking. But sometimes I get so uncomfortable with myself that I know I need to do something about it. If I stay that way long enough, I have no doubt I would want a drink.”

“You are always so balanced,” she said. “That’s such a healthy fucking answer.” Sobriety proved more complicated than simply not drinking. Sometimes I would sit and think about ways to just pause it for a minute. I drove to work and imagined getting in an accident that injured me just enough to keep me in a hospital bed for a few weeks but not enough to change my life forever.

This is definitely not normal. The wild woman said. You need therapy.

You’re probably right, I replied. But when do I have time for that?

My skin was crawling, I would do almost anything to avoid silence. I did not want to hear her laughing.

Your best friend thinks you are healthy, she told me. What a joke. 

I don’t have to listen to you, I said. You are all lies.

Am I? She asked. I did not know how to make her stop, but maybe if I started talking, she couldn’t. I called my sponsor.

“I am just so uncomfortable,” I said.  “Nothing feels wrong, but it does not feel right either.”

“I have had that thought,” she tells me on the phone. “I won’t say normal people do but you will find plenty of people in these rooms who come up with a wild plan to alter their perception of reality.” I laughed because she was right. I thought of the moments when someone else came to me with a confession and I answered, “me too.” The relief on her face was always familiar.  Why do I think I am so special?

In the weeks after my first child was born everything I had practiced was put to the test. Postpartum brought physical challenges exacerbated by hormones, my emotions were erratic. I found myself again saying “I am fine. Why do you keep asking me?” I was tired, anxious, and lonely. 

Maybe they were all right, I told the wild woman. It is my biology. 

You can’t let them be right, she screamed. What are you complaining about anyway? You have a baby. Women have children every day.  I listened to her and stayed silent. 

My husband felt the shift and came to me with his concerns that I was not fine. “You can always talk to me,” he said. “Or we can find someone for you to talk to. I want to make sure you’re ok.” I was too tired to keep him out, deciding he was safe.

He will think you lost your mind, she told me. 

Maybe he will, I said to her. I have lost something.  

You can’t tell him about me, he will admit you to a psych ward.

But I can, I found the strength to tell her. For you are me. I am talking to myself.

The wild woman fell silent. I turned to my husband and said, “I am not fine.”

“What can I do to help you?” he asked. “We’ll figure this out together.”

When my son cries in the presence of family and one or more says, “faker, you’re fine” or “look at those crocodile tears.” I pull him to me, bring my face to his and say, “I know you feel sad, upset or disappointed,” trying to fill in the blanks where his limbic system glitches.  “I am here until you are ready to play again.” I want him to cry those crocodile tears into a river that drowns out the voices telling him he’s fine when he knows he is not.  

Or my daughter falls as she learns to walk, and I hear, “Shhh you are ok” come from my mouth. I reject the default setting and continue to speak. “You fell, that hurt. I bet it was scary.” I hold her until she calms down and chooses what she will do next.

When my son comes to me crying, I ask him, “What’s wrong?” 

“Mommy, I mad,” he says, folding into my arms. I sit and listen to the cause of his frustration, and we try to come up with a solution together. It has to be worth something when he tells me “I sad,” “I mad,” “I hurt,” “I scared.” He knows what he is. Even if those words can’t hold all of it, they are a start. 

Maybe my mother or father had a voice whispering to them that they were overreacting, to be quiet, to sit down and to shut up? My boy confidently looks me in the eye and tells me what he is. That is worth everything. 

I don’t want him to be fine. I don’t want them to be fine. I choose not to be fine. I want to erase the word from my lexicon and disorder the creation of infinite words and phrases that can be traced to a solitary root: FINE.