The Things that Novels Can't Tell You

Lately my mental health has felt a bit like I built my well-being out of straw and then a wolf with, really, surprisingly good breath control came along and blew it down. So I tried a version with sticks, and could someone please explain to me where these fucking wolves keep coming from? So maybe I'll try straw again. That really wasn't so bad. Straw is a good insulator so it was warm and cozy. I have some leftover sticks too. I'm good. If I run out of options I have a couple of decks of cards on hand. Those are great for building houses.

Talking about this is risky because inevitably—unless I start off with a very strongly worded warning about not wanting advice, and perhaps even then—someone is going to pop up and tell me about bricks. 

I know I'm supposed to appreciate the thought. I know that unsolicited advice is rooted in caring. I guess I do, appreciate the thought, that is. The problem is that they're going to bring up bricks like this is some great innovation they've thought of, like perhaps I haven't heard of them, or maybe I've heard of them in passing but just didn't realize you could build things with them. Certainly I must not know that well-being houses built of bricks are resistant to operatic wolves. 

So then I will be forced to expend what energy I have left after cleaning up from the wolves explaining that I simply do not have the strength to move bricks. Or I went to the brick yard and they're backordered for months. Or I've heard that these wolves rent bulldozers when confronted with brick houses and I'm afraid I'll be crushed in my sleep. Or whatever. If the advice seems obvious maybe assume there are barriers. And ask about those. Or don't, because all that really does is create labor for the person who probably posted looking for commiseration unless they specifically asked for advice.

This post isn't actually about my mental health or advice but if I want to write about an aspect of my recent coping that I find interesting I have to acknowledge that I've been struggling. I've been reluctant to do that too publicly because if I admit to darkness, someone is going to insist on trying to shine light on it which, unless you're actually going to show up with a flashlight in hand, or some bricks, or a handful of metaphors that are capable of staying where you put them without running off the rails, probably won't help me. 

But, please do show up with metaphors. I'll make tea and we can chase them.

Anyway, a while ago I had the surprising and, to me, amusing realization that in these moments of darkness I had started to mentally self-soothe with fantasies of self-harm and self-destructive behavior. (And as an aside when I say fantasy I want to be clear that I mean of the idle time-wasting variety, not the planning or wanting variety. I am not a danger to myself or others nor am I intending to become one.) This amuses me because it is so incongruous, with my current middle-age mother existence, and with all the selves that came before that. Aside from the four years I spent roiling in anxiety and utterly failing to write a dissertation proposal, much less a dissertation, I've avoided downward spirals. My vices are limited to excessive alcohol and sex with strangers, both of which have potential for danger, but the worst I've experienced has been hangovers, embarrassment, and the occasional bout of unpleasant pining. In short, I'm risk-averse, boring, and lucky.

So the utter cavalcade of bad ideas and debauchery parading through my brain is a remarkable contrast to my reality. It also raises a question. Where are these images that my mind is turning over and over like some sort of mental worry stone actually coming from? Some are extrapolations from my own experiences. Memories layered with what-ifs. Most, though, are too far afield from my own life for that, but too detailed to be pure fabrications. Instead they are things I have read, stretched from their original form to fit my needs, imagined as if I were the center of the story, but borrowed, in part or wholesale, nonetheless.

Rob Roberge’s memoir Liar is one recent source of images, though honestly I’m not sure if reading that was what started the fantasies or whether I sought out Roberge specifically for those images based on having read The Cost of Living a decade ago. I appreciated Liar for, among other things, exploring the utility of the sort of controlled pain that comes from self-harm or BDSM, particularly since I have no experience with the former, and somewhat different experiences of the latter.

Thinking about this, and looking for novels and memoirs to read as I explore this current mood, it occurred to me how little of what I know about the world comes from my own experience. I have in recent years been intentionally trying to read works by authors with lives different than mine. Even before that, though, the breadth of my experiences paled against what I’d read. If my information about the lives of others was limited by what I see in my day-to-day life I fear that I would struggle greatly with empathy.

It occurs to me, too, that what I know of people, how they think, what they feel comes more from books than conversations or observations. The inability to see into the minds of others has long frustrated me. I wonder sometimes how different the inner workings of my head are from those around me. There are a few people I know well enough to have a glimpse of their inner landscape, but even then it is just a sliver, and the rest of the people around me seem opaque or like looking in a window that reflects yourself back at you more than it reveals what is behind it. 

Books feel like they crack open the internal worlds of others a tiny bit more. A novel doesn't tell me what the author thinks directly, but what is offered of the characters’ thoughts and emotions gives a view of what the author thinks is the normal spectrum of human motivations and feelings. A memoir cuts out some of the middleman and done well gives a more direct view. It’s constructed, of course, but so is much of what we know about our acquaintances, and even our loved ones.

From novels I conclude that the inner workings of my brain are not really so strange. I do not feel more deeply than the average fictional character in the kind of literary fiction that delves into such things. My motivations are not more fractured. My inner monologue is no more insistent, deviant, or obsessive.

It is not lost on me, however, that I am comparing my inner life to the inner lives (actual or presumed) of writers. That leaves me wondering, still, about everybody else. Who are these people who do not feel compelled to try to shape their pain, or their joy, into words? What do they imagine in the in-between moments of their days? Do their inner monologues gallop? Are they lost too but simply do not throw letters at paper or onto screens as a way of wayfinding? Or are they already so confident in their paths they have no need for wayfinding at all?

These are the kinds of questions that novels can’t answer.