heatwave blues

Heatwaves, why perfection is overrated, and my new favorite movie.

Dear whomever,

Greetings from the underbelly of a heatwave.

First, let me tell you how things are doing in my home.

To start, I worry about the cats. They are not complaining, per se, but my own body is, so I can’t imagine how theirs feels. I put ice in their water fountain - they empty it of half a liter daily. I wipe their faces with cold water, despite the anger it brings in them. I give them extra food as an apology for leaving them alone in Hell for a few hours.

I try not to think of global warming, or climate change, of my could-be children sweating, of worlds ending. The cats are enough to think about. They lay flat on the tiles in this heat, and look up at me with slow-blinks and what I hope is understanding that we are all in this together.

And me? I sit across the fan with the spray bottle that was originally meant for my hair, and keep watering myself like I’m a dying flower. My head hurts and I am angry. I hate being angry. I hate this feeling of frustration - because it can so easily lead me to anxiety.

When things don’t come quick or how I want them to I tend to shut off. I get bored and angsty and I lay on my bed for hours, staring at ceilings or phone screens - wasting even more time. It’s all or nothing for me. In the midst of this heat wave I find myself just waiting for it to be over.

I hosted my first weekly game night, and for the first time in my decade-long career as a hostess, I sat there immobile, watching everything happen around me. After I said goodbye to everyone at the door, I was like Fuck - I should’ve tried to enjoy that.

And sometimes that small “Fuck,” can lead to a whole series of unwanted thoughts.

Thoughts can sometimes feel outside of you: like a force you cannot contain.

Let me get to the point.

I’ve read pretty much everything John Green has published. I’d say Turtles All the Way Down is his best work - a very clear story that holds an honest reflection of mental health and OCD within it. Today, while I was searching for a movie that I hoped could initiate some kind of emotion in me - and get my mind off of my suffering - I scrolled past it, went back, and thought: Fine, let’s see.

Turtles All the Way Down follows a high-schooler named Aza and her struggles with balancing her OCD with her daily life. The plot is moved forward by a mystery/detective story. Though, to be honest, the specifics of the it don’t matter. What I want to talk about specifically is her disorder, perhaps use some of her thoughts to show you my own. Honestly, it’s been a while since I felt such an honest portrayal of mental health in a story.

It reminded me of when I first read the book, when I was (I think) seventeen.

I found myself most identifying with Aza’s… black and white thinking. She goes to therapy and she tries a series of meds and eventually reaches a point of surrender. Aza refers to her OCD as “thought spirals”…. it starts with something small, like taking a bite out of a hamburger, and easy falls out of her grasp and into an uncontainable mess.

As I watched the movie today I found myself crying a lot, because though I don’t have OCD I find it unbelievably painful and relatable the way our thoughts can get ahead of us and how after so many tries of “getting better” we feel so incapable of change. As someone who’s been actively in therapy for 3 years… it gets frustrating. The up and downs. We want it all to be straightforward… but it’s just not. Aza discusses this a lot, and most of all she fears losing herself… (something that is common when trying to change your thinking), and that introspection leads her to think, “What is the self? Who am I? Am I even real if my thoughts are not me?”

“You just, like, hate yourself? You hate being yourself?"
"There's no self to hate. It's like, when I look into myself, there's no actual me—just a bunch of thoughts and behaviors and circumstances. And a lot of them just don't feel like they're mine. They're not things I want to think or do or whatever. And when I do look for the, like, Real Me, I never find it. It's like those nesting dolls, you know? The ones that are hollow, and then when you open them up, there's a smaller doll inside, and you keep opening hollow dolls until eventually you get to the smallest one, and it's solid all the way through. But with me, I don't think there is one that is solid. They just keep getting smaller.”

John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

We want to change. We want to be better. Of course. There is always that drive. But then there is life, and triggers, and moments that toss us out of line. And every fall often feels like the last. It is so easy to give up… as I mentioned in my last letter to you. Giving up is easier than getting better. Destroying is easier than building.

In a scene, Aza is in the hospital trying to get ahead of a thought spiral. She recites affirmations that are obviously from therapy, like “my now is not my forever,” trying to use that to juxtapose what she’s actually thinking, which is, (trigger warning), “swallow a handful of hand sanitizer to get ahead of the germs that are infecting me right now”, and that was really what stood out to me: the whiplash between your triggers and your deep want to get better.

I am in the midst of this heat wave convincing myself that I will not force anything in the world to change anymore. I will sit still and solid and watch and allow. But sometimes - sometimes I feel a bad feeling, or I see something that triggers me, or I simply wake up on the wrong side of the bed, and everything I worked so hard and carefully to cultivate falls out of place. I spill some liquid from my glass. And then I think, Fuck, why did I even choose this glass? Why did I move or scare or wince? I told myself I’d be still and yet here I am. And then I have this unbelievable urge to just pour all the liquid out of the glass and be done with it all, finally.

It’s like this memory of mine when, on New Year’s Eve, I spilled a bottle of wine on my friends’ carpet. I remember distinctly the fear: red wine on a grey carpet will be a feat to clean, we were in a religious country, the smell would stay, they’d get in trouble, Fuck! And I was already so deeply wanting to impress this person - to have them like me - I was already so stressed about it - but I knew immediately that they were disappointed. I tried to help but it wasn't accepted.

I remember just deciding to go to sleep after the fact. They told me I was such a clumsy person, and I thought, No one has ever told me that. And then I thought: Is that what people think of me? And then I thought: Oh my God, I am a mess that will never change.

Thought spiral. I went to bed, let myself rot in my own catacomb. Shame.

We all carry with us some sort of heaviness. They, perhaps, were overwhelmed with what their family would think. And me, I was just overwhelmed with getting them to like me. When I spoke, in my last letter, about comparing pain and circumstances, I wanted to say that to everyone their hurt is the most important hurt. And through that idea, we lose ourselves in ourselves. It’s easy to empathize with yourself. The real test is empathizing with others. And then, also, another important test is empathizing with yourself. A conundrum, yes. But so is life.

‘Does it hurt?' I nodded. 'You know Sekou Sundiata, in a poem, he said the most important part of the body 'ain't the heart or the lungs or the brain. The biggest, most important part of the body is the part that hurts.’

John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

While Turtles All the Way Down is romantic and funny and hopeful, it has a realness to it that I really like. I haven't read the book since its release, and I’m not big on consuming media more than once, but it was the ending scene that made me realize that this story wasn't one about getting over mental health.

As Aza says, “I wanted to tell her that I was getting better, because that was supposed to be the narrative of illness: it was a hurdle you jumped over, or a battle you won,” but in many cases the real ending of mental health is understanding how to navigate what comes out of it. And a sort of acceptance to its existence. Who am I if I’m not my anxiety? Or my C-PTSD? Well, I am a writer and a creative and a deep, deep lover…

You're both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. You're the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. You're the storyteller and the story told. You are somebody's something, but you are also your you.

John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

In the ending scene of Turtles All the Way Down, Aza’s asks her best friend if she thinks she’d ever be capable of being in a relationship. And her best friend says something along the lines of: Of course, Aza, you will live a full life, and of course you will experience an amazing love story, and it will be so amazing, but you will also struggle and have setbacks, you will also have thought spirals. You will love and you will live but you will also struggle and suffer. And when that happens I will be beside you through it all. Because love… love is how you become real.

And the love here isn’t only friendship. It isn't only romance. As I often say: it is everything and more. And most of all it is love for the journey, and understanding of its imperfection. We think being human should be cut and dry, polished. That’s why stories like Turtles All the Way Down are so important: they show us that each human is a deeply thinking and suffering and loving thing.

I always say, if the book was from the villains point of view, you’d probably empathize with even them.

Nothing perfect is worth loving, anyway. And remember:

You pick your endings, and your beginnings. You get to pick the frame, you know? Maybe you don't choose what's in the picture, but you decide the frame.

John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

With love,

Amal