It’s almost midnight- I might explode right here, right now. If I don’t write something now, I’ll die. Or burn to a crisp. I feel like I’ve been wasting potential to a biblical level, wasting my hypothetical potential to such a disgusting level that God himself is going to strike me down.
Maybe it’s an off day, maybe I’m a genius, maybe I’m 21. I am trying to do better at filling up my empty burning skull. Poetry is a comfort…
An Exit Wound That Feels So Fucking Good
by Megann Lynn
For three years I've had a bullet in my chest.
Joan Didion wrote Do not whine. Do not complain.
Work Harder. Spend more time alone.
Like any good disciple, I listened.
Sometimes the bullet was soft, pink, gooey, barely there.
Sometimes it burned blue with heat
& I laid in bed wondering if the work would kill me.
I did not complain when I walked for hours,
trying to get the sound of a sentence right.
I bled politely all over West Virginia.
It is April. The work is done.
Look, I have plucked the bullet from my body.
Look, I am not alone. Look, I am alive.
Purple wildflowers blooming everywhere.
For the past two weeks I’ve been collecting- I know I need to do a better job at feeding myself, and I’ve finally made it a priority. I wake early, and do my work, and I fill my ears with as much as they’ll take. This week I’ve been listening to Brideshead revisited on audiobook, catching up on John Oliver’s show, comedy specials, and doing a deep dive into marc maron. I had a moment today, watering somebody else’s tomatoes and listening to Marc Maron steadily shout in my ear. I didn’t have the words for the feeling in that moment, and now, my eyes rolling back into my head, doped up from an evening doom scroll, I feel even less qualified to come up with an answer.
I have been filling my head- after a long hard winter of the soul, when the best i could was to bunker down into a frozen dissociation, it feels so fucking good. But I’m on the edge- it’s a feeling I often have. To describe it could take up a novella, but I’d probably progress as far as I do in a 1000 word essay.
The feeling is like being on the edge, but you can’t tell if you’re going to fall off a cliff, or into the ocean. You might get swept away into some grand, far off adventure, but it’s just as likely you’re about to be crushed below on the rocks. Another term for this emotion, this anxious premonition, would be “waiting for the other shoe.” It’s a favorite pastime of mine.
What’s worst is when I feel like it’s deserved. For the past two weeks I’ve been here, at this absolutely gorgeous animal sanctuary. Every day I wake up early, sleeping in a room too grand, a bed too big, on a farm too lovely. Every morning the coffee is already made, no matter how early I’m up. My work has been taking care of the rabbits, watering begonias and propagating succulents. I whisper nonsense to my favorite rabbit, butterscotch, and I’ve only been bitten once. (which I personally feel was an appropriate response in the context) it’s a beautiful place- with interesting people. More about the people another time.
This has been going on for two weeks, all this luxurious deliciousness. My boss buys me beers and bath bombs- for the time being, my room has a private bathroom with a huge tub. With fucking superjets.
There’s the religious guilt mentality that comes up, of course, which we’re both tired of hearing about- “when does it end? What’s going to go wrong?” because, as we all know, we weren’t put on this earth to be happy, so the minute that you feel really happy, and really comfortable, it’s practically a sign that you’re about to be in hot water. Because this world, and it’s pleasures, are irrelevant- so why enjoy anything?
That’s the obvious mind circling that goes on, but that’s not what I’m trying to work through– I think I’ve given up trying to fix the part of me that doesn’t want to deserve things. What’s really getting to me is the cold hard logic of needing a damn direction. That’s partially where the filling the head comes in.
Last week I applied for the part time, fully remote work that I should have done two weeks prior- but it’s finished, and now I wait. Nervously. I have plans, dreams, aspirations, obviously, but it wasn’t until this week that I realized I really put all my eggs into one basket.
So I need to make this trip count- hence, Marc Maron. Something about an unhinged man in his sixties, rocking out and spinning out, while still appearing as some sort of humanoid, mentor-ish gremlin… hope comes in strange shapes and sizes.
If I stop thinking about the shoe, gun to my head, I can say that I’m thankful for the inspiration. I really do feel inspired here. I get to wake up in the morning, mucking out rabbit hutches and watering plants, drink about a gallon of free coffee, and do my thing. It’s a good balance of challenge- everyone has been kind enough to let me loose on creative projects. Yesterday involved cake baking, arts and crafts, carving peaches and plums and pineapples. I can work and feel useful, have that precious time to myself, live amongst nature, and not have to worry that I’ll bump into someone downstairs that passively hates my existence. It’s so strange, coming from the context of my other homes, other jobs, to suddenly be able to exist freely. Some days I feel sick to my stomach that among my hundred and one ideas, I still have yet to produce a complete novel, and then I remember that it’s very very difficult to write a novel when you’re constantly trying to prove why you’re worthy of being alive, and also hiding from your family. Multitasking I can do, but actively surviving complex trauma can be a real kicker.
I realize that I might be adding fuel to the fire when it comes to my media exposure. As someone who wants to “break” into the creative industry, I might be my own problem. (this turn of phrase always scares me- it’s accurate, but it conjures an image of trying to carve a hole in a brick wall with a spoon. I don’t want a herculean task, I wanna make movies) I said I might be my own problem- i definitely fucking am, but lately i’ve realized i’m fucking things up in a new an exciting way. As someone who wants to break into the creative industry, there’s a lot of people I’m waiting to meet on the other side- people I look up to, people I imagine working with, shaking hands with on red carpets, being surprised by during my interview on jimmy kimmel, etc. (The other day, I listened to an episode of Pete Holm’s podcast, where he talked about how “no healthy person craves to be famous.”) I frequently have this sort of Walter Mitty fantasy, but I’ve been doing better at it. It’s a difficult thing, trying to deprogram the gen-z parasocial upbringing, while still keeping my the spark of a dream alive. As of late, most of my media is comedy, and most of this comedic media is spent really dissecting the craft. This is where I’m dancing on the edge of the knife- I’m young, I’m only weeks away from 22. Of course I need my mentors, my guardian angels, my patron saints, I’ve only had about ten years of decent brain function, and there’s an entire universe that I’ve got to catch up on. I think it’s a great thing to be able to listen in on these conversations, to be a wallflower to discussions on self narrative, stage presence, relationship with the media, trusting comedic instinct, etc. But, (not to name yet another comedy podcast) it was something I heard the other day that’s really made me rethink my direction. “Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend,” Andy Samberg, the July 28th episode- they were discussing Samberg’s origins, especially when it came to his community. I was trying to have a nice morning, doing chores and listening to my podcast in the sunshine, when Samberg casually says some shit like, “It’s so important to get that core crew in your early to mid-twenties- it’s almost impossible to get work done as a group unless you’re established young.”
Well fuck me, then.
It’s the sort of aggravating thing that I’m not sure who to blame for- I’ve had the pleasure of meeting so many wonderful people, and lately, the greater pleasure of meeting people I can finally, confidently, call friends. But I’ve yet to really stick with people- part of it is my quite literal transient situation, I’m in a new state every three months or so. This is a chosen lifestyle- i have to remind myself that I’ve chosen, and (and enjoyed) working like this. But it’s hot me that all of my influence has been from people who have not only carved their way through the damn wall, but are long past that effort. They made it, and are looking back through the lens of experience, trial and error, years, sometimes decades of hindsight. But I lack anyone to speak from a place of camaraderie- there’s no influence of someone in my shoes- or better yet, another young person that’s a few steps ahead. Someone to at least wave from the other side.
Last december, over a slow and illness-infused phone call, I told Mariah that I “realized that I’m just going to be a miserable person. That even when I’m happy, this is the state that I just end up at… like I’m sort of Toby Zeigler character that can’t physically keep happiness. I might experience joy, I might have friends of some sort, but I’ve always know that there was a difference in my perspective… I can taste this happiness stuff, I can point at it, dissect it, but at the end of the day, I’m alone in my own space, in my own universe, whether I like it or not. I’m just miserable to my core.”
It’s a long quote, and definitely only an outline of what I really said, but it’s a conversation that’s stuck with me. It most certainly came from a place of deep darkness- i like to think my complexity gives me a little something-something. I can’t say (or, at least, SHOULDN’T say) that I fully agree with it now, about nine months later. Although it may not be true (it may well be true, but it seems self-destructive to resign to it) it’s a thought that itches. Sometimes I worry that the only reason I don’t have writing partners is because of me. I definitely seem to be the common denominator.
So we come back to the work- the work will save me, “the work” is the beautiful, attainable, tangible thing for me to keep running alongside with.
What it I ever fucking finish any of it?
Let’s not depress anyone kind enough to give this a read- on a hike the other day I saw that from the last month I’ve had 163 readers. It’s a small number, but given the fact that I haven’t put out new content in two months, the number is baffling. 163 is just enough to make me take a deep breath and pick up the computer. I’ve got to get wares to sell- I’ve got to generate content. It’s the ooey gooey phrases like ‘generate content’ that keep me from producing new things.
The horrible little math equation- “I want to have the freedom to make my beautiful things in peace, so I’ll work my ass off running in circles to get enough attention to do so. But if I waste too much time catering to the audience, the product becomes stale, and I lose the joy of my work- BUT if i only do the things I love to do, in the exact way I love to do them, there will be no one to look at it… and if no one’s looking, no one is buying, and the anxiety of starving to death will also starve my creativity.”
There’s no real answer to this equation- my only comfort is in knowing that I’m following a grand tradition of millions and billions of creatives across history. Maybe that’s where my haunted nature comes from- I’m not lonely, I’m just keeping company with my artistic forefathers. And they’re all as neurotic and self-frustrated as I am.
Here is my try at an answer, to anyone reading- you and I must continue. If it’s your own bizarre shit, do it consistently. If it’s oatmeal flavored aura-farming, do that consistently, too. I think we’ve got to keep chugging away, but keep doing other things, too. Watering tomatoes and making coffees, for example. We work, we live, we try to keep a balance between the two. I might not have a writer’s room, a creative godparent, or even a real job, but I can balance this fear out with the thought that I have people in my life. They love me- I love them- that’s what I’ve got.
Chugging along.
The Wastepaper Basket 
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