List Of Thoughts I Wrote Down While Going Nuts In Quarantine

I remember reading about these two guys who escaped prison in Upstate New York a handful of years back, how one of them had a dad who was a total fucking no show. How he finally bought his son a bike for his birthday but it wound up being used and broken, and the son was so disappointed he threw it out the window, and then the police were called and the son was the one who got in trouble. 

I remember when my mother was so down on her luck. She’d divorced my father because it wasn’t the life she wanted. But on her own, nothing was going her way. She couldn’t find a job and she needed money to help pay her rent so finally she asked her father for help. 

I was 6 at the time and we met my grandfather at a restaurant I’d never been to before, and when my mother asked him for money and he said no, she lifted her glass and tossed her water right in his face. And while the water dripped all over him, she grabbed me by the crook of my arm and dragged me out of the restaurant before I could finish eating my potato skins. “He’s not for me,” she cried in the car on the drive home. “He never has been and he never will be.”

I remember one of the first weekends I saw my mother after I moved in with my father. I was 9 or 10 at the time. At the last minute I remembered it was her birthday. I didn't really feel like making her anything because I was still feeling like I was missing so much of what I wanted myself. 

But I found some brand new socks in a closet that still had the tags on so I brought them with me. In the car I said happy birthday and handed her the socks but instead of being happy about them, she cried. I felt terrible. They were men’s dress socks after all. And both of us sat in the car in tears, mourning what we didn’t have that we wanted so badly.

I remember when I was in my second year of college. My mother lost her apartment and moved into my dorm room temporarily. We were at a Chinese restaurant and she was sure she was being followed by detectives. She was sure they knew about the designer dresses she‘d stolen because she’d wanted them so badly but had no means to pay for them. 

She felt so guilty for stealing them and was sure her life had gone to shit because she was being punished for her crimes. I tried to tell her it was the world that was made of a lot more shit than she was. That she had tried so hard to be part of the fabric of society but society kept closing its doors on her. That she should just enjoy the fucking dresses. But she only shushed me because she thought the detectives were listening.

I think about the inside of these moments. Each one of them was one of those kinds of moment where you can’t see anything else very clearly because you’re so stuck inside of it. 

 I remember I used to cope by closing my eyes and imagining a different moment. Where things would be so much different. Where people would have the skills to be easy instead of difficult. Where people who liked each other would get together and grant each other the space to contribute something that made everyone feel more alive. Where people didn’t have to compensate so much for all the things they wished so badly they had.

And now It’s so many years later. And I’m not sure exactly how it happened but I’ve somehow passed the threshold of those insurmountable moments, and I can see them clearly, in retrospect. And I can see now how they didn’t quite happen for a reason. But that they served a purpose.

Each one of those moments planted a seed in me, that helped me grow a greater understanding of how people behave when they’re starving for sustenance they have no access to. 

And so I try to remember, that when I cross paths with someone who seems like they’re suffering, even if their behavior is really difficult to be with, to give them something that I’ve got. Even if I’m not sure that what I’ve got has any value, I share it anyhow, just in case it makes a difference .

-JLK