I Should Tell You

BY ERIN KHAR

This piece is part of the Relationship Issue. Read more here.

I met him on a Thursday. Or was it a Wednesday? It might have been my birthday. Maybe it was someone else’s. Those sorts of details, the ones I usually remember, are all unimportant. We met. And I knew he liked me. And I didn’t like him. That might be a lie. I might have liked him. That’s unimportant now. 

If I were to tell you the truth, I would tell you that I met him in Paris, on my 21st, no 22nd birthday. But, I will tell you that I don’t remember because you don’t really want the details. You want to believe that no one existed before you. You want to believe that no one, especially not him, has known the mole just below my left breast, or watched me sleep, always on the right side of the bed, with 2 pillows please, and I can’t sleep naked, I have to wear underwear because I have an irrational fear of something crawling up inside me, up between my legs when I sleep. If I were to tell you the truth, I would tell you that he knows those things about me. And that truth would burn you and you would take the fire and throw it at me. 
So, I say he didn’t matter. I don’t tell you about the snowball fight on the banks of the Seine, on a magical February night. The streetlights made the snow gold, and we slid down gilded patches of ice into each other’s arms and made confessions and declarations, as kids passing by doused us with powder, because it was Mardi Gras. Did I mention that? No, of course not. 
Instead of telling you that I loved him grandly and absolutely and savagely, I tell you that he meant nothing. And then I remain silent. I imagine that this is better for me, to be loved excessively by a man I feel nothing for. I shouldn’t say that and I won’t, but I care for you, and despise you a little too, for loving me, for knowing that you will lose me, for trying to mute that sharpness left behind in the heart he shattered. 

We sit across a table, a table marked by an ocean of time and other love, bolder love, but to you it is just a table. And you take my hand, to get my attention. Your hand is bigger than mine. Your hand is older than mine. Your hand loves more than mine. I focus on the table, the grain of the wood, the grooves, what made them, where the wood has traveled. Your hand over mine, I touch the table and try to recall where I am and who I’ve become. I say my lines, the words you want to hear. The words seem to come from someone else’s mouth. A waitress appears, and you are distracted, and I release my hand from yours.

You order dessert and I think about lying in bed under a heap of duvet, naked, with the man who broke me. It was far too cold to go outside, and we were starving. Starved from hours, maybe days, of learning the contours of every inch of our intertwined bodies. Chestnut cream and creme fraiche in a bowl, a big white ceramic bowl, swirled together, and a sprig of mint, and spoon feeding, and bliss. I had never been happier and I left the bowl on the floor next to the bed, which I would never do now. Now, I would take it to the kitchen and wash it. Then, go to the bathroom, turn on the light, and look at a stranger’s face staring back at me in the mirror. 

You’re asking me something? It shocks me a little, forces me to come back to the table and the hand and the waitress and the dessert. What am I thinking about? I should tell you that I let him in. I should tell you I wrote him long-winded love letters, exposing all parts of me. I should tell you that I waited for him to make up his mind. Did I forget to mention that he had a girlfriend when I met him? Well, he did, and I waited, and he chose me, and I was a fool. 

But, I don’t. I tell you about a story I read about bailarinas, taxi dancers, like in Sweet Charity, but in Queens. They’re mostly Dominican, paid $2 per dance. And, sometimes they get paid $40 to sit there for an hour and make small talk like they are on a date, or $500 for the night, and some of them prostitute themselves. Some of them have kids. Some of them wait for the men to leave their wives or girlfriends. And all of them are lonely. 

I talk too fast and your eyes are kind and your cheekbones high and I study your golden face and I feel guilty. I tell you about Rosa, one of the women in the story, who has been a bailarina for 14 years. She’s waiting for her life to change and she doesn’t know how she got there. And, I don’t know how I got here. 

I don’t tell you that I feel like Rosa. He didn’t pay me to dance. He paid for pieces of my heart. He paid for them with scraps of time and lovemaking and promises. I don’t tell you that I feel like Rosa now, that I pretend to be here, participating in a relationship. But, I am there still wandering in bliss and loss and ecstasy and devastation. 

I know it’s unfair to you. I am paralyzed. I resent you. 

Somewhere between the table and the dessert and the bailarinas and the check, you mention a trip to Paris. We should go to Paris together. You want to see the city through my eyes. I tell you I would love that. I tell you about The Catacombs and Place des Invalides and the many corners I unearthed in that city. This seems to please you and I’m nauseous. The years between now and then do little to protect me. I excuse myself.

There’s a line for the bathroom. A petite perky blonde woman ahead of me strikes up a conversation about how long she’s been waiting. I listen to her complaining and watch us in the mirror on the wall. She is small and light and I am tall and dark. We are both waiting. Rosa is waiting. The man at the table who loves me is waiting.
 
I waited for the man I loved to make up his mind. He did. He chose me and we left Paris and came to Los Angeles and he began doubting his decision. He should have told me, but he didn’t. I sensed it and the doubt worked like a knife, shaving off flakes of me. Slowly, or quickly, we unraveled from each other and I made him leave, because only having a part of him was far too painful. 

The petite perky blonde has finished and it’s my turn. I lock the bathroom door behind me and weep. The wound has festered long but the tears are fresh. I don’t, I can’t allow myself to linger here too long. I remember you, at the table, waiting. I look in another mirror. I don’t know how I got here. But, I know I cannot stay.

I return to you, at the table. Your hair reminds me of wheat and I soften. You take my hand. I should tell you, but I won’t that when he left, I did too. I won’t tell you that he came back and when he came back I had already disintegrated. I was so deeply entrenched in self-destruction that I couldn’t find my way back. I wanted to love him again. I wanted to go back to the midnight walks and the breathless proclamations and all the tiny discoveries that felt so big and the submission to this wave of feeling that I could not contain. I broke his heart too, and left mine there. 

I won’t tell you, but I should, that he taught me how to have a broken heart, that he taught me how to surrender, that he taught me how to be humbled by the pain of loss. I came to you broken and I don’t want to love. And, I know that when I leave you will have taught me how to love and that part of loving you is letting go, letting go of you, untethering you from my limp heart, so you can find a less broken heart who can love you back. And you might hate me for this, but I will have enough love to do it anyway. 

I take your hand from across the table. I think you already know.
 

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Erin Khar lives, loves, and writes in New York City and sometimes other cities too. She was the recipient of a 2012 Eric Hoffer Editor's Choice Prize for her story, "Last House at the End of the Street," which was published in the Best New Writing 2012 anthology. Her work has appeared many places, including  Sliver of Stone,  Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, The Manifest-Station, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Dr. Oz. The Good Life, and as a regular contributor for Ravishly. She is currently working on her first book, a memoir. When she’s not writing, she’s probably watching Beverly Hills, 90210. 

Challenging the Narrative of OCD As A Rich White Person's Mental Illness

BY PHOEBE RUSCH

I’ve been on my OCD medication for almost six years. Without Luvox, I’d be bombarded by mental images of having sex with you, your parents, my parents, a seventy-five year old lady at the grocery store, pre-school children and some one’s pet dog. Un-medicated, my mind becomes an absurd, pornographic hell. The images cause a sensation of existential dread, like a churning in the gut from drinking too much coffee, not pleasure. Still, the physiological experience of fight or flight is sexual excitement’s twin.

Male participants in a 1974 study rated their female cohorts as more desirable after walking across a rickety rope bridge, misattributing their own shortness of breath and racing heartbeats to attraction. Even without intrusive thoughts and compulsive ruminating, discerning our true feelings can be difficult. OCD seeks absolute certainty, rears up when faced by conundrums like human sexuality; when the two become entangled, as they did in my case, it’s monstrously painful and confusing.

We all have bizarre, disquieting thoughts sometimes. What kind of person has such sick, evil thoughts,we may ask ourselves. If you, like me, have OCD, your mind will begin to imitate an oil derrick, relentlessly mining itself for answers. Instead of dismissing disturbing thoughts, you will become convinced that they reflect the fundamental truth about you. The conviction that you are in fact a sick, evil person will only further lodge whatever mental flotsam you desperately want to wash away. Too terrified and ashamed to ask anyone for help, you will probably, understandably, become suicidal.

When I’m on OCD medication, I don’t feel harassed by my own mind. Even if it’s a bad day, I’m able to laugh at the intrusive thoughts, to recognize them for what they are, which strips away their power. Cognitive behavioral therapy has provided me with excellent training in this regard. Still, without Luvox the volume turns up and my head once more becomes a weird, terrifying place to be. I can’t live that way. It’s not a life, really. If Luvox is the easy way out, I’m happy taking it. If I’m a pill-popper, so be it. No amount of ruminative talk therapy is going to calm my hyperactive amygdala; analyzing someone’s childhood won’t cure their diabetes.

Even as Americans turn to SSRIs at unprecedented rates (the CDC estimates that antidepressant prescription increased 400% between 1988 and 2008), this supposed “quick fix” remains stigmatized, suggesting a level of cultural shame. New York Times columnist Diana Spechler has chronicled “breaking up” with her anxiety medication, citing concerns about the pharmaceutical industry and long-term side-effects. In her XOJane essay It’s Fine If Other People Want to Come Off Their Psychiatric Drugs, But I Am Never, Ever Quitting My Meds, LGBT mental health advocate Teresa Theophano argues that while she respects Spechler’s decision, natural remedies don’t work for everyone and reinforcing the idea that mental illness can be overcome by strength of will is dangerous.

In my case the biomedical model really does fit. Aside from my OCD, I’ve led a fairly charmed life. I used to feel embarrassed for fitting the stereotype of someone on SSRIs: white, navel-gazing, suburbanite. With no real problems, the privileged invent problems or Americans have taken to medicating away their problems instead of facing them head on: these narratives trivialize pain, shaming those lucky enough to be able to afford the thing that might very well keep them alive. They also pivot on the assumption that anxiety disorders and depression are a form of pain only rich white Westerners experience.

The converse of the myth that mental illness is a first world luxury, invented out of the boredom of lacking nothing, is the myth that poor people, especially poor people of color in non-Western countries, are simple and happy, facilitating the revelations of voluntourists: I learned so much from the way they’re able to be so joyful, even though they have nothing! Or, as is often said of Haiti, a country ravaged by natural disaster, political corruption and foreign intervention, I’m amazed by their resilience in the face of so much suffering. This supposed compliment dehumanizes Haitians, denying them vulnerability, conflating survival with an infinite capacity to endure pain.

The same line of thinking that shames privileged people suffering from mental illness renders marginalized sufferers invisible. Articles that treat the subject of mental health outside the U.S. and Western Europe tend to focus on the lingering trauma of war and natural disaster, the daily grind of poverty, but not less sensational issues like familial strife, domestic abuse or chemical imbalance that people may also lack the framework to talk about. When I shared my story with a college friend from Madagascar, he told me that if I was Malagasy my family would probably take me to an exorcist.

Conventional wisdom holds that OCD is a first-world malady, a product of Western individualism and atomization; searching for studies on OCD in the non-Western world turns up very little. But I’m willing to bet that this vacuum is due to scarce resources and cultural taboos which prevent self-reporting. The human mind is not somehow stranger and more complex, more prone to malady, in some parts of the world or in some demographics than others.

My (excellent, effective) OCD therapy cost $125 per session after insurance. The specialist I consulted also offered group therapy sessions for those who couldn’t afford to see her individually. Several participants were black and from the South side of Chicago, where racist federal housing policy denied people of color the ability to build equity for the next generation.

While these group members knew that they had OCD, that they weren’t really going to burn down their house or get AIDs from a public restroom, didn’t actually want to push people off train platforms or molest their daughter or stab their husband with a butcher knife, that didn’t stop their obsessions or help them resist the momentary comfort of giving into the compulsions that soothed their fears, routines so exhaustively time-consuming it often became impossible to hold down a job. Imagine checking, for hours at an end, to make absolutely sure you haven’t run over anyone with your car or poisoned your aging mother’s food. Then add to that the stress of dealing with institutionalized racism, which increases one’s chances of hypertension, compromises the immune system and can cause ulcers.

Unfortunately, Luvox, which allowed me to stop running on the endless hamster wheel in my mind and begin functioning, can cost hundreds of dollars per bottle without decent insurance. Instead of perpetuating narratives which frame mental illness as privileged white self-indulgence--narratives premised on an understanding of mental illness as a purely social phenomena rather than a biological one--we should fight for everyone’s access to psycho-pharmaceuticals. Instead of simply dismissing pharmaceutical companies as evil, we should demand transparency and equitable pricing, not only in America but across the globe.

Taking medication for psychological ailments is not a weakness or a character flaw. No one should be judged for being proactive about their health.

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Phoebe Rusch is a fellow in fiction at the University of Michigan. You can read about her here or on her blog. Her work is also forthcoming on Bust Magazine's website.