Self-helping ourselves to death
Plus an excerpt of my novel-in-progress (gulp!) - a companion to Episode 14 about the power of allegory and processing experiences
I’ve been thinking a lot about the self help industry - what it does and doesn’t do for us. There was a period in my life that ended about 5 years ago where I was going through a rough patch - divorce during early motherhood, twin motherhood at that, uprooted from my life and my business in New York and found myself decamped to a small town in coastal South Carolina near my mom who has a personality disorder. Fun times.
Seeking routine and stability in an uncertain exhausting time, I unearthed an ad agency somewhere in the low country and landed a brand strategy job there that took me on long daily commutes over long stretches of marsh in the rising and setting sun. That sun was pouring directly into my eyes, a great metaphor for the whole era. As tedious as it was, those drives were the only break from single parenting twin toddlers, and I started listening to podcasts to pass the time. I listened to some true crime goodies like Up and Vanished, S-Town, and the cheesy but very bingeable, Dr. Death - but also ‘self help bro’ podcasts like the Tim Ferriss Show, Lewis Howes School of Greatness, Sam Harris Waking Up, and yes, a little of Tony Robbins after seeing “Not Your Guru” and softening to him a bit (before the allegations came out).
It's difficult to unwind the cord that has been wrapped around us since we all got smartphones. We thought we were finding a shorter distance between ourselves and other people, but instead we’ve found ourselves adrift. We’re all very far away.
Looking back, very little substance came out of all of those hours of listening to life hackers and affable guests like Mel Robbins and Gretchen Rubin who offered quick and painless solutions to life’s challenges (count down from 5!) (know your “tendency” ‘type’!) but it was a welcome salve, like a soothing back rub during a time of great distress. They were my supportive quasi-friends a.k.a. distractors getting me through desperate times. Mostly though, when a back rub is over, the pain comes rushing back. So goes self help overload.
I really don’t want to discount the value of the advice industry entirely. We can always improve through a sprinkling of well researched strategies for life management. I’m sure I absorbed some of the tips and tricks I heard. In this week’s podcast, I talk about one book I found particularly useful, and I definitely have counted to 5 once or twice to get to the gym, but it’s hard to discern exactly how much time one should dedicate to the genre. Mark Manson the anti-self help self helper himself says that it may be a way of practicing avoidance. True.
I’m a more evolved and grounded person because of that period but I can’t trace it back to the bromides of self help gurus. I trace it back to the excruciatingly painful and misguided rebound relationship I had at the time and the slow march of time and turning my attention to literature and my own writing and healing to get through it and make sense of it. Life helped.
Did you know that there were 45,300 new self-help books published in 2020? Of course, that was quite a year for self-improvement, but the market size of self-improvement products and services is expected to be worth around $460.7 billion by 2032.
A lot of our journey on earth is sense making. That’s why we search for clues as to why things happen and look for patterns in our environment. We need the narrative arc, the story of our own lives. We find meaning in connecting with people, with art, with beauty and with the passage of time.
I do continue to read, browse, and ingest audio advice (on 1.8 speed) here and there but I take it all with a grain of salt and I limit my exposure. I started this past week’s episode several times, beleaguered by burnout from what my therapist called ‘all my efforting, efforting efforting’ and she suggested that I just stop. Stop it all. Stop. My efforts were not in the form of imbibing too much self help but in too much of everything digital and fleeting. I started a podcast because I feel I get and give more out of long form and I feel we have reached a definite tipping point in all of our endless clicking, commenting, strategizing, shouting, and absorbing of the ephemeral.
The past few weeks I have done a little more of nothing and I’m seeing more happening as a result. I've doubled down on the relaxing, swimming, sitting on the curb watching my kids play baseball with a tennis racket, and cutting dead leaves off my tomato plants.
We're drowning in advice. You can read a million self-help books and not be any more enlightened than you were when you started. Just more burnt out. Maybe you'll have one or two new tools in your arsenal that are really effective for you but at the end of the day, you really have to do your own work.
I started to draft a novel several years ago, trying to make sense of this terrible person I had gotten involved during my podcast marathon days. I came up with a story called Claw about this creature, that on the outside is very handsome, smooth skin, good bone structure but just underneath the surface lurks a monster. As the story starts out, a lot of disorienting things start to happen which is the truth of the feeling of the story that I lived.
The metaphor is more true to the experience than any simple recounting of facts.
Here’s the excerpt… Listen to more of this week’s episode about self help, over ‘efforting’, and the power of metaphor wherever you get your podcasts.
Claw.
When I got back to the Target parking lot, my car wouldn't start. I was going to be late to work and I was already on thin ice. I looked around and saw two decently put together, people walk into a store. Either of them would probably have given me a ride and not dumped my body in a ditch. But I couldn't bring myself to approach them. If I got a ride, I'd have to make small talk and force a friendliness that would exacerbate my ever-present awareness that I'm just not friendly. Not these days. And I have to be careful not to see any of the off, putting things about South Carolina that constantly circled my mind. I did not want to have to ask anyone for anything. Any interaction with strangers made me feel worse because people seemed genuinely happy to be here. Even worked hard to get here.
It was as if I was ordered to this low country golfing enclave as a punishment. And I was resentful of my captors, but I had no captors. I came here entirely on my own to escape a marriage. I was looking for respite at the very least.
So, no, I wasn't going to ask these people for a ride to work. So I began to walk the three miles. I walked on the south side of the street across the road was a horse farm, a golf course, plenty of manicured Greenway than just marsh. I crossed the street to at least be on the side with a pretty land. I usually only got to see from my car. It rained the night before and wet leaves squelched under foot, and it looked like another rain was coming. The clouds moved from clusters to a thin veil with a ripples resting belly down over top of me. ..., it looked like I was under the sea. The horses moved to the far side of the pasture, waiting for the first drops. My feet started to hurt on the hard pavement. Sweat percolated on my forehead. There was a stickiness to my thighs and the denim that swooshed as I walked. A block went on for what seemed like ages.
Even when I could see the next corner, it still felt like there were at least two more New York blocks to go. As I got closer , I saw that there was a man standing there lingering and glancing back at me. I thought, well, he's not going to rob me because he's wearing this crisp lemon yellow Izod which doesn't go well with robbing people. But surely he's going to try to get me to join his church. Why he'd be standing where there was almost no foot traffic was beyond me. But such as the way of the Lord, I guess.
Now I'm standing on the corner with my back to him and he says:
“Excuse me?”
I didn't budge. I waited for the light to change and the wind picked up.
“Nice break from the heat this morning”, he said.
I continued to say nothing.
“Nice break”, he repeated.
“Yeah,” I mumbled. The light turned. And I said “bye” with a little wave and started to walk. He started walking too. When I feel scared, I usually get angry. So I was kind of puffing myself up to get this guy off my back and show him I was not going to play around or be meek, but then he said my name.
“Alicia”.
That's when I whipped around to see he was gone.
He disappeared into thin air. My heart started to pound. I looked in the bushes across the street, around the corner. And I went over what he looked like in my mind, I held onto the image of this lemon, yellow Izod, and I thought about the whole look and suddenly it seemed like it was a disguise of some sort. Alicia, I could hear the voice echoing in my head. I crossed back to the other side of the street where the outlets and the gas station were. Maybe I imagined him saying my name. Maybe I just made him up entirely. I was tired. I was not getting much sleep. I tried to shrug the whole thing off and I walked into the gas station to get water but when the door closed behind me, the first thing I saw was that yellow shirt. There he was at the counter putting his wallet into his back pocket. I went and hid in the snack aisle to try and get a good look at him. He had taut calves and point angles. Like. He had an athletic build. I walked toward the door, keeping my eyes on him, but just as I felt for the handle, he turned and saw me.
“Alicia!”
Upon hearing my name again, my heart froze. He just walked casually in front of me, biting into an energy bar with a gotcha expression. And I knew I was holding my jaw in this tense position. I found myself doing that lately like I was holding still for a dental x-ray with a bulky film, digging into my cheek. I was used to enduring a certain level of discomfort.
“Do I know you?”
I felt like he was leading me into a false reality where we did know one another, but we did not know one another and I wasn't going to be tricked. That was my attitude and I could feel my hands making fists.
He laughed and said my name again like I was a silly child in need of correcting. And he pushed a lock of hair away from his face. I noticed his clear complexion and almost wrinkle-free skin. He had that face of someone who had just had everything going for him, his whole life. Like he'd won the golden ticket at birth and knew he was in the clear was all going to be okay for him no matter what he did. I guess they call that white male privilege, but it's something more, it's utter and complete shelter from any struggle outside the self. But the self can be a mighty thing.
He was carrying a bag and he opened the bag and he pulled out a windbreaker and he put it on. I recognized the windbreaker immediately as I had the exact same one. He put his arms through the holes carefully and deliberately and I realized I was being lulled into waiting for something, like that big x-ray machine, to flash bright in my eyes. I was holding my jaw again in that awkward position. And I, I sort of snapped to have to go.
“I just want to ask you one thing,” he said.
“What's that?” I crossed my arms. I have a way of being overly familiar with strangers and I know that. I think it's all my years living in New York where I had conversations with people at lunch counters, clothing stores, bars, the subway platform.
“Did you see the security light go on outside your house last night?” he asked.
I had indeed seen the security light go on outside of my house. In fact, I woke up and retraced my steps throughout my window filled home wondering if my movements from one of the windows had caught me at an angle from the motion sensor and found nothing. I checked the doors and went to sleep with my phone, , getting lost in the phones, jagged flow of images and words that exacerbated my constant sense of floating. This man is trying to scare me. I thought.
“I'm calling the police,” I said,
“No, calm down, calm down. It's Jonathan, by the way.” He stuck out his hand for me to shake it.
“How would you know that my security light went off?”
He looked accused. “I don't know why you're pretending you don't know me.”
I went to open my mouth. I didn't know what I was going to even say. And he said, “come on.”
And I could never, to this day, explain why I followed him.Before I knew it I was sitting across from him at the Starbucks across the way, looking out the window, watching a cement truck roll by. Jonathan started to talk to me about the music on the radio when we heard a loud screech. We looked up to see a car veering off the road, rolling into a ditch on the far side, we ran across the road into the median, waiting for the traffic to clear. Nobody else came out with us, but the smoke was billowing. Jonathan just lit a cigarette and looked both ways, he seemed to be noticing me, noticing him, but not making any movement to cross to the other side of the street where the car was. I made a move and then he followed me. We ran across and down the embankment where the car's tires were facing up and still rolling slowly. You could see all the grid work of the overturned car. The driver was stuck behind the wheel, but very much alive. He looked dazed and he looked terrified.
I started to yank on the door to open it Jonathan stood next to me, smoking, watching my efforts before bending down next to me, nonchalantly with a cigarette it's still stuck in his mouth as he pulled the door a little bit before taking a step back and letting me do the work of helping the man out of the car, the car started to edge his way out and we helped him to his feet. But his legs were shaking so badly. He collapsed. We saw that there was an old wheelbarrow down by the water. I pulled it over towards him and we hosted him onto it and rolled him away from the filtering smoke. The guy was still moaning. I held his hand and I dialed 911 and reported the accident. Jonathan walked away toward the trees while I did this and then he motioned for me to come. I let go of that man's hand and I went. He pointed to a smooth rock where we could sit down . He sat and made room for me. He returned to a story again about the song we had been listening to in the Starbucks and seeing that band perform live. The lyrics went “Called to the devil and the devil did come. I said to the devil devil, do you like drums? Do you like cigarettes? Dominos and rum…” He drummed on his leg. And then he stopped and rested his wrists on the knees of his jeans with his hands hanging down.Then I saw him clutch at his sleeve and pull the sleeve over his hand. Something wiggled under his sleeve. I pretended to tie my shoe and looked over to see what it was. I noticed a talon peeking out a sharp raptor kind of tapping at his shinbone. I sat up quickly and all the blood rushed from my head but he was just looking up at the tree and finishing the last drag of his cigarette. I asked him about the band again to just keep the conversation going. My heart was pounding into my throat at this point.
“Are you from South Carolina?" I asked.
“Yep.” He breathed smoke into the leaves above us.
I realized that he was attractive, but only from certain angles. From some angles he was perfect, chiseled, almost uncannily, good looking. But from other angles, he was almost grotesque. He had large sparkling teeth, a pronounced Roman nose, almost like the gag kind that are attached to eyebrows and black glasses.
There were two ways of viewing him, slimy lurker or a young Matt Dylan. I was watching both as they morphed to and fro like a hologram as you circle it. Just then an ambulance pulled up and two men with round Southern bellies got out and asked for us to point them to the driver. We walked them down to the edge of the marsh where we had propped the wheelbarrow against a rock. But the wheelbarrow, when we got down there, it was empty.
The man was gone. I realized we had just left a man who got in a car accident alone. I glanced over at Jonathan and saw the raptor lying inert against his jeans. He looked at me and pulled it back up into his sleeve. The two men ran down the embankment to the car and we followed then they stopped. To see an alligator slithering back into the water. Oh my God.
I thought I would pass out. I lowered myself to the grass and the men radioed for help, which we all knew was too late. They got on their knees and began feeling around in the mud for the body. Jonathan pursed his lips in resignation, but didn't move a muscle. He had one hand on his hip and gazed blankly into that water. I could hear his breathing slow and measured.
His yellow Izod was as crisp as ever as I watched his chest go up and down. We did what we could. He said, and I stood there feeling the need to get close to him. Like a magnetic curiosity and desire to unsee his deformity and see more of the him that I liked. I kept my eyes on his and I didn't look down at the water. If I just focused on his face and head, I wouldn't have to think about the alligator slithering away after his meal. It would make no sense at this point to have a normal conversation.
So we didn't. I looked into his face, desperate for remorse, regret, the horror of what we just saw, but I found nothing, not delight or glee or satisfaction, not apathy. If anything, just acceptance. People die.
People slither away into the marsh in the jaws of an alligator and die. He walked up the hill and he waited for me. He looked behind us at the EMT on the radios, khaki pant legs covered in mud, not a ripple in the water.
Two police cars came roaring down the road and pulled off into the grass, dust flying. The traffic was slow now. Rush hour was over. A patch of daffodils peeked out from the side of the road. We walked back into the Starbucks and the air conditioning was cold. The sharpness hit me. I forgot what was going on around me. And I felt light, almost happy just to have someone to talk to. We ordered at the counter.
I was playing a role now with him. It reminded me of how I used to stop at red lights and look into the car next to mine. Whoever was in there. I would imagine myself in there in that life with them. Right now, I was with this man in his yellow shirt. It was like I was in a car full of frat boys on a road trip to a concert, hats backwards, the misogynist jokes flying. Someone would say something surprisingly sensitive and vulnerable and then covered up with a joke or a laugh that re-introduced casual brutality. They trade fantasy football picks. I could imagine Jonathan in that car brimming with nervous energy, revving up to play his role and not be seen for who he was: a monster.
You know if something vibrates and that vibration is strong, rapid and disorienting, you can't really see the thing clearly. People add blur to their social media pictures to distort features to look smoother and erase blemishes. What I was, was in a deep harmonious blur.
We sat down.
He mumbled something about his izod being too crisp, too new, almost reading my mind. He pointed out the folds and the fabric running across his torso, said it was a gift from his mother. This flash of self-awareness was disarming . Likable in fact. I started to feel guilty about my judgment.
Both of his hands were tucked under the table now. I was reimagining his hand as a disability. Maybe he was born with a birth defect.
He started telling me a story wide-eyed and blushing. While he's telling the story, a man walked in, he walked right up to Jonathan and whispered something in his ear. Under his jacket, I saw a gun. It was a cop. He pointed to the EMT guys from the accident standing outside. They wanted him to go out and give his account. Jonathan stood up and straightened his pants. His eyes were stony, but his limbs were jumpy and floppy as he walked outside. He suddenly had the look of an outlaw.
Is this what malice looks like?
Something was brimming in his eyes, duplicity, deception, double lives, all the d’s, the devil.
Through the window. I saw him play with his hair, moving it around to cover up his forehead. His other hand remained hidden with an outline, the shape of a scythe in his pocket. I was staring at him both attracted and disgusted, repelled and compelled. While I sat there, everything outside started to dim into a bruised purple. Like Twilight, but also like someone had dimmed a light on a computer screen. The only thing that wasn't dim was him and his pocket. His pocket glowed. The cops looked down and saw the glow and he noticed that they saw it and he looked in the window at me. I felt like I needed to protect him.
And I started to get up to go outside. I was gathering my things when there was a sharp bang against the glass. They had him pushed, flush against the glass. He looked me directly in the eyes and his mouth open. Blackness was swirling inside and a single tendril of smoke drifted up. His eyes were bulging and frozen.
One of the cops had an arm around his waist and reached into his pocket and pulled out his hand, which was now a bloody dripping stump. No claw. He smiled almost like a wince, but with perceptible joy in his face as he'd fooled them. He'd remove the claw, even though it cost him what would have been a fatal hemorrhage had he been human. I was alone in the Starbucks now everybody had left dispersing into the parking lot in horror. Some leaving in the car, some staying and watching from the outer edges of the strip mall. He was looking into my eyes and breathing slowly unblinking.
He mouthed the words. I know you. I pushed my chair back, screeching along the wood floor. I felt invisible tentacles linking us, drowning me somehow, but lifting this man up.
His mouth was still open and gaping, the black smoke rising in wisps. And I realized his lips were not moving, but yet he was definitely speaking to me.
The cop found me on the ground, keeled over with throbbing pain in my eyes. She pulled up a chair and helped me onto it. It was just her and I now in the Starbucks. She was thick and solid wrapped in her heavy navy uniform. Her gun shown in her holster and her leather belt was cracked and stretched against the fabric. She handed me, eye wash and said, come on. She took me into the bathroom, put this in your eyes. I was lightheaded , and definitely anxious, but I just followed her instructions.
I washed out each eye. And she handed me a paper towel and took me by the arm out the back door. I sat down on a bench the sun was bright. The clouds were gone now and she brought me water and sat down next to me. She was disarmingly kind, which didn't match her authoritative look, you're going to be okay. Where is he?
I asked. She shook her head with an expression that looked like pity.
“He's gone.”
My stomach dropped. “What's going to become of him?”
“I don't know. They'll keep him overnight and then release him probably. They don't have anything to he keep him on.”
“How do you know is gone”?
She got up and said, come with me. We walked along the back of the outlet stores, a couple of H&M employees walked by pulling a wagon full of hang tags. There was a bus boy from Wings Palace standing against the stucco and smoking. We stopped at a store room door. She unlocked the door and held it open for me and she said, “last chance, are you sure you want to see him?” I nodded.
Inside there was a long table facing the door and at the table sat three or four groups of people, all detainees of some kind of crime, probably shoplifting. He sat in the middle of them all. His hands were cuffed and he leaned slightly forward. I met his eyes and he looked right at me and raised his arms slowly. He had two bloody stumps, dripping blood down his arms, and he smiled a sly smile at me. I went over. Can I talk to you for a minute?
He slid around on his stool and cleared his throat. “Sure”. His expression didn't change.
“Did you have anything to do with the accident back there? Did you know that guy?”
He answered the way liars do. “How would I know that guy?” he said raising his zip ties slightly.
“I don't know. Why are the cops talking to you and why not me?”
“I don't know. Look, why aren't you interrogating me? I don't want to talk about this now or why you don't recognize me. This is upsetting enough.”
“I'm afraid,” I said,
“That's not my problem,” he replied.
Just then the door opened with a loud creak and banged shut. The cop that was protecting me, left the room. Now I saw that everyone had left the room and it was just us.
“I want to get out of here,” I said.
“Well, I can't, but you can. Goodbye then,” he said.
I got up and walked out, leaving him alone in the empty store room.
Back in the blistering sunlight. I looked at my phone and I couldn't believe it was only 11AM, but still I wasn't at work and hadn't called and that isn't good. The cops stood waiting for me.
“Your coworkers were here.”
“I'm not going back to that job.”
She didn't seem to hear.
The door slammed shut and out came Jonathan walking toward us with no zip ties.
The cop looked at him. “You're free to go.” She pointed him down the road one way and turned the other way toward the parking lot and looked at me. “There's your car. Your mom brought it. Just needed a jump. You should go as far away as you can.”
I nodded and walked to my car through the empty lot in the now blazing sun. Before I could close the door, there he was. “Hi,” he said, leaning into my car.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“I'm going to keep walking,” he said. He looked down the road like he was trying to see where he might be headed.
“Okay,” I said, and pulled at the door handle.
He backed away as I closed the door, but then I rolled down the window.” Take care of yourself.” I put my car in reverse, struck by a strange sensation of desire that I had to use all my power to fight. He knocked on the hood to say goodbye and I pulled out.
All alone now, I passed the place where the accident happened and decided to pull off.
I drove onto the wet grass and stopped and got out and walked down the embankment. The car had been hauled away. I could see a depression in the grass where the alligator dragged the body back into the water. I went over and was staring into it at a safe distance when I spotted a set of keys from a rental car. I scooped them up. Wondering if they needed them for evidence. Not that there will be a trial against an alligator. We were the negligent ones. As I turned to leave, I saw something else glinting in the grass. Glasses, just the reading kind, but nice ones.
I put them in my car. I drove down the road a little bit and saw a Holiday Inn. Went to reception. Over the loudspeakers, Pharrell summoned the empty lobby to clap along, if you feel like happiness is the truth as an unsmiling blonde came out from the back. I asked her if they had any rooms and she said, “yes”, and wordlessly checked me in and handed me a key card. I drove around to my room, feeling the slightest lift of freedom in my chest. The bed was inviting with its taut corners and extra pillows, the flat screen over the heavy chest of drawers. I loved it precisely because it wasn't home. I went back outside and pulled a bag out of my trunk. I had my beading suit and a towel with me from the gym. I went to the pool and jumped in and started to do laps. The air was warm. The pool was only slightly cooler.
I dove to the bottom and felt around the pool floor. I close my eyes and let bubbles float from my mouth. I could hear my heart. I held my breath as long as I could and then I kicked my way to the surface. I got out and grabbed a towel back inside. Dry, except for my hair, I laid down crossways over the bed and I looked up at the stucco ceiling, and before I knew it I was waking up to the sound of loud knocking on my door. I put on a robe and looked out to see a yellow Izod through the viewfinder. I took a deep breath and before I could think, I opened the door. He came right in, walked past me and collapsed on the bed like he owned the place.
“Where'd you come from?” I asked.
“I walked here,” he said, out of breath from the outlets.
“Yeah.” I was suddenly feeling very awake. And so I watched him, this stranger with claw hands drift off on my freshly made neutral bed. A human strong man hand now crossing over his chest, the other hand draped over the side of the bed as his head fell to the side.
I let him be. I turned on the TV, no news on any local station about the accident. I opened my laptop. I sat on the edge of the bed and fell asleep again for a while before getting woken up by a couple arguing outside. The monster was still sleeping, curled up with an arm under his smooth face. I went to the bathroom and ran a bath. After a while I got up dripping from the water and grabbed a plush white towel and held it to my face for what seemed like a long time. When I went into the bedroom, he wasn't there. Neither of us had fallen asleep under the covers and the bedspread was wrinkled into a swirly shape where he'd been, I got dressed in the same clothes I had on all day and opened the door tentatively to see him stooping near the vending machine. He scooped up an energy bar from the bottom.
I tiptoed out of sight just as he was standing up. I found my car in the parking lot, got in and backed out without looking in his direction.
I drove for 10 minutes and pulled into a wild wings parking lot. And went into the dark restaurant ring with TV screens and sat at the bar and ordered. While I waited, my phone buzzed with a text, from a phone with no caller ID. It was a picture of a hunk of concrete on the side of the road. I had no idea what it was. Was it from the accident site? It was hard to tell. My wings arrived. The chicken skin was withered, leathery and puckered with feather follicles that were stained orange from hot sauce. I dipped a wing into a cup of ranch and orange dye spidered through the white. I took a bite. A player on the screen wiped sweat from his brow with a small white towel and put his hands on his head and looked up at the sky.
I finished, paid, and got back in my car. I drove past houses topped by frowning oaks with sleepy moss fangs, past long low bridges where moonlight reflected on still water, where reeds splayed and choked at murky edges, and where what teamed under the surface gave no hint of anything above the waterline.
I drove until I was out of the low country. I was driving west cause I wanted to see the mountains before I went Northeast again. The trees rose taller now, more dense and dry, wicking away vagaries in a crisp pine swirl of air.