Written for my Creative Non-Fiction Class
It is in those moments of overwhelming agony that we begin to fear life itself. We begin to question its worth and its very meaning. We may not be able to get by if we cannot at least be hardend in our outlook when we are faced with situations at their worst.
And things can be there- at their worst. Freshman year of college, fourth block, and things were at their worst, at the worst possible time.
I was in a class that challenged me beyond belief. Not in what it the way it was making me think and not in the difficulty of it all- just in the sheer quantity. Eight hours of class every day. From 9am to noon with a 30 minute break for lunch. Then 12:30 to 3 or 4. Then we would meet again at night, at 7 or 8pm and our meetings would last until 10 or 11pm. As for homework, it three essays a night, each two to three pages in length. 50 to 150 pages of reading. Every other night we would have to make a long power point. There was no missing class, as everything we wrote about revolved around seeing films and reviewing them. The class was Russian Woman in Film. The professor was visiting from Moscow and was intent on giving American students perspective that let them see what hard work looked like. In Russia, she said, "We work hard and never complain."
The pictures the class painted of Russia were beyond bleak. Depressing rates of prostitution and alcoholism matched with freezing weather, grey skies and unworldly isolation. "I never want to go to Russia", students would say at night classes the professor did not attend. "It sounds miserable, like hell on earth". The films displayed this best, and we watched at least two every day. Some about murder, some about robbery, some about the collapse of trust in politics, about abandonment, about the poverty of the average family...and always with a terribly sad ending. I had never seen so many unsettling and upsetting movies in such a short period of time.
So, I met the demands of the class as best I could, pulling all nighters, some back to back. Sleep deprivation, mixed with caffeine to keep it going, is a very ugly thing. It drains you of purpose and if you are only doing it to do your homework, your homework suffers. And when you are being hard on yourself, if your homework suffers, you suffer.
When you have no life in your bones given to you by sleep and you are depending on the life in your muscles given to you by energy drinks and caffeine pills, you can get very, very sick. Nose bleeds and vomit. Loss of appetite and bad vision. I had never been through this before, but I didn't see much of a choice. I had to pass this class, as hard as it was. I was a freshman, a perfectionist, and I knew I could do it.
The challenges and dramatic perils of taking "Russian Women in Film" came at a time when my father was in Haiti covering the catastrophic damage of one of mankind's most devastating earthquakes.
Because of the power outages in Port-Au-Prince, we lost contact with my father. Stories of looting, homicides and a incredible lack of resources were dominating the news. The city was a ruin and a hub for crime at it's worst in one of the most dangerous places on earth. A week went by without word from my dad. Nobody in his office in New York had heard from him and none of my emails or texts received reply. I knew that without power he could not charge his phone or computer, but I felt the need to be reassured. With little sleep and loads of stress, the feeling that my father was "missing" in the middle of hell on earth could not have hit me harder.
FRONTLINE had assigned my father to create a documentary on the earthquake. But, when he arrived in Port-Au-Prince to begin work on his documentary, PBS took notice in a way they don't typically. He was the only correspondent there, thus more than just an employee working on a film. PBS News Hour wanted him on TV. They were going to interview him about the situation on the ground. Finally, I would have an idea of what was going on. He was alive and well and ready for TV, or so I thought.
I had never seen him look worse. Scratchy voice, sunburnt neck, dirty face. He described a situation I was unprepared to hear about. He had seen babies dehydrate to death, dozens of bodies being picked up by bulldozers, amputations preformed without anesthetic, thousands of people trying to stay safe in a new world of homelessness dominated by rape, theft and warfare. He'd covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, seen guerilla battles firsthand in Nicaragua. He was in New York to cover the horrors of September 11th, in Guatemala to cover drug wars, in New Orleans to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and in Saudi Arabia to cover public beheadings and mistreatment of women. "I have never seen anything even close this bad in my decades of directing" he said on national television. Conflict zones, terrorism and battlefield journalism, where he had risked his life and survived near death experiences too many times to count didn't measure up to what he was going through now.
It truly was hell on earth. After a brief wave of power hit his hotel, I got an email. His tone was no better than it was on the TV- he was going through something nobody should and yet he was the lucky one. He had food and shelter, he had privilege. He was struck with an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness and piercing sense of hopelessness.
"How could he ever recover?", I thought. And how am I to focus on a class that requires all the focus I can provide when all I can think about is my Dad.
So, one would hope that the story resolved itself from there, that my Dad returned to the States and began to recover and I came out of the class and entered winter break ready to see him and get some sleep! But, no. When shit is bad, it's really bad.
My cousin, who I was inseparably close with as I spent lots of time with him every summer and every winter, had been diagnosed with Crohn's disease. His medicine was not working and he was losing weight off his already skinny body very rapidly. The doctors, having taken dangerously long to finally diagnos him, where now struggling to find a cure that worked. His body was rejecting his medicine and vomiting everything he ate. He was becoming increasingly malnourished and his stomach was extending like that of a famished toddler in National Geographic. He looked like one of those photos that shocked the world. We were hanging on and hoping for a miracle.
Henry was his name. And I was his biggest role model. I meant the world to him, and as this was happening, he meant the world to me. I had to miss class to speak to him on the phone. His optimism brought me to tears. I had agreed to visit him in Vermont over winter break, a week I ended up helping his mother take care of him so she could go to work.
They finally found a drug that worked. His healing process could begin. Of course, the medicine dramatically increased his chances of getting cancer later in life, but they had to risk it.
You may think, it can't get any worse for me the people close to me. Well, I won't elaborate more than I want to, but my best friend at the time had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and she was losing her mind- saying things over the phone that made no sense, rehashing memories with which she could hurt me with, saying the meanest things imaginable. When she heard news of my cousin, she told me we were killing him with medicine. About a month later, I had to cut her out of my life for good. But I cannot deny how much more painful she made the whole experience. Her words stuck with me, they pierced my heart. Messages of homophobia, of bigotry, of judgement, of hate. She charged that I was a confused and deranged person. She charged that Haiti was getting what they deserved because they practiced voodoo. She called all our friends names and was eventually on her own.
So, looking back on this time- a time so bad it brought me to the worst state I had ever been in, I am grateful it was as short-lived as a block. I am still somewhat sensitive about all of it. The string of circumstances that made the experience so hellish drove me into the ground. I considered ending my life one night, thinking I just could not take it all anymore. That way of thinking never went far. Some sleep did me well when I needed it most. But, it was what it was, and it was ugly.
I think, now, understanding that life can be horrific, and will likely be even worse at some future point down the road, I am more prepared for things at their worst. I can survive the worst of the worst. I have to.
If I did it then, I can do it again.
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