you are not helpless / I'll help you try to beat it
[CW for discussion of mental illness, suicide, and addiction]
Dear You–
I've found myself thinking a lot about Jason Molina lately. This March was seven years since he died. I was deeply sad when he died, of course, but he died when my grandmother was in the hospital, dying; he died only a few days before she did. So I was sad, but full of too much closer-to-home grief to really think about it. I've been thinking about him lately. He was less than a year older than I am now when he died, and when I think of how he died, and think of the trajectory I used to be on...if I'd continued down that path of hard drugs and binge drinking, I might not be too far off from a similar end. I've been listening to a lot of Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co. I've been sad a lot and his songs, dark as they often are, have been bringing me comfort for two decades, and right now is no exception. Especially "Blue Chicago Moon." The lyrics:
If the blues are your hunter
Then you will come face to face
With that darkness and desolation
And the endless depression
But you are not helpless
And you are not helpless
Try to beat it
Try to beat it
And live through space's loneliness
And live through space's loneliness
You are not helpless
You are not helpless
I'll help you try to beat it
I'm not the first to say it, but this pandemic has been hard on those of us who suffer from anxiety, depression, etc. etc. Usually, when I'm depressed (especially when I'm also having suicidal thoughts), I help myself get through them by reminding myself that I have things to look forward to in the future. "So you're depressed now," I tell myself, "but it won't always be this way. Next week you get to see your best friend." Or "I can't kill myself right now, I have tickets to that concert in three months." But with this, every event has been cancelled or postponed indefinitely, and most days are this mind-numbing mixture of boredom, depression, and anxiety and every week feels like it's three years long.
I'll tell you something: when this all first hit in my area (meaning: schools and businesses closing, safer-at-home put in place, people near me getting sick), I spent a week very seriously considering killing myself. I considered it more seriously than I have in a number of years. I don't know how to explain it but: I'm kind of afraid of dying, and sometimes the fear of death (as with a global pandemic like this one) makes me want to kill myself because part of what scares me about death is the not knowing when/how I'm going to die. And I think: "if I kill myself, at least I'll be in control of it." I got past this bout of it, and I'm not even entirely sure how. I still get deeply depressed a lot of days/moments (and I'm still anxious like, all the time), and since I have nothing big to look forward to I try to keep myself going with small things–seeing my children smile, weekly extended family video chats and video chats with a group of local poets, flowers blooming in my yard, books I'm reading and films I want to watch. I bake a lot and make a lot of curries and sometimes my partner and I load the family in the car and pretend we're going on a road trip, we take road-snacks and good songs and drive aimlessly down country roads. I drink a lot of tea and a lot of sparkling water, and on days like today I keep the windows open so I can hear the rain coming down. I tell myself: "You are not helpless. You are not helpless."
I've been reading: Ocean Vuong (I read On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and then I read this poem in the April issue of POETRY Magazine and now I'm reading Night Sky With Exit Wounds and basically I'm really fucking into Ocean Vuong right now), Lisel Mueller, "The Lost Performance of the High Priestess of the Temple of Horror" by Carmen Maria Machado, "'The impossible has already happened': what coronavirus can teach us about hope" by Rebecca Solnit, "I will be gone, but not forever" by Leo DeLuca (a beautiful piece about Jason Molina and his music from March 2014), "The saga of Punkin' Donuts" by Leor Galil, to name a few things. I've also been enjoying the Shelter in Poems series spearheaded by the Academy of American poets (and I'm looking forward to their virtual event on April 30) and the Prompts Against Anxiety that Woodland Pattern has curated.
I've been watching: Psych binge-a-thons on USA, Ken Burns' Country Music series, and Fleabag. (Yeah, I'm late on the Fleabag train but oh god. OH GOD.)
I've been listening to: Songs: Ohia / Magnolia Electric Co. (as mentioned above), Palace Music, Brianna Kocka, Fiona Apple - Fetch the Bolt Cutters, X - Alphabetland, Orville Peck, and a lot of old-time country music (probably due to watching Country Music). I've made a couple playlists recently: a 'vs.' mix of old-school alternative (based on that brackets thing that was floating around), and Hard Times Come Again No More (a mix of old-time country, new alt-country, folk, and the like).
Three interviews with / profiles of me and/or The Loneliest Show On Earth have come out since I last sent you a letter. Michael T. Fournier interviewed me for his Paging All Punks series at Razorcake, my local paper ran a little Q&A about me/my book, and Luisa Aparisi-França interviewed me for Dying Dahlia Review. Speaking of my book, it's still available, and May 1st would be the start of the carnival/circus season if things were not as they are so if you haven't already, you should order it and then pretend you're at the circus as you read. (And I have some author copies, so if you want to purchase a signed one direct from me, get at me and we'll work it out.)
Country Queer published my ode to Judee Sill, Ghost City Press published a poem of mine in their My Loves: Queer Love Poems digital anthology, Vanessa Maki included me in a piece about gender identity vs. gender expression. I've also been putting some of my older stuff up on Tumblr, namely "Belmont and Clark" (a piece I wrote in 2015), and "TRUST YR STUPID FUCKING HEART" (a piece I wrote in 2016). I'm still plugging away on Bone & Ink Press stuff, and for the next two days, all the poetry titles are still 15% off on both Etsy and Payhip. Social media-wise, I'm mostly active on Instagram these days, and a little bit on Tumblr–I'm @rustbeltjessie on both of those. (I'm avoiding Twitter and Facebook as much as possible, as those heighten my anxiety and depression.) And I'm working on a bunch of new stuff: two chapbooks, a zine, and a novel. Details to come as they get closer to being finished and/or closer to their release dates.
That's all, for now. Stay safe, hold on to the small things, wash your hands. You are not helpless. I'll help you try to beat it.
Love, love, and love,
Jessie Lynn McMains