\"Into the Deep,\" Annual Atlantic Undergraduate English Conference

Alexandrina Hanam, MSVU   

     

INTO THE DEEP 

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Alexandrina Hanam, MSVU   

 

DOWN //

1: I was rubbing garlic salt into the chicken. She pretended not to notice what I was doing. We were caught in the same black mood and the need for company triumphed over raw meat. She commented on the amount of food I was cooking. I have to cook it all now, I said to her. I have to do it tonight or it will go bad. My voice must have cracked. I tried not to look her in the eyes because my eyes always give it away. My eyes always look sad. She asked how I was, how I was doing. I sighed a heavy sigh and waited. Then I told her that I was afraid of what I was feeling and how I’d felt it before but it felt worse now, like I waited too long. I was afraid that if I went to the hospital to talk to someone that they would keep me. I was afraid that I would have to stay there. I would never come home and the chicken would burn in the oven. “I’m afraid I don’t know how to take care of myself anymore.”

“But everyone gets like that sometimes. Maybe you’re stressed out.” She said it kindly and then she went to bed.

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Alexandrina Hanam, MSVU   

2: That tightening inside your chest. You’ve felt it before. When you peak the crescent of a roller coaster’s wave. When your car tires spin on black ice in winter. For a moment your heart pauses. It’s like this but it’s longer than a pause. It can be hours or days.

3: Sitting in the ER waiting room with Jeff. Five hours. It felt like a week. Bright televisions, flashing neon, cartoons on a loop, over and over and over. I went to the children’s section with polka dot walls and big windows and sat on the floor willing myself to be absorbed into the television, into these happy shows with smiling dogs and pancakes every morning. Telling the doctor that I had stopped drinking, that I was sad but I wasn’t going to kill myself, that I was only exhausted. I wanted to lay down into softness itself and sleep into oblivion. I wanted the only kind of numbness I had left.

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Alexandrina Hanam, MSVU   

4: Another odd feature of the parallel universe is that although it is invisible from this side, once you are in it you can easily see the world you came from. Sometimes the world you came from looks huge and menacing, quivering like a vast pile of jelly; at other times it is miniaturized and alluring, a-spin and shining in its orbit. Either way, it can't be discounted.

5: Telling my roommate how I was afraid that I was going to be hospitalized. “I’m afraid I can’t take care of myself.” Feeling like a baby left in the subway. I’m just a baby, I don’t have any change. Not knowing how to name what you need, what you want.

6: Forgetting how deep the bathtub at home is, I can sink my entire body into it. Talking on the phone while taking a midnight soak. Him joking, “you can drown in only an inch of water.” The jokes we make about death, all the time, making it funny so we can pretend to process it. 4

Alexandrina Hanam, MSVU   

7: The only odd thing was that I was suddenly a vegetarian. I associated meat with suicide, because of passing out at the meat counter. But I knew there was more to it. The meat was bruised, bleeding, and imprisoned in a tight wrapping. And, although I had a six-month respite from thinking about it, so was I.

8: Telling my dad about my suicide attempts. Him crying​ he didn’t know he didn’t know he was sorry he had no idea​ . Bibles rested in our hands as evidence of our sad attempts at feeling more important than ourselves.

9: To read narratives of mental illness is to come upon a twisted sort of diary--we’re all battling against the same darkness. But at the same time, it’s not the same because we are fighting against ourselves. Our own bodies revolt against us despite our wishes--to be well, to wake up feeling okay, to be awarded some sense of relief. 5

Alexandrina Hanam, MSVU   

10: It never stopped, even at night; it was our lullaby. It was our metronome, our pulse. It was our lives measured out in doses slightly larger than those famous coffee spoons. Soup spoons, maybe? Dented tin spoons brimming with what should have been sweet but was sour, gone off, gone by without our savoring it: our lives.

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Alexandrina Hanam, MSVU   

11: From the second you open your eyes, you are ready to fall asleep again. The liminal place is a good place, a safe place to be. For the hours you are asleep, you are on pause. You cease feeling, you stop being. You go to bed expecting to wake up no better, but you still hope that somehow you will wake up changed.

12: Experience is thick. Perceptions are thickened and dulled. Time is slow, dripping slowly through the clogged filter of thickened perception. The body temperature is low. The pulse is sluggish. The immune system is half-asleep. The organism is torpid and brackish. Even the reflexes are diminished, as if the lower leg couldn’t be bothered to jerk itself out of its stupor when the knee is tapped.

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Alexandrina Hanam, MSVU   

13: John is a physician, and perhaps--(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind--) perhaps that one reason I do not get well faster. You see he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do? If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression--a slight hysterical tendency--what is one to do?

14: When I approach my mum, all I get in response is silence. “It’s just a phase. You’ll be fine, you’ll grow out of it” (except I’ve grown into it like big ears or a funny mouth). I am given six boxes of seven pills. 42 pale pink buttons. My mother tells me “antidepressant,” the pills tell me “nothing.” And I feel nothing. Instead of restoration or relief, I feel carved out, empty. I stop taking them. The feelings come back. All of my feelings come back.

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Alexandrina Hanam, MSVU   

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Alexandrina Hanam, MSVU   

UP //

1: Wanting to pause at the right time​ . When life is good, you want to pause time, freeze the moment. Sometimes it’s to remember it forever. You want to remember this moment in total clarity: the bench that supported you, the smell of baking bread carried on the brisk spring air, the warmth of the body next to yours. You remember clarity and gratitude. You are thankful to be alive to experience this moment, and you file it in your memory under “happy.”

2: Of course I never mention it to them any more--I am too wise,--but I keep watch of it all the same. There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous.

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Alexandrina Hanam, MSVU   

3: I envy the steadiness of others, or what I see as their infallible stability. The “grass is greener” viewpoint from an unbalanced mind. One big coming-of-age moment occurred for me when I realized that, while some things I experience are unique or rare, others are more universal than I’d imagined. Sadness and loneliness, while capable of freezing us within ourselves, also have immense power to forge connections.

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Alexandrina Hanam, MSVU   

4: This is an invitation. Allow yourself to feel sad, to embrace the dark and lurking. Bring it to the forefront. Things are often less frightening in the light.

I have kept a space for you.

Come.

5: There’s an old saying about aging: Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many. This keeps me going when a day is difficult. The thing about getting older is that it happens all the time. You’re getting older right now just reading this. Every second is a notch in your timeline, a grain of sand moved in your life’s hourglass. Last year I noticed wrinkles had begun to settle next to my eyes. A month ago I found my first grey hair. My face is beginning to permanently crease from smiling. I celebrate each omen of seniority as they arrive. I throw my creaking knees a birthday party and blow out the candles, happy they have carried me to ​ here​ .

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Alexandrina Hanam, MSVU   

6: I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once. But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at a time. And though I always see her, she may be able to creep faster than I can turn! I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country, creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind.

7: When you emerge from a depressed state--the “low” of the mood cycle; in my case, rapid cycling--it is like your body is new and your nerves fresh. It can feel like a part of your brain has timed out, or has been locked up, and now it is finally accessible again. The smallest experiences are all-encompassing. Drinking a glass of ice cold chocolate milk as slowly as I can. Each sip brings awareness to the act of taking it in. A glacial reminder of an unbroken body. Listening to clock hands sound out time. Universes expand and collapse in the time between each​ tick ​ and ​ tock​ . Marvelling at textures: the smoothness of hand thrown pottery against a palm, the residual heat after you return to your bed, the crispness of lettuce torn for your salad. The radiance of radishes, brilliant greens of the grass. The very ​ being​ of things moves me. A radish exists solely for its radish-ness. The grass exemplifies its grass-ness. And I, I am ​ being​ . I am here, I am here, I am here.

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Alexandrina Hanam, MSVU   

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Alexandrina Hanam, MSVU   

NOTES

DOWN // 4: Susanna Kaysen, ​ Girl, Interrupted​ , p. 6. 7: Susanna Kaysen, ​ Girl, Interrupted​ , p. 38. 10: Susanna Kaysen, ​ Girl, Interrupted​ , p. 55. 12: Susanna Kaysen, ​ Girl, Interrupted​ , p. 75. 13: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ​ The Yellow Wallpaper​ , p.3.

UP // 3: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ​ The Yellow Wallpaper​ , p.11. 5: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ​ The Yellow Wallpaper​ , p.16.

PHOTOS // Cover: open source Moth (p. 5): author Flame (p.8): open source Sky (p.10): author Beach (p.13): open source

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