Jade Sharma - Problems

And I think about those women on Facebook who are always posting pictures of themselves with husbands or children, and I think how for so long, that’s what I had wanted. But anyone can find others to hide behind. Being alone, figuring out how to make the hours go, satiating your own wrestling human heart, means you never have to hide or be numb again.

Beauty or meaning is not intrinsic to suffering. But if you can take the suffering and find the parts that are funny or profound, you can curate your world into something that might be entertaining for someone else for a while. Eventually, maybe, that time will have been useful. More useful than, like, working in a bank.

You will find yourself awake at three in the morning, wondering where all this energy comes from. You will find yourself counting change over and over, not knowing what you want or if you want anything at all. You will find yourself doubled over in the bathroom praying to the bathroom god to make the pain stop. You will find yourself staring at your cell phone, alternating between real fear and scary excitement knowing someone out there will contact you. You will find yourself in a familiar world, one you remember with a nostalgia that feels jarring and confusing. You don’t know how to fill the hours. You will find yourself with a sudden and disturbing interest in cleaning, in looking underneath and behind every piece of furniture at least one hundred times in two days. If you find a bag, it doesn’t really count, like how you don’t have to feel guilty when you are on a diet and someone hands you a free brownie. You will find yourself in the rain without an umbrella. You’ll find yourself wondering when it was that you lost track of the world. You will find yourself outside buildings trying to bum a cigarette. The world is cold to strangers. You will find yourself not having anywhere to go but not wanting to go home. You will hear “take care of yourself” with a new profound sense of meaning. You will find yourself wanting sex but not knowing how to even look at a man without blushing. You will wish you could just sleep: the only real relief from this world. You used to never want to sleep. You will sigh after you masturbate, because it felt like being high for a few seconds. You will think, I am not done with dope. I want some right fucking now . But fear and dread will arise; if you go back, you may not come back. Through the bus window, you will watch a man in beaten, weathered clothes look for bottles in a heap of trash bags, and you will be moved to tears. You will make yourself promise over and over you won’t use again. You are not used to shitting so many times a day. You will find yourself on the phone with your mother, crying like an infant. You will find yourself wishing you could be like all those girls at the bar who seem so easy and fun. You will find yourself feeling like another species. You will find yourself wondering how on Earth people meet other people. It feels like a trick you no longer know how to perform. You will find yourself walking forever, wanting to exhaust yourself so sleep will come heavy when your head hits the pillow. You will get a dog. Small pleasures will show themselves here and there in between the periods of drudgery. You will want to shut the door firmly on the world, leave the madness forever, get high and listen to jazz and be okay.

This really isn’t funny anymore. As you grow up, the world becomes smaller; only a few friends can help guide you. Only a few who are still patient with you. You will cling to them like a child clings to her mother’s skirt. You won’t ever want to go home. You will be home all the time. You will be bored. You will find that your room has morphed into a cell. Picture a time-lapse camera filming the window through winter to spring, and you are asleep with the laptop playing; you are sitting on the edge of the bed; you are pacing with the phone; you are curled up in a fetal position crying, and this is how the days will pass. You will close your eyes and open them, and the ceiling will be right where it was the day before. Sometimes you will take comfort in the predictability of this life. But mostly you will be an anxious little kid stuck inside forever, wanting to go out and play.

You did this yourself. Way to go, kid.

Everyone talks constantly about how cold it is. Ryan says it should rain this weekend. You look forward to having his company. Just to sit in his clean room and watch a movie. Instead of looking forward to a bag of dope, you are looking forward to two wondrous hours of oblivion. You don’t hang out very often because he works all day, and you are asleep most of the day. But when he is home you feel content. He tells you about his life. His job is boring, but he likes it. He met a girl, and they made out. You are an eager listener. You try to not come off as desperate. You remember what it felt like to have a whole life, and you remember what it felt like to encounter people who didn’t; you remember how you could almost smell their loneliness. You don’t know how, but you will have a life again. You will go to work and come home and have friends to call. You will have boyfriends. A skeptical part of you doesn’t really believe any of this. Nothing tells you the dread and sadness and emptiness will ever end. Still you have to wake up and get out of bed. You have to believe it won’t go on like this forever. You are stronger than before, and the next time life bestows any charms on you, you will smile brightly and remember and be grateful. You won’t ever forget. Even the sight of blood on toilet tissue will be a reminder: there is still time enough for life to grow inside you. It’s been so long you can’t remember the last time you got your period, and even the cramps are shockingly refreshing. A new normal. You don’t know how or why, but one day you will wake up and walk your dog outside, and you will be okay.

You will feel waves of sadness and you will let them run through you because that is what they are: passing waves. You will smoke a cigarette before you go back inside where it’s warm.

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Coffee House Press is an internationally renowned independent book publisher and arts nonprofit based in Minneapolis, MN; through its literary publications and Books in Action program, Coffee House acts as a catalyst and connector — between authors and readers, ideas and resources, creativity and community, inspiration and action.

Coffee House Press books are made possible through the generous support of grants and donations from corporate giving programs, state and federal support, family foundations, and the many individuals who believe in the transformational power of literature. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to the legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund and a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota. Coffee House also receives major operating support from the Amazon Literary Partnership, the Bush Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, Target, and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). To find out more about how NEA grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov. Special project support for this title was received from the Jerome Foundation.