Uncategorized | Marvin&Company: Stories About Death And Entrepreneurship

October 2, 2021

Cecily Strong Is In My Head

I’m reading Cecily Strong’s book, This Will All Be Over Soon, about her lockdown experience. I highly recommend it – she has words for my experience that I’ve struggled to find for 18 months. As if she’s in my head. If you have unresolved lockdown trauma and need a good cry, seriously read this book.

She’s grieving out loud. It’s so personal, I feel like we’re friends now. Not in a creepy stalker way (I swear). Like I want to call to ask how today is and if she’s drinking enough water. That’s the kind of writer I want to be – we’re friends now, Reader, because I’m sharing my broken brain with you. Please be kind.

Recently, on a much-too-long car trip, my friend and I made the mistake of discussing Big Feelings while we were both in awful moods. Now, these awful moods had not one thing to do with each other, but suddenly there were Big Feelings in the car along with our awful moods and multiple hours left to drive.

Side note: if you’re ever on a long car trip with someone you like, and you’re both in awful moods, talk about things that don’t matter. Listen to your favorite band and point out the weird looking trees. Avoid, at all costs, anything the elicits emotions of any kind. It leads nowhere good. With this advice unheeded, we ended up discussing Covid Lockdown.

Although we’ve spent most of our days together for the past five years, we had extremely different lockdown experiences. I’m still shaken. For me, there aren’t enough words to describe those dark days. I’ve managed depression and anxiety my whole life and never in my 44 years has my brain been in such a scary place as those 96 days. When I emerged on Day 97, the day a handful of us tentatively returned to the office together and began sorting out the early days of New Normal, my mental health was abysmal. I was barely treading water (and the water was also on fire).

My friend’s perspective is that it happened and it’s over. In retrospect everything was fine. And it was actually fine – they’re not wrong. The reality is that we were incredibly lucky. We went home to watch Netflix with our families and, while it was scary at times, it was ultimately okay. The company hung on, no one lost their jobs or paychecks, our loved ones remained healthy. And now lockdown is over! Life continued and we don’t need to talk about it anymore!

So why do I still cry every time I think about those 96 days? Why do I sometimes have to set down Cecily’s book with shaking hands and take deep breaths because it’s like she’s in my head? What’s wrong with me? Shouldn’t I be better now that I know we all lived?

My friend says I need to learn how to let things go. I need to be better at compartmentalization. It’s frustrating to them sometimes that I’m still so messed up over something that wasn’t really that bad. Why do I still need to talk about it?

Those 96 days haunt me and I can’t explain why. Part of me feels ashamed and weak, but I’ve lived through some things (we all have – and it’s SO NOT OKAY to judge anyone else’s trauma). This is what I can’t wrap my head around, though. I’ve managed to keep on keeping on in seemingly much worse circumstances. So WTF is it about lockdown?

I’ve experienced trauma and loss and heartbreak that by all rational comparison was far worse than 96 days of Buffy the Vampire Slayer reruns. I don’t have the right words, and although Cecily comes closer than my therapist or anyone else I’ve spoken to about this, I still can’t quite find them.

Here’s one of the things that still hurts to think about. My friend in the car refused to see me during lockdown. In the beginning I understood, no one knew what was happening and we’re in New York, the epicenter of scary in the earliest days of Covid. By mid-May, however, almost everyone I knew had started socially distanced outdoor meetups, yet one of the people I love most in the world – who had no underlying health conditions – didn’t want to see me in a setting every expert agreed was probably safe. My heart hurt missing this person, and I wasn’t important enough for a slight inconvenience. I know, I know, they had their own trauma response (although they won’t call it that because lockdown wasn’t traumatic!) and this is just what their fear looked like. I should respect that. It’s not fair for me to expect them to change themselves for my comfort. It hurt though. It hurt and they don’t want to talk about it, only tell me I am wrong for being upset still.

I still feel so broken and I miss the person I used to be. I don’t think she’s coming back. The worst part, I think, is having so many (highly inconvenient) Big Feelings that one of my best friends thinks are just excessive. I shouldn’t still be like this, and yet here we are.

So what are the right words? I am well aware how strange it is that I’m still so fucking sad about 96 days that happened a year and a half ago, but now I know it’s not just me. This actor I’ve watched every Saturday night for like 8 years is having a hard time too. That’s validating, right?. I know all of this and still I am close to tears writing about it. I want to ask Cecily to help me explain. She has better words than me. She felt the things I feel and wrote a whole book about it. I want to tell her she helped and I appreciate her.

I hope she’s drinking enough water. I want her to be okay.

March 1, 2021

March Again

So it’s March again. Or still. Is everyone else exhausted too, or is it just me?

Anniversaries of traumatic events are tough. When I was training to be a Death Doula, we talked a lot about anniversary grief. The one year mark of a death is a time to honor our dead person and sift through our memories about the death. It can be a time of peaceful introspection or a hellscape of anxiety, and it’s perfectly normal for it to be a mix of both.

In March 2020 the world split irrevocably into two parts – before and after. We aren’t going back to the before times. No matter who we elect, how many of us get vaccinated, or what the economy does. We’re only going forward with the knowledge that something terrible has happened that affected every single one of us.

I remember waking up every day with a deep sense of both fear and apathy. The act of forcing myself to believe that something – anything – mattered was in itself exhausting. This was my brain adjusting itself to the tsunami of cortisol and adrenaline that accompanies a crisis. The thing is, this crisis wasn’t as simple or short lived as a car accident or a leopard in the tall grass. Our brain’s complex system of protecting our dumb asses in a crisis ended up hurting us more than it helped. This time, the leopard really was in the tall grass, and it’s not leaving anytime soon. We have no choice but to adapt to our surroundings, so like many of our ancestors before us we’re experiencing how trauma rewires our brains. It’s unpleasant.

Exercise, eating real food, meditation, social interaction (even on Zoom), hobbies, work, and down time for our tired brains all help this process. All of this can smooth the rough edges of a horrible experience, just like it does when we’re grieving a person, but it can’t change the fact that grief is uncomfortable on it’s best day. Grief physically hurts us. And we are all grieving right now.

The whole world is grieving the future ripped away from us so quickly that will never be quite the same. We’re grieving our dead people, our collective poor choices and those of our leaders, and the ways in which our society has changed. Perhaps it’s changed for the better, and still even good change is disconcerting. Grief in a culture that’s death-illiterate and has never been taught how to grieve is difficult. This year has been an incredible challenge for us.

For those of us with the incredible good luck to not lose our jobs or our people, it may seem disingenuous to still feel this grief. It’s not, so please let yourself off the hook for any of that misplaced guilt. We all lost something. Our sense of wellbeing, the peace of mind that comes from being many generations removed from this kind of trauma. We were gaslighted by our leaders and watched half the country deny that a global pandemic was real. Whenever I am faced with a COVID denier, while I gave up so much to flatten the curve, the rage I feel is overwhelming. I’m probably not the only one.

So if you’re feeling big emotions that don’t make sense in the context of where we are right now, it’s probably COVID grief. Processing trauma takes a long, long time, and we’re still in the middle of the crisis. This is what the anniversary of a death looks like. You’re not losing your mind, I promise. We’re grieving in community.

February 24, 2021

Henrietta

She announced her superior position in a text:

This is his wife. He is in the hospital. And does not want to see you. Do not come here.

I knew you first, by the way. Not that we’re keeping score.

When I’d asked, a few months earlier, who will call me when you die? You said: I want you here with me. Holding my hand.

You and I were friends who loved each other. You said I was the one with whom you could discuss your death, because I had a way of listening without holding you accountable for my grief. You said, please keep coming back.

For eighteen months and eighty thousand miles, I came back. Until I knew the thruway like I knew my back yard. Until the baristas in the rest-stop Starbucks recognized me. You said the wife, from whom you were long separated, knew you had a meaningful friendship with a woman you’d known for decades. You said I was important. You called me your best friend. So I came back to you.

You said your people would honor my place in your life. The moment you were too sick to speak any of that sweetness, Your people found different words for me: Lying piece of shit. Drama queen. Gold digger. Whore.

So I stayed in a hotel in Henrietta. For two sleepless days. Weeping. Raging. Disintegrating. A five minute drive from you.

I didn’t know how to be that sad in Henrietta. So the next day, when you called to ask why I didn’t come to see you, I was in Rhode Island. I will forever regret being so far away from you when you called me for the last time, and I will forever regret coming back.

I didn’t know you tried to add me to your will. I didn’t know you tried to give me money I didn’t want or need, to thank me with dollars when you ran out of words. Of course they hated me. Of course they thought the worst of me. Of course they forced you to change that will, took your phone, read words not meant for them. Or course the laser focus of their grief became the inexplicable intimacy of a long platonic friendship. All that grief turned into more palatable rage; of course it did. You offered up the perfect recipe for rage-grief on a gilded platter.

What were you thinking? You sweet, stupid, selfish man.

My final gift to you is quietly accepting that I am reviled by nearly every person who ever loved you. I will not hate them back. I wish them all well (and far away, but still, honestly, well).

So please, darling, understand. I did not mean to let you down on our final day.

That broken girl in Henrietta was unprepared for a hospital room filled with the people who banned her from your funeral.

So the woman who grew up in the shadow of a castle and drove nine hours from Narragansett had to come instead. To stand alone in a room full of hate and whisper to you: Thank you for this adventure. I’ll see you next time.

August 14, 2020

Chasing Rainbows

I once employed a subcontractor who had lots of opinions about how I ran my business. He was quick to point out how he’d do something better or different, and what, in his opinion, I was doing wrong. Of course this grew tiresome, but this man was good at his job and put in lots of billable hours for my company. So I would smile and thank him for his input.

It’s not that his ideas were bad. In fact, many made sense in the short term. Most of his ideas were good, just not fully formed. Do this thing, it will make money. Market yourself this way, you’ll get more clients. In his mind I was obstinate for failing to chase my company’s full potential and limiting its growth.

He had once owned a brewery which ultimately failed because, among other issues, it expanded quickly without a stable foundation upon which to rebuild should new growth become untenable. One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned as a small business owner is that just because something can make money, doesn’t necessarily make it a good investment.

Sustainable success is achieved with balance between big ideas and carefully calculated risks. Some of the best ideas can easily turn out to be rainbow chasing.

What my well-meaning colleague didn’t recognize is that going in a million different directions at once erodes the foundation upon which a company is built. A good idea only has true merit if it can be reasonably implemented without siphoning too many existing resources. If doing something new will make money, but doing the new thing means doing less of something that already makes money and already has a strong client base, that growth is not sustainable.

Even the best ideas will have setbacks in the implementation phase. This is the place where so many new businesses stumble. Ideas are great – we need a constant flow of new ideas for our businesses to remain relevant – and not all great ideas are a good idea. These two truths are not mutually exclusive. That part is really important.

December 2, 2013

Introduction

My friend, with whom I had run a successful consulting firm for over 14 years, died on October 31, 2012.

Five days later his siblings, who I had not met until the funeral, informed me that they now owned the company I created. I conceded the company name and attempted to keep the clients I had signed – people who knew my parents and grandparents (I’m from a really small town). The siblings then attempted to sue me. An inadequate understanding of business law caused me to lose my life’s work. Their first demand was to take down the company website.

In doing so, I discovered that I owned the domain name. This led me to the idea of making it into something useful.

This is me standing up for myself, claiming the last, small piece of my friend, and my former life, that no one can take from me.

I may write every day, or once a year. My first crack at blogging will be a collection of essays about navigating my way through grief, but I expect it may branch out into other things. We’ll see how it goes.

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