Adam Gnade

BY ADAM GNADE

Sometimes I want to take my life apart and make a map out of it. In this fantasy, I chart what food I eat every day and how tired or sick or alive I feel when I wake up in the morning. I bar graph how much booze I drink and I map out how many times a day I brush my teeth. Everything goes in until it’s a complete and total ground plan of my life.

The reason to make a map of your life is to find the patterns. There’s truth in patterns, but it’s the kind of truth that’s hard to accept; the truth we don’t always see because we’re not always looking.

I’m not always looking either, but I have been noticing patterns lately and the patterns are not so hot. I’m seeing the stress and the bad cycles and the worrying about stupid shit like money. Or the opposite, the times when I stop caring and throw my life into the wilderness. Those are the good times but they’re also me giving up and running away. They’re me not facing the hard things and that’s cowardly.

It’s all an easy product of fear. I know that much. I’m afraid of tomorrow and I’m afraid of next year and I’m afraid that each choice I make will be the one that I’ll look back on and regret forever.

But I’m fighting it. I’m fighting to say “yes” whenever my brain screams “no!” just because it’s afraid of what it’s decided the consequences will be.

In high school I was terrified of going anywhere that people might not want me. I didn’t want to go into new social situations because I was afraid that what I had to offer wasn’t good enough for people. I was also afraid shit would get awkward and I’d run out of things to say, but doubting my own substance was the big one.

I lost a lot of friends that way. I’d get a call from somebody and they would say, “Hey, you want to do (whatever) today?” And I’d make an excuse and back out. Without fail.

After a while they’d just stop asking, and I’d lie in my bed and imagine all the things people were doing without me and I’d think, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!”

It’s a shit business sometimes but you have to fight and when you learn how to fight a lot of this ceases to matter. I’ve learned a lot lately and I know the things that bring me down by name and I have a box of tools to deal with them now. On the good days I know I’m not a creep and I know I’m not a loser and when it gets bad—and it always does—I can remember how the good days felt and I can trust myself to believe in my worth.

Still, there are some mean bastards out there and some cold fucking facts and some days it’s all a willful act of refusal just to keep moving. And there it is, out there on the horizon, the Big Motherfuckin’ Sad comin’ at you and you gotta look it right in the eye and say, “You can go get fucked, motherfucker.”

Sometimes life flattens you like a fucking beer can but you can’t let it overwhelm you. You have to stand as tall as you can and grab the Big Motherfuckin’ Sad by the throat and tear that shit right out. With your bare hands. Tear its throat out and throw it on the ground and fucking stomp on it.

Like Sean Tillman once sang, “I’ll dance on your grave, and know that I’m okay.” You gotta dance to kill sometimes. Dance on their ribs until they break. Dance on the city as it burns and crumbles and falls into itself. Dance until it’s just you and the people you love and dance until you have the life you wanted in the first place.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is we’re all braver and stronger than we give ourselves credit for. Some days can be a goddamn motherfucker, but some days are good and right and sweet.

This is life. This big mess.