“I vividly remember watching cartoons as a kid and seeing Bugs Bunny standing on a lily pad, playing ‘Hello My Darling,’ with a banjo in his hand and a drum on his back. I’ve always wanted to play music myself. But it’s so hard to make a living at it. For awhile I was playing the banjo in restaurants. But I couldn’t make it work. So I thought I’d try the Bugs Bunny thing.”
“It was a woman. I don’t even remember her name. But sometimes she’d take me out of my third grade class, and we’d go to her office, and just play with play-doh, or dried beans. I don’t even remember what we talked about. But she helped me find ways to control my anger: stop cussing in class, stop doing off the wall things, stuff like that. I think it was the first time someone ever really tried to help me. When I was a baby, my father got murdered. And sometimes you can’t really talk to your family about nothing. Because there are these sensitive spots and dark places, and maybe they’re hurting too. So people just hold onto stuff. Especially in this neighborhood. Especially males. They walk around with pain on them because it charges them up. They need it so they can have an excuse to lash out and do whatever they want. And I guess some people win on it. But at the end of the day, I’d rather win on being positive. I don’t mind saying how I feel. And I’m not a therapist, but I try to let people around me know that I don’t mind if they share. That if they’re hurting about something, you know, they can call me.“
“My husband hasn’t been home in 153 days. There’s a legal case right now, so I can’t say exactly what happened. But he suffered a catastrophic brain injury in July. And so many of his memories are gone. Some days I’ll go visit him and it just won’t stick. He still remembers my name, but his memories about me are all wrong. Or the details are mixed up. But he’s one hundred percent convinced they’re true. He can’t be corrected. He’s steadfast in his memories. Right now I feel like we’re on two different tracks. I’m just trying to find the places where they merge. He recognized our wedding ring yesterday, even though it was around my neck, that was big for me. It was a moment when our realities came together. Our 45th anniversary is this Saturday. I’m just hoping it will be as normal as possible. I’m going to cook him dinner. Hopefully he’ll eat. And maybe we can share some of the same memories. I’m not sure if that’s enough for me, but it has to be. It has to be enough. Because he’s not going anywhere. And neither am I. We’re in this together.”
“I’d just turned twelve. I think Dad realized that I needed somebody in my life. He was working two jobs so I never had anyone to talk to. Mom wasn’t around. Middle school was a complete disaster. I had no friends and was getting bullied tons. Then one day I came home from school, and Dad was home, which was shocking, because he normally worked until 9 pm. And he introduced me to this guy. I had no clue who he was. He said his name was Adam, and that he was my ‘Big Brother,’ and he was going to help me. But I had no clue what that meant. I just thought it was a friend of my dad’s or something. We were only supposed to meet two times a month. But it ended up being more like three times a week. He helped me study. I could call him whenever I felt sad. And he helped me with my anger outbursts. Whenever I was having a bad day, we’d go to a bridge near his house and throw a bunch of rocks in the creek. He helped me so much over the years. Even after he moved to New York, I was able to do the last two years of high school by myself. He promised me that if I graduated with all B’s, he’d fly me up to New York for a visit. Well I did better than that. I graduated with all A’s and B’s.”
“I’d just started grad school in Tennessee. I was a little lonely, so I might have been looking for some familial bonds. But I actually got the idea from an episode of West Wing. One of the main characters was a Big Brother. So I did a quick Google search, and found that the East Tennessee chapter was one of the strongest in the country. What really prompted me to join was learning that the little brother list is much longer than the little sister list. The organization gave me a personality test, and I got matched with Brandon. He was extremely shy. I had no idea what to do. In the beginning there was a lot of silence. And whenever he did talk, I’d just say: ‘I get that, I get that.’ After a few days of that, he told me: ‘Thanks for trying to get me.’ Soon Brandon became my best friend in Knoxville. And I think I shared that title for a little while, until he got older and met more friends. Food was a big part of our friendship. We always went to Shoney’s. I still have a picture of the first time we went. He filled half his plate with red jello, and the other half with chicken nuggets. I focused a lot on his academics. I’m a big school nerd, so that was my comfort zone. We did a lot of homework together. I wasn’t aiming for him to get A’s. I was just aiming for a feeling of progress. His improvement at school was huge. He even got ‘The Turnaround Award’ in 8th Grade. That was such a big moment for both of us. We’ve come a long way since then. Now we’re looking for the right college.”
“One of my best friends is getting engaged, and I think she’s making a mistake. I brought it up the other night. We were both a little drunk. And she didn’t get angry, but she told our other friends that I seemed disappointed in her. Maybe I overstepped my bounds. I’ve asked myself if I’m just jealous. Or if I’m trying to bring us back to the place we were: two roommates, watching movies, exploring New York. But I really think my only concern is her happiness. I just don’t think her fiancé ‘gets’ her. He’s a really nice guy. He’s not asking her to change or anything. She’s just not herself when she’s around him. She always seems like she’s about to say one thing, then she’ll pause, and say something else. Like she’s searching for the words that will make her who she needs to be for the relationship to work.”
(½) “My childhood was dominated by her stories: living in the ghetto for two years, surviving off potato peels, running like an animal from the Nazis. She was the only one who survived. I have no grandparents. No aunts or uncles. Her entire family was killed. We rose up from the ashes. And my mother became a monster. She deprived us like she was deprived. My brother and I were always made to feel like a burden. Like we were leeching from her. There were no special occasions. No birthdays. No cake. Everything was counted. Everything was calculated. Whenever I asked for something, I was made to feel responsible for World War II. She’d say: ‘I didn’t survive Hitler to get you a bag of potato chips.’ She never let me feel like we were in America. I felt like I was the one wearing stripes. I’ve dreamed about Hitler since I was child. He tells me I’m a mistake. And that I should have been killed. I remember when I grew older and started visiting the houses of friends. I saw how their parents treated them. How they were given gifts. And how they were loved. It felt like I was crawling out of the sewer, after the war, and learning that this entire time, some people had been living normal lives.“
“I’m going to be watching my nineteen-month-old daughter later. But I just smoked a joint so all I can think about is the buffalo dip in my fridge. She’s going to want to eat it. I’ll have to keep it in the kitchen and run back and forth. I’m just hoping I can stay awake. I discovered an album where Charlie Brown sings classic rock, so for awhile we were listening to Grateful Dead and Queen. But that era’s over. Because she discovered Mom’s pop crap. We’re probably just going to build some sick block castles. Actually I’ll build them, and she’ll knock them over because she loves to watch me freak out. Then I’m praying she’ll take a nap so I can watch the football game. Honestly I don’t even care about the game. It’s just an excuse to eat my buffalo dip.”
“It was a really toxic relationship. I think she’d agree with that. We allowed each other to be depressed. We encouraged it, actually- just to increase the dependency. We were together 24/7. Instead of pushing each other to be better, or get help, we just stayed in bed all day long. We skipped our classes. I failed out of school. Occasionally she’d break up with me, and I’d be a mess, then a month later she’d be knocking on my door. And I hate saying it out loud, because she was suffering too, and I don’t want to make her seem like a bad person. But she knew how to pick apart my insecurities. She made me feel manipulative for needing help. She made me feel like a terrible person. Like I just wanted attention. Since I thought she was the only one who really knew me, I figured it must be true. It got to the point where I didn’t feel worthy of being around people who cared about me. So I kept away from my family. Then I took their absence as proof they didn’t care. Eventually I convinced myself that everyone would be better off without me. One night I locked the door of my bedroom, and swallowed an entire bottle of Ambien. A few days later I woke up in the ICU. My whole family was there. My mom told me that if I’d died, she’d never have been able to live with herself. My dad told me that he’d dropped to his knees when he’d learned. I guess that’s what it took to make it finally click. I’d spent so much time convincing myself that nobody cared. If I’d have only stepped out of that relationship, and leaned on those people, I’d have learned how much they did.”