If Reality Won’t Provide Narrative Coherence, I’ll Borrow Some
I’m wrapping up some hyper-fixations. Let me tell you about them.
First, I watched every episode of Star Trek Voyager. This started in August, the week the flooring in my front room was removed with a jackhammer because someone glued it down. I had to work out of a hotel room across the street that week. The Voyager rewatch continued through my birthday week in October.
I had someone come in to steam clean the tile and then started Star Trek the Next Generation. About this same time, I moved on from my Reba music hyper-fixation to Sheryl Crow. That took me through to Christmas, when I jumped to the X-Files and the Sheryl Crow hyper fixation continued, until this past week when it was all ... just over.
I found myself wondering, “Who do I listen to next?” Then, almost as abruptly, I thought, “What the heck just happened?”
That probably isn’t normal, right? But also, maybe absolutely necessary. I thought I was killing time, too stressed to focus, but now, looking at the timeline, what exactly were these benders?
I can’t resist a mythological and spiritual narration of my behavior. It’s easier for me to take than a psychological reading, and I’d argue (and have with my therapist) that I’m getting just as much from it.
Consider the Voyager arc. A spaceship, thrown to the other side of the galaxy, fights every known obstacle to get home, losing time, life, and hope, only to be saved by a future version of their Captain who knew the cost of her iconoclastic idealism and rectified it in real time. Literally, I started it the day a jackhammer was used inside my house to remove flooring that should have never been glued down, one week after my ex-wife moved out and I filed divorce paperwork, started a new role at work, and felt thoroughly adrift and alienated from myself.
The foundation of the house had just been re-poured. At one point, I remember seeing thirteen men traipsing through my house with buckets of cement and one uncoiling a cement hose into the master bedroom.
Did I tell you what happened? One day, in early June, I noticed the flooring in the bedroom was warped. The next day, a contractor came out and discovered a crack in the foundation. The next week the crew chief chased the water leak to the pool. A pool leak met a poorly poured foundation from 1979 and the backyard and the back half of the house were dug up.
Who doesn’t need a mythical space captain during this kind of chaos?
Listen, I never suggested my subconscious is subtle. I’ve always used stories as scaffolding when I’m rebuilding my consciousness after upheaval and loss. I’m humbled I didn’t realize it until today.
During that same time period, I’d lie in bed at night, listening to a Reba McEntire playlist I made. When I get sick, or I have an infusion, or I’m scared, I listen to Reba. Nothing soothes a broken heart like For My Broken Heart and nothing gives hope in darkness like Somehow You Do. Reba vibrates with this energy that says, “Yeah, this is all awful, it’s gonna hurt. Put your boots back on. Let me give you a hug. Now get back on the horse.”
Eight-year-old me first saw Reba on CMT in the living room of our double-wide trailer in Helper, Utah. I remember it because it was a few weeks after my baptism and I had my Kermit and Miss Piggy dolls with me, and Buttercup kept trying to chew them. It was a late fall, early winter weekend morning. There were no leaves on the trees outside the window. I could feel hot air coming out of the floor vent. My mom had made me put on socks with my nightshirt. I’d been sick, maybe even in the hospital. I was laying on the floor, right in front of the television. The carpet was brown and black swirls. The TV was color console, dark grain wood. We didn’t have a remote control yet so I had to punch the numbers into the cable box. Reba was singing Whoever’s in New England, and I thought she looked so sad and pretty holding her coffee cup while looking out the window of her house. The video doesn’t really hold up to time, but if you’re questioning my deep and abiding love for Reba and this song, may I suggest this video of her performing this song with Cody Johnson a couple years ago. You’ll see.
This was about the same time I decided to log my RA pain, stiffness, food, sleep, and activity in ChatGPT every night, no matter what. I also started logging my dreams too. I am not sure why I decided to do this, but it began a recovery arc in the middle of chaos.
Then, I abruptly shifted from Reba to Sheryl Crow, where I cycled through all of her 90’s albums on repeat. When I was not listening to this, I was watching Star Trek Next Generation. The house was almost finished. I was feeling a bit better. Legalities were wrapping up. I started to think a bit more concretely about the structure I wanted in my life and more than anything, I wanted calm.
Is there anything more calming than listening to Jean-Luc Picard parse through ethical and emotional complexity a few hours nightly? Picard is calm, structured, logical coherence to Janeway’s intuitive and emotional fire. Picard is operating within an existing framework of structure in the Alpha Quadrant while Janeway is literally managing jackhammers in her living room.
And Sheryl Crow? If Reba is the aunt who will bail you out of prison and not tell your mom and dad, Sheryl Crow is the older sister who says, “Yeah, you got yourself into some trouble. Life is often painful, doesn’t work out how you think, relationships end, but jump in the car and let’s take a ride.” Her voice is not perfect. It’s incarnated. It pulls you down to earth, explains absurdity, sadness, and loss with a wink and wise lyrics and then says, “You still need to have some fun.”
I was sixteen when I first heard and saw Sheryl on VH1. I’d just come home from the Ogden Athletic club. I’d been playing a game of pickup basketball with the guys there. I was home alone, making a sandwich in the kitchen, when I heard her first sing Strong Enough to be My Man. I remember leaning on the doorway between the kitchen and living room, chewing a bite, transfixed. My mom had bought a new TV, a floor model for cheap from Sears, where she worked. It was a giant flat screen, console floor unit with a wooden frame. Anyway, the video ended and I thought, “I’m gay.”
I’m a mystery to myself. Honestly. I guess I just pulled pieces of myself through time, tucked them back inside, right into their place, and carried on. What else is there to do?
My mom, Becky, the ultimate philosopher, survivor of chronic myeloid leukemia, heart attack, and stroke is fond of saying, “You can’t let the bastards win.” I’ll sometimes say, “Mom, who are the bastards?” She’ll say, “Anyone or anything that thinks it’s going to beat you.” Divorce? Rheumatoid arthritis? House chaos? Death of a beloved dog? “Don’t let ‘em win.”
She’s also fond of saying, “Wish in one hand and shit in another, see which one gets filled first.” Maybe harsh, but also, valid life advice. I find this very helpful when reality does not conform to my expectations.
No one chooses adversity. I write about this a lot. Sometimes a lot of shit happens, all at once. Stacked losses, cascading into a pool of, “There is no freaking way I can manage all this.” Until you do, and days turn to weeks, and weeks to months, months to years, and you look back and think, It passed. It always does.
As long as you’re alive, you’ve got plenty to work with. You’ve got stories, songs, voices, myths. Anchors to narratives bigger than your own. We can get swallowed up by the immediacy and urgency of our daily lives and major traumas. But there’s always this moment, where I find my way to the surface, and I say, “In the game of Becky vs. the World, I’m still standing.”
If reality won’t provide narrative coherence, I’ll borrow some.
“There’s coffee in that nebula.” - Captain Janeway