The Pit of Despair by Brandon Mead
There’s a meme floating around about 2020 using images and dialogue from a scene in the 1987 classic The Princess Bride. A young, thin Cary Elwes wakes-up strapped to a table, prepped for what looks like torture, when he asks a ghoulishly painted figure above him, “Where am I?
Like Westly, most of us are asking that same question about the unfamiliar surroundings we’ve found ourselves in, the darkness that is this year. To that question, in a strained raspy voice, 2020 has replied, “The pit of despair.”
Right now, there are holes ripping through the bottom of the unicorn house slippers I used to rarely put on. The only laundry I’ve done in weeks consists entirely of bathrobes and pajamas. I’m treating the hair on my face like a science experiment, seeing how long it can grow while I don’t have coworkers around to ask me what fashion statement I’m attempting to make.
And I don’t think I’m alone when I find myself staring through the front window of my house, out to the overgrown weeds and empty road, asking, “Is there even a reason to do anything anymore?”
On a video call, I can just see the faces of my friends. Other than the few feet of wall and decor behind them—their different backgrounds composed of books, statues, sometimes a strange distant view of a vacant room further away—I can only tell if they’re truly doing alright from the sound of their voice. The digitally filtered moving image of their eyes and skin, lips and teeth, tells me a fraction of the story. Below what looks like a v-neck shirt or well-loved college sweater, everything else could be a total disaster.
It’s the benefit we take for granted when we’re able to be in close social proximity to one another, to read the signs of depression. To know for sure whether someone has been showering or keeping up with their personal hygiene. Get a real idea if the smile they’re showing the world was stained with tears just moments before entering a conversation. But as my own fur matches the growth slowly forming groups between my friend’s eyebrows, the lack of concealer on their cheeks, the jewelry or earrings that used to be part of our personalities, missing—I can’t help but wonder if this isolation is peak physical comfort, or mental discomfort.
My current emotional range is a wheel that re-activates every morning (let’s be honest, afternoon) when I wake-up. The choices it could land on range from: Everything will turn out okay to I absolutely cannot handle this. It spins in a constant circle throughout the day. I make coffee, I let the dog out, I watch Tiger King with my mouth hanging wide open—and through the duration, in the back of my mind, there’s an arrow spiraling on a flat piece of colorful pressed cardboard. A Twister game dial cycling like a weather vane, determining my mental stability from moment to moment.
There are other memes out there telling us, for the love of Cher, please do not do your own hair while you’re in quarantine. Sure, your roots will start to show and there will be lines at the salons for months once this is over. We’ll all be fighting for appointments and threatening violence in the streets for the last chair at Supercuts just to get a pair of scissors near our grown-out sides and split ends. But whatever you do: DO NOT CUT YOUR OWN HAIR. Do not bleach it, dye it, and definitely don’t shave your head. Whatever cosmetic alteration you would default to in a time of crisis; the collective consensus says, you’re going to regret it.
But the truth is, a lot of us need to do anything we can to keep ourselves together right now. For many people, isolation is not a new problem. Before this, our therapists or doctors, told us: Go outside. Meet people. Engage in a hug twenty times each day. Fast-forward to this medical disaster, the prescription to cure a worldwide disease has become something that completely contradicts our typical medication. Loneliness and isolation is exactly what the doctor is ordering.
For those of us who live with generalized anxiety (by itself or paired with depression), when pending doom is our norm, what do we do now that doom has arrived? The questions have presented: How do we get our prescribed human contact when we can’t even leave our house? And: How do we seek happiness to help us cope with our own terrible thoughts, when there is nowhere to escape?
While the humor circling around boasts that introverts have this quarantine covered, that their typical life has prepared them for months of video games and snack food—I find myself concerned for my more extroverted friends. The ones that gain their fuel from other people and personal touch in their daily interactions. The individuals whose jobs or social circles give them a stage on which to perform. A place to feel a spotlight as a means for survival. In this crisis, their well of human interaction and admiration has been roped-off for maintenance. And for many of them, it’s a struggle to keep from lifting the yellow caution tape to just sneak a taste of being in the same room with friends or fans. Even when they know that choosing not to maintain social distancing practices could potentially be endangering their lives, as well as the rest of us.
The good news is people have been finding answers. A performer friend of mine, Logan Donahoo, has been hosting viewing parties of offbeat indie films and bizarre archived commercials. The Fringe Theatre Festivals he usually performs in around the world may be cancelled, but it’s not stopping him from showing anyone willing to tune-in to his livestream what Troma movie he and his cat are taking in for the evening. Drag Queens like the ones at Savoy Orlando, have been broadcasting runway shows and balls from their living rooms. Putting on full-face and ultra-volumized hair for any amount of viewers.
An extremely talented musician and source of light, Amy Steinberg, read tarot cards for people between playing song requests on Facebook one night. Letting cards fall from her Moon Deck when someone asked in the comments, “What can the cards tell me about my career from here?” She shuffled, and the cards answered with The Hanged Man, upside-down. Meaning, the world is upside-down, which makes the hanged man right-side-up. Amy said, “Everything is going to change, but in the best way possible.” Someone typed out, “What does the universe want me to know right now?” Finding its way out of the deck The Hermit told them in response, “We’re all feeling lonely, but it’s going to be okay.” As expected, someone asked, “When will this virus be over?” And smiling, but not laughing, Ms. Steinberg told them, “The cards say four months until things feel more normal, but it will be completely gone in nine.”
Metaphysics and messages from the universe included, we’re all looking for numbers and positivity to cling to right now. Information to battle against whatever part of our individual personalities makes isolation difficult. Perhaps we aren’t all the type to start livestreams or read Neil Gaiman excerpts to an audience like LaVar Burton. Maybe watching Netflix in sweat pants and letting our eyebrows grow out is the best thing we can do most days, and that’s okay. Because for the days it’s not enough, for the days during this crisis when we just wish we could hug someone or see a friend in person, we have the next best thing: the fact that we are all in this together.
The constant combat with our own mental health is something deeply personal for each of us, and while this situation really facilitates falling into intense melancholy and overthinking literally everything—really, truly, we are not alone in this darkness. Some of us are going to need to be lanterns and the rest of us moths to their flame. We need to keep producing, supporting, and appreciating that fire. Let it burn brighter than we ever have before so we can navigate past the Rodents of Unusual Size and through this cursed swamp. That’s how we will keep ourselves moving forward and find each other again on the other side, ready to embrace.
But until then, keep wearing out those pajamas and house slippers. Ask your friends, “For real, how are you?” Do whatever you need to do to keep your mental health a top priority. If it makes you feel better to get up everyday and put on a suit to take a conference call, fucking go for it. Do your eyeliner, glue down some lashes, put in the effort to keep things as normal as you need them to be. If your mental stability relies on that routine, your fellow humans, support you. Most importantly—even if your hair stylist friends think it will be a mistake—if shaving your head will alleviate any tension or sadness for you right now, by all means, SHAVE YOUR HEAD. Maybe it will look cute, maybe it won’t, but there’s never been a better time to give it a try.
I know, when someone says they’re “Quarantining” then posting pictures of themselves grilling with twelve friends at the beach; you’re thinking, “I do not think that word means what you think it means.”
And while your watching the news updates and reading articles about people in power suggesting we get back to work before this pandemic is actually over in order to save the economy, your brain is screaming, “Inconceivable!”
But try to remember there’s another iconic line in The Princess Bride we can apply to these times, “Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a little while.”
So if your true love is large gatherings, your job that is suddenly considered non-essential, socializing with your friends, or just living what we all used to consider regular life; think of Westly and Buttercup. Know that nothing can stop us from using our collective resources and love for each other, to find our way out of any pit.