Show me how good it gets
On learning to remain open to life.
Hi Folks,
This summer, I got in my car and drove ten hours alone from Durham, North Carolina to Woodstock, New York. I had just turned twenty-four. I had no real reason to be in Woodstock, other than that I had always wanted to go. It was the first non-work-related solo trip I had taken since before the pandemic. I had never been to Woodstock, nor had I ever driven more than six hours at a time. I didn’t know what to expect, or exactly why I felt the need to take this trip, only that after turning twenty four everything that had felt frightening or strange to me before suddenly did not. The world felt newly open; I was ready to be surprised by it.
I’ve been an anxious person for as long as I can remember. I’m the person who looks up directions everywhere I go, even if I have been there before. I’ve already searched the menu and decided what I will order. I’ve probably even practiced ordering it. If I agree to social plans, I guarantee you I have run through every possible interactive scenario before I even get to the front door. I’m an adrenaline junkie and a lover of adventure, but I am also the type of person who plans everything out, who has always had a carefully curated vision of their life. When I was a child, I decided to be a writer, and then I drafted every single step of what that would look like: I would finish a first draft by the time I was sixteen, so that I could have a published novel by the time I was eighteen. That novel would be the thing that would get me into college, where I would move to New York to study creative writing and become a new young voice prominent on the scene. I would hone my craft in college, and graduate with another book in hand. Maybe I would go to Europe for a few years, or stay in New York; it didn’t matter to me much as long as it was somewhere that felt exciting. Of course I would be wealthy, because, even though I knew most writers hardly make any money, I also felt confident that I would be one of the few to break through. For a kid who didn’t feel like I ever fit in, I was sure that that outlier nature would be the thing that would make me a successful adult. It wasn’t even something I questioned; I was born for this, I was sure. Are you tired of me yet? Same. It was exhausting to think this way and imagine thinking this way, forever.
Along with success, the path I envisioned of what it meant to be a writer also led into depression, alcoholism, and addiction. But I wasn’t afraid of these things; I just accepted that they were part of the process, a necessity to creative production. I didn’t care about having close relationships or friendships or any of the things that truly give life meaning; I just wanted my name in big letters, the flashing of bright lights in my eyes. I would have done anything. Sometimes, I fear I still would. (These days, I’m experimenting with sobriety, and I’ve spent many years unpacking this particular artistic myth. If you’re interested, I highly recommend Leslie Jamison’s The Recovering, which felt like it rewired my brain when I first read it.)
I have all the half-truths here: I did publish a book before I was eighteen, and it was rushed and terribly written and I have scrubbed as many traces of it as I can find from the internet. I did move to New York to work in publishing, and I was the most stressed and sad and lonely I have ever been. I did hit rock bottom of anxiety and depression, and then realized as I was crawling myself back out that I had never devised a plan that included happiness, or joy, or community. I had never thought about what my life would look like if I tried to make it good.
It felt radical, at nineteen, to make the choice to want to live, and to want to live well. And I’ve spent the last five years trying to be as true to that promise as I can. I developed new plans, and they started to look like returning South, moving to the mountains, writing about the people and places that felt important to me. They started to look like building a life with other people, in community. Like dinner parties and road trips and late nights in back gardens talking with people I love. It was a good plan; it was a plan that kept me alive, and got me to where I am today. But it was still a plan.
I wrote for the newsletter just after I first returned from Woodstock about the strange experience of feeling most at home in liminal spaces. I wrote that I was afraid I had tied myself so deeply to a place that I would now never get free of it or have a life outside of it and that terrifies me sometimes, even still, even now. I don’t want to be the kind of person perpetually planning out every aspect of my life. I want the world to surprise me in all the strange and most exciting ways.
For the last six weeks, I have made it my personal mission to let life surprise me. Of course, when I write this it sounds like another plan. But it hit me this summer that the times I have been happiest have often been when I have finally allowed myself to live with no plan, just seeing where each day takes me. Incidentally, this is also when I have connected with the people who most impact my life. I cannot make those connections if I only wander the world on routes I know, with headphones in, with sunglasses on, afraid of everything around me all the time. As terrifying as the open spaces are, the idea of being alone like this, forever, is even more so.
In Woodstock, I lived like this. I knew no one, and had no clue about anything in the town. When I lived in New York City, I always said I would go up for a weekend and check it out. But I never did. There was never time, or I was always overloaded, or too sad to get out of bed. A week before I left, I booked a hotel room, put gas in my car, and just drove.
Mostly, I was worried about being alone, or not having things to fill my time with. The funny part of this story is that from the minute I got there I was hardly alone at all. I wandered into drum circles and artist gatherings and my favorite bar I have ever been to. I stumbled upon concerts and waterfalls and made new friends and connected with friends who happened to be in the area. In a coffee shop, I found myself chatting to the man next to me, who turned out to be the director of one of my favorite documentaries, a film that helped me figured out the scope of what rural Southern Studies could do back when I first watched it for a course in college. In search of wifi, I ventured into a nearby city and another new favorite coffee shop. I never once felt lonely, not the way I so often do back home.
When I returned to North Carolina, it was to a brand new city, where I knew no one. The goal became simple: hang on to whatever I felt two weeks ago. Wander into places you have never been. Stop worrying about what other might think of you. Go to the concert alone. Dance on the sidewalk if a good song is playing. Say hello to people you think are interesting. Live. Live. Live.
I’m holding on to this as best as possible. I’m still trying to believe that life can surprise me in good ways as much as bad. I’m trying to stop telling myself no before even asking the questions. And often, I am struck by how lucky I am, how beautiful my life is. How this is what I have always wanted, even if this isn’t at all the form I thought it would take. There is nothing about my life I would change right now. I don’t know what my day looks like tomorrow or the next day or the next week or the next month or the next year but I know that I am making art and building a community of creativity and support and that everything else will come in due time. I refuse to plan. I refuse to rush.
It is always easier to believe the world is a bad place. Of course that will always be the easy way out. But I also deeply believe in the world and the people within it. And I want to see how good it gets.
I’ll leave you here with the words of one of my favorite poets, Robinson Jeffers. This is his poem, “The Answer”:
Then what is the answer? Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose
the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one's own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
and not wish for evil; and not be duped
by dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will
not be fulfilled.
To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and his history... for contemplation or in fact...
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
the greatest beauty is
organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.
Integrity is wholeness. The greatest beauty is wholeness. However ugly the parts appear the whole remains beautiful. Yes.
FIVE THINGS THAT BROUGHT ME JOY THIS WEEK
Speaking of Robinson Jeffers, another one of my favorite poems of his, “Time of Disturbance”, and the final stanza, which reads: As for these quarrels, they are like the moon, recurrent and / fantastic. They have their beauty but night’s is better. / It is better to be silent than make a noise. It is better to strike / dead than strike often. It is better not to strike.
I think Jupiter 4 by Sharon Van Etten is one of the best songs ever written. Seeing it live just enforced that belief all the more. Jupiter 4 Radio is one of the best stations on Spotify, if you ask me.
This meme, because I am currently sitting in the shade drinking iced coffee and just realized I am… cold?
The music and wisdom of Chris Pierce, who I had the pleasure of introducing at the North Carolina Folk Festival this past weekend.
I finally started watching Girls and wow, why is this show resemblant of every single person I went to college with, including my eighteen-year-old-self. They’re all terrible. I can’t stop watching. Adam Driver is excellent in this. And Jemima Kirke is one of the coolest people alive. Yes, I’ve only gotten through season one. No spoilers!
I'm sitting on my bed in my dorm below the Good Folk excerpts on my wall, about complicated relationships to home, about faith, about isolation, as I read this. I've been away at college for exactly two weeks and re-read these words every day: "That is where the loneliness stems from-- the ways in which we feel that no one else has felt like this, that no one else will ever feel like this." I am working through the desire to feel understood, the need to articulate how I feel everything and feel like I may explode at any moment, but most of what we talk about here is what residence hall people live in or how they are liking their classes. I am surrounded by so many people and feel so alone. I've made some really amazing friends this week and am grateful for how hard they make me laugh and make me feel seen. It's also hard being in a place that feels limiting and makes me question whether higher education is for me. I don't have a comfortable association with the words "course," "academics," "scholarship," and I spent so much of high school longing to get out, get to college where I would finally be understood, where I would "break into blossom" in the words of James Wright! And even now, I'm creating new visions, a new "plan," for a future in which I can get out. I have this rigid, vast, wonderful belief in a future where I will then find my place. When I struggle to get up in the morning and hold insurmountable feelings and so much pain for me to make sense of, this clear, bright future feels like the only way for me to cope. But I want to be more open, remember that we are constantly evolving and that I will figure it out along the way. Thank you for this post Spencer. You always make me feel less alone. I am sending you all the love I feel at your writing, your presence, your existence. Ahhhh!
p.s. The absolute feeling of comfort and joy at receiving a Good Folk notification!!
caitlin