Side A 

I walk into Spyhouse Coffee in northeast Minneapolis, the one off of Broadway, and the baristas are playing the album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge by My Chemical Romance. The light from the lamps—a soft, dull yellow—melts into the woodwork that covers most of the surfaces in this rustic coffee shop. Vapor rising from gray mugs dissolves in front of faces, and as I walk toward the register, I finally feel at ease. 

“Nice choice on the music tonight, guys,” I say to them. “Who picked it?” They look at each other before the one on the left says, “It was sort of a joint effort.” “Well, keep it up,” I say, taking my coffee to the bar. 

Taking my seat next to strangers engrossed in the screens of their laptops, I open my book and try to get lost, but soon I realize that I’ve been reading the same page for five minutes. The song “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” is playing, and I find myself paying more attention to it than Hanif Abdurraqib’s They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us. There’s an essay in this collection about MCR, and it seems fitting that this song would be playing. 

I set the book on the bar, giving up for now, and look at the people around me: some with thick textbooks in front of them, studying for their last finals before Christmas break; some among a large group of friends; some seated at small, two person tables, leaning in close to hear one another over the music and chatter. I begin tracing the grain of the wooden surface with my finger, singing along in my head to the song.

The album gets me all nostalgic. I listened to it a lot when I was younger, relating (in that unique, angst-ridden preteen sort of way) to many of Gerard Way’s lyrics. Most of the band’s songs could be described as the sort of self-indulgent and self-centered music that was produced at the height of the emo scene, but hey. For a kid, or anyone for that matter, it was nice to know someone else was feeling that way, too. 

The chorus of the song is relatively simple, repeating the words “I’m not okay” several times. A critic/cynic might be tempted to say, “All right Gerard, we get it,” though during the song’s bridge, Way breaks the pattern and sings, “I’m okay now/ I’m okay now/ But you really need to listen to me/ Because I’m telling you the truth/ I mean this, I’m okay! (Trust me),” before launching back into the final chorus. All in all, it’s a good song with a catchy chorus and decent verses, which explains why it still gets so many plays on Spotify after the band’s almost decade-long break. 

Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about the importance of the bridge—it’s the lie we tell others, and sometimes ourselves, during hard times, while the chorus is our true feelings. If you listen to it, the words rush out like a reassurance, Of course I’m okay, why would you suggest otherwise? The chorus, though, is more of a sulking lament, dragging on just as the days seem to do when you carry this inner awareness of something intangibly wrong, like a voice in your head reminding you that you’re not okay, reminding you enough times until you realize that the voice is, in fact, your own. 

And that line at the end of the chorus– “You wear me out,” – how perfectly put. If the chorus is the confession we wish we could tell, that last line is an admittance to how tiring it is not to admit how we feel, how draining it is to wear a smile on your face like a cheap halloween mask so real that you can almost smell the chemicals in the plastic that make you wonder if breathing them in will be the death of you someday? 

I came to Spyhouse for distraction. There’s something comforting about the presence of others when feeling this way. As if, for a moment, you can unload this inexplicable weight that rests on you, gravity seemingly affecting you more significantly than everyone else. I could have read my book in my little apartment back up in the ‘burbs, but the silence was just so damn loud. So here I sit, watching snowflakes out the window turn gold from the streetlight. 

I knew people growing up who wore their problems like a badge of honor, like it was their best quality. My parents are so strict, they make me come home at ten every night; Yeah, I’ve been on antidepressants since I was thirteen; kids walking around, showing you the cuts on their arms and explaining that they just wanted a distraction from it all. Mental illness, despite its classification as an illness, has become romanticized. Emotions and struggles have become a sort of commodity, artists selling their pain to music labels and art galleries. Grief has become a common currency. 

But there’s nothing romantic about failing to get out of bed until three o’clock in the afternoon. There’s no silver lining in the pressure felt in your head, pushing your thoughts to the sides of your skull and making you feel cramped in your own mind. That little voice, your voice, reminding you that you’re not okay, is not comforting at two AM as the moonlight won’t stop bleeding through your blinds. Numb is not a synonym for fun. 

“Do you need anything else?” the barista asks, seeing that I’ve reached the bottom of my coffee. 

I’m startled when she appears behind the bar. “Oh, a refill would be nice, please.” 

“You got it,” she says. When she returns, cup in hand, she adds, “I’m glad someone still has good taste in music.” 

I don’t think artists are to blame for this romanticization. There’s nothing wrong with writing a song about pain—there are times when it can even be therapeutic. And the audience isn’t at fault, either. Don't we enjoy art in the first place because we either look into a mirror at ourselves or out a window at an unfamiliar place? 

The problem, I think, lies in mistaking this reflection for elevation. That person onstage is singing about the same problems I have and they’re adored by millions—this must make me special, too. In reality, that person gained popularity because of their skill to render pain into art, not for having just experienced pain itself. We are, after all, more than the sum of our tragedies. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself. 

When I listen closer, I realize the second to last song is playing, “Cemetery Drive.” Has it already been thirty minutes? During the chorus, Way laments into the microphone, “I miss you/ I miss you/ so far.” And isn’t that how it feels to yearn for someone or something you’ve lost? The lines feel intimate and immediate. So far, I miss you. In them lies the hope that the feeling will diminish over time. In French, I miss you is Tu me manques, or You are missing from me. I’ve always felt that the French version captures the emotion better, like a piece of yourself is missing. 

I’ve been walking around lately feeling like I’ve left pieces of myself behind, living in that moment of hope. I picture myself like Jacob Marley from A Christmas Carol, carrying around his chains and briefcases, except within mine are the secrets I don’t tell anyone.

Sometimes, when I walk by myself, I imagine telling people how I actually feel. This is how I picture it going: 

Do you want to know a secret? 

Lately, I’ve been feeling old—not in my heart, but in my head. I’m able-bodied (for the most part), twenty-two, and I’ve only a moderate chance of getting cancer at some point due to genetics and bad habits. But my head. My head feels, at times, that I’ve got too much in it, that I’ve acquired too much baggage to qualify for a carry on. I’m not saying that I’m a genius, but 

I’ve noticed a correlation between my happiness and how much I know. If ignorance is bliss, what’s the opposite? 

I feel jaded, like I’ve experienced too much, which is odd considering my age. But wasn’t it Flannery O’Connor who said that anyone who survives their childhood has enough information about life to last them for the rest of theirs? If that’s the case, what do we do with the information and experiences that we acquire during the rest of it? Perhaps it all solidifies, calcifies, transmogrifies into something that prematurely ages us to some sort of spiritual geriatric, an old soul blessed, for the time being, with a young body. 

I imagine telling the baristas this, but I worry that they’ll think I’m strange. So I drink my coffee and leave with that phrase repeating in my head—Do you want to know a secret? Do you want to know a secret? 

Side B 

I find myself walking along Broadway toward a bridge that goes over a set of train tracks. It’s quiet for a night in the city, with only a single car passing every couple of minutes, and the silence is magnified by the falling snow that covers the streets, absorbing all the sound. I let my hand skim the surface of the guard rail as I walk, brushing the snow off and watching it drift down to the iron rails and gravel below. What is it, twenty feet? Thirty? I get midway down the length of the bridge and stop, leaning on the rail and resting my forehead against the cool metal. 

I’m afraid of my thoughts. They feel invasive, the way that they seem external but have found a way to nestle themselves somewhere above my neck and behind my eyes. I know I shouldn’t be feeling this way—that’s the part that makes it so frightening. I’m making a career out of using my mind, from scholarship, academia, and education to journalism and counseling kids. My mind has always been my ally, so for it to turn on me feels like betrayal. I question everything now. 

As I was leaving Spyhouse, “Modern Chemistry” by Motion City Soundtrack came to mind. Walking along the sidewalk reminded me of the instrumentals of the song, the same monotonous guitar riff repeating itself acting as a parallel to the way my feet shuffled through the snow. Thinking of it still, I stare at the train cars, looking past the rust and graffiti and into something beyond. My toes start to go numb as I hum lightly to myself. 

The beginning of the first verse starts with Justin Courtney Pierre singing, “I barely have the motivation they say/ I suffer from a lack of serotonin/ synapses/ they happen to/ infrequently for me/ to be functioning properly.” This is how it feels, at times. Like my mind is an electric board with crossed wires, sending signals to the wrong places at the wrong times, creating little puffs of smoke and flashes of light when fuses burn out. Even the lines, when listening to the song, feel disjointed, like the thoughts aren’t coming through at the right speed.

The structure itself doesn’t even follow a traditional form, with two verses preceding a chorus and a third verse to close the song, creating a sense of displacement that reminds me of myself, lately. I’ve been lingering over images and phrases, struggling to find the right way to say things. It’s like my gears aren’t turning, or at the very least, they aren’t greased. 

Like the snowflakes that keep getting caught in my lashes. They remind me of something, but I can’t think of the word. I watch as they gather at my feet, coating the thin fabric of my tennis shoes and I look up to see them clumping together to form a little mound on the guard rail. A similar pile is being made on the street light to my right as the snow sticks to the side of the pole. I remember my neighbor used to call it “heart attack snow,” the kind that’s so heavy when you shovel that the effort of lifting it over your shoulder was enough to “give a guy a heart attack.” The sort of snow that clumps together like pillow fluff. That’s the word I was thinking of. The snowflakes look like pillow fluff. The second verse of “Modern Chemistry” continues, “I took the pills/ I took the advice/ The panic stopped/ but still I’m not right.” It’s not as though I haven’t thought about seeing a doctor — that’s what you’re supposed to do when something’s wrong. If your car’s making a noise, bring it to the shop. I just worry about altering anything that has to do with my head. The reason I have a place to sleep and food to eat is because of the degree to which I’m able to think. I’m not sure who I’d be if that were to somehow diminish. 

The chorus is like a mantra, with Pierre singing, “I believe in medication/ and I believe in therapy/ and I believe in crystal light, ‘cause I believe in me, yeah.” And almost as an afterthought, he adds, “It’s all uplifting, fuck yeah,” as if he has to keep reassuring himself that these steps he’s taking, the pills, the therapy, are working, despite how he feels. He even refers to it as his “nursery rhyme” in the line leading up to the chorus. Not to mention he brings up medication and crystal light therapy in the same sentence. Is he likening the two? The bridge provides two levels of safety, with the ground being comprised of a sidewalk, then a raised curb, then a guard rail on top of this curb. I clutch the guard rail and lift my feet onto the curb, working my toes to get the feeling back. The top of the rail reaches my sternum now, and I look down below at the tracks. I imagine what it’d be like if I fell. Wind rushing past me, the ground approaching at a faster and faster speed. I imagine the impact, the suddenness of it. Would it be over in a blink, like shutting off the TV? Or would I be left for a while feeling like recently hit roadkill, twitching and aware? 

As I stand here, I realize I’m committing plagiarism. Hanif Abdurraqib has an essay called “Brief Notes on Staying” from his collection They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, a short, poignant piece of writing about the state of sadness. It begins with a friend who jumped from a bridge and continues to reflect on the role of pain in art. I remember writing a quote from it in a notebook because it stood out to me so much: “Life, if anything, is too long. We accumulate too much along the way. Too many heartbreaks, too many funerals, too many physical setbacks,” I wrote it down because it was the first line of writing I’d encountered that reflected how I’d been feeling. I’d finally found someone who was able to put into words this sensation of internal weight, this baggage threatening to burst. 

I’ve been to so many funerals now, it’s hard to keep track. They were all before the age of twenty, and no matter how strong I got with age, the caskets never got any lighter. A couple weeks ago, I tried to count them all. I’d come up with a number, and then an hour or so later, I’d remember another. I’d count names on my fingers, finally arriving at nine. Jack, Ron, Dondo, Shirley, Rob, Brian, Marcia, Eileen, Violet. I went through family photos trying to remember them all, and I came across one where everyone in it was dead. When Brian died, I helped two of my uncles bring his body out of his bedroom where hospice had been taking care of him and into a van. The small-town funeral home didn’t have an actual hearse, so they sent a minivan with the back seats taken out. At the graveyard, we all took turns digging the hole for his urn, digging down so he’d be right next to his brother. We arrived expecting a hole to have already been dug, but all we found was a single spade. We all became grave diggers that day. 

Another time, I reached down my mom’s throat and retrieved a handful of little green pills. Amitriptyline. A hard word for a twelve year old, but I’d always liked reading. She’d been grieving over her dad’s death, and after a night of drinking, this was the climax. I remember saying no as I did it, but it didn’t sound like me. I remember thinking, my hand slick with saliva, Did I just make that sound? Because it surely wasn’t a word. 

And there’s more. God, there’s more. There’s a lifetime of it. Holes in walls, stains in fabric from scratched skin, dark eyes from blows unfairly thrown. I stand here on this bridge and see it all playing out, whether my eyes are open or closed, less like a photo reel and more like a web of memories and experiences occurring all at once. Maybe time isn’t as linear as they say. Maybe we carry the past with us, experiencing our lives tangentially. 

And it doesn’t go away. Back in the coffee shop, I saw it. Reading They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, I saw it, the images bleeding through the page and between the letters. At home, I see it on the television and in the shadows when I turn off the lights. I see it now. I wish there were someone standing on this bridge with me so I could tell them: Can’t you see it? Can’t you see him lying in the casket? Can’t you see her taking the pills? You feel them like beads in your hand, right? Can’t you hear the slapping of skin against skin, the cries of pain muffled between a single wall? Can’t you hear her saying you’re hurting me? Can’t you see it? 

But it’s just me. I’m alone on this bridge, looking down at the train tracks and seeing so much more. I’ve got to stop seeing it. You know what I mean? I’ve got to stop seeing it all at once, all the time. When I close my eyes, when I dream, I see it, that web of melancholy, and I’m stuck in it like an insect waiting for the spider. 

I grip the guard rail, still standing on the raised curb. Gravity accelerates at nine point eight meters per second. What an odd thing to remember. How did the rest of that song go, again? Oh yeah: 

And now the walls are closing in again 

I peer over, looking over the rail. The wind picks up and blows the hair from my face.

I can’t breathe and I can’t bleed 

My knuckles turn white from clutching the guard rail. 

Will you be my alibi? 

I look to see if anyone’s watching. 

Tell them that I truly tried 

I close my eyes and experience gravity. 

To give in. 

I step down. 

I’ve always wondered what Pierre meant by the last lines. There’s room for a certain multiplicity of meaning. Was it that he tried to let the medication and therapy work, but in the end, just couldn’t give in to the treatment? Or did he try his best to give in to his desires, but couldn’t go through with it? The song seems to be at odds even with itself here. Behind these words, the chorus is being repeated again: I believe in medication, and I believe in therapy… like Pierre has two opposing lines of thought happening at once. 

The snow isn’t falling anymore, and I hesitate to move my feet for fear of ruining the stillness that’s been created, like the world has frozen around me. I wonder if, during moments like this, the world really does freeze, at least in our memories, creating a snapshot of experience. Perhaps we all walk around with photo albums in our heads of moments when the world ceases to spin. I suddenly become aware of how cold I am, the holes in my tennis shoes having left my feet soaking wet. I look down at my hands and see they’ve become red and difficult to move. I take one last look around at the picture I seem to have stepped into and walk back to my car, breathing into my hands and warming them back to life.