The Wreckage of My Presence: Essays

by Casey Wilson

And I do care. I care deeply if someone feels upset or embarrassed or left out. I not only care, I take on their emotions in what some would describe as a codependent form of trauma bonding. With friends and strangers alike! And this girl couldn’t be bothered to throw me even a “Mmm hmm.”

David Sedaris once wrote that if you happened upon his mother and their childhood dog napping together in a deep embrace on the couch midday, you might think you were witnessing the aftermath of a suicide pact.

A small voice at first, so small I barely knew where it was coming from, but it was telling me something. It was my voice. And it was telling me just because someone says they know something doesn’t mean they do. Or that it’s right for me. And this incessant searching had brought me further afield from my North Star—which was what I was paying people handsomely supposedly to help me find.

Speaking of. Please don’t keep suggesting I practice more self-care. I know you mean well. And I’m all for it as an overall concept, and of course I believe it to be important, especially for women. HOWEVER. Let’s all take a step back and calm down. And at least acknowledge that the notion one would even have the luxury/time/money to actively practice self-care is coming from a place of incredible privilege. So let’s start there. Now, that said, as someone who has had the means to seek help from every unaccredited guru under the hot Los Angeles sun and who still seems to find the time to steal away for bottom facials, I’m tired of being cheerfully and almost pityingly told, whenever a problem arises, that I just need to “practice more self-care.” I’m already leaning in and working full-time while doing 85 percent of the housework, carrying 90 percent of the mental load, and making 79 cents on the dang dollar. Much more disturbing, Black women are making 63 cents, Indigenous women 58 cents, and Latinx women, only 54 cents. And on top of all that, we’re supposed to engage in radical self-care? Here’s something radical. This is too much to ask of us and from ourselves. Now you’d have me find time to fail at something else????

Similarly, I’m over this well-meant but rather insufferable demand that we all practice mindfulness all the time. In these times?? In 2020? You want me to be present for this?? No thanks! I will be practicing mindlessness, please and thank you. Let’s all make a pact to live our worst lives.

All this time I’d felt there was something so helplessly wrong with me. But all along, that was the answer. I can’t. And the program is based around the admission of that fact, acknowledging that I am powerless over it, and turning it over to a power greater than me. IT’S GOD’S PROBLEM NOW, MOTHERFUCKERS! And something in the surrendering, as anyone who has worked a 12-step program knows, is so freeing—it’s like a weight comes off of you (pun intended). There is peace in knowing you can’t do anything. For an ambitious perfectionist, this is both revolutionary and excruciating. But what a goddamn relief.