What can I say about being sent to board at a prep school in south Florida in 1988?
It was rough. We were at the bitterest, last extremity of the Cold War, but I really didn’t see how it could end with anything else than a full on thermonuclear holocaust. I was 14 and didn’t believe I’d live to see 20. The school was bewildering, full of American preppies who spoke a language that was nominally English but nothing I could understand. I was lost at sea—but at the same time, thrilled to finally be in the United States. By the end of the first semester, I’d picked up enough of the slang to at least know when I was being insulted.
Prep school was full of kids who knew they were going to be doctors and lawyers. I had no idea what I was doing there, but there was an art department with a couple of potter’s wheels, and I had been yearning to get my hands in clay my whole life. Clay, being literally earth, is incredibly grounding to work with. It got me through my whole first year. It saved my life. I’m no production potter, but I’ve had a passion for clay ever since, and it’s only ever brought me good things. It’s the mystical action of fire on earth—you take what’s basically fancy dirt, pass it through a fire, and you get from it an artifact with the potential to last thousands of years (if butterfingers doesn’t drop it).
Thousands of years. I’ve made all sorts of ceramics in my life, and every time I open a kiln I never fail to contemplate how much longer this work might last than my human body. Ea-nasir never expected that his shitty copper would earn him a negative Yelp review on a clay tablet that would outlive him by 4,000 years.
The second thing that saved my life in high school was discovering that I had a knack for building theatre sets. I had no urge to strut and fret upon the stage itself, but setting the stage…now that was interesting. I loved creating little temporary worlds for the actors to inhabit. I loved creating a space where the audience could get drawn in, forget themselves, and live for just a little while in an entirely alternate and better dimension. I was good at it. I won awards.
The third thing that saved my life was a single hit of blotter LSD. I was a good kid, but by the age of 17 I was suicidal. I cut myself, but just a little bit at a time, to placate the urge and stay sort of functional. Shit just builds up, you know? Home life sucked. My parents were still together, but they’d never stopped bickering. School was incredibly stressful, but being there was better than being home. I was being pushed to “succeed” but everyone said that the things I was passionate about would never make me a living. I didn’t know what the hell to do, so when my roommate gifted me two tabs of competent, mid-grade blotter, I felt like even if I did the legendary jump-off-the-roof-because-I-think-I-can-fly thing, it wouldn’t have been much of a loss. And, for real, I had no idea how to even get on the roof of the dorm. So, whatevs.
A friend and I took the blotter one Friday afternoon. It was hilarious, and it was terrifying. I saw a kid turn into a giant pickle. We ran away from the friend we’d enlisted as a sitter, because her red shoes had little kitten heels that clicked ominously on the concrete sidewalk as she stalked us. Free of her, we smoked cigarettes and admired the quality of the sunset. I was visited mid-trip by a much older version of myself who gifted me this wisdom: Yeah, stuff right now sucks. But look around—all those other kids here, the future doctors and lawyers—it sucks for them too, and it’s worse for them in a lot of ways. You have a lot more sucky stuff to get through in life, but it’s gonna be OK. You’re gonna make it. It’s gonna be really fun, too. So just stick with it, honey.
This didn’t change my circumstances, but it was a lifeline that I grabbed onto and never let go. I came out of that trip still troubled, but no longer suicidal. I knew I was too stubborn to self-destruct. I was particularly not going to self-destruct as a result of other people’s stupid shit that I could now see them laying on me and everyone else around them. There’s gotta be a better way.
So now I’m about the age that I would have been, when I was visiting my 17 year old self. They’ve invented this type of therapy called IFS, where you visualize visiting former traumatized versions of you, help them out, give them advice, and often remove them from terrible situations. It’s wonderfully effective and I’ve been doing it for a few years. Life has, indeed, gotten a lot more fun. And clay work and set building—those passions aren’t trivial. I know now why I was so drawn to them.
