All the Tiny Things
by Maryann Aita
Every forty seconds, somewhere in the world, someone takes their own life. As a collective, humanity cannot tolerate surviving another minute of existence. Although I never attempted suicide, I’ve come close, but something has always pulled me back. Tiny things: my cat, a text from a friend, the thought of making my roommate find my body. So many others with depression wilt, and droop, below the threshold—that thin barrier between seeing trying as possible and succumbing to the ease of giving up. Depression is isolating and self-fueling: the more alone you feel, the more alone you become. The barrier is most often impermeable; once you sink, you drown. With most people I know (myself included) in self-quarantine, I worry about how easy it is to forget about the tiny things that keep us from slipping, and the bigger things that will always matter.
From about fifteen, I had always imagined I would die by suicide. It sounds bizarre, I know, to live a life assuming depression would one day claim me, like waiting to be hit by a bus. But I lived it, anyway. Finally, when I could afford it, I went to therapy. I spent three years seeing a therapist three times a week, then went on medication, got the right diagnosis, and now see a psychiatrist twice a month. While making a sandwich a few months ago, I realized I hadn’t neared the line in almost three years. I’m here, I thought. I’m here. I’m in this life. For good. I had made so many sandwiches, merely to move the hands of the clock that ticks away my existence. Suddenly, there were many more sandwiches to make, not the sandwiches of an indefinite death march, but sandwiches for the sake of sandwiches.
This was a mark of progress for me, one both freeing and terrifying—much like I imagine how it feels to skydive. I shared my victory with a friend; it had been more than two years of seeing a future that didn’t end by my own hand. He was not as excited by my progress as I was.
“Don’t do that,” he said.
“Do what?”
“Kill yourself. Please don’t do that.”
“I won’t,” I said. “For the first time in my life, actually, I’m confident I won’t.”
“Good...I would really miss you.”
All those tiny things that stopped me were just things that stopped me. I never thought about those who might miss me. Now, in the throes of pandemic, I can’t stop thinking about who would miss me, whom I would miss. I made it so far, only to get here, to a world consumed by daily infection rates rather than work emails, replacing one capitalistic burden with another. I can’t stop thinking about those forty seconds.
With the illness of panic spreading even more rapidly than disease itself, apocalypse looms. If suicide rates skyrocket, does it matter? I worked so hard to be here, to want to be alive, it has to matter. Yet, amid vanishing toilet paper and the war-profiteering of hand sanitizer, my sandwich-making for the sake of sandwich-making no longer feels like a victory. My unframed artwork, unrequited romantic feelings, and unpublished book seem so unimportant now. Yet, I’m here. I’m here, in this life, for good. And all the tiny things will matter again, eventually.
I would miss tiny things. I would miss sandwiches, and free tote bags with $50 purchases, and guessing which one my cats is sitting on me in the dark. As I attempt to quell my own anxiety playing Candy Crush—I can’t even focus on a fucking crossword puzzle—I am telling myself to breathe (but not too close to other people), and that the first way to instill panic is to tell someone not to panic. Instead of telling myself to calm down, I try to remember my friend’s I would really miss you. I know he’s not the only one who would, but it only takes one. One tiny thing to keep going. Maybe I really do have only one friend who would miss me—but I have so many friends I would also miss. And if not for me, I should keep trying for them, even if all I can do is continue washing my hands to the few lyrics of pop songs I remember. As the next few weeks or months pass, we may just be watching the clock hands tick, but we are all watching the hands tick. We are all in isolation, clinging to tiny things while we wait for the more substantial ones. Find your tiny thing. And for anyone else struggling to keep going, know that I would really miss you.
maryann aita
Maryann is a Brooklyn-based writer and performer. She received a 2020 Best of the Net nomination for her essay in PANK Magazine, and her nonfiction has appeared in The Porter House Review, The Exposition Review, and Drunk Monkeys, among other journals. Her fiction is forthcoming in Press Pause Press. In pre-pandemic times, Maryann performed around New York City and her one-woman show, My Dysfunctional Vagina, was featured at The People's Improv Theater. She grew up in Bozeman, Montana, but moved to New York to attend NYU, and she never left. Maryann has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and lives in Williamsburg with two cats.