Rethinking and Reworking, Learning To See 

I decided to apply for UMD midway through an anxiety attack. It was my Senior Year, the Monday of tech week of the last high school play I would ever act in. It’s tradition that at the end of the last performance, all the Seniors stand in a row and tell the audience of grandmas and children what they plan to do after graduation. Due to Covid, life, and my general inability to learn normally, my Senior Year had been a mad scramble to get to the finish line without imploding, and I had no idea what my plan was. You’ll only graduate because your Math teacher takes pity on you. You don’t deserve this opportunity.

So that Monday, while my classmates watched The Power of One, I accosted my former English teacher during her prep period and begged her to help me draft a desperate plea of an application letter. I sent that letter to the only two schools I’d given any serious thought to: the University of Minnesota Duluth and Century, the local community college. I figured UMD wouldn’t accept just anybody, and the gesture would amount to very little. I just knew, in that moment, I needed to be able to stand on that stage in six days and say that I had some sort of plan. That I had some semblance of an idea of what came next. Then I could make one up later. You’ll never have a plan. You don’t take the time to actually think about what you want. Why are you leaving? What do you think you’re going to achieve?

A month later I received my UMD acceptance letter in the mail. I took stock of my life (Still single + no license + overweight + owns too many comic books + too depressed for his own good = Hopelessly directionless) shrugged, thought “I’ll figure it out” and went on my way. Duluth was beautiful, but lonely. My apartment was on the third floor of an elevator-free building, so lugging my crap up there was annoying, to say the least. I had no concept of who I was anymore, no idea of what this John guy was supposed to be, and no close friends. I filled the days with solo adventures that only served to teach me one lesson: Duluth is one big hill, and you shouldn’t walk down it if you’re not emotionally ready to walk back up. You wanted to go somewhere else, and now you’re here. Now what? What were you hoping to achieve? You’re not living for you. YOU’RE LIVING FOR THEM!

One day at work two fellow librarians were talking about going to Target after our shift to look for pillows. “Can I come with?” I said, half-joking, half-desperate. They looked at me with uncertainty. “Sure.” Eight hours later, we’d walked the length of the Miller Hill Mall, spent two of those arguing in the Target pillow aisle, and played cards. I had friends again. Mission accomplished. IF you graduate college, you’ll wave goodbye to them and move somewhere else, only to figure all this out again. At the end of the day, you’re still in the Mahtomedi High School parking lot realizing you’ll probably never see most of your friends again, wondering what comes next.

Life carried on, though as the days piled up I felt even moreso that I was no longer a part of it. I needed an answer for what I was feeling, and I found it in my Existentialist Philosophy class. “Existentialism is the study of alienation, absurdity and existence. It proffers that everything we do in this life is meaningless. Nature as a whole has no design. No reason for existing. There’s nothing and nobody making you do anything. You could walk out of this door right now and not come back. Only your ideals and societal structures are keeping you here.” This made perfect sense to me. I began to look at things differently. What was stopping me from getting high all the time and not going to class? Why was I going to class, what was I hoping to achieve? When I was home, my main goal was primarily to “live the best life I could”, but I had no real idea of what that was for me. What IS keeping you here? You should just sleep through class. You won’t do anything with all knowledge anyway.

I would look into the mirror and find myself afraid at my inability to recognize the person looking back. Who was this large, hairy man staring sadly into my eyes? How had he gotten here? What had happened to the me I knew? My head would pound out a depressing rhythm, and the man in the mirror would laugh and glare. Years of deflecting and burying my head in books and comic books, thousands of movies, had reprogrammed my brain. I could only see my life in terms of what was. My story was the only thing I had to offer. My stories were the only thing I could be. Who cares enough to listen? Who wants to hear what this hairy man has to say?

I had told “my story” so many times over the years, I’d become numb to it. In therapists offices, to my friends, to people who clearly didn’t care but listened anyway. It was a routine, a monologue I wished I’d never memorized. “My father has Borderline Personality Disorder. His father probably does too, but they didn’t know how to check back then. My grandpa most days would come home and verbally abuse his children. My father carried his trauma with him, in every moment, on every day. When he couldn’t handle the stressors of life, the burden of his pain and his inability to calm his anxieties became mine to hold. My mom suffers from severe depression and anxiety. She couldn’t deal with it, couldn’t get through the day. When I was nine, she moved to an apartment in Fridley and took full custody of me from my father. My life was

divided into black and white, good and evil, a simplicity that my love of comic books allowed me to exploit. Back then, dad was evil. When he regained custody of me and she had to move to Duluth to rebuild her life and overcome her own struggles, she was evil. When dad’s outbursts became too much to bear and I began lying and trying to run away to escape, I was evil.” It took me too many years to realize that ‘flawed and complicated’ is never the same as evil. Nobody is truly evil. Except for dictators, genocidal maniacs, and Dr. Phil. The person who actively holds on to every sad and broken moment, only to project their fears and insecurities onto those they love, is their own worst enemy.

It’s impossible to ground yourself in the present moment and live life as it is, especially if part of you is still back in your hometown. On a bad day, I carry each and every moment of my 21 years of existence with me. My first crush. The first comic book I remember reading. The day my mom took custody of me from my father. The day he got me back. The arguments we had that turned into screaming matches. The pauses between breaths, where my body could no longer summon the courage to inhale, when my chest felt tight and anything but anger felt impossible. The relief I felt when I finally realized that my parents’ own struggles with mental health would only define me as much as I allowed. The frustration I felt, every time I had to remind myself what I had always known: Only you have the capacity to make yourself truly happy.

On good days I could call dad for help and advice, talk about upcoming DC movies and pretend I wasn’t internally questioning every single choice that had gotten me here. Other times both of us were far too entrenched in our own bullshit to be of any assistance to anybody, let alone ourselves. Life in Mahtomedi carried on without me, and the distance made me feel simultaneously empowered by my own individuality and isolated. You’re letting him down. You’re letting yourself down. Why are you here?

A summer working in the boundary waters grounded me once more, and set things in perspective. I was no longer John Skrip, tired and sad college student. I could be John Skrip, tired cook at a summer camp. The whole world fell away, and all that mattered was making food and manual labor. I found myself surrounded and bolstered by a community unlike any I’d ever experienced. There’s a magical quality to that part of the world that I can’t quite decipher, it puts everything in perspective. It also doesn’t last.

The summer ends, people move on, and real life creeps back in. Old arguments start up again, and the anxiety of the unknown overtakes you. Who are you? What are you working toward? Who do you want to be? Dad gets worse, ends up in the hospital. You sit at his bedside, wondering what will happen next. You return to Duluth, but the town is no longer yours. There are some fears you can’t escape, no matter where you go. You’re so terrified that everyone will leave you behind that you abandon yourself.

Dad gets better, and worse, and better, and worse. One Christmas, he starts to run, with no plan of ever coming back. You run after him but your lungs don’t work. Everyone drives after him, the Police are called. You don’t panic, you work on autopilot. In your head, you knew this day would come. You’ve been preparing for years. They find him at the edge of some woods. He’s taken a whole bottle of pills. He spends the next several weeks in a coma. You sit next to him at first, joking with his best friend to avoid thinking of what may happen. You act strong to show yourself you can be, to protect your stepmom, who is hurting as much as you are. Eventually it’s time to go back to school, to keep living your life. They make you go. The day he wakes up and you talk for the first time in weeks, you’ve never been so scared. Eventually he leaves the hospital, and the cycle continues. He gets better, and worse. Better and worse. On the bad days he blames you for not letting him go.

Life continues, and your Great-Uncle dies. You miss him but you didn’t know him. This was the greatest man your father knew. The man you were meant to live up to, to strive to be like. A way better guy than your sexist grandfather. There was so much you could have asked him, so many conversations you could have had. But just a few months ago, you were too afraid to talk to him when your dad was in the hospital. You go home to bury Great-Uncle Allen. On the bus ride back, you bawl your eyes out.

You think you’re okay. You spend a semester languishing around the house, unable to commit to your own life. Who are you? What do you want? What is the point of any of this? You need to escape from this hole you’ve put yourself in, but you see no way out. Your friends start to worry. Your dad starts to worry. Your therapist won’t say it, but he’s worried too. They all know you aren’t telling them the full truth, but nobody wants to confront you. You want to cry, to put a name to what you’re putting yourself through. You fill journals trying to find the answer.

Now I’m a Junior. My education has gotten out of my hands. I don’t know what I’m doing. I scream into my pillow, looking for something. My pillow says nothing. My friend brings her Wii up to the house. Why go to class? I spend a whole day playing Island Flyover in Wii Sports Resort and getting high. My stomach hurts. I vomit and keep playing. My arms get sore.

Time passes and my grades suffer. I fall back into old habits, watching shows and reading comics and avoiding the life I’m meant to be living. Achieving happiness seems far more difficult than immersing myself in the world of the Flash. You read and watch the fictional lives of others to prevent yourself from making the effort of living your own.

One day, seemingly out of nowhere, a switch flips. All the words stay the same, but the meaning is different. I’m not a scared kid living in his mom’s apartment, waiting for her to wake up. I’m not looking in my dad’s eyes, wondering what I’ve done wrong, why he’s yelling. I’m not John Skrip, the bundle of anxiety and self-doubt and uncertainty. I am who I decide I am. What other people think or say means nothing. I am John Skrip, the five year old who just said “Mom, stop! I have all the groceries, but I forgot my dignity in the car!” She laughs and you grin. That’s all you ever wanted to be. You wanted to make people laugh. You wanted your dad to roll his eyes while you intentionally irritate him with weird, dumb jokes. You wanted to walk through life unencumbered and enjoy the day. And why not? Who’s stopping you?

I have bad months, more than not. I do my best to wake up every day and choose positivity. It’s far from easy. The switch flipped, but it flips all the time. It’s near impossible to even find the time to write, to tell the stories I wish to. I’m drowning in noise, in TV shows and movies, other people’s thoughts and the impending word that the world is about to end. I journal every day but all I can say is “I wish I was doing better”. I still question whether I’m doing the right things. Whether I’m funny. Whether I deserve friends. I put off applying for jobs after college, to carve my path, to plan next steps. The end approaches and I shut down, fall into bad habits. I know what I need to achieve but I follow the instincts of my thirteen year old self. Every day you wake up and choose to get out of bed is a day you can achieve what you want to, if you just focus and breathe through the chaos, through the ADHD.

I don’t know what I’m doing, but who does? I question why I have to relearn things I already knew. It doesn’t matter. It’s all irrelevant. I wish I’d done more, escaped my fog more often, learned more, taken more advantage of my time here, with these people. I wish I’d known, when I was a scared kid begging for attention, that I was loved, that it was okay. That I wouldn’t feel like an outcast forever. If I’d known any of it I wouldn’t be who I am now, choosing to try whenever I can. I wouldn’t have better relationships with my parents. I can grow as much as I want, try to be as optimistic as I want, but part of me will always be scared.

Part of me will always be that kid, or sitting next to dad in the hospital. And right now, in this moment, I choose not to recede into myself or fear the unknown. I choose to love all aspects of myself. I choose to write my heart onto the page. I choose to be weird and make stupid jokes that alienate and confuse others, because I no longer care what others think. If existence is futile and there is no reason for being, or doing, then I will always choose, whenever conscious enough, to pick positivity and absurdity over wallowing in what-ifs and desolation. Migration is a physical concept but a psychological one as well (I’m not a Therapist, don’t quote me on that) and every day I embark on a journey within my chaotic head to be the me I want to. Today I have succeeded. Tomorrow I will do what I can. And eventually I’ll be where I want to be, and I’ll have the job and life I envisioned myself having. Because I refuse to give up on the me that got to this moment.