by Colleen McCarthy

My computer speakers are pumping out the sounds of loud angry music: heavy pop punk, post hardcore, metal. I tend to measure time in concerts; or rather, between concerts. The last show was four months ago, the next is two weeks out. Concerts are a beacon of hope, it’s a way to connect to the scene, to reach out and have someone reach back.

My room is a visual representation of the clutter within my head. There are books strewn about, DVDs outside of their cases, perching precariously off the shelf, a bag of trash hangs from the knob on the dresser. Three hampers sit looming against the wall, overflowing with the laundry I’ve been avoiding for the past three weeks, and the closet is brimming with bags and boxes of junk that I’ve neglected to sort. My nightstand has a glass of water sitting in a puddle of its own condensation, and the drawer is pulled open exposing old iPods and cameras that haven’t worked since high school. I’m sitting in my bed cross-legged staring down a bottle of Lorazepam 1MG tablets, prescribed to me for my severe anxiety attacks.

Music is the only constant in my life. Davey Muise’s voice floats out of the speakers, surrounding me. The song is Lead Balloon, by his old band, Vanna who has recently been laid to rest. The last time I saw Vanna was in New Jersey, I’d driven up from New Hampshire with a friend. We stood in the small venue with concrete floors and a tiny wooden stage with chipped black paint, barely large enough for the bands to move. The speakers were stacked high and with every stroke of the guitar, every beat of the kick drum, you could feel the music pulsing through you.

We stood at the back of the crowd, this wasn’t exactly my friend’s scene. She’d joined only so I wouldn’t have to go alone. I could see the kids who made up the crowd, people clinging to the walls, people with their knees pressed up against the stage their heads bobbing, people flailing around like whirligigs made of flannel and denim and leather. As we watched the crowd moshing and singing, my friend leaned over and shouted over the music to me, “I get it now, these are your people.” I nodded and smiled, because they were my people.

With each song Vanna played I tried to step closer, without bringing my friend too close to the moshers. I’m not much of a crowd participator, but I bobbed my head along to the beat. When Davey sang Lead Balloon he made his way into the crowd and the whirligig of flannel and denim and leather became a bouquet as they all huddled together, and I fought tears while I stood at the back of the crowd.

I’ve learned that when you want to die, you spend a lot of time alone. My room is closing in on me, getting smaller and smaller with each day that goes by. Music is the reason that, even though I’m having a staring contest with a bottle of pills, I know I’m going to make it through the night. Because I know that there’s another concert two weeks out, where I’ll walk into the venue, into the pit, and have all of these powerful people standing with me, people who feel just like me.

Colleen McCarthy is a current degree candidate at The Mountainview Low Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction.

by Zachary Scott

When I was a little kid I had this horrible habit of waltzing up to someone else’s glass and just taking a swig. The world – including your drink – was mine for the taking and I was more than willing to take. That ended when I was around five. My memory of the event that sent my drink stealing days into retirement is as hazy as that late humid summer evening. The inconsequential details are blurred around the edges, the way that all ‘90s film and TV flashback scenes start, becoming clearer as the main event comes into scene. Summer in upstate New York gets sticky, and gross. Few things relieve that as sweetly as a cold soda – yeah, it’s soda in this part of upstate, not pop. This is where the scene gets clearer. Me with blond curls springing out from my head in whichever frizzy direction they chose, acid-washed shorts and a bad school-photo-day patterned shirt, sleeves cut off, and Dad’s soda. The glass sweating a bit, beckoned me, so I did what I did then. I snuck over to the end-stand and grabbed his drink. He was caught up in conversation about which wrestler was better, or something like that, with a friend or older cousin, or whoever was there. Glass in hand, still undetected, I took a nice long gulp of that soda, grossly watered down by melted ice, and tainted by the Jack that, looking back now, occupied most of the space inside. I don’t think I recoiled in disgust. I was five, my flare for melodramatics not quite fine-tuned as it is now. The hairball sound that belched out of me was enough to get his attention. As he took the glass away, my face contorted into that puckered lip, horse eye expression I still make to this day when booze is too strong or we’re mashing with kettle bells at the gym. Lesson learned. No more stealing drinks from people.

My father was the kind of low-key alcoholic who laughed it off with comments like “alcoholics go to meetings, and I don’t so…” You know the genre of humor. I didn’t know – not until I was like thirteen; not until I saw that there was something more to occasional fits of rage, sleeping through the day and staying up through the night. I didn’t realize that my normal wasn’t at all normal until I was carrying him up the stairs to our second-floor apartment because I realized the real chance that he might stumble into the river a football field away. He eventually stopped drinking and talks openly about the addiction, but he’s never really talked about why he drank. I never asked. I tried to be a model son and brother; tearfully came out of the closet; fought to prove to the world that we were just like them – by the way, we’re not and that’s okay. I got a degree, a job, a husband, another degree, a nice car, a third degree. I became an elder at my church. Yet happiness still evades me. I made the promise that I wouldn’t abuse alcohol, but still never bothered to care about why he had. Until recently.

I was sitting at a red light the other morning. I was in the nice car, wearing an overpriced topcoat and chinos, made in the developing world, on my way to the job where I am a respected leader, even if I can barely stomach the fortyish hours a week I spend there. I had been spiraling for weeks, maybe longer. Sometimes, when I’m in those states it’s hard to keep track of the passing of time. Just a few weeks earlier I had entertained the thought of closing my eyes and letting go of the wheel. I honestly thought that maybe it’d be easier to just let the car drift off the very same road, sixty miles an hour into the darkness, into the woods. That night I had a breakdown. A snotty nosed, bleary eyed, can’t stand the terrified look in my husband’s eyes, breakdown.

Our dear friend and his wife own a CrossFit gym in town. He is also our pastor. On Friday nights they run a fusion between CrossFit workout and worship. My husband made me go. Somewhere between the theological conversations and the back squats, my pain eased up.

At the red light, every ache, every sorrow, every ounce of failure and frustration I’ve ever felt suffocated me. Staring at that light, harsh against the blue sky behind it, I fell apart. I tried talking myself down. I reminded myself of my blessings – a roof, a job, food in my belly, clothes to keep me warm, a husband who would walk to the ends of the earth to ease my pain, and a community of people who love me. That. Doesn’t. Work. And it sure as hell didn’t at that never ending fucking red light. I felt like an asshole. So many people have so much more to deal with, such bigger pain, and here I was, a privileged, if not gay, white man with seemingly nothing to worry about, and I couldn’t break away from the sadness, the terror, the stress, the anxiety. Then, in a moment as fleeting as ever, I found empathy. That’s when I knew, even before I texted my father, asking why, that he was trying to numb his pain just as I wanted to.

He called them demons - moments from his past that he would never be able to return to and change. He’s sober now, and has been for more years of my life than he was drunk. He manages his demons, rather than numbing them.

I live with mental illness. Depression and anxiety are my demons. Sometimes I’m in control, and sometimes they have me backed against a wall, cowering in the dark. Even as I write this, even as you read it, I am struggling. I have moments here and there where they almost knock me down, but those moments are decreasing in frequency and severity. In one of my darkest moments the Divine reached into me and forced me to turn to the one person I am most like, despite either of our efforts to the contrary, and taught me true empathy. That’s how I know that, Dad and I, we’ll manage.

Zachary Scott is a graduate of The Mountainview Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction. He is currently completing revisions of his manuscript, Finding Rhoda.

Dear Davey

Jack and Soda