Replanting

About a year ago, my boyfriend impaled himself on a metal post. We had just moved in together into a miraculously affordable bungalow with a backyard, and we were cheerfully ripping out piles and piles of invasive weeds, uncovering planter boxes and the remains of an old fence. We left the posts sticking up, small tubes about an inch or two wide with blunt ends, while we hacked and pulled our way through a mass of ivy. I’d been afraid to find snakes and rats, but there weren’t any, and after a few weekend days of hard work, we were almost done.

Then an ivy root snapped in my boyfriend’s hands, he stumbled downhill, and his armpit went down onto one of those metal posts. He came up off of it and I ran after him inside, he was saying it was probably bad, pretty bad. We somehow got his shirt off him, and he lifted his arm to show me. I thought I was prepared for something bad, but I wasn’t prepared for what I saw: a huge black hole in his armpit. I almost fainted.

He became incredibly, eerily calm. Should we call an ambulance? Probably, I sobbed. I had never really driven in San Francisco, had let my license expire, and I just imagined him passing out on me on our way to the ER, as I struggled with traffic and the narrow, hilly streets outside our house — he didn’t think he was going to pass out, but he didn’t know. He apologized for not being able to drive, because he is a wonderful person.

I dialed 911 on my phone, a tester phone for my job, and it didn’t work; the operator couldn’t hear me. So I found his phone, dialed again. The ambulance would be there in five minutes. He asked me to get him a change of clothes for the hospital, and I frantically cast aside T-shirts and pants until I found what I thought might be his favorite, comfiest ones. We sat on the bench by the door. I kept telling him I loved him. He kept telling me it was going to be ok, he was going to be fine. He was mostly dreading the needles (his phobia). Oddly, the gushing blood we expected never came, not even as the first responders arrived and drew back the shirt my boyfriend was now using to press against the wound.

I thought this seemed like a great sign, but the doctors looked very concerned. They took my boyfriend into the back of the ambulance and put an oxygen mask to his mouth. One of them asked me, “Is he usually this pale?” I wasn’t sure. His chest did look pale, but was it more pale than normal? Had I even been paying attention to anything in my life? I overheard the head doctor say that they needed to go to SF General, even though my boyfriend was a Kaiser patient. SF General was the only place equipped to deal with a puncture wound to the trunk area.

I climbed into the passenger seat, and started calling family members, who answered the phone brightly; it was a pleasant surprise to hear from me. I had never had to call 911 before, much less tell people about a bad accident, but it was all very straightforward, as it turned out, which was both relieving and chilling.

When we got to the hospital, a phalanx of doctors swarmed around my boyfriend and whisked him away. I was left standing with a social worker, who had a serene face and a soothing voice, and I loved her immediately, but I was very afraid of what she was saying, and moreover what she represented. He was in the OR, and they might have to operate on him. Apparently, your armpit is right next to your lung.

The social worker led me to a small room with brown chairs, brown walls, and brown floors, and left, closing the door behind her. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so obsessed with my thoughts, so unable to think of anything but the worst outcomes, so alone. I now realize most people, past a certain age, have probably experienced their own brown room, but at a very lucky 27 years old, this was my first. I tried to text my mom, but I didn’t have service (you would hope to have service at a hospital — I blamed my tester phone again). I felt heavy with helplessness; I put my head on my knees. I was still wearing my sports bra, and my perfectly intact armpits were rank. I peeled a few sticky weeds off my yoga pants. I told myself it would be ok and I tried to believe it.

And it was ok. They didn’t have to operate. Miraculously, the post had missed all his major arteries, and hadn’t nicked his lung after all. He’d need stitches, if only because the hole was so big, and it had done a little damage to his nerves, but that would heal. The air bubbles in his chest cavity — a normal result of having a hole in your armpit — would go away on their own, although they still wanted to monitor him for six hours to make sure the bubbles didn’t make his lung collapse.

He squeezed my hand while they cleaned his wound, excruciating pain on his face, despite a hefty serving of fentanyl and his natural fortitude. He had told me, at dinner one night after we moved in together, that he really needed me; he’d told me he would probably propose within the year. “I can’t wait to marry you,” I said as he lay on the hospital bed. I really needed him too.

In the weeks that followed, I washed his armpit and replaced his gauze and made sure he took his antibiotics. When we went to Hawaii about a month later, he had healed well enough to swim in the ocean. It feels a little weird to him now when you touch his arm or hand on that side; in a more positive development, his impaled pit doesn’t really smell anymore (we think the glands got messed with, and we might be onto an innovative new procedure for bad B.O.).

The changes for me were more psychological than physical. I felt more sure about my boyfriend than ever, and I suddenly felt it was important to be sure about everything, as sure as possible — because any of the things I took for granted about my life, including my life itself, could change or disappear in an instant. Maybe this was something that my boyfriend, active and accident prone since youth, didn’t need to learn. He’s an entrepreneur, engaged with life and aware of what he wants in a way that seems to come naturally. I was the one who needed a wakeup call.

I appeared to be doing splendidly. My work provided me with a great salary, unbelievable benefits, and exotic travel opportunities. When I talked about what I did at parties, it sounded objectively interesting and important. I got to meet Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson when they filmed a movie about how crazy amazing it was to have my job.

Inside, I was sick, and barely surviving. I was wasting hours reading about other people’s relationship drama on Reddit and looking at pictures of adoptable cats and puppies I had no intention of adopting (for some reason, that was how my sickness expressed itself via the internet). My face was broken out in painful acne cysts that I poked at feverishly. I avoided talking to anyone at work more than was absolutely necessary, eating my lunch alone. I smiled and nodded and did just enough to keep afloat, all the while feeling that I could barely contain my true listless, selfish nature. Any misstep, however small, became confirmation, which cycled into guilt and avoidance, which led to more missteps.

After my boyfriend’s accident, I began to have a small, insistent feeling that what I was doing with the majority of my time was truly wrong, wasteful, and needed to stop. The feeling followed me around for a few weeks, as I explained to coworkers that I was a bit shaken up. Then I suddenly hit rock bottom.

Our team was hosting partners from another company, and I came into the engineering meeting late from unexpected traffic (a common enough occurrence that it should have been expected, but I also refused to get on the shuttle at 6 in order to get to work by 8). The complex design tradeoffs and negotiations, already underway, went over my head completely. I spent the meeting among all these well-meaning and well-informed men, confused, distracted, and feeling like a kid in class who hopes they won’t be called on — and I was never that kid. What’s more, I was supposed to be a leader on the team, the manager of the product.

As we walked back from lunch, my lead engineer asked me, very kindly, “Is everything ok? You have sad eyes.” (Picture this in a faint German accent.) I told him everything was fine, and excused myself from the meeting. I went out to a field a short walk from the office and lay under a tree in the fetal position and cried uncontrollably.

A year before this, I had gone through a similar crisis, including the fetal position crying (and looking back, there had been many lite versions). And I’d come out of that rock bottom deciding to recommit to my job and move to a new and exciting project — building phones — with a great manager. Now I felt like an even bigger failure.

The work on my new team was, again, so objectively interesting and important, and the people were, again, for the most part so supportive and smart and just trying to do their best. But looking towards the future — days, years — I saw nothing but endless things I didn’t want to do. Success would mean more of these things, with higher pressure and higher stakes. Failure would mean less attractive and interesting versions of these things (did I even care?). Interminably.

I thought a good, sane person would have focused on the opportunities to have a positive impact on millions of people, and the lifestyle the job afforded me — which was what everyone told me to do whenever I had one of these crises of faith. Unless I really wasn’t happy, of course; no one wanted me to be unhappy. It seemed I had to decide for myself: was I unhappy, or was there something wrong with me? I knew “imposter syndrome” is common among women (at my company there was even a group devoted to this syndrome, with hundreds of members). I knew I had a tendency to be dramatic and sensitive. I knew I’d lived a sheltered, privileged life, and now, in my 20s, had a job that people twice my age dreamed of having.

It had been my dream too, ever since I was in college and met a few older guys, freshly back from their product manager training trip around the world, which sounded like the best thing ever. And my dream came true, despite the fact that I didn’t even make it past the phone screen the two times I’d interviewed for the summer internship version of my job. Surely this was the golden opportunity of my life; well-meaning people were always telling me that I couldn’t do better.

In the field, under the tree, I wasn’t crying because I was unhappy. I already knew that. I was reminded every time I dreaded going to work (every morning), every time I imagined the future with a nauseous shiver. I was crying because if I couldn’t be happy here, I didn’t think I could be happy anywhere. I was unhappy, and there was something wrong with me.

My boyfriend spent hours with me on the phone, telling me that I was not a bad person. But I wasn’t easily convinced. When I did leave, about a month later, it wasn’t with my head held high, moving on to bigger and better things. I teared up talking to my boss and my engineering lead, in conversations where I admitted that I didn’t really know why I was unhappy, or what I wanted to do, but I supposed I had to go figure it out, since my boyfriend just had this accident and I realized that life was short. They were incredibly supportive, but except for the fact that nobody was mad and everyone understood, it was like initiating a hard breakup; I felt confused and ashamed.

I said goodbye to an organization I had loved and been sheltered by, that had treated me kindly and generously, given me fun and fond memories, and taught me things I couldn’t have learned anywhere else. Mostly, I said goodbye to my old identity, which was completely wrapped up in that job — it was where I ate, played sports, and made many of my adult friends; it provided my phone, my computer, and my transportation; it was mostly all I talked about.

I cringe to say this, but for my entire life after college, my entire real adult life, everyone was always asking me what I did, and I usually replied, “I work at Google.” Only then would I explain my position (not many people know what a product manager is). That was how I saw myself — I wasn’t in an industry or on a career track, I was a Googler, like I was an American.

The version of me with that job had been certified smart, wealthy, and successful, and people were proud of her, even admired her. She wasn’t the very best at her job, and she wasn’t the very worst. The problem was only that she wasn’t happy. In fact, she was so negative and dysfunctional that I couldn’t stand to be around her anymore. Maybe I was really breaking up with her.

I felt empty after I left. I didn’t think I wanted to do anything, and so for a while, I didn’t. It wasn’t that terrible, or that different from what I’d been doing at my job — only now I didn’t hate myself, I just felt bored. I slept a lot. I played video games. I took a few trips. I took the LSAT, which was intense and weird and kind of fun. I’d told everyone that I was going to maybe apply to law school, because that felt productive and like something I could possibly succeed at, but I let the application date come and go without really researching a single school. That was somehow fine, though; if I could be ok leaving my job, I could be ok not doing another thing I didn’t want to do.

The more I spent time with just myself, suddenly with no expectations to meet and no identity to uphold, the more I felt drawn to strange and surprising things. I learned to knit, to bake bread, and to garden, three skills I’d never had even a hint of inclination to study in the past. I stroked those hats, loaves, and leaves with an obsessed, amazed feeling. It was a feeling of love, for what I had created, and even more for myself, the creator. It was a feeling I hadn’t experienced in a long time.

Except I had occasionally gotten a whiff of this feeling at work, when I would reread a particularly thoughtful email or doc I’d written (which I did somewhat compulsively). I cared too much about these things — people were always asking me, “What’s the tl;dr?” This stood for “Too long; didn’t read” (a term appropriated from Reddit, I think), and the unspoken rule was that it should go at the top of anything longer than a few paragraphs. I wouldn’t have minded as much if it was called “summary” or something, but “too long; didn’t read”? Wasn’t that a bit insulting to everyone involved? Anyway, it felt secret and weird, my pride in the things I’d created that were always tl;dr. But it was something.

At home one night with my brain’s newfound silence, I remember looking at myself in the bathroom mirror and hearing with absolute certainty, so clearly that it felt like I was saying the words aloud, “You are going to become a writer. That’s what you really want to do. That’s what you have always wanted to do.”

I didn’t know what to do with this information. It felt kind of absurd and impossible. I hadn’t written a single story or essay since college. But I couldn’t deny that the voice was vigorous, by which I mean full of life.

I left my job last August, and I started trying to write in October, hardly managing to finish even one very bad and frustrating piece. It’s now May, and I’ve submitted a short story to several writing contests. It’s maybe still very bad, but I’m proud of it, and the important thing is, it was joyful, not frustrating. More to come on my journey as a writer, and the support I’ve received and am still receiving from wonderful people.

It’s spring. My boyfriend proposed last November, when I was newly unemployed and anxious, and it was perfect. I can’t wait to marry him. In our backyard, a vegetable garden is flourishing — I planted tomatoes in the place where we yanked out that post.

I think everything will be ok.