Bluebirds, Signs, and Other Tangentially Related Nonsense
I've been asked what my spark bird is a few times.
I don't really have one, truthfully. There was a specific moment that got me into birding, as is the same with every hobby on planet Earth. In that sense, I guess it's not that special. It's kind of anticlimactic; you'd think that with the amount of money and time I've poured into bird photography, I'd have some sort of grand revelatory moment where I saw a specific bird that changed my life forever. Most birders share this experience. I do not.
It started with a casual quest to identify the sounds I heard in my backyard as I sat depressed and bored on the porch. I asked my mom for her own camera, got some lens upgrades, bought my own, brand new camera in what some would consider a financially dicey impulse decision. I have met friends through birding, and I enjoy sharing the hobby with loved ones. But there's something special about going alone, driving three hours to see a single bird, wandering around looking for it for hours, then finding it fifty feet from the parking lot. These moments belong to me and the bird, no one else. There is no one who can taint them or take them away from me.
Nighttime birding is different; I've tried it once. I pulled up on the gravel road and parked behind my friend, hoping not to blind her with my brights. It was 5:30 in the morning, but weirdly, I felt awake as all five of us trudged up a wooded hill. I realized as we scanned the deathly still trees that I needed a better flashlight if I was going to do this again. We heard the birds we were looking for but didn't see them. Still, I had never heard the howl of a screech owl or the wail of a whip-poor-will, nor had I heard the soft, low cooing of a great horned owl anywhere but TV.
The sun rose as we came upon a small prairie-like clearing. I had forgotten how purple the world is at sunrise. The first of the songbirds to sing were the cardinals, then the towhees, then an indistinguishable chorus of tweets and chirps slowly rose from the tall grasses and drowned out the electric hum of the starkly man-made powerlines that receded into the distance.
I wandered off from the rest of the group and stared into the weeds, wondering how so many birds could be so hidden in the brush. I walked away from that trip with only a picture of the crescent moonâlarge and cratered and astronomicalâand a distant photo of a lone chipping sparrow. It looked small and a bit lonely hopping around in the dirt. I wondered if it was content.
I'd like to think I'm starting to build a full, if small, life for myself, one where romance is not the only important fixture. I think I've been doing pretty good recently; I've made more friends, and I've found a niche within my city that I actually enjoy occupying. But sometimes in the dead heat of a humid night, or alone before the fading sun of a Sunday evening, or in the silence of a red light at an empty intersection, I find myself longing, still, to be dragged laughing into the bedroom, to feel the weight of another's arm on my waist as I fall asleep, to be kissed in the morning when I wake up. And sometimes, despite how I wish it wasn't, it's painful.
Every sign says âit's coming, it's coming,â but maybe I'm just looking for comfort in the coldness of an alien abduction-themed claw machine, the warmth of two birds huddled together, the fireworks of a random baseball game that burn and spark as I drive by the stadium. Maybe the tarot cards mean nothing; maybe the swing of the pendulum is not divine, but the shaking of my own hand as I ask the universe for guidance in interpreting the intentions of someone who really, clearly is not into me. There is no way to know for sure.
***
My grandfather on my mom's side died when I was ten. I've been into birds for a little over two years, and I'd hope that you can surmise from the subject matter of some of my writing that I am much older than twelve. My memories of him, unfortunately, are quite faded by now. I remember him, but they're mostly scattered vignettes from my childhood that have been sun-bleached and frayed around the edges.
When my grandmother passed my mom traveled to her house to clean it out to get ready to sell it. When she got back, she brought my grampa's old birding field guide, Peterson's A Field Guide to the Birds, copyrighted 1947. It's old enough to list the ivory-billed woodpecker as merely critically endangered instead of extinct.
I think at some point in the past I had learned that he was into birds. The reminder I held in my hands was stark, green to blend in with foliage in the field, the hardcover spine malleable with age and use. The back had a ruler embossed into the edge. I flipped through the yellowing pages, printed in black and white. In the middle of the book, there was a signature with full color illustrations of common eastern United States birds, annotated to indicate the subtle differences between them. The first few pages of the book were a simple list of birds with a space next to each one: a checklist.
Most modern birders use e-Bird to log their bird sightings, usually creating a separate checklist for each outing. The website does keep a âlife listâ of all the birds you have encountered, though, not dissimilar to the one in the back of the field guide. My grampa had filled in the birds he presumably spotted, and I wondered if this was a true life list or just a list of the birds he had seen since he got the book. I considered adding my checkmarks beside his so I could compare our lists; his unfortunately cut short, but mine still ongoing. There was a part of me that felt that doing so would ruin the sanctity of this list, like the addition of mine would muddy the perfectly still waters of his birding records. It was like a snapshot into his life, and I didn't want to alter that.
My mom told me that he had tried to get bluebirds to visit and nest at my grandparentsâ house for years without luck. Last spring, I watched a single bluebird dad raise his son in my backyard, all by himself. He sat with him on the bird house day in and day out; he guarded the feeder and chased other birds away when they tried to approach while Baby Bluebird was eating.
Perhaps they had nested in my yard years prior. Truthfully, I wasn't really paying attention. Still, there's something full-circle about it. I'd like to think that my grampa would have loved to see my little bluebird family if he were still here today. I'd like to think he would be thrilled to know that I've picked up birding and have started providing them with what is essentially a bird bread and breakfast.
He's not here to see them, but nonetheless, I consider his wish fulfilled.
***
I am not a particularly religious person, and it feels stupid as a white person to say I'm âspiritualâ because that brings an image to mind that I donât really identify with. But I think there is a consciousness to the way things work that is difficult to explain. I look too hard for signs to the point where I find them in places where they aren't, but sometimes it feels like there's something listening when I beg for mercy or help or a bone or something; the problem I find with traditional religion besides the obvious is that the âhelpâ that comes feels too arbitrary and random to come from a benevolent presence. Why is it that I am hurt so fundamentally and so young that I stumble through a meaningless existence for years before anything feels okay, but when I say, please let me have fun tonight, my wish is more or less granted? I guess I shouldn't be complaining that sometimes I am permitted a fun night out with friendsâand I'm notâbut what feels off about a good and merciful god is the imbalance with which the world unfolds. But sometimes something happens that can't be a coincidence. Or maybe I just don't want it to be.
Clearly my spiritual beliefs morph over time, but I think one of three things happens when we die. The low hanging fruit: the worshippers were right; we ascend to the heavens to be with loved ones forever. The imperfect and fleshy existence of a body is gone, but an ethereal and eternal life of grace has begun. Maybe we are reincarnated into something else, something majestic like a whale or stupid like an ant. Or maybe nothing happens. The light behind our eyes fades and we unremarkably decompose into the dirt, to be woven into fabric of the plants, the animals, the rocks, and eventually, when the sun engulfs the earth, the stars.
Weirdly, there's something comforting about all three.
CW: mentions of suicide attempts and physical/emotional/medical neglect and aduse, general theme and discussion of forced institutionalization
I'll be the first to say that I was a nightmarish teenager. We all were, sure, but I can't imagine I was easy to deal with. I tried to kill myself a few times. I couldn't parse my interpersonal relationships and instead defaulted to flopping around like a wounded fish. I am not denying any of these things, and I am not saying that my parents put me at Youth Care out of malice. But I don't think they understoodâor understand, stillâwhat they were doing.Â
If your Netflix algorithm has pegged you as anything but a small child, you have probably seen an ad for a show called âThe Program,â which centers on a now-defunct therapeutic âschoolâ and the experiences of past students. Though no longer in operation, this school is just one of the hundreds of its kind in the United States. They vary in the intensity and egregiousness and legality of the âtherapiesâ they carry out, but they all revolve around the core idea that teenage mental illness is a problem to be snuffed out rather than treated. And they are somehow very, very adept at convincing parents that this is so.
I am not about to claim that my experience was, at its core, the most traumatic outcome of one of these prisons. My saving grace was that I am quickly able to adapt to my environment out of a terrified and paralyzing sense of self-preservation, one that only kicks in when I realize that I am (unfortunately) not going to die, but instead will experience some sort of life-altering trauma.
It was pretty clear upon arrival that this would not be a pleasant or positive experience in any form. Truthfully, what can you expect when putting a group of suicidal and otherwise troubled teenagers in the hands of a couple of sub-degreed, wannabe-therapists for months at a time?
The kids are mean. They're vicious. The staff and therapists almost overtly encourage it. There are multiple âgroup therapyâ sessions per day where the first to bite gets the upper hand and sets the tone for the entire discussion. No one wants to be the one under fire, so everyone joins in. It is your one and only goal in these sessions to be anyone but the scapegoat. If you are quiet and have nothing negative to say about the target, you will likely be next. This is the environment that is fostered and actively encouraged by the staff, but they get to go home. You have to live with these people. The bonds you make in these places are fickle and vital to your survivalâyou will sacrifice the one sitting next to you if it means that you are safe from the verbal abuse, but there is no one else to find companionship with in such a lonely place. So you must leave the room and return to the hall like you didn't just spend an hour sinking your teeth into a 15 year old's soggy, mushy bones. And if you're the 15 year old, you must pretend that you're better for it, and hope it's someone else's turn tomorrow.Â
(My most egregious crime, for those wondering, was being pre-transition and wanting to be gendered correctly).
There is no respect to be had here because you are the structural fracture of your family. You all are; this is a gathering of the problem kids, and while you kind of hate each other in a million tiny ways that grate on you, there is something to be said for the kinship you share. They have taken chunks of your skin, but you have taken chunks of theirs in an equal exchange of therapist-sanctioned vitriol.Â
The hatred you share for these people runs shallow but the bond runs much deeper. This is a remarkably dysfunctional way of forming relationships with other people. If the only way you can connect with others is through shared trauma for months at a time, you are set up for immediate interpersonal failure as an adult. You'll mistake mistreatment for love and remain comfortable in it. Your only redeeming quality, after all, is your shared suffering.
In the hierarchy of therapeutic achievement lies a strange kind class system. The level ones are the dirt; the level sixes are nearly close enough to God's grace but have some sort of lingering vice that prevents them from leaving. Some rise through the ranks quicker than others, and this is entirely based on your ability to do whatever is told without question. This is the only hope for your recovery, you see, and until you can assume the role of the perfect mild-mannered child, you will be stuck behind barred windows for the time being.
And God forbid you have some sort of medical issue here, even worse if it's chronic. Staff members were allegedly given a several day long training session before my diabetic arrival, so this obviously qualified them to make all of my medical decisions for me. There was no doctor or medical professional who was regularly on staff that I could tell; just a PA who seemed to wander the campus at-will. Medical care was treated as a privilege here. One time a staff member tried to give me an absurd amount of extra insulin because I wanted butter on my pancakes. There was one who wouldn't let me eat when I had a low blood sugar. A kid who was deathly allergic to bees was stung and told to pop a couple Benadryls; his hand swelled to the size of a baseball.
About a week in, I began having anaphylactic reactions multiple times per day for no discernable reason. Hives the size of golfballs, even basketballs covered my skin at all times. The itching was maddening. I could not escape it, its grip usually worse at night as I tried to sleep. I gouged permanent scars into my skin because I could not feel pain, only the firey itch of my body falling apart. Obviously, no one gave a fuck. I got a Zyrtec every 24 hours and told there was nothing else that could be done. They didn't take me to see an actual doctor until the week before my parents were coming to bring me home, probably in a desperate attempt to make me look like a person again before they got there. I was misdiagnosed with Scabies because the doctor only saw the scrapes my nails left on my skin. Two months after I got home, I was diagnosed with chronic hives and put on a twice monthly biologic injection to control it. It will be lifelong.
It is somehow conveyed to the parents that their kids are learning coping and interpersonal skills, and this facade is maintained by the active surveillance of all student-parent interactions. There's an only partially spoken rule that you are not allowed to beg your parents to bring you home. The undercurrent of this is that you cannot divulge the abuse that you are suffering because they can and will cut you off from the outside world. What you learn is subservience; any sort of resistance or questioning is, by nature, an offense against your case to get out. Any outward expression of negative emotion is grounds for punishment, the range of which is arbitrary, and, frankly, based on how much that staff member likes you. It's the fastest way to learn back-breaking people-pleasing; when you can be put in a headlock and have your wrist broken for literally anything (and have seen it happen), you learn that it's in your best interest to put your head down and hide, and hope to God that Stacy is in a good mood for her night shift.
Your goal as a prisoner here is not recovery. It never was, and it never will be. Your goal is convincing yourself, your parents, and everyone else there that you are fine now, actually, and that you pinky promise you won't try to kill yourself even though you really, really want to. You will not leave this place as a particularly well adjusted almost-adult, in fact, you will likely struggle for years to form genuine connections with other people due to your paralyzing and all-encompassing fear of getting in troubleâthey can break your bones for that, remember? You will no longer speak up for yourself because that will get your 10 minutes of outside time taken away. You will be unable to express your sadness or anger or frustration in a healthy or productive way, if at all, because these are offensive emotions that get you put in the âquiet room,â the one made of concrete with a drain in the floor and blood in the grout. You will apologize like your life depends on it because it feels like it does. You will have nightmares about this for years. You will believe that the consequence for struggling is abrupt and forced institutionalization, so it's best to pretend like it's all gone away, now, isn't it? You will pray that when a lover lays their head on your chest, they will hear more than the echo of a hallowed-out ribcage. You will hope that when you speak to them, your voice won't waver with a passivity so fundamental that it sounds like you were born to be a doormat. You will realize, slowly, as you navigate your young adult life, that nothing has been fixed; nothing has changed; and you are still more fucked up than you ever could have imagined.Â
Maybe it's time to admit that I don't know what I'm doing.
When I started hooking up with my most recent âexâ last year (if you can even call them that), I had gone so long without a romantic connection and even longer without sex that I had forgotten what it felt like, so I think I was doomed to catch feelings for them despite their inability to treat me like a person. And of course by initially positing myself as equally unavailable and indifferent from the start, I set myself up for failure when I inevitably wanted more.
Apparently sex is too tied up in feelings for me to keep it casual; that much, I learned painfully and quickly. It had been almost two years since my last relationship, three and a half since I had been touched or desired in any capacity. So having a companionship start so fiery and intense was something completely new and very, very enticing despite my better judgement.
I had previously considered myself more or less healed from my previous relationships; the scars were still there and keloided, sure, but they no longer oozed blood when touched. I think this person, we'll call them Baneberry, broke something in me, something I didn't know was there. Unintentionally, maybe, but the hairline fracture quickly devolved into a splintered mess and stayed there long after they were gone.
I didn't recognize myself around them. I had considered myself relatively strong given my circumstances, unsatisfied without a lover but not exactly unhappy. Their presence in my life turned me into some sort of deranged and neurotic incubus, my thoughts dominated by their looks, their body, how they felt, the way they looked at me like they were starving, when they would answer me, when they would stop ignoring me, when they would start treating me like I was more than an object.
It should've been clear to me that when they agreed to try dating, it was just to keep me around longer. The pattern was well established by now: they'd only talk to me when they wanted sex; they'd get what they wanted, a placating fuck to keep me hooked; I'd try to get close to them; they'd dissappear; they'd hit me up again next time they wanted a body in their bed.
I eventually got tired of this. After the most sexually-charged, anxiety-inducing four months of my life, I cut it off. They took a week to even open the message. Released from their clutches, I moved on, had a brief but failed relationship, went back to square one.
Five months later, I saw Baneberry on a dating app. Their profile described everything they weren't when I knew them; emotionally available, looking for a long term relationship, ready to find âtheir person.â Interesting. Last I had seen, they were so far off from being able to form any sort of emotional connection that I wondered if they were even capable of it. In a moment of weakness, I matched with them. We exchanged lukewarm niceties. I asked if they wanted to try dating again. I heard nothing back for over a week (but who's counting); obviously, this was a futile and embarrassing attempt at reconnection. I woke up one morning to a notification: Baneberry had messaged me and then immediately blocked me. At this point, the situation was bordering on self-harm.
Another month later I re-downloaded Grindr in another (this time horny) moment of weakness. The app had been enshittified to the point of unusability, so I didn't get much out of it this time around. Baneberry DMed me, a simple âhey,â to which I told them that their behavior was very bizarre. We talked, and I saw something I had never seen in them before: vulnerability. They said they were sorry, that they were just scared, that they wanted to start over.
This was the universe testing me, or perhaps some sort of funny joke. In possibly my dumbest move to date, I agreed. I could feel the disappointment of my friends weighing heavy on my back, crushing the air out of me as I told them we were back together. I had willingly stepped back into the fire, after all; what kind of idiot would do that?
Predictably, we quickly fell apart. In a fugue-like state, we acted out the scenes of our history with an alarming accuracy, a stupid and painful push and pull. They encountered a difficult situation. Had me over, careful to word the invitation in a confusing and non-committal way. We connected on a level that I had not previously felt before. I didn't cum because my body was paralyzed with anxiety, but I had counted the whole experience as a win because they laid with me in bed after and actually showed some semblance of emotion.
Then the disappearing act began. Slow, disengaged texts. Understandable given their situation, but I eventually cracked; the secret, unknown bone they had fractured our first time around had, it turned out, healed at a bent and dysfunctional angle that had slotted itself through the slats of my ribcage and punctured a lung. I could no longer breathe.
I ripped a surprisingly reassuring and comforting response from their chest. They weren't blowing me off, no; they just had a lot going on. They didn't like being in constant contact (despite the fact that this was not what I was asking for). Great, problem solved, lung stitched up, fucked up bone back in its fucked up, hallowed-out place.
Baneberry disappeared. I got no responses; they didn't even read my messages. I snapped this time; the stupid and useless bone re-broken and the splinters lodged in my chest wall, my lungs, my fragile little hummingbird heart, far up into my throat. While poorly worded, what I said was true: I felt like I was being yanked around; it was selfish of them to keep me on hold while they figured their life out; I was confused and at my wit's end. They exploded with a scorching fire that I didn't expect from them, even in their current situation. I ended it, finally, and if I'm lucky, for good.
The thing that I realized after I began to dust myself off was that I do not owe them my misery just because they were in a tough situation. I would rather be touch-starved and lonely than be constantly at the mercy of someone else's emotionless libido and inconsistent, stevia-sweet touch. I don't care for them anymore; their spell has more or less worn off. I will not wait around for them to figure out how to treat me like a human being because I am not a bottomless well of tolerance and grace.
I'd like to think that I can take away some sort of lesson from all my failed relationships like a flattened souvenir penny. I learned so painfully the first time around that I can't do casual sex. The second lesson was much more nebulous but has allowed me to slowly lay the fantasy of a functional relationship with them to rest; in all circumstances across time and space, it's clear we will never work. I think, I hope, that I have managed to shove that stupid, bent bone back into place. If I cinch my chest tight enough, God willing, it will stay there.
I write this as a farewell of sorts, so I can stop acting out fake arguments with them in the shower like a lunatic. This is likely all the closure I'll get, so I guess I'll have to make use of it. I like someone else now, though I don't think he knows it. There's no more room in my life for such an obtrusive and heavy presence. I don't think I hate them. After all, they're a product of their life circumstances, which don't seem to have been easy. But it's also not my fault that theyâre incapable of forming a genuine connection, and it's not my responsibility to teach them how.
