“If you stay alive for no other reason, do it for spite.” -Maria Bamford
Spite, the kind that keeps you alive, isn’t (always, or at least isn’t entirely) about the kind of gleeful desire to stand on top of your enemies, to love and thrive at the thought of their destruction. Spite (the kind that keeps you alive) is the caged animal slamming their body against the bars, it’s the taste of metal and *fuck you*, it’s seeing no way out and deciding, in all the absurdity and hubris of it, that you are going to *make* a way out.
Because suicidality (the kind that needs spite to get out of) is the feeling of pure powerlessness. People mistake suicidality for someone who isn’t thinking clearly, who just hasn’t realized the plethora of options available to them. But the terror in the powerlessness is because you *have*; painfully, and carefully, with all the panicked hope it entails, with death biting at your heels. You have hunted for any gap in the roof of your cage, you have struggled through whatever bars you could, sometimes terrified that you have gotten yourself stuck there, the metal digging into your chest and stomach, until the achingly horrible, despairing relief that comes when you finally free yourself, breathing and alive, right back into that cage.
You have thought and considered and tried, you have tried and thought and considered, you have considered and tried and thought, you have tried and then tried again.
I grew up with a violent, abusive brother. He and I both knew that the only thing stopping him from killing me was his own will and desire, and that if ever that changed; if there was ever a point and pleasure to it, and a way to avoid the consequences, there was no wall between us. Nothing that physically could stop him.
My mother is certain that I provoked him, that if I hadn’t been a taunting and sharp-edged child, he would have had no need to feel such fury toward me, that his violence was a form of misplaced justice, undeserved only in its severity, not its intent. But I did it for the same reason a trapped animal slams itself against the cage, or bites at the metal of the bars even if it breaks their teeth: because powerlessness is the worse death.
I couldn’t hurt him. I could spit curses and threats, I could throw myself at him, claws at the ready, it didn’t matter. His response was the cool amusement of someone who knows that they are untouchable, who extracts pleasure at the thought of the trapped animal who is so silly as to think they could manage to find a way out.
I had one weapon, and it cost me dearly, but it was the only thing I could say that hit him right where his wounds were alive and screaming. It was all I had to punch out through the metal, tear me right open, just to swipe at him, to put some of his skin under my nails. I paid for it every time, but the payment meant something: his fury said I had a little bit of power. I could extract a response, I could slam my body against the cage, I could *fight* even if that fight cost me my ability to breathe for a few moments, even if I was flung, swiftly and directly, back into that cage.
Can you feel it? How often your voice is hoarse with fear and anger, your teeth are bared and your eyes are wide, both catching in the sunlight, and you put all the fight into your body, and there’s nothing you can do. Try it, dare you. You know you’ll feel the front of your throat pressed to its back. You know you’ll collapse to the ground when your diaphragm can’t pull any air in. Your head will ring, both loud and static, while you hold yourself still until you’re certain the world isn’t going to go black. He’ll twist your arm until you’re not sure what will happen. Here too, is his will: he’s never watching your arm. He’s watching your eyes for the stopping point.
And you know it, and he knows it, so there’s no need for this silly little game where you hope your anger means something. And the powerlessness you feel, the thing that floods through you from the top of your head until it feels like needles in your feet, has no relief point, no place of release, because all you’ll get in response is the casual shrug of someone who finds it almost cute, the way you think your threats and fury could accomplish anything.
So let the spite take you, right? Because the difference between the spite that keeps you alive, and letting it go is the difference between life and death. It may be full of hatred and disgust, but it’s the adrenaline of *refusal*: you will not die in this cage, you will not ever accept that you deserve this, you will not ever resign yourself to this life.
If you live too long for spite, someone will tell you that spite is unsustainable, and this is true. It is not because your anger destroys you, or because your feelings are wrong and sickening. It is because spite is supposed to lead the way out of the cage. It is supposed to break down those goddamn bars, and whatever damage it leaves you with, it’s supposed to make you free. But spite runs out after how many goddamn times you have had to extract yourself back into the cage just to free yourself from the bars you caught on in your attempts to escape. And spite cannot withstand a life in which its presence is an amusement for a world who knows that it stands for nothing. It cannot hold up after your body is bruised and your teeth are broken and your mouth tastes of metal, and there isn’t a weak spot in the cage at all, nothing to tell you that your efforts stand for anything. Spite needs at least an imagined future, one in which its existence is at least, an accomplishment in and of itself. Powerlessness—the kind that has considered all the options, and can’t find a way out—always wins.
What do you do then? Spite-advocates say: see what kind of skin you can keep pulling under your fingernails, what wounds this cruel and violent world has that you can get at. But they don’t have an answer for when the skin under your nails can’t actually accomplish anything at all. The world will heal from your silly little game where you thought you could do something. My brother is not still nursing his wounds from anything that I did. What do you do when you realize that your spite is not as grand as it once felt?
Do you know, for two years now, I have learned to accept a kind of not-breathing. The first time I put on a mask, I had a panic attack. Now my skin always prickles like needles, I pull the air through the mask so hard my lips chafe and numb against the fabric, and I’ve grown accustomed to the times my heart seems to stutter a bit on the downbeat of my step.
Most people who’ve read the things that I’ve written read the voice of the person who found spite. They don’t know about the dark chasm between the two. The taunting and sharp-edged child turned into a passive, obedient, ‘happy’ teenager. There was no thought in their head anymore. Their mother would ask them, “do you remember when you were a brat?” and they would nod: yes, they remembered. They remembered the time they dug their nails into their brother’s skin so hard they drew blood, and they no longer remembered how close he was to breaking their arm, how desperate they were to get out of his grip. It was only later, I regained the sharp-edged child. Only after a long and cold acceptance of the inside of my cage.
I can live when the spite runs out. I have taught myself what to do when I can’t breathe: you hold onto the understanding that time itself is finite. When you’re on the floor with the wind knocked out of you and you think *I’m going to die*, you treat it like you’re just holding your breath yourself. You will get to the next moment when the process of breathing kicks back in again; the moment when you’ll take a grateful, ragged, horrifying breath on the floor of your cage, *you’re alive*. You’re alive, and it’s the only thing in that moment, not spite, not fury, not escape, just *alive*. You don’t hate him, you don’t fight him, you don’t want anything from him but for him to walk away while you hold onto these precious mouthfuls of air. And you lose everything but the sense that the cage is the place where there’s air, the cage is the place where there’s air, the cage is the place where you can breathe, and there’s nothing else.
Yesterday, I walked passed a woman and her small child on the sidewalk. I put myself in the bike lane just to get a bit more distance between us. Her child looked at little concerned at me, maybe they were upset I was walking where I wasn’t supposed to. Maybe they could hear how I was nearly swallowing my mask trying to get the air in my lungs. And I thought about how weird and astonishing and stupid and coincidental it is that I haven’t caught Covid and I’m not sick and I’m alive, and it’s a cage, and I don’t think anymore *when the pandemic is over* because I don’t throw myself at those bars anymore, and my mouth is too full of fabric to taste the metal of the bars, but I’m alive.
I know how to live when the spite runs out.
I just don’t want to anymore.