3. Operation Friendship
A chapter on loneliness, my TV family and making my first friends as an adult
When I look back on my twenties and all the the adventures my mind and body went on, it’s easy to focus on the symptoms — the psychosis, suicide attempt, fugue states, and more than twenty psychiatric hospitalizations. But more often than not, as I organize the pages of my health records and journal entries, I don’t think much of the symptoms. I really only see one thing — how I almost died from loneliness.
Sometime after that hospitalization, and before the next one, I was alive but my days were empty, hollow really. Consumed with contamination phobias and social anxiety, all I wished for was less hours in the day and someone to pass them with – that, or the bravery to walk outside in daylight. Time crept forward slowly and after cleaning my great aunt’s house top to bottom, too scared to venture out and do anything in the world, I set out to watch all of her movies.
Other than being great companions, the movies quickly became study guides – windows into the world beyond the bounds of the house. They offered a glimpse into what lay beyond my locked door, the endless suicide note writing, and my weekly 3:00 a.m. trip to the grocery store to avoid being seen.
I was determined to re-learn that world and what was normal within it. ln the wake of my sexual assault and resulting agoraphobia, I didn’t trust my natural instincts any longer. After all, shitting myself and hyperventilating weren’t really endearing ways to engage with people, nevertheless make friends.
So, I set out to re-learn how to be a human the only safe way I knew how – through watching movies and copying human behavior in the safety of the house.
I quickly exhausted my great aunt’s VHS collection. Four Weddings and a Funeral (the original), Casablanca, and The Wizard of Oz. In hopes that a few more movies would foster enough knowledge and confidence to actually get me out the door, I had my dad drop off our family’s DVD library. Contact, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Bring It On, She’s All That, and The Shawshank Redemption, among others.
I worked through the Tupperware of movies methodically. I even applied my film studies training to their dissection. And movie after movie, as I watched with intent, I re-learned how to stand, how to talk, how to express myself and what hand gestures went with certain moods. As my practice continued, I began watching the movies in the bathroom and pausing them to practice in the mirror.
After a few weeks of this, not only had I learned to dance the whole cheerleading routine from Bring It On and do a dramatic recreation of Smeagol’s “my precious” monologue, but I had also learned to find a newfound safety in an amalgamation of the many characters and their characteristics that I had learned to impersonate. I called them my TV family.
I took a little sass from Missy in Bring It On, the kindness of Sam and the silliness of Merry and Pippin in Lord of the Rings. I also found myself in the relentless curiosity of Dr. Eleanor in Contact, the quirkiness of Laney Boggs in She’s All That, and the deep goodness in Red from The Shawshank Redemption.
Connecting with these re-discovered pieces of self, I finally felt brave enough to watch the only movie in the box that I had never seen, V for Vendetta. The dark and ominous cover art had kept me from watching it up until that point, but material to learn from, was material to learn from.
One random afternoon, I put it on.
And then, watching that movie became as much of a compulsion as the mirror practicing and washing rituals I did three times daily to manage my contamination OCD.
For those unfamiliar, the film champions the story of V, a man brutally wounded in a government science experiment gone wrong, as he takes on a fascist, fear-mongering regime with the help of an unlikely companion, Evey, after she is rescued from sexual assault by V.
Although dystopian in nature, the movie resonated in more ways than one. V was a hermit and an outsider determined to break down the fear that controlled everyone. Evey was a survivor of death and near-assault learning to find her voice and above all, friendship and love in the most unexpected places. The whole movie was a fight against fear, a fight to find true freedom of being in face of what society deemed “normal” or “acceptable behavior.”
I watched that movie over and over again and in tandem with all the parts of myself I had collected from my TV family in the other films, I felt myself get braver and braver each time I saw it. V’s speech, a telecast soliloquy on complacency and fear became my breakfast companion.
Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of the everyday routine, the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke….
There are, of course, those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now orders are being shouted into telephones and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there?... And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance, coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told…
If you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror…. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid….
Fear got the best of you.
And one sunny Saturday morning, after watching V’s speech with my Cheerios, I decided fear wasn’t going to win any longer.
I surprised myself by walking right out my door.
I went to the only place I could think of that was safe from my contamination OC was the squash courts, a place where everyone was required to change their shoes and leave the outside dirt outside. Using an old racket I’d been given in college, I played by myself. Hitting the ball repeatedly over and over again, I found a way to quiet my brain and a new refuge of sorts that was beyond the bounds of home.
For the next few months, I watched V’s speech with my breakfast and went to the squash courts every single day. This became my routine. After playing alone for nearly three months, one day I bumped into a distant family friend, Kelly.
Without knowing my recent past or my current reality, he drew me in for a huge hug. He then proceeded to introduce me to everyone at the courts that day. Using the reflection in the glass to check my body language and facial expressions, I channeled all of my favorite characters. I even made eye contact a few times. Everyone was kind, especially Busani, the assistant squash coach, this family friend Kelly and Ted, Bill, and Adele. From that day forward, my routine changed. I didn’t just go to the courts. I went to the courts and I met real human beings there.
Being totally new to the sport, I was quickly adopted by Ted and Bill as a student of the game. Determined to teach me to do more than just hit the ball repeatedly for hours, they set out to turn me into a real squash player. It was the ideal re-introduction to being a human. There was no talking during play and all I had to do was listen to their lesson and execute. I practiced with discipline and learned quickly. While my social skills between sets lagged behind, I also slowly learned that too: how to make small talk, ask questions, and listen intently as they spoke about their lives.
Ted, Bill, and Adele became my first friends. They were all at least twenty years my senior but they made it safe to be my own amalgamation of characters and more than that, they made it safe to be anything in between or beyond those characters as well. I spent the first year of leaving my house only making friends with these three adults. They hold the first three pages in the journal I aptly named, Operation Friendship.
That was all there was to it. That was the start.
Maybe this isn’t what you expected. Maybe you wanted a perfect recipe for how to make friends or some series of romantic meet-cutes about the enriching social life I have now? But that would not be the truth. At least, that would not be the first truth of my many friendships.
For the truth is exactly this: my first friends were TV characters and humans that were the exact opposite of everything I thought they’d be. But that didn't matter and it still doesn't because I know their kids’ names, their health stories, how they take their coffee, and what treats they like in between matches. And more than that, I know that all of me is safe with them beyond the bounds of my house and thanks to that incredible truth, I now have hundreds of pages of entries in that friendship journal.
To read more about what happened next, join me below.
Thank you for sharing this! 💟
Thank you for sharing your heart, reminds me there are still chances to meet our soul friends as I call them