“I’m Still Here.”
As usual, someone was bearing their soul to my mother.
Sighing loudly, I impatiently waited, annoyed to the level appropriate for any self-respecting 15 year old. January on Elm Street in New Canaan, Connecticut wasn’t going to get any warmer and I wasn’t getting any less hungry. Still, wanting to hear the confidences being shared, I leaned in to listen.
“I know how your family is, but how are YOU doing?” my mother pressed her confider.
“Well, you know what? I’m still here.”
Mom nodded knowingly, hugged her and assured her, “Well, you know what? THAT is enough.”
Huh?
What was she talking about!? Where was the pep talk about sucking it up, going for a walk, and helping someone who had it worse off than you? Where were the warrior metaphors? The, “It’s-not-so-bad,-you-could-be-putting-your-dog-down-today” lectures. Nothing? How could it be that, at 15, I possessed superior tools for how to deal with life and sorrow better than this wallowing, broken friend and my mother?! I thought, “Being ‘here’ is not an accomplishment, Mom—at least not a thing to announce proudly like this lady?! Let me have a go at her so we can wrap this up quickly and reheat last night’s meatloaf. Come on, Beverly! You can do better.” I rolled my eyes wishing I had a mom with deeper thoughts and smarter friends.
I’m now 48 and I’ve been kicked in the head enough times where I now understand that I owe an apology to my empathetic mother and her wise friend. The cosmic throat punches I’ve received in the past few years have taught me nothing if not the resilience and meaning of this phrase “I’m still here.” Some may argue that resilience only counts if one pushes onward with confidence, positivity, and battle plan mapped out in a spreadsheet. Nay, I say! Nay!--sometimes waking up, exiting your bed, and clawing your way to the bathroom is the most dignified bravery anyone can muster. Did you shrug and roll over in your bed? No! You got up and defiantly walked on those cold bathroom tiles like a boss! What’s more, you remembered your AppleTv password and logged on. Escape to the Château ain’t gonna watch itself! No sir. You stayed awake and watched 3 entire seasons! And damnit! You are still here!
There are all sorts of versions of “I’m still here!”, threads that when woven together, no matter what their condition, contribute to the strength of the fabric that they knit together for humanity. These threads, be they shredded, frayed, steel strong, faded, color clashing or otherwise, contribute collectively to the beauty and resilience of our shared human fabric woven on this loom of life. If you show up, weakly casting your thread into the mix knowing full well that you’ve tried to salvage it by patching it together with 5 knots a boy scout would scoff at, congratulations! You’ve succeeded. You want to be part of the design and we want you here so much we’ll whirl our stronger, fatter strands around you cocoonlike, sheathing your shoddy knots to render them unbreakable. You’re here. We’re here. And we’ll take you and your stinky battered self in any condition. (Plus you can tell us if Dick Strawbridge successfully installed the lift on Château.)
We all know what it feels like to be beaten down and the countless ways to respond to those painful right hooks. Sometimes when provoked, we immediately lunge at our attackers shrieking like lunatics, wildly windmilling our arms while clawing for their eyes. Sometimes we curl up in an embryonic heap covering our head, letting them have at it. And sometimes we don’t even enter the ring, naively imagining we can stay the battle’s inevitability by avoiding glove to cheek contact for just a few moments longer. But even if we decide to sit this round out, preferring to stay in our dark rooms and hide, eventually a breaking point barrels in and we find ourselves pivot-stepping back toward the ring. At that point, staring at our opponent dead in the eyes, we’ll widen the ring’s ropes just enough to fling our bruised, weakened body into the center, and dare them to come at us. It doesn’t matter that our own eye is swollen shut—we’ll find our own version of Rocky’s Mickey to cut it open so we can peer through the blood.
Even Hamlet, the patron saint of sullen angst, depression, and inaction, mobilized when provoked too aggressively in the ring. As he ruminates on the existential emptiness of life and the pointlessness of action, he almost succumbs to this anguish by contemplating suicide. However, after discovering that his old friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, had been “sent for” to spy on him in hopes he would divulge the cause of his “madness,” his inner strength erupts and his endgame shifts from fleeing this life to fighting to remain “here” in it. Feeling disrespected by his friends, he asks them to perform for him by playing a recorder. Guildenstern, answers that he cannot play the instrument declaring, "But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony; I have not the skill.” Enraged, Hamlet spews:
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of
me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know
my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my
mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to
the top of my compass: and there is much music,
excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot
you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am
easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what
instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you
cannot play upon me. (Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Act III sc ii, emphasis mine)
In other words---“Bros! Do you think I’m the same thing a simple pipe?! An instrument you can play at will? I’m not an idiot. I can see what is going on here, and guess what? I’m still here. You can tug and strum at my frayed thread as much as you want. You can mess with me however you wish—fret away—but you will not succeed in outplaying, outwitting, or outmaneuvering me.” Hamlet’s soul-uprising and defiant declaration to his manipulators intoxicates me; he insists on being seen, heard, and respected. Whenever I hear his manifesto or similar proclamations, I’m spurred to lace up my gloves and do the same.
Examples of such moxie and resilience can be found anywhere but are most heady for me when the warrior is a battle-worn underdog. Playwright Stephen Sondheim created such a victor in the character Carlotta Campion from his 1971 musical, Follies. In the song, “I’m Still Here,” Carlotta, an aging former showgirl, recounts the tides of her life including all missteps, tragedies, victories, and rises and falls that she experienced over the course of her lifetime; they haven’t all been stellar or praiseworthy (I see you drugs and burlesque) but the thread of her life has woven a durable fabric born out of dogged tenacity. And what is her constant life refrain here? Quite literally, “I’m still here!” Here are the lyrics:
Black sable one day, next day it goes into hock,
but I’m here.
Top billing Monday, Tuesday you’re touring in stock,
but I’m here. . .
Good times and bum times, I’ve seen ‘em all
And, my dear,
I’m still here.
Plush velvet sometimes
Sometimes just pretzels and beer,
but I’m here.
I’ve run the gamut A to Z.
Three cheers but dammit, c’est la vie!
I even got through all of last year,
and I’m here!
Lord knows, at least I was there,
and I’m here.
Look who’s here?
You better believe it!
I’m still here.
(Sondheim, Stephen. Follies, “I’m Still Here”. 1971. Emphasis mine.)
Though a minor character, Sondheim composed a song for her with the weight necessary to convey that even though the world may view her as a washed-up joke of an actress, she knew she was not the punchline attributed to her. No. Instead, she was a revelation and one, like my mother’s friend, that embodied triumph, solid confidence, and unflappable stoicism all just by choosing to remain here on this earth, day after excruciating day.
Megan Garber Atlantic article in its entirety. Read it. It made me cry.
But perhaps nowhere is “being here” so defiant and brilliantly inspiring as the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Though I swore off the vacuous soul suck that is Instagram a few years ago, I now find myself lured back in, logging on every few hours to see what he has posted. I don’t understand his words (looking up Ukrainian lessons now) but I understand his passion and his message clearly—We are not leaving. We are not afraid. We are seeking help but are scrappy and will not be moved if we don’t get it. Will fight like lions. We are STILL HERE!
One such post shows President Zelenksy and his cabinet defiantly recording in the open air one night. Megan Garber of The Atlantic explains it beautifully this way:
If you happened to encounter their video as one of many across a feed—a group of guys, a bit blurry in thumbnail form, poorly lit against the night—you’d probably not realize what you were witnessing: a president and his cabinet, outmatched but outspoken, declaring their defiance in the face of an invasion. You’d probably not realize the deep significance of the refrain Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky repeats throughout the 32-second video that doubles as a state-of-the-union address: Тут—tут—tут. Here—here—here. . . . The citizens of Ukraine are vulnerable [and w]hat Zelensky’s videos announce, above all, is that their leader has chosen to be vulnerable along with them. . . . As of Friday evening, the heads of the democratically elected government of Ukraine were still alive, and still in power, and still vowing to resist. “We are all here,” Zelensky said. “Our soldiers are here. The citizens of the country are here.” . . . . In war’s chaos, after all, few statements are as powerful as the one Zelensky has been delivering, to his people and to the world: I’m still here. (Garber, Megan. The Atlantic. “The Grim Stagecraft of Zelensky’s Selfie Videos.” 28 Feb 2022
With this unyielding war cry of being immovable in his country with his people where he belongs, he has managed to expose a Russian mad man and his hubris. He has gotten the globe to wrap their collective threads around his to form a strong rope and one, I hope, that will manage to pull him and his people through this invasion and brutality.
What I admire most about President Zelensky is that he is an archetype for the hero—a personage who got thrown into a conflict not of his doing but somehow manages to know exactly how to lead, what to say, and what his country needs. While others may advise him about the right approach to the conflict, (getting out of Dodge, for example, by taking asylum) he affirms he knows better. Refusing to leave, he stubbornly repeats the word “Tут. Tут. Tут.”, “choosing to be vulnerable along with [his people],” as Garber says above, while digging in his heels and demanding that they listen to what he ACTUALLY needs—"I need ammunition, not a ride.” he demands.
It's clear that what is most helpful during times of duress and trauma is a companion—one who will walk with you when you choose to stay here and defy the odds. Hamlet had his Horatio. Zelensky has his cabinet. That Connecticut mother had my mother. And all of them had God. My religious tradition tells me that we have an ever present companion in Jesus who will remain with us be it clawing across that bathroom floor or accepting a medal of honor. Ironically, He’s able to be here by NOT being there once—"He is NOT here. He is risen.” His lack of presence at the tomb allows His eternal ever-presence to be with us. By choosing to not remain in the tomb, He chooses to be vulnerable along with us, His people, in life’s trenches…HERE. This means we don’t have to manage the stony path alone; God stays here too, experiencing the journey along with us. He does it too; God is still here with us.
So. . . with Hamlet, Carlotta, Zelensky, and that Connecticut mother as a guide and Christ as a companion, what am I saying to the last few years and to 2022 which continues to pummel me relentlessly?
I’m still here.
Don’t mind me, in attempts to hold a few more kilos of burden, I’ll be pitching and twisting my tattered thread into yet another poorly formed square knot. And don’t you dare count me out either. I could be anywhere else but I’m still here, allowing myself to wake up to another day, drool on my cheek and sciatica in my hip, telling people I need ammunition, not a ride.
Skinny Deeps
