Goodbye (for now) to all that

Jesus year and an impulsive move.

“Happy Jesus Year!” was the well-wish-du jour around my birthday this January 28th. Texts, calls, in-person exchanges with friends, it was a constant chorus. I had never heard the phrase before, which refers to a person’s thirty-third year of life. The year of his life where Jesus (at least the one of Christian theology) was flogged and crucified under Pontius Pilate, entombed after his death, and rose from the dead three days later. ‘Jesus wept’ (John 11:35) is the shortest verse in the King James Version of the Bible. I learned that fact during a very brief enrollment in Catholic school when I was twelve. I’ve thought of it often since. The divinity of sadness. A deity, fully man. 

My name is Hannah and I was born in 1991. I had the sense, as my 33rd birthday approached, that this year would be an important one for me. That it is palindromic made it feel significant. I had no sense that it would be, as the lore of the Jesus year states, a divine or transformative time. And at first it was not. February was much the same as the months before I was 33. In March, I fell into a deep depression unlike any I had experienced since my late teens. No one is suited to depression and I am particularly ill suited to it. My life has little structure and most of my pleasure, historically, has come from activity and social interaction. I stopped writing and then started writing things I could not publish contemporaneously. I ordered french fries to my front door and felt sorry for myself. I do everything right and nothing good happens to me, I thought. I cannot stand self-pity and loathed myself even more for falling into it. I tried to do everything people say cures depression- time with friends, exercise, meditation, prayer, seeking purpose. None of it worked. I cannot, for medical reasons, take an SSRI. 

 I was lonely and tired and all but bedridden. 

You can have anything you want but you cannot have everything you want. 

It is advice that I have given countless people since it came to me— in conversation with a wonderful sunny woman near a pool in Corsica— in the summer of 2017. I typically contextualize the advice, so decide what you want and then ask yourself if your choices and actions are in service of that goal. I also often tell people to do as I say, not as I do. A tongue in cheek cliche that makes me smile. Also, based on many of my chaotic choices since my divorce, sound advice. 

I have, since my marriage ended, allowed myself almost unilateral permission to indulge my impulses. I rarely considered whether this was a sound way to live. I am a writer and my career and my passion is telling stories. My job became an excuse for me to indulge my chaotic nature. Collecting stories is working, I told myself. But I have more stories than I have published pages and my body of work cannot live in my mind. 

Decide what you want and ask yourself if your choices are getting you closer to that goal. 

I want to publish a book, get married again. I would like to have a child, I think. I want peace and health and stable relationships. I am the author of zero books, single largely by choice, in no state to be anyone's mother, and while I am reasonably healthy and have wonderful friendships, I’d lost the serenity that I felt with myself. None of my choices were getting me closer to any goal except being very well known in certain Manhattan circles. In April, I went on a walk with a friend. 

“Hannah, it’s time to stop collecting stories and start collecting real human connections.” She said to me, offhandedly. I knew, at that moment, that I would take a long break from drinking to work on myself. I decided in May that my long break should last for more than three months that I had originally planned. Sobriety did not lift my sadness, it compounded it, left me without control of my emotions. I was tearful and I was resolved to continue not drinking. I complained to my friends and forced myself to do Pilates or walk every day and did very little else. I needed something more. I had considered, since spending time there while I was living on my sailboat, moving to Palm Beach. It was a place that relaxed me, where I felt at ease. I don’t mind humidity and can easily tolerate dresses covered in loud prints as long as no one forces me to wear one. I booked a long weekend trip in late May and made contact with some real estate agents before my flight. The last night of the trip, I called my sister from my hotel room. 

“Parry, I think I am going to move to Palm Beach. I’m going to do a Pilates certification course because I need some structure in my life, I need to help people. I think between writing and teaching I can make a more than sustainable income, even for my lifestyle. I was going to do a course in New York but all of my friends are leaving New York for the summer and the course was canceled. The class here starts in less than two weeks.” 

“I like this plan.” She said, I was surprised. Typically, when I tell a friend of mine one of my plans they say absolutely do not do that. I typically do it anyway. 

“I… Why? Really?” I asked her. I felt like a child who had declared she was running away from home, only to hear her dad offer to help her pack. 

“Yes, really. It’s the only plan you’ve ever told me that includes an actual plan.” Every single trusted friend and therapist I asked agreed with Parry. But don’t you think this is insane? I asked them all, noting potential drama, financial risks, a lifetime of life altering and completely impulsive choices. I think this will be good for you. They all said. It was the first time in my life that I did not know what to do and I believe that when people do not know what to do, they should take the advice of people who love them. And so I did that. 

this is the only outfit I want to wear.

Many things came together in a way that felt like a divine sign- like a universal and connecting energy that I call God was urging me to make the move. I wasn’t positive I was going to do it until I was on the plane. I arrived in the middle of a storm, we sat on the runway at the Palm Beach airport for over an hour, waiting for lightning to clear so we could taxi to the gate. A friend picked me up from my new rental and took me out for pizza. I did not unpack a thing and barely slept, not really believing I had actually left New York, however temporarily. 

Florida did not make me feel better immediately. It has been, at the time of writing, just over a week. But I’ve woken each day and written for at least a few hours, mostly working on a larger project that I hope will be my debut essay collection. I have done pilates and studied for my course, paid attention during my classes which are small and held in person. The day after I moved here, I went to the grocery store and, without thinking about it, washed and sorted all of my produce and put all of my groceries away neatly. Who have I become? I thought to myself. “Your voice sounds lighter, you’re happier there.” It isn’t something one friend has said to me, it has become the new Jesus Year chorus. 

June 21, 2024

I am not healed but I am healing. I am rough and nervous and optimistic, just like this essay. 

On Thursday night I went out with a friend. We had dinner and went to a nightclub and just after midnight I found her on the dance floor. 

“The designated driver is leaving, are you coming with me or Ubering?” I asked her. She joined me and asked if, instead of going straight home, we could go smoke a cigarette on the beach. 

“The beach is closed.” 

“So what?” We went. We sat and talked and looked at the moon. 

“Let’s swim.” I said. 

“Our clothes will get wet.” She told me. 

“Who cares? I drive a Jeep, it can get wet. But I’ll probably go in naked.” I do not like to ruin my clothes. And so under the light of the full, solstice moon, I ran into the Atlantic. I did not intend the symbolism but it felt like a baptism, like I was going to be okay. Right foot, left foot, like I may have found a path worth walking. 

I love you so very much and I’ve missed you terribly, 

Hannah Stella