Thank God Jeremy Renner Wrote a Fucking Book

I am trying to be more open about my bipolar disorder. While I take responsibility for it in my personal life—managing my symptoms with CBT, taking my meds—I tend to see it as something to be ashamed of. The root is that something is wrong with me. I am outside; I am other. I mask when I am around others. I filter myself to be more palatable. I am grateful for the presence of certain friends and family where I don’t have to do that. But I do shove it in a closet—pushing, jabbing, fighting—making it fit where I want it to go—away, out of sight. But then it comes roaring out. It is a part of me. It is what makes me smart and creative. It’s what gives me my empathy and open-mindedness. It is the same as having green eyes or curly hair.

            I used to see mania as a euphoria. Now, I see it as a plague. It has evolved. I am productive, creative, a steam engine charging toward my career—a future—a home safe in LATAM that I see so clearly through holes punched in a paper, as I put it to a friend. But I can’t sleep. My thoughts race and oppress me—a mind so loud I’m shouting, “Let me out, please, let me out. Be quiet. Be fucking quiet.” A life without rest is no life at all. I try to lean in whenever I can—use these unique manic abilities to get shit done. But at the end of the day, when all is silent and done, I think of Coyotes by Don Edwards and I mourn this curse I’ve been stuck with. A lifelong grappling on a bouldering wall of mania and depression. I went bouldering for the first time yesterday. Something about it. A metaphor, perhaps. A yanking out of the closet. An argument with my being. It was a challenge I enjoyed.

            Werner Herzog made a documentary about Timothy Treadwell entitled Grizzly Man. I connected with this story—this person. A troubled soul. Someone who felt so alone in the civilized world—so alone in a crowd or a city among other humans—so sick of masking—that he went to live with the grizzly bears in Alaska. He documented it all on camera—an existential wonderland of footage. Some could see it as crazy, but I saw myself in Timothy Treadwell. I too feel other. I too feel lonely. I too feel so hopelessly different I want to run away from it all. I can’t outrun my mind. But perhaps I can outrun others’ opinions of me. Perhaps I can outrun my past hospital stay. Maybe I can outrun the screaming, the panic attacks, the tears. Perhaps I can outrun the cuts—now scars. Or maybe not. I think he was trying that same thing. And he found his home out there with the bears. The danger enthralled him. He saw more humanity in those creatures than I suspect he had ever been shown in his life before. I think about my own life—the mere handful of people I feel a soul connection with—people who not only understand—they feel similarly. A rare thing for someone like me.

            Timothy Treadwell died at the hands of one of the grizzly bears he dedicated his life to. How will I meet my end? I had only hope that it be similarly doing something I love.

            Geronimo’s gone.

            A couple nights ago, wired as I can be, I browsed Spotify searching for alivio via some audio. I cannot sleep without a double dose of ZzQuil, an oscillating fan, and some form of rain noises or a relaxing audiobook. And there it was, recommended to me, a memoir by Jeremy Renner.

            God, I hate Jeremy Renner. I hate his snowplow story. I hate his movies, save for Wind River, which I primarily watched for Elizabeth Olsen. But I clicked play. And I slept. I didn’t make it through the first chapter. I used up all my free listening minutes as the book played through the night. I woke up and thought, seriously? That was what it took? Thank God Jeremy Renner wrote a fucking book. Sometimes, the answer is some form of magical divine I can’t explain, a beautiful mystery I don’t feel the need to quantify.

            Sometimes I try so fucking hard when the answer is quite simple, quite silent, and right in front of me, like that book. I write about this idea of home, how it’s not always tied to a place. How it’s not always where you are born. Home was sitting at my bistro table with my dear bouldering friend last night, holding hands, and understanding. But sometimes, home actually is a place. I’ve been searching for that place my whole life. I thought perhaps it would make sense. I thought perhaps it would come down from the clouds and present itself to me. But it was quiet. It was here. It was whispering to me. LATAM. A place I am drawn to time and time again. A language I once tried so hard not to learn. It stuck itself on me, and I fell in love—7 years ago in Guatemala. I’ve been chasing it ever since. Learning Spanish. Then Peru, and now, finally, Argentina in November. Home. It’s there, in my heart, all along. Waiting for me. Waiting for me to take that leap. It’s the kind of thing, like my bipolar disorder, that I grapple with and stick in the closet. Because it’s tough. It involves letting go. It requires open hands. It is about surrender. I poke more holes in the paper. I listen to Coyotes. I remember Timothy Treadwell. I think about my own writing, my own essence—a freelancing career I am trying to start. It doesn’t make sense. Freelancing? LATAM? Being poor? But when your soul calls you home, you’re a fool if you don’t listen. You’re a fool if you don’t listen to Jeremy Renner’s fucking book.