On Change and Apotheosis
The essay below was originally published on December 13, 2021.
Welcome to Past Bangers, a series where I re-publish some of my old work because I don't think they got enough attention the first time. Yes, this is a self-aggrandizing project, and yes, I am back after months of accidental radio silence once again. This week’s past banger is from June 2019, one that I wrote not long after the previous entry. Now that we are in the final stretch of 2021, I thought it would be fitting to share this one — not just because this essay is about endings, not just because the last Evangelion movie came out this past year, but because a version of myself is, as well, coming to a close. I have changed so much in just one year alone. What I wanted (and what I thought I wanted) in January is light-years away from what I want now. And who I will be this time next year is another person entirely, whose heart and desires I can’t yet conceive of. The process of shedding one’s old self is always bittersweet, but I can’t wait to meet that new person — that future Jonah. So, on that note, goodbye to all Evangelions (all old constructs, safeties, and bodies), and for what it’s worth, congratulations.
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For a number of reasons, my session with my therapist this week was my last. None of them personal — for the last two years, she was my foremost, and sometimes only, confidante — and all of them bureaucratic. No matter. I closed out the session by telling her about Neon Genesis Evangelion, which I had just binged over the weekend when it was released on Netflix. The series, I said to her, ends with a kind of ridiculous scene, with everyone standing around protagonist Ikari Shinji in a circle, clapping and congratulating him on his emotional growth. But it’s still moving because you know just how hard Shinji fought (and fought himself) to get to that point. As a lark, when our session ended and I was about to leave, she stood from her chair and clapped for me as well.
I am scared, of course, to move forward without her. Like Shinji, I am terrified of most things in life, I tend to avoid the things I think will hurt me, and I indulge in loneliness far too often. And both of us, our trauma a heavy thing to try and get out from under. I think, in a way, our greatest sin is our love of stasis. If only, if only, if only, I wrote once, I had the strength to change.
Sometimes I dream of summer. We are in summer right now, but I mean a summer I can take advantage of, a sun bright but never blinding, car rides with the top down and hair flowing out backwards like a tremendous wave, music set to Lana Del Rey, whose songs always smell of longing. Of course, this is all impossible. I don’t even have a car. And it’s always too hot.
I need to stop dreaming about things that will never happen. And nostalgia has never served me well, not these fatal love affairs with the past, getting stuck in time loops that never feed me. Remember: this deep ocean you know, the one you always seem to drown yourself in, she dries up eventually too. Time, this cruel, unerring god, time is what will save you — that will put its blocks between you and the bad things that came before. The strength, I think, comes after.
Things do change. They change quickly. The seasons inevitably change, and my mood changes. I have changed, my therapist says to me, in the two years since I stepped into her office. And I tell her yes, whatever had laid down like a weight on my chest now feels a little lighter, and I am more at peace with myself. I had written in a letter to a friend several months ago that I had found peace, and that I wished her the same. This seems like a lie in retrospect and yet not a lie. I haven’t cried in a while, and the last significant time was probably when I first opened my heart to my therapist to spill out all of the hot, rancid blood that had been silently poisoning me for years. On my way out of the office, my therapist sent me off with the same words she always did: “Take care of yourself.” This time, it meant something else.