Prozac and Jesus and Whimsical Carousels
A brief essay on the arts.
Recently, I watched Out of Body: Noah Kahan, and it made me feel all the things in the best way. I shed a tear the way one does when a good friend confides in you and you realize you’re a trusted person. You know what I mean? Maybe not.
One of my favorite lyrics of his is:
Wind chill this year, stole the word from my tongue.
Or:
But it made you a stranger
And filled you with anger
Now I'm third in the lineup
To your Lord and your Savior
His lyrics often wrestle with family, lose faith, and the internal struggle to understand his purpose, something I know a bit too well. Learning that he too is a middle child? Icing on the cake for me. I am here for my fellow middle-child representation — as if we don’t insert ourselves enough.
“That’s the thing about art”,” I interrupt my enchilada making it’s way to my mouth seated across from my husband.
“It’s meant to be about you. It’s how you interpret it. It can be whatever you need it to be.”
He was caught up in feeling like he couldn’t relate to a song anymore after the artist explained his lyrics, defending his logic to me as to why it resonated with him. I quickly corrected him like any good wannabe humanities teacher would and said “no no dear, you don’t need to defend why you felt something. That’s that point of it all - to feel something.”
Take this painting for example. The other day I became completely enamored with it after the artist shared their art on Tiktok and instantly added it to my Etsy cart. Her shop is here by the way.
Maybe it spoke to me or maybe I was just in my luteal phase, but it thrusted me into a feeling I hadn’t felt in a long time. One of blissful giggles when my mother and grandmother were able-bodied and took me to the mall that had a carousel. I’d ride and ride and wave to them for what felt like all day. I loved riding on my imaginary horse and pretending I wasn’t in some mall soon-forgotten by Ohio. Or in a living room on a pretend horse not attached to a carousel.
It’s interesting how memories surface sometimes for me, almost like someone took a penny and scratched away at my brain to uncover the image. Scratch, scratch, jackpot.
To me this piece is about a horse breaking away almost in defiance from the routine of the carousel. She’s not playing along anymore and the music has abruptly halted, dismantling the path she was told to go down.
At least, that’s what it felt like when I was younger and began experiencing life for all it had to offer — and take from me.
My grandma Sharon is one of the strongest people I know, having survived a family that barely exists because they’ve almost all killed themselves.
I’m sorry that was dark; I think it’s important to mention the dark. Too often does it get overlooked and I think the family members who passed due to their illness are worth remembering.
“It’s because of Prozac and Jesus that I’m here,” she jokes. Our dark humor teeters between the invisible phone lines we connect on.
My mother on the other hand is all but consumed physically and mentally by the devastating illness called Multiple Sclerosis. On top of this, she believes in Jesus too, except a different kind than her mom does. Medical intervention? Heavens no. There’s a dash of delusion in the way she speaks and sometimes I wonder if it’s the disease or if it’s the disease.
She won’t entertain medication; not for her brain or her body’s sake. And it breaks my heart in an increasingly frustrating way that I’ve had to step away some days before coming back to resolving to meet her where she’s comfortable.
Instead, she entertains revised memories and wishful superstitions, telling me “there’s no cure, but I believe in miracles.” I believe in miracles, too, and they sometimes look like medicine.
Then there’s me: the daughter trying to break free of the generational curse that chases me the way the horses on the carousel do. My own illness manifests into asking questions and consuming anger like a bedtime snack. Having had so many moments I wished to get back on that carousel, the one where I knew the routine and where motherly figures stood by and smiled at me, no one fearing for my salvation.
My salvation is complicated, I guess. Because on paper it looks like I don’t believe but if you listened to all my conversations with the trees — or the nights spent staring up at moon — you’d recognize the prayers buried beneath it all.
And so in honor of the women forgotten by time who were locked up for their delusions, and the women who so diligently pray each night that my soul be saved, I take my Prozac and say a prayer to Jesus, for fear I don’t really know anything at all.
