and most frequently asked question in the world : why are we all here? The persistent need to make sense of life, to gain some semblance of control in an otherwise uncertain world, is one of the few things that unites us all. No matter how much we gain or how much we learn, there's no escaping the reality that nothing is permanent and a lot is unknowable.
To temper our uneasiness about what we might lose, how we might hurt, and how desperately we want to believe there's some reason for it all, we cling to ideas of what it all might mean—what the events of our lives mean about the grand picture, what our accomplishments mean about us, what we mean to the people we meet, and what our lives mean in the context of history. We can never know for sure what life itself means, but we can know that we mean something in a potentially meaningless world. When we realize that our actions might be our only hope at living a meaningful life, it's easy to feel paralyzed. After all, purpose is something deliberate, something grand, something beautiful—something people would want to talk about. Meaning can be a high-pressure situation if we don't trust ourselves to identify it and then live in accordance with it.
At twenty-four years old, I'd officially set up shop in Manhattan, where I planned to become a Broadway star. I was rarely sure I liked myself, but I was certain I loved myself when I gutted myself onstage and filled the hole with a fictional character. Also: everyone else knew that I came to New York to become someone. I felt desperate to succeed on a massive scale—to take that small bit of joy I felt while in a costume and pump it into an aura of greatness that everyone could see, admire, and respect.
Going to New York was easy; doing something when I got there, not so much. If I pursued my purpose and failed, I'd have to acknowledge that I wasn't good enough to do what I was meant to do, and worse yet, I'd confirm what I assumed to be my family members’ suspicions: that I was inadequate and a horrible disappointment. You could have watched me from afar for a lifetime and never have known it, but you'd have been certain if you looked into my eyes for even a second: for the vast majority of my life, I believed the words Lori Deschene meant “worthless.” In fear of confirming this under a magnifying spotlight, I tucked myself into a hole of a home the moment I got to New York. If I chose to sit on the sidelines, I figured, I wasn't choosing not to try; I was just waiting for the right time.
I worked for four hours a day as a telemarketer and lived in a week-to-week single-room-occupancy building, somewhat like a dorm for crackheads, prostitutes, and little girls lost. On most afternoons, after work, I filled a small rolling suitcase with the necessities I didn't want stolen if someone ransacked my place for drug money and then made the trek to the Times Square Internet Café. After finding a relatively odorless spot to camp out through the evening, I'd dive into Craigslist, hoping to emerge at the surface of reality with some answer as to what I should do and who I should be. I looked for jobs; I searched for roommate situations; I browsed the event section to fantasize about hobbies I might take up; I even frequented the platonic personals section for friendships. Although I made a few peripheral connections, I knew I wasn't going to really open myself up to new people and experiences. It was like I was creating a vision board for a life I had no intention of realizing in the foreseeable future. I was pretty much just going through the motions. I was “trying” to fill my life, while secretly feeling opposed to the risk it would involve.
One month into my daily web surfing, I met Rich and Jim, two middle-aged homeless men who looked more like suburbanites who'd simply been car-sprayed with a muddy rain puddle. Rich and Jim owned an online software-support company that went bankrupt after 9/11. Having put all their funding and energy into the business, they decided to go for broke—to stay in NYC despite their dwindling resources and to sacrifice everything for their goals, including their rent money. When I met them, they were thousands in the hole, with holes throughout their newspaper-lined coats, and close to having their servers shut down. Yet I never got any sense of anger or despondency from them. They were like cocky kids going for their black belts, each sparring against the best at the dojo—even massive bruises and bloody welts would be cool if they came with victory and bragging rights.
I immediately wanted to be like them. I imagined what it would feel like to package all of the events in my life as signs that I was on the right track, even when presented with abundant evidence to the contrary. I wondered how liberating it would feel to do only what I really wanted to do and to ostracize myself out of passion instead of fear. I ached for that sense of blind faith and obliviousness and hoped perhaps they'd give it to me, like a communicable disease they caught on the street. I wanted to gather everyone else's expectations and use them as fuel for a trash-can fire that would warm our odd little threesome.
Rich and Jim were my first friends in NYC, and after several months and hundreds of heart-opening conversations, I trusted them implicitly. One cold, bitter night as I was leaving the café, I heard Rich tell Jim the shelter was full. They'd put in yet another twelve-hour workday, and now they'd need to cuddle on a park bench and hope to avoid frostbite, pneumonia, and police harassment. My mouth knew what this meant before my brain formulated a thought: “I have some room,” I said aloud. By some I meant a three-by-three patch of floor, the only extra space, right next to my bed.
I knew I hardly knew them, but that same logic hadn't seemed to stop me from being alone with myself. For two weeks they shared my shoebox room, squished together on an air mattress like two oversize, mismatched spoons. They'd leave early in the morning, head to their storage space for clothes, and then go to the café to work on a deal. They were always “so close” to closing a deal. One day, after multiple late-payment warnings, their servers went down. All they'd sacrificed, all the cold nights they'd spent on the street, all the work they'd put in—gone, leaving them with nothing to show for their loyalty to possibility.
And I still had nothing but the hope of seeing them succeed. All the space another person might fill with her own ambition I overflowed with voyeuristic support for Rich and Jim. If I couldn't champion their comeback story and ride their rags-to-riches coattails as the one who believed in them, what I feared was reality would actually be true: my life meant nothing because I was doing nothing. With far more desperation than I registered, I pulled out my credit card and fronted them $700. They had to keep going. I had to hold on to their dream.
If my life were a movie, the next part would be the montage that's often referred to as “fun and games” in the film industry. You'd see them high-fiving at the computer as business appears to increase exponentially. You'd catch a glimpse of us doing a three-way Laverne &Shirley schlemiel-schlimazel in unified elation over everything that's going right. As a viewer, you'd know I made the right choice—that my risk paid off, and they were well on their way to creating a money-making, history-breaking venture. And then the impact would hit as strong as a frozen anvil to the face when you saw me standing alone in my room, the $100 in cash I kept hidden under my bed gone, and Rich and Jim no more than the dirty air mattress they popped before they left.
In one fell swoop, I lost my only friends and the illusion that I was living a life that meant something. How could I have been so naïve and pathetic? In a prolonged dramatic gesture, I walked over to the mirror, stared deeply into my empty eyes—murmuring that I was stupid, hopeless, and worthless—and then, putting all my anger into a forceful grab, shattered the mirror against the floor, the shards scattering all along the deflated bed.
I would sooner have slumped there forever, alone with shame and sorrow, than risk going into the world and proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that I meant nothing. Not that my life meant nothing—that I did. If you opened the dictionary to Lori Deschene, I feared, you'd wonder how a single piece of paper could express such a putrid-smelling, soul-sucking emptiness.
When I was younger, I used to say words repeatedly to wear them down, a lot like tossing food in the blender and completely forgetting it had once been a solid item. I'd start while I was coloring or doing some other solitary activity, murmuring, “Refrigerator. Refrigerator. Refriii-igeeeeraaatooor.” If I said it often enough, suddenly I began to forget what exactly it meant. It would even start to sound foreign, made up, empty—like a balloon suddenly losing its air. As I sat there staring at the broken glass, trying to numb myself against the indignity of my fearful choices, I found myself muttering, “Lori Deschene,” wondering what other people thought when