Silver Linings - People I’ve Loved

This lady hug print hangs on the gallery wall above my couch, wedged between a photo of a cold, unbothered Bernie Sanders at the 2021 Inauguration and a framed quote from a Pablo Neruda poem. I remember first seeing this print in one of Beacon's many novelty and niche gift stores and immediately being drawn to it. There's a tenderness here. I foolishly walked away without it and spent the next week tracking down stores in Manhattan that sold the artist's work before resigning to buy it online. I pulled a few sus hits for lady hug butts before finally Googling the store to find the brand behind the print - People I've Loved.

People I've Loved is the brain child / brand of artist Carissa Potter. Their tagline reads - We Make Goods That Inspire You To Be Closer To The People You Love, Including Yourself. They make a host of gentle and sentimental artwork and merchandise all of which evoke a sense being held by a warm hand. Very on brand for me. I'm secretly aspiring to be Carissa Potter and model a lot of my own work on her newsletters and prints. Every week she says something that always turns on a little lightbulb in my brain. This week it's a commentary on silver linings. In her Instagram Live, Carissa invited author Eirinie Carson to talk about her new book The Dead are Gods , where Eirinie explores love and grief after the passing of her best friend. As a part of this conversation Carissa and Eirinie talk about the purpose of art spinning horrible situations into something beautiful or evocative. But despite their ability to spin shit into gold, they hate the idea of silver linings. And I do too.

I have a comically horrifically bad life. Structurally, it's good - the job is good , the dog is good, the apartment is good (except for the electric stove) the friends are very very good, the family is chaotic, but ultimately good. I, would consider myself good, in a very 17 years in Catholic School, strong moral code, Blessed are the poor in spirit kind of way, not emotionally nor psychogically. But I've somehow always found myself in absolutely horrific situations, not brought out by anything I've done, just purely horrific luck. In A to B to C, I'll outline deeper. Chaotic and traumatic upbringing and household that I truly can not even begin to scratch the surface of. There are situations that I think Jerry Springer nor Maury could touch. I was heavily bullied in elementary and middle school. Evidently being the smartest in the class and a dark-skinned overweight black girl did not gain me the popularity I'd hoped as an aspiring Oprah. On my day of peak confidence, Picture Day, I put together an outfit that I think is so creative and groundbreaking, inspired by my recent discovery of the show What Not to Wear. I don my mother's orange leather heels, wrap myself in a multi-colored sweater and tiered ombre dress. I walk through the doors of Our Lady of Perpetual Help ready to showcase my couture look for the Ms. Magnotta's 5th grade class, only to be hideously ridiculed upon entry into my classroom. I round out the day with several other embarrassing moments - tripping and spilling chocolate milk on my dress in front of my crush crush Joey Dizenzo. In college, I bared my ass to a crowded amphitheater while dancing for the South Indian culture show. And in adulthood, there are many notable horrors including the time where slept with white supremacist and a misogynist, by accident of course, on a date that ended with him yelling "I hate Black Lives Matter" to me from across the bedroom. I tried to correct that in my next partner and then went on to date just a misogynist.

Horrifically, comically (mostly out of necessity) bad.

When I talk about any one particular bad experience, I will inevitably be met with some combination of pity and some sort of unsolicited silver lining wrapped response. "That's absolutely awful. Well at least you didn't get married to him. Now you'll have really high standards(trauma, baggage) for the next person. Well if it wasn't for this horrific event, you wouldn't be the joyful gracious blah blah blah you are today" . I'd probably rather be somewhere else if I'm honest. Would I really need to endure all of these things to have gone through any semblance of personally growth and development. I think we can accept that these things that happened to us were terrible, without the use of a silver lining to push our acceptance of them. I don't think we need silver linings to make meaning out of the horrible things that happen to us.

I think the thing I hate most about the way silver linings are offered, are that they always imply that our suffering had purpose, as if this thing needed to happen for us to tease out some good outcome from a bad situation. But imagine finding a purpose in the death of parent who worked tirelessly to and unselfishly to support everyone but died in a particularly cruel and painful manner. What's the purpose of going through severe mental illness and a psychological breakdown driven to the point of suicidal ideation after undergoing several traumatic events? I can't say that there is a purpose for these things and if so, would it really make any of it worth it? And so while these quests for silver linings are well-intentioned, if most of us had to pick, if we had the choice, we wouldn't go through any of these awful experiences in the fist place.

There's a difference between purpose and meaning. Purpose being a the motivator, the why behind something that happens. Pousse had to die in Orange is the New Black to show the abject cruelty of the prison system. Brian, your dog in elementary school had to be hit with a car in order for to appreciate the joy he provided to you. That's why you have 4 dogs that you love so much now. But we don't need to do these things to find meaning from these events. Maybe there is no little to no purpose in the tragic life events that come to pass. We can accept that they come, sometimes subtly, sometimes all at once unexpectedly, because life is just random and unplanned and unfair. And we can accept that. And despite all that, we can find meaning in this shit life. We can take the shitty raw materials that life gives us and find ways to push ourselves towards something greater and better. We can accept that we didn't deserve the things that happened to us and the pain we felt. We can accept that there is no purpose or silver lining inherent in the situations that we face. But we can work to make life mean something, to use our grief and our pain to push us to towards something meaningful.

Life happens. Bad things happen, often to good people. But find art, find love, find meaning, not silver linings.

Keeping Tabs