Off Page.

    When you read a book—even a biography—not everything is included. Perhaps they don’t mention FDR going to the bathroom or eating a single meal, but you trust that, off the page, he ate and shit his way through the presidency. The editor decides these details don’t add anything to the plot, so they’re cut.

    But life isn’t like a book, and these little details actually do matter in making a life. Eating a solid meal to fuel your body, working out and feeling blood pulse through your veins, breathing fresh air—having moments just inside your stupid, human body, far more animal than any of us care to admit—matters. This is what makes up the bulk of living.

Ninety-nine percent of life is off page.

    We spend far more time washing dishes or taking showers than having life-changing moments. And yet even life-changing character development can occur off page. Say, in the last chapter, the main character has a particularly difficult day, and the next chapter opens with: “Over the past five years, Anton continued to regret this behavior, replaying that day in his head and all the things he could have done differently.” Five years occurred off page. Anton has clearly grown and changed. The author decided you don’t need the details—just the end result.

    When this blog started, I often went months without posting anything. There was so much off-page time. In 2015, I posted only three poems. At the time, I was a full-time caregiver to my first husband. I worked part-time. I taught him how to walk and talk. I emptied a shit bag daily. I bathed him. I cleaned an open wound, careful not to move too quickly. I was busy. I assure you, there was much going on off page.

    I barely even have a journal entry from that period. I was simply too busy with the next task to think—much less daydream, much less feel emotions, much less consider what I wanted or needed. I was consumed by a to-do list of care for another human being. My body shrank quietly while everything else demanded more. I reached a new adult low weight.

Being off page then was not a philosophy. It was survival. It worked.

    At some point, when I wasn't just surviving anymore, I became significantly more “productive.” I leaned into the blog. I leaned even harder into being on page. And for a while, it was fun. A challenge.

In hindsight, it felt inevitable.

As if by design, I turn everything I enjoy into something punishing.

    It happens slowly, through my own actions. I move fast, go deep, overcommit. I did it with alcohol. I did it with drugs. I did it with work. I did it with love. I reached bottom quickly, and then—just as quickly—scrambled toward relief. Only drank 5 years before I clung to sobriety and yet I still sit next to people in AA meetings who lived that life for decades. I don’t know how they survived it. My intensity makes me look like a fraud, even to myself.

    I don’t like hurting. I don’t like wanting things until they hurt to want. Over time, you would think I’ve learned how to leave before desire turns on me. But it's always hindsight, baby. One could say this was the primary reason for my divorce from my first husband.

    This blog has always been a repository for some of my darkest, most negative thoughts, and for a long time it felt like a relief to share them in a safe space. It was exciting in August 2024 when I wrote thirty-seven pieces. The productivity felt limitless. I’ve always been productive in some fashion—obsessive, overwhelming, too much. Or so I’m told. I only really notice it occasionally. A few weeks ago, I noticed it clearly.

    I tried to confide in this blog, my longtime confidant, but could manage only a few vague, petulant sentences. Cryptic posts. Fragments better suited to an AIM away message soaked in teenage hormones and quiet rage—as if I were daring the internet to notice me.

    I hope you understand this as I mean it: sometime around 2020, I became an obsessive documenter of my life. I can tell you every book I’ve read in the past five years. The tarot cards I pulled on July 19, 2022—Three of Wands and The Star. How many times I read the AA Daily Reflection in 2024. How many letters I sent, and to whom. I’ve even saved every letter I’ve received.

On shelves and in boxes: the Caroline Archive.
Curated. Cultivated. Composed.

    You’d think I were a U.S. president building a presidential library. As if historians will one day analyze the inner life of Caroline, minor figure, no body. As if I’m a bird Darwin is studying. Even though no one will read my planners or journals but me, the truth is clear: I no longer live off page.

I haven’t been off page in a long time.

    Not like I was in 2015—when I wrote only three poems but also threatened divorce, and my first husband threatened suicide. Eventually, we both followed through. So much can happen when you aren’t tracking, writing, documenting, cataloguing, talking, explaining yourself into coherence. Maybe if I get a little more off page, my life could begin moving again.

    What if I just made dinner, ate dinner, shit and pissed—did the things that happen off page—and lived without worrying where it was going? That strange, luscious, beautiful breadth of living I keep circling but never quite entering.

What if I simply took my two prescription nasal sprays twice a day?

Worth a try, for a bit.