Megan O’Laughlin

Ashland MFA Candidate

THE SEA OF TREES

When she hears stories, my 7-year-old daughter will ask, “Is it real?” These stories tell of big things: death, weather, and war. She knows the stories from books, movies, and even dinnertime conversations. Her eyes sparkle, and she wants to know: is there a jade rabbit living on the moon? How does a woman with snakes on her head turn men into stone, and why? Did Buddha really sit under that tree for so long? 

These stories paint a picture of the world, and they answer questions. Most of all, they fill a desperate need for humans: to explain something unexplainable. To make it all make sense. 

The smaller stories are part of our lives, too- family stories explaining who we are, how we got here. These personal mythologies tell us what is dangerous, when to run, and how to fight. The messages may not always be explicit, but they are unmistakably present. We drink these stories, and we dress our holiday meals with them. As we ingest them, they become a part of us, but a part that can make us sick. 

Then we pass the stories along to the next generation.

Like so many, my family chews on scarcity, wrapped up in the gloomy tales of my grandmother’s farm during the Great Depression. Like so many, we are intoxicated by the meritocratic fairy tale of the Irish immigrants who went from poverty to success in just a few generations. Like so many, we are poisoned by the story of war and what it takes away.

Then there's another story about a silent sickness that grinds away at a person, slowly but surely, subtle until it's not. And unlike in war, you die by your own hand. 

I can't make it all make sense. 

If my daughter asked me, "Is it real?" about the story of the poisons of war trauma or suicidal depression, I'd have to tell her, "Yes, these stories are as real as the trees outside the window." And, because she's at that magical age, she will talk to the trees in what she says is their language —the language of movement— her arms up in the air like the woody cedar branches, swaying in the wind.

____

In Japan, the Aokigahara forest grows out of the lava rock floor created from the past eruptions of nearby Mount Fuji. The porous lava rock absorbs sound, so the breath is like a roar in your ears as you walk the lonely forest paths. Aokigahara is called the Sea of Trees because it looks like the sea from the top of Mount Fuji, trees swaying in the wind like waves of water. It is also called the Suicide Forest because so many people have walked into the quiet woods to take their own lives.

I haven’t been to Aokigahara or Japan, but I live in the Pacific Northwest with our cedar trees dripping with sea fog. I looked at pictures of Aokigahara online and watched a horror movie about it, full of ghouls and silly jump scares. Aokigahara looks like the Pacific Northwest forests, with those strong trees and countless ferns bursting from the forest floor. I can imagine that familiar smell: mossy, damp, woody.

In the Pacific Northwest, we also have gruesome death stories that mark the land. The stories tell of killers who steal women in the night, white-faced monsters who take over the land, and then have the privilege to forget history.

Looking online, I found a photograph of a sign at the entrance to the Aokigahara forest. It reads (translated from Japanese): “Your life is a precious gift from your parents. Please think about your parents, siblings, and children. Don’t keep it to yourself. Talk about your troubles.”

____ 

I was fourteen years old when my uncle died. I recall the phone ringing, followed by mom screaming. Then —eventually— a quiet house. I’m not sure what really happened and what is just a story in my head; memories can be slippery and difficult like that. 

When that phone call reached through the lines from Minnesota to Idaho, I was already depressed, regularly asking myself, what is wrong with me? I considered myself an annoying teenager, used to being called weird, told I was too much. I discovered drinking and smoking helped. I felt lighter when drunk and breathed better with the cigarettes, if that makes sense.

I regularly walked to school with three friends. They were cool and stylish, with flannel shirts tied around their waists and long, straight hair, while my hair was frizzy and full of cowlicks. One day, my friends handed me a note on blue-lined paper. It said they needed a break from me and wouldn’t walk to school with me anymore. 

While my mom went to Minnesota to be with the family, I stayed home in Idaho. My dad drove me to school in our red Jeep, and I saw the three heads with straight hair: my friends walking down the sidewalk. I looked down into my lap and told myself: Stop being so annoying. Why, why, why? 

Alone with my thoughts, the truth usually came out. If other people found me annoying and weird, I found myself even more. I hated my impatient mind that got so fixated on things. I hated my loud voice. I hated my body which was becoming rounded and tall. I thought about my uncle and wondered, Why, why, why? And then, with great fear, Am I going to end up doing that too? 

_____

Perhaps family history is like a quilt instead of a story, a poison, a food, or a painting. When stitched together, the seemingly disparate pieces make a whole. 

I've collected the stories about my uncle's death, a messy patchwork blanket I've sewn for nearly three decades. In a family like mine, with difficulties like this, we can be quiet, even secretive. We don't know how to talk about these things. The quilt, stitched with this quiet shame, absorbs the sounds of our voices like the lava rock of Aokigahara. 

One square is made from his old t-shirt. After his death, boxes of his stuff arrived at our house. I grabbed the turquoise t-shirt with bright red letters that read EAT AT ED'S. I wore it regularly to parties in college, where I drank until the kegs dried up and stumbled home, sometimes alone and sometimes not, and laughed when someone commented on my shirt. EAT AT ED'S. People at the party asked me, "Who's Ed?" and "Can I be Ed?" We'd crack up and spill beer on our shoes. But inside my laughter, that question remained: Why, why, why?

One square is made from my uncle's old Pendelton jacket, which my mom gave to my husband years ago. He hangs it lovingly in the closet like he does with all his clothes. He wears it on cold days, pats the pockets, and says, "This coat is so warm. It's over 30 years old!" Sometimes I want to cry when I see him in that vibrant red fabric: my kind-faced husband filling the wool coat with his broad shoulders.

One square is made from the beige upholstery from my grandparents' home, where I sometimes stayed in the summers. I locked myself out when I went outside to smoke and woke Boppy, my grandfather, with my late night knocks on the door. Their son —my uncle—was a void in the family, a void at family get-togethers, a void in our lives. That was the message, or what I thought was the message: avoid. Don't speak of it. 

My grandparents took me along to the lakeside where a tree sat in his memory, his name on a small plaque. My grandparents stood silently as they stared at the water and held each other. They seemed so small. I didn't dare say a word. By then, it had been four years since his death. They will never get over this, I realized. 

One square is made from a dog's fur, from Buddy, a companion to the end, left with my uncle's body for days until my grandparents found them. I'm not sure about this square because my memory is old, replayed so many times that I'm not sure what is real or what my mind accidentally created when it tried to fill in the gaps. I'm unsure if Buddy was his name or if he was even there, a ghost dog in more ways than one. My hazy memories are composed of other people's stories, shared by my cousins over the years as we've gathered and recounted our memories. How did you find out? What did your mom do? Why did he do it? What do you remember about him? On that last question, I barely had anything to share. Why, why, why?

One square is green for the laced marijuana my cousin and I smoked on a muggy Minnesota night. I saw my uncle. He stood in the corner of the room, blank-faced. Perhaps it was my intoxicated panic, but I swore he told me to kill myself. 

One square is glittery and silver, a scratchy thrift store fabric. At age seventeen, I wore that silver shirt every day. It covered my arms, which broke out regularly in angry red patches, communicating what I could not. I hid my body, drank whenever I could, and smoked whenever and whatever I found. People asked me why I wore so many clothes, even on hot days. "I'm allergic to the sun," I said. But I knew that it was an allergy to myself, for I was a reckless drunkard of a teenager and I had been discarded, used, and forgotten.  

Another square is made from cigarette filters, Camels, to be exact–my favorite cigarettes, constantly in my hand or mouth, a remedy for my overfilled mind. Camel in hand, I could make a sunny afternoon of day drinking go sideways with my jabbering, annoying ways. I remember the red-eyed end of one particular Camel. I held it to my arm on that bright day on my friend's porch and heard it sizzle on my skin. I'm not supposed to be here! I yelled. I'm too fucked up! Why, why, why? With that pocked scar in a small circle, my pale skin could also be part of the quilt, the square next to the Camel filters, and now this tragedy is a horror story because only serial killers and demons make things out of human skin. 

Despite all the tattoos I have, that scar sits uncovered, uncolored. I regularly look at the scar and feel its gentle ridges, beholding the little dots. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I say to the scar, a tiny portal to that sobbing teenager who didn't understand. 

One square of the quilt is made of the pills he took. My mom told me he tried to take his life three times. And now, I think nearly all of us in the family take some kind of pill for our depression. I learned that my uncle was taking a new medication, but it didn't help quickly enough; it possibly even made things worse. It was the 90's. If you think depression is hard to manage now, imagine it 30 years ago. 

____

My grandparents encouraged me and showed a dedicated interest in my life. My painting hung in their kitchen. They printed out years of my travel emails and placed them in a blue folder labeled Megan: Travels. They told me they hoped I’d one day write a book about my adventures. When we visited their home in Minnesota, they insisted that my husband eat the leftover food. "He's not a garbage disposal!" I exclaimed as my Nana scraped leftovers onto his plate. He only wanted to be a good grandson to them, so he shrugged as he chewed, mouth full of potatoes.

We sat in my grandparents' house on their beige upholstery, just a few years before my Boppy died. I proudly explained my new therapy specialty of dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT). I told my Boppy all about it- the research, the skills, the fact that it is a treatment for people who feel suicidal. 

My Boppy, retired eye surgeon, talented woodworker, skilled sailor, army veteran, and classical art and music lover, seemed interested in DBT. He read about it on his tablet for a long time that night. His eyes seemed to sparkle as a shadow crossed his face.

I also saw this shadowy/ sparkly look at a fund-raising dinner with some work colleagues. My friend and fellow therapist introduced us to one of the organization's founders, a woman who later spoke at the podium about the suicide of her child. 

"This is my DBT consultation team," my colleague said and introduced us by name. 

"Oh, you're all DBT therapists?" she said, brightening, and then, "Wow, I love what you do.” In a quieter voice she said, "thank you, thank you, thank you." I noticed that when she said it, just as when others say thank you, it quiets the why, why, why? 

A shadow fell across woman’s face. Can you imagine her question, my Boppy's question, the questions of all those left behind: What if my loved one had been saved? and Why, why, why? Maybe they would have been saved by a different medicine, a different treatment, a different childhood, a different something. The question is a wish that the loved one never walked into the forest. They never felt the need to go there in the first place. 

____

In Japan, folktales attribute the suicides in Aokigahara to the Yurei, the unhappy ghosts. There are different kinds of Yurei–the sad spirits of mothers, souls lost at sea, and mischievous children. They wear white, and their hair is messy and windblown. As they move, they leave a trail of flames behind them, yet the forest never burns down.

The stories of the Yurei explain something that doesn't make sense; they answer the questions of why, why, why? And yet, we are left haunted by the Yurei. I wonder which ghosts we will see when we confront death. And are these ghosts, or are they reflections, images of our traumas projected before us? 

____

Like me, my little daughter doesn't deal well with mistakes. One day, she practiced writing the letter J with her little hand. She rips up her paper and screams, "I AM SO DUMB! I AM THE WORST GIRL IN THE WORLD! I KNOW YOU HATE ME!" I tell her, "No, no. It's okay! I love you!" 

But she doesn't hear me, and I know why. She only hears that harsh voice. So dumb, worst girl, so dumb. Then, in my mind's eye, a past and future nightmare: a creative, sparkling teen who burns her skin, who gets so drunk she can't feel her body, who sees herself as an annoying to everyone. Why, why, why?

Time is the remedy for such episodes. Eventually, my little daughter wears herself out. I recall what I have learned, what I have often told my clients and students: The emotion goes up and down, like a wave, with a beginning, middle, and end. No emotion lasts forever. At the end of her wave, she shuffles out of her room in socked feet, arms outstretched, dried tears on her round cheeks. She sits in my lap and hugs my neck like a baby koala. "Mama," she says sadly. 

"You do that sometimes," my husband told me one day as he washed dishes. Hands deep in the suds, he pointed to our daughter's room with his elbow, where she wailed on her bed during one of her episodes. Prickly skinned, I wanted to reject that statement, but I knew it was true. A simple mistake can incite that cruel voice in my mind, with its repetitive chants: So stupid. So annoying. Why, why, why? Of course, my daughter never heard this from me, but she now hears it in her mind, too.

I imagined the flaming ghosts as they move through the generations of my family, a curse of burning sickness for each of us. I decided to tell my daughter the truth- a new story. "You know when you get upset and have those mean thoughts?" I asked. She nodded. "It's not just you. I have those mean thoughts too." 

My daughter asked me, "You know how it feels?" I nodded and then continued, "This happens in our family. Our thoughts can be loud and mean, and it can make us sick. This is why I take medicine. And why I meditate so much. And why I have a job where I teach people about their feelings, because it happens to other people too. We can learn to love ourselves instead and not believe the mean voices. I am trying to do this, and I will help you do it too." 

She hugged my neck, my little koala. "You'll help me?" she asked. 

"Yes," I told her. "It's the most important thing we can ever do." 

Later, we drove alongside the sea. The tall cedars trees cast long, dancing shadows across the road. I asked her what she remembered about the story I told her. "I just remember you," she said. "And I remember you helping me." As she smiled at me from the backseat, her eyes sparkled. It was as real as the sea of trees swaying outside the window.

__________

MEGAN E. O'LAUGHLIN (SHE/THEY) WRITES ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH, MYTHOLOGY, AND GHOSTS. SHE WORKS AS A PSYCHOTHERAPIST SPECIALIZING IN TRAUMA RECOVERY AND TEACHES MINDFULNESS CLASSES. SHE IS CURRENTLY WORKING ON AN MFA IN CREATIVE NONFICTION FROM ASHLAND UNIVERSITY. MEGAN LIVES ON A PENINSULA BY THE SEA WITH HER SPOUSE, DAUGHTER, AND DOGS.