Turtles All the Way Down

“Once I start thinking about splitting the skin apart, I literally cannot not do it.”

Aza’s OCD consumes her life, as her obsessive thoughts and compulsions are inescapable. Aza cannot resist the urge to split open her callus with her fingernail, drain out the blood and pus, clean the wound thoroughly, then wrap her finger in a fresh Band-Aid. It does not matter that Aza recognizes this compulsion as illogical. She must go through the ritual to relieve her anxiety.

“True terror isn’t being scared; it’s not having a choice in the matter.” 

Aza is remembering when she was a young child and would pretend to fear the spiders Daisy threw at her for fun. At that age, Aza’s emotions still felt like play. Her father was still alive, and her world felt secure. Her OCD had not manifested itself in compulsions and obsessive thoughts she was helpless to disregard. This passage shows the reader that Aza is not afraid of the traditional things people generally fear, like spiders. Her greatest fear is lack of control over her thoughts and actions.

“I could remember Dad talking to me about my name, telling me, It spans the whole alphabet, because we wanted you to know you can be anything.” 

The primary trauma of Aza’s life was the sudden death of her father when she was young. From her recollections and the comments by her mother, it seems that Aza and her father had similar personalities. It is significant that right from birth, Aza’s father wanted her to have unlimited possibilities in who she decided to be. Aza’s name is unique to her, in contrast to Davis, who was branded from birth as his father’s “junior.” The contrast in Aza and Davis’s relationships with their fathers is reflected in their conceptions of what family is all about.

“I have these thoughts that Dr. Karen Singh calls “intrusives,” but the first time she said it, I heard “invasives,” which I like better, because, like invasive weeds, these thoughts seem to arrive at my biosphere from some faraway land, and then they spread out of control.” 

The semantic difference between the words “intrusive” and “invasive” highlights the difference in how Aza’s thoughts are perceived by Dr. Singh and herself. Dr. Singh describes the thoughts as nudging into the consciousness, unwanted and unbidden. Aza’s perception of her thoughts is that they are alien, all-pervasive, and out of her control. Aza’s obsessive thoughts drown out her logical counterarguments, the thoughts that could help her treat herself better, like an invading army.

“Worrying is the correct worldview. Life is worrisome.” 

While talking about Aza’s father, Aza’s mother thinks that Aza sounds “just like him” and that they had very similar personalities. Aza’s mother says he was a worrier, implying that that is a negative trait. Aza, because she is like her father, finds it normal to worry. There is a suggestion in this passage that Aza may have inherited her mental illness issues from her father, which makes her condition seem like a life-long challenge, rather than something that can be “fixed.”

“So often, nothing could deliver me from fear, but then sometimes, just listening to Daisy did the trick. She’d straightened something inside me, and I no longer felt like I was in a whirlpool or walking an ever-tightening spiral.” 

Daisy has been Aza’s best friend since they were young. So much of the time, Aza feels trapped inside her own mind, but sometimes Daisy’s endless chatter can permeate those inner thoughts. Daisy’s constancy in Aza’s life is therapeutic, even if Aza cannot express how much she loves and needs Daisy. Listening to Daisy can bring Aza back out into the world again, where Aza feels more like herself.

“‘Just be honest with Dr. Singh, okay? There’s no need to suffer.’ Which I’d argue is just a fundamental misunderstanding of the human predicament, but okay.”

Aza’s mother desperately wants Aza to feel “better,” and she hangs a great deal of hope on therapy and medication. Aza is convinced that therapy will not help her; she fears that taking medication will change her and take away her control over who she is. If, as Aza says, suffering is a fundamental part of the human experience, then nothing she does, including seeking help from Dr. Singh, will make any difference. Part of Aza’s suffering stems from hating her mental condition but being loathe to do anything to break out of her patterns of behavior.

“Me: You’re not your money.

Him: Then what am I? What is anyone?

Me: I is the hardest word to define.

Him: Maybe you are what you can't not be.” 

This text exchange between Aza and Davis highlights the concept of identity. Davis grew up in a wealthy household and equates his identity with his father’s money. If he is not his family’s money, then he does not know who and what he is. Davis’s lack of a distinct identity made his life hollow and lonely, which Aza understands. She fears that her compulsions and obsessions, which she did not choose, define who she is. She “can’t not” be enmeshed in her tightening spirals.

“I wanted to tell her that I was getting better, because that was supposed to be the narrative of illness: It was a hurdle you jumped over, or a battle you won. Illness is a story told in the past tense.” 

As Aza drives to her appointment with Dr. Singh, she wonders what to say to her. Aza thinks that there is an accepted script in therapy that she does not know how to follow. People go to therapy, do the work, and “get better.” Aza does not care about the ongoing process of therapy because she does not believe that therapy will help her. She does not believe that she can get “better.” She especially does not believe that what others have done, using language that applies to their circumstances, applies to hers.

“Dr. Singh told me once that if you have a perfectly tuned guitar and a perfectly tuned violin in the same room, and you pluck the D string of the guitar, then all the way across the room, the D string on the violin will also vibrate. I could always feel my mother’s vibrating strings.” 

Aza’s mother bemoans the fact that Aza does not talk to her about her problems, or much at all. Part of Aza’s reticence is typical teenage avoidance of talking to her parent. She also does not want to burden her mother, who still suffers from the loss of her husband. This passage shows that despite this lack of verbal communication, Aza still feels connected to her mother. 

“‘Star Wars is the American religion,’ Davis said at one point, and Mychal said, ‘I think religion is the American religion,’ and even though I laughed with them, it felt like I was watching the whole thing from somewhere else, like I was watching a movie about my life instead of living it.” 

Aza often feels detached from her surroundings. She goes through the motions of participating in a conversation, laughing when other people laugh, though she often has no idea why they are laughing. People think she is just “quiet,” but she is too consumed by her inner thoughts to pay attention to what others are saying. Aza describes this as having separate “selves,” the self that it is physically in attendance with other people and the self that is experiencing her thoughts and feelings.

“Years ago, Mom had backed up all Dad’s pictures and emails onto a computer and multiple hard drives, but I liked swiping through them on his phone—partly because that’s how I’d always looked at them, but mostly because there was something magical about it being his phone, which still worked eight years after his body stopped working.” 

Aza keeps her father’s phone hidden in Harold’s trunk to stay connected to his memory. Aza used to imagine her father in the room with her, but that has faded over time. Pictures that he took, on the phone that he used to take them, feel like the last tether Aza has to his actual presence. The pictures offer his perspective on the world, as if Aza is seeing it through his eyes.

“Madness, in my admittedly limited experience, is accompanied by no superpowers; being mentally unwell doesn’t make you loftily intelligent any more than having the flu does.” 

Aza often thinks in metaphors and literary references when discussing her inner struggles. She thinks that if her life were truly fictional and followed literary tropes, her OCD would emerge as the element that allows her to miraculously solve the mystery of Pickett’s disappearance. In real life, Aza finds that her obsessiveness and compulsiveness hinder her detective work. Aza believes that mental illness is romanticized by those who do not understand it.

“I don’t mean that you’re a bad friend or anything. But you’re slightly tortured, and the way you’re tortured is sometimes also painful for, like, everyone around you.” 

Daisy resents Aza’s disapproval over her spending the money to buy a car. In Daisy’s mind, she stood by Aza for many years, without judgement, as Aza struggled with her mental illness. This passage indicates that this is a rare occasion during which Daisy vents her frustration with Aza for being self-absorbed and a difficult person to be around.

“She noted, more than once, that the meteor shower was happening, beyond the overcast sky, even if we could not see it. Who cares if she can kiss? She can see through the clouds.” 

Aza finds Davis’s secret blog and reads his entries, which provide a view into his inner thoughts and feelings about her. Davis is taken by Aza’s ability to “see through the clouds,” to look past the noise and confusion of daily life, to see what is truly important. This passage allows Aza to see how much Davis cares about her special inner beauty.

“I woke up the next morning feeling wretched—not just tired, but terrified. I now saw myself as Daisy saw me—clueless, helpless, useless. Less.” 

Aza’s discovery of Daisy’s Star Wars fan fiction constitutes a significant development in their relationship. Daisy was Aza’s “safe place,” the person she could count on to love her unconditionally and to whom she could tell anything. Aza is naturally critical of herself and exhibits a great deal of self-hatred, so to read Daisy’s description of “her,” through Ayala, appears to confirm all the terrible things she thinks about herself.

“Our hearts were broken in the same places. That’s something like love, but maybe not quite the thing itself.” 

Aza feels strongly about Davis and wonders if what she feels is love. What she does know is that they share experiences that formed who they are. Both lost a beloved parent at a young age, a formative trauma that informs their present lives. Aza and Davis crave someone who understands, and finding that sense of understanding in each other feels as strong as love.

“We’re supposed to be best friends, Holmesy, and you don’t even know if I have any fucking pets. You have no idea what it’s like for me, and you’re so, like, pathologically uncurious that you don’t even know what you don’t know.” 

This passage is part of Aza and Daisy’s climactic argument. Daisy accuses Aza of being too self-absorbed to care about anyone else’s personal life and challenges, even those of her best friend. Daisy’s pain and anger has been building over the many years of their relationship, and she expresses her resentment that Aza has never realized her own privilege. Aza flares back, saying that Daisy has no clue what pain and terror she deals with on a daily basis. Aza loses control in her anger, and they literally crash.

“And in the way-down deep, some me screaming, get me out of here get me out of here get me out please I’ll do anything, but the thoughts just keep spinning, the tightening gyre, the jogger’s mouth, the stupidity of Ayala, Aza, and Holmesy and all my irreconcilable selves, my self-absorption, the filth in my gut, think about anything other than yourself you disgusting narcissist.” 

Aza hits rock bottom in the hospital, her multiple “selves” shouting internally for her attention. She feels fragmented and overwhelmed, and the most destructive parts of her consciousness take control. This passage shows how Aza’s mind feels both part of her and a separate entity with its own agenda. The anxiety of being vulnerable to C. diff infection, her greatest fear, results in her succumbing to her inner demons. Aza drinking hand sanitizer is less a cry for help and more the victory of her most negative inner impulses.

“You lie there, not even thinking really, except to try to consider how to describe the hurt, as if finding the language for it might bring it up out of you. If you can make something real, if you can see it and smell it and touch it, then you can kill it.” 

The change to a second person point of view in Chapter 20 represents Aza’s distance from the story. She tried to maintain control over her actions and thoughts but failed. Her pain is so indescribable that she cannot find the language to characterize it. Without words, it cannot have shape and substance, and therefore it cannot be mended. It is at this point that Aza allows herself to ask her mother for help.

“It’s turtles all the way fucking down, Holmesy. You’re trying to find the turtle at the bottom of the pile, but that’s not how it works.” 

The meaning behind the title of the novel is revealed in this passage. Daisy tells the story of the professor and the old woman who claimed that the world sat on the back of never-ending turtles. Daisy uses this to tell Aza that it is futile to try and find her “real” self amongst the multitudes of selves she struggles with. There is no finality in figuring out who and what you are.

“As we circulated around the gallery, looking for Mychal, I didn’t feel like I’d found the solid nesting doll or anything. Nothing had been fixed, not really. It was like the zoologist said about science: You never really find answers, just new and deeper questions.” 

Aza solves the mystery of Pickett’s disappearance, but it does not give her the sense of closure she had hoped for. The pursuit of truth is never-ending, as one answer leads to more questions. Aza is disappointed with this life lesson, but it is another important example that there are no easy ways to calm and quiet her agitated mind.

Davis stopped at the doorway for a second, looked back at Mom and me in what must have seemed to him like domestic bliss.” 

Aza takes her home situation for granted. The things that people normally find enviable, like wealth and prestige, are less important than having a mother who loves you and places your well-being above everything else in the world. Davis’s world is turned upside down, as he now has to assume responsibility for his brother’s care. Aza considered her mother’s attention suffocating and irritating, but here she finally realizes how much luckier she is than Davis to have someone to protect her, rather than being forced at a young age to be a protector.