Letting the dam break

Last month, Brad and I took a belated 10th anniversary trip to Key West (it was our 17th anniversary). Though we didn’t go with any grand plans, we did book one excursion – a half day of dolphin watching, sandbar swimming and snorkeling on the nearby reef. 

I’d only been snorkeling once before – on our honeymoon in St. Kitts, which as we established earlier, was a long time ago. Our guide gave us a laundry list of things to be mindful of: tightening our masks properly, not making a habit of lifting it up which would allow water to get in and increased the likelihood of fogginess, blowing water out of the snorkel, and being careful not to accidentally kick the reef with our flippers because it was fragile and more than 90% of it has died off. Then she showed us a series of hand signals she’d use to direct us to places or what to do if we were in distress or wanted to call other snorkelers over to see something cool. There were a lot of instructions. Which is why when it came time to follow the last directive- have fun- I struggled. A lot. 

I jumped off the boat on this magical, clear sunny day into water that  was exactly the right shade of blue and the perfect amount of warm, but not too warm, and began swimming, my anxiety activated. It was buzzing with the checklist of all the things I needed to be aware of: the location of the boat, the way my mask was fitting, how close my flippers were to the reef, whether water was getting into the snorkel tube, whether Brad was OK, etc.  I worried about drifting too far from the boat or drowning or causing irreparable harm to an already fragile ecosystem. What should’ve been the most intuitive part- just breathing- suddenly felt complicated. I couldn’t figure out how to maintain steady breath with the snorkel in my mouth, so I’d surface and pull out the mouthpiece to take a breath, only to end up swallowing seawater. Which was the saltiest seawater I’d ever tasted. I’d put the mouthpiece back in and attempt to relax, but constantly felt the need to check my location against the rest of the group and to Brad, who I knew was struggling, too. 

While one part of my brain was trying to remind me of all the ways I could die, the other part was reminding me to enjoy myself. “Who knows when we’ll get to do this again?” it whispered before the other voices drowned it out yelling that I was doing it all wrong and that I was not meant for snorkeling and that we’d just wasted a lot of money and become a murderer of precious sea creatures in the process and that time was running out so I’d better find some damn fish.

It was a whole mental journey I went on floundering around Cottrell Key. Just the Florida version of the same old adventure I’m always taking in my brain.

I’d come on this trip desperate to escape it. Even just for a few days.

Because lately I have felt a certain type of numbness settling in like a wet, woolen blanket. This heavy, scratchy thing that doesn’t really keep me warm and only serves to make me aware of my discomfort. The more I try to shrug it off, the weightier it feels, the tighter it wraps around me. Until my skin starts to feel like a human-shaped rash I want to crawl out of. 

And I’m desperate not to name it. As if naming the thing somehow makes it more real, more indelible. Like Adam naming all the beasts in the field and the birds in the air. Only I never feel as if I have dominion over this creature when it visits. 

Depression. 

There. I said it. 

Seeing the word fills me with dread. The memory of months spent only existing on the surface of my life. Always aware that the tears were on the verge of spilling out and that if they started, I might never be able to stop them. The constant fixing of my face. The mask wearing so that I can be presentable to a world I was certain could not carry the weight of my misery. Depression didn’t feel so much like a diagnosis as a sentence. As if I’d been assigned an entirely new sense of personhood. Like waking up and discovering I was suddenly a new species. Not a human anymore, but something other and outside the rest of the world. And that any second I would be discovered as an imposter. 

Having experienced periods of deep depression over the past 20 years, the possibility of its return makes me hypervigilant of my moods.

A day or two of feeling low or irritable is excusable – especially if I can attribute it to something. Not getting enough sleep for instance, or dealing with some extra stress. It’s always a relief when after fits of blubbering over Instagram Reels of horses who are getting to run on real grass for the first time or puppies snuggling with infants, my period arrives. “Oh thank god, it’s only Ethel,” I say to myself and my family. Ethel being the name of my menstrual cycle- because old friends deserve a name and I’m attempting to normalize and celebrate all the functions of a woman’s body for my daughters. A practice which feels deeply uncomfortable for me, as my parents routinely reminded me that all five of my brothers and sisters were the result of immaculate conception, so I have to force myself and the girls to recite “mensturation is perfectly normal” along with the correct names for all a lady’s dainty bits. As you can imagine, my children are very well adjusted. 

Where were we?

Oh yes, when I can identify the cause of the mental desolation, it immediately becomes more manageable. Less like an empty void into which all of hope will soon be swallowed. 

But it’s been a month, likely more, in which I have felt … robotic. Like I am getting through the day, but not so much living. I keep thinking of Andrew Soloman’s Ted Talk on depression. “That its opposite was not happiness, but vitality.” Vitality: The exhibiting of the capacities of animation or life (www.etymonline.com/word/vitality).

I have not felt animated, colored in. There have been no creative surges- those waves of inspiration that led to all sorts of random nonsense: a kitchen renovation in our old house, bottle cap art, crafts with the kids, sidewalk poetry, writing an entire novel. 

But recently, that energy, those impulses have been missing. When I can’t locate even the smallest bits of them it can feel like they’re gone forever. Like I have been drained of the force that allows me to feel authentic and filled with purpose. 

So I have been avoiding the word as a means of warding off the creature, which is a child’s way of managing mental health really. If I can’t see it, then it must not exist. Only I can feel sort of lurking around the corner. 

I finally mentioned my worries to my therapist a week or two ago. I was trying to get at the feeling. How I felt as if I had built a dam behind my eyes. But I knew there were cracks. I worried that even mentioning the cracks, the whole structure would burst and I would never stop weeping. (Even as I shared with my therapist, a person of infinite kindness who I actually pay to not judge me for crying too much- I was still holding back the tears). 

The past year has been a crucible for my family, the details of which are not mine to share. But witnessing multiple people I love very much endure massive and ongoing trauma has been difficult. It’s shifted the ground under my feet in ways I don’t quite understand. It’s as if I see the mortality of my people in a new way. That I’m aware the years ahead will include enormous loss and I’m not ready for it. I feel a thickening of my outer layers. A desire to protect myself from the coming storms. My own little world, my people and our little microcosm of humanity feels like an echo or a ripple of what’s happening at the macro level. 

I’m deeply disturbed by how quickly these often mundane, but essential  institutions I assumed were steadfast have eroded. That a small group of people would choose to use their power and privilege to create so much suffering for others. That these people are using othering as a tool to foment hatred and real violence for no other purpose than trying to ensure that they don’t have to adapt to a changing world. That it’s all happening through a bureaucracy of paperwork makes it all feel so much more sinister and unstoppable. 

To witness it- the dismantling of democracy, this rounding up of people, this name-calling, this callous disregard for anyone’s humanity- is demoralizing. To feel powerless against it- like the tools at our disposal are so small and meager- makes life feel futile right now. But still every day, I hear the voice in my head: “Do something. Do SOMETHING.”

But what? 

This is the air I have been breathing over the last year. And I’ve read the whole project was designed to do exactly this: exhaust the citizenry into submission. That week after week we’d be confronted with the next awful thing and that this the firehose of casual brutality and dehumanization- that this was the superweapon of democracy killers. It makes it so that we are all so overwhelmed by fires that we can’t sort out how to begin putting them out.

And here’s the other layer: This awareness, this knowledge that if I cave to the despair they have won, that has made me doubly avoidant of any whisper of depression. 

I, of anyone, needs to be steady and stalwart. I come from a place of privilege. I am comfortable. My kids are healthy and thriving. We have a roof over our heads and a pantry full of food. I have a good job and decent healthcare. Both my parents are still alive and all my siblings. My needs are met. Allowing depression into my home is unacceptable. It’s giving in. And I don’t want to give in. I have responsibility to my kids, my family, my neighbors, my students, and my community. I need to keep showing up.

So you see the difficulty of the situation. I’m struggling with how to be in this world that feels unfamiliar and frightening. And it feels like right now all I’m doing is surviving. Floundering day to day.

In a way, the snorkeling was just an extension of what my life on land has been. Me versus my brain versus the downfall of society: Ocean Edition.

At some point during my battle with fun out on the reef, I stopped and floated, which is one of my favorite things to do in the water. I lay on my back and looked at the sky- where there were no fish- but at least I could breathe without complication. I realized the salt water left me so buoyant I actually didn’t need to do much to stay afloat. So I rolled over and I did less. 

I just floated. And there below me I saw fish. Bright yellow and silver and blue-green. I had to keep reminding myself to stay calm. To just be in the water. “Just be here,” I told myself over and over again. While I repeated this mantra, I spotted a large, round grey rock beneath me that suddenly shifted and floated up. My brain took a moment to catch up with what I was seeing: A large sea turtle. I swam backward a little to give the turtle space, marveling at its presence. Right there. Right there in front of me. I popped my head out of the water to see if any of the other snorkelers were nearby, but they were on the other end of the boat. Not wanting to lose track of the turtle, I put my face back into the water and watched as this giant prehistoric-looking being meandered through the water. Not especially bothered by me or anything nearby, really. My whole person felt flooded. With what? Wonder? Magic? Also, embarrassment for showing up uninvited in the turtle’s home. 

At one point the turtle turned his whole body around to face me. Their eyes like Yoda’s, wizened and calm. The turtle studied me as I studied the turtle, tears filling my eyes. The sentiment exchanged was peace. Acceptance. I was allowed to be there. That I just needed to go with the flow. The whole encounter lasted maybe a minute, maybe three minutes. The turtle turned and swam on his way. My goggles fogged and I had to lift my head out of the water. By the time I wiped it away and put my face down again, the turtle had disappeared. 

But I’m left with their face. Their serenity. The reminder that it is OK to float. To allow whatever waves you’re moving through to take you where you need to go. 

Lately, I’ve been keeping my eye open for breadcrumbs as a way toward some sense of peace in the storm we’re living through. I often find them in nature or art. Anytime I’m by the ocean. In September, Brad and I went to the second day of the Ocean’s Calling Festival in Ocean City, Maryland. It poured rain for most of the day- but we were committed to the music and had an amazing day. At the end of the night, we stood in a deluge of rain dancing barefoot in the sand to a very soggy Vampire Weekend. I took a break from dancing during “Capricorn” and listened closely as Ezra Koenig sang a message that shot like an arrow directly into my bones: “I know you’re tired of tryin’, Listen clearly, you don’t have to try.” 

Because the trying. The constant trying to make sense of it. To hold all these layers of pain. That is at the heart of my sadness right now. That I can never do enough to make it all better. That I can’t even do the minimum. And listen – I recognize how absurd it sounds that one little middle aged lady derping around her existence in Virginia is going to be able to fix all the things. I recognize that clearly. But also, I don’t think I’m alone in that feeling? I see it etched on the faces of the women I pass on the way to vote or at my school. My sisters. My mother. The world is broken, our people are hurting, and we haven’t done enough to heal it. 

I desperately want to believe merciful, insistent Ezra Koenig. The turtle. The ocean itself in its constant push and pull always reminding me that this is the way of the world. And that my hereness, my existence is enough. That we’re all enough.

What I’m realizing in writing all this out. In naming the creature I fear lurks behind the door, is that maybe it’s not actually depression I’m living with. Maybe I’m just grieving. Maybe this heaviness in my heart is the natural product of the heaviness of the world around me. And so it makes sense to feel tired. It makes sense to feel hopeless. It makes sense to be angry and afraid. To want to cocoon. 

Today, as an experiment, I’m letting the dam break. I’m taking off my mask. I’m sitting next to this creature -whether it’s depression or grief- I’m sharing what it and the turtle and Ezra Koenig and the ocean told me, in case someone else feels the same. 

This is the fire I’m choosing to fight today is being alone in my despair.

My beautiful neighbor friend always supplies me with great books. Yesterday I came home from work to find this:

And when I turned to page 157, here is what it said:

The breadcrumb that led to this post.