For reasons unknown to me, my mind has been embroiled in its toughest season yet — moderate anxiety, mild depression, and the gray pall of brain fog almost everywhere I go. My writing practice has again fallen to almost zero; it’s just too much to ask, too much mental energy to spend when simple tasks feel overwhelming and I reach for easy sources of boredom to cloak the unfocused dread (8 hours on the bike trainer listening to podcasts? Yes please.)
Since nothing specific triggered this mental health episode, I have all sorts of theories about the cause: Living in a middle-aged body with thyroid disease and possible hormone imbalance. Leaning too hard on strenuous exercise for too many years resulting in adrenal fatigue and deficient serotonin. The accumulated traumas of endurance racing. Living with a middle-aged brain that may be subconsciously leveraging an existential crisis in a last-gasp bid for biological reproduction (sorry, DNA, it’s not going to happen.) Living with a middle-aged brain that has been jostled around in more than a few hard crashes, even if I’ve never been formally diagnosed with a concussion. Living in a society on an alarming arc toward authoritarianism and violence. Living in a world that is visibly dying. The “depression” part of those stages of grief, which are really just a way to parse out emotions about our own mortality.
So many theories. Nothing close to an answer.
And yes, I am back in therapy, and yes, I am considering medication. I’ve started yoga and strength training. I’ve cut back on caffeine. I’m trying, really trying, to cut back on sugar and other less ideal parts of my diet. I’m still exercising, likely too much. I’m still getting outside — my favorite days are still when the weather is cold and snowy, perhaps with a blast of Arctic wind. I’m getting together with friends when I can. But if I’m being honest, my brain is not improving. Not a lot, at least since October.
Now, I want to try to get back to writing. Even if it’s garbage. Even if I need to divert from the theme of sorting the contents of an old trunk full of photos and journals, which causes its own psychic pain with every realization that nostalgia has masked a lot of old trauma. Still, writing is the only way I can process anything. I need to return, but no promises.
One of the worst aspects of living with generalized anxiety is insomnia. I don’t even know how to approach this because better bedtime habits won’t help. I’m so exhausted that I usually pass out as soon as I hit the pillow, but within 2-3 hours I’m jolted by some sort of nightmare that keeps me awake for the rest of the night. If I’m lucky and don’t have a lot to do with my morning, I can sometimes grab more sleep between 6 and 9 a.m. But only sometimes. My therapist suggested I write down the content of my nightmares, but that is the last thing I want to do amid the disquietude of 3 a.m. What I prefer to do is lay very still, remind myself I am warm and safe, and find a way to a happy place.
My favorite place, most recently, is one that has surprised me. It’s a memory I didn’t even think about for years until I started sorting through my trunk and found the panoramic photograph at the top of this post. My then-boyfriend, Geoff, took it in June 2001 during a three-month-long road trip across a few dozen U.S. states and Canadian provinces. I had dropped everything for this once-in-a-lifetime adventure. I quit two part-time graphic design jobs, indefinitely deferred law school, bid a terse goodbye to my roommate, and sent postcards to my parents because I was too ashamed to talk to them directly about all of these irresponsible decisions I was making. This adventure was my everything. In my 21-year-old brain, there was no future, no need for a future. There was only the incredible here and now. I can’t tell you how much I miss having that perspective.
Texas, however, brought a tough blow from reality. We’d been on the road for about three weeks when I received an urgent e-mail from my parents. “Call Home Now.” My roommate had contacted them because our landlords were kicking us out of our apartment with no notice. The apartment situation was complicated in itself. The one-bedroom condo belonged to the parents of my ex-boyfriend, who’d been away in the Peace Corps for two years. The parents didn’t know we’d broken up for good. When they figured it out, they drove down to Salt Lake from Pocatello and discovered the damage in the apartment. (A lot of that damage was from the ex’s dismantled cannabis grow operation, but my roommate also let her destructive parrot have free reign of the place.) They were furious (understandably.) We were to vacate the premises within a week. I was a thousand miles away.
My parents were incredibly forgiving of my irresponsible choices and didn’t demand I come straight home. They offered to move me out, but amid the tension of the situation, I ended up with almost none of my belongings. So there I was, in the middle of the vast, empty woods of eastern Texas, with no home, no job, and no possessions save for some clothing, my Geo Prism, and the meager camping gear I’d brought along. I wasn’t sure I was ever going attend law school, didn’t know whether the new guy and I had a future, didn’t even know where I’d be sleeping the following night. Suddenly I felt very small, and very lost.
After sorting out what we could over time-limited pay phone calls, Geoff and I left town and any connection to the outside world (fellow Xennials, don’t you miss those last innocent years before cell phones were everywhere?) We pulled out our Rand McNally map and found a free campground on the shore of a small lake off of Interstate 30, near the Arkansas border. I don’t remember the name of the lake, but it was a breathtakingly lovely place, nestled in a cluster of tall deciduous trees. Moss grew on the picnic tables. We were the only campers that night.
After dinner, just as the sun was beginning to set, I announced I wanted to go for a swim. This was an innocent time, before whitewater trauma left a permanent and debilitating water phobia, when I could still submerge myself in a body of water and feel peace. I stripped to my underwear and stepped into the lake. Although the evening had cooled, the water was pleasantly warm. Trees crowded the shoreline — so different from the high desert reservoirs I’d grown up with in Utah. The surface of the lake was utterly still, like glass. As I moved through the water, tiny ripples fanned out for long seconds, unbroken.
I began to swim, taking gentle strokes and tiny kicks to avoid disturbing this perfect stillness. The evening air was filled with a cacophony of little sounds — cricket chirps, frog croaks, surfacing fish, and other unidentifiable plops and groans. It was beautiful. I couldn’t help but hum myself, adding to the choir. Geoff and I had been listening to a cassette tape of Beck’s 1998 album “Mutations,” and the earworm still clung to my thoughts.
I bet you were far to find
Electrified in all this life
Now you find that you’re almost dying
And all alone.
I continued to crawl toward the far shore, feeling the weight fall away from my body, the warm water holding me like a hand. In rhythm with my breathing, I mumbled a few verses out loud.
When the moon is a counterfeit,
Better find the one that fits
Better find the one that lights
The way for you.
Crickets sang, quiet water rippled toward the far shore, and a sky full of pink and gold light became deeper and richer until even the lake was saturated. I arrived at Beck’s chorus and felt the buzz of freedom, true freedom, freedom that belonged only to me, freedom and everything that came with it, good and bad.
Tell me that it’s nobody’s fault
Nobody’s fault
But my own.
By the time I turned around, indigo dusk had settled over the sky. Hints of the moon illuminated the forest along the eastern shore. For a time, though, the lake became very dark with stars overhead. I swam with a gentle backstroke and felt as though I was floating through space. After I rolled over, I could see the dim flicker of Geoff’s propane lantern and followed the yellow light home. When I returned to camp, Geoff smiled and asked me if I’d enjoyed my swim. It was well after dark and he had no idea where I’d gone, but didn’t seem worried at all. He never seemed to worry about anything. That was something, I thought, that I loved about him.
Now, when nightmares fill me with dread, I return to that lake in Eastern Texas. I remember how it felt, to be unencumbered and free. And I remember that in spite of all of the years, the accumulation of responsibilities and possessions and scars and age and thousands of little traumas — at the deepest levels where it counts, I am still unencumbered and free.
This is nobody’s fault but my own.
I can still swim.
This may be a helpful perspective. https://tomkenyon.com/transition-states-of-consciousness
Thank you for continuing to write. We are in the midst of a great unraveling and the cognitive dissonance of our society ignoring and ridiculing those who recognize it is probably a big part. We will see the collapse of it all and it is scary. The only thing we can do is to love earth, each other and not allow ourselves to get sucked into the hate. Watch it, understand it but do not allow the negative emotions to own you. They are tricksters and liars.