Last week, New York was hit with one of the most devastating storms it has seen in recent history. I spent much of that week with friends binge drinking and laughing and cuddling under unbelievably comfy blankets. I was disconnected from the world in so many ways: couldn't go into work, cell service was so difficult it felt futile, and I was wrapped in a cocoon trying not to go stir crazy. It was a welcome isolation from the world.
I have shared this not to cause alarm to my friends and family or the world about my general well-being, though I do appreciate their concern. I've shared it in the spirit of the strange bits of culture I stumbled upon earlier this week that have allowed me to refocus things momentarily to reconsider the effects that I can have not only on my own future, but the lives of others. If someone has read this and felt similarly, I'm humbled to be in your company and in solidarity, I hope you are given a moment of respite to reach out for help. It is there for us.
I welcomed the isolation because for the past year, it is what I have been doing to myself in many, many ways. As a qualifier, I think it's important to note that I often write with a dramatic ... flair? I try to be humorous while being honest, I try to make what I write interesting for the reader while still ringing true. I can't promise any of that for you this time.
I suppose it's best if I start from the beginning.
I suppose it's best if I start from the beginning.
For as long as I can remember, I have struggled with anxiety. What anxiety has looked like for me, traditionally, is that I often worry deeply about things beyond my control. From when I was a child, I tried to plan and organize as often and effectively as I could in order to make sure that my life was on the right track. I genuinely believe this was something that came naturally for me. I can't pinpoint a time of trauma that created this. It's just how I've always been, and it didn't negatively affect my life, at least I don't remember it that way. When I got to high school, the pressure - very similar pressures that I imagine everyone at that age feels - suddenly felt unbearable. Rather than address them, I would often disengage. Rather than confront challenges, I would avoid them. Where most anxious people would aggressively plan or spring into action, I just gave up. This is, to my knowledge, where an incredibly damaging cycle began for me. One that I continue to struggle with today. I avoid responsibility, I avoid challenges, and I circumvent solutions opting instead for quick and easy fixes. Often completed in haste, with poor workmanship, as I think a math teacher noted on a homework assignment once.
Perhaps because of this habit of getting myself in easily avoidable trouble (trouble is what I'd say I'm in - the kind you get from shirking responsibility), I've become a person without meaning, without direction, without motivation.
I think most people would never think this about me. I'm a good actor. I enjoy fleeting moments with my friends, usually out or in bars dancing where reality is kept at bay when often I'd really just rather be home reading a book. (I can't spend that much time alone, though.) I work for an organization with an incredibly noble mission, I volunteer, I care passionately about the well-being of others who are not me, and I carry with me a sense of humor that I use to diffuse tension whenever I can. It only recently occurred to me that perhaps I do these things to keep a sliver of "goodness" about me alive. Because the truth is, I feel like a terrible human being most days.
I think most people would never think this about me. I'm a good actor. I enjoy fleeting moments with my friends, usually out or in bars dancing where reality is kept at bay when often I'd really just rather be home reading a book. (I can't spend that much time alone, though.) I work for an organization with an incredibly noble mission, I volunteer, I care passionately about the well-being of others who are not me, and I carry with me a sense of humor that I use to diffuse tension whenever I can. It only recently occurred to me that perhaps I do these things to keep a sliver of "goodness" about me alive. Because the truth is, I feel like a terrible human being most days.
When trying to describe what it feels like to be me right now, I'm at a loss. I could describe my actions, which manifest themselves as symptoms of depression. It's without a doubt that I am grappling with depression. I'm not sure how long I've struggled with this because it's been different in every year of my life since high school. I just know that it's gotten much worse. I've grown tired of trying to describe what that's like for me because of the reaction I'm faced with from very many people, which often centers around: "Why?" or "Why don't you just stop?"
I guess I should try to explain. When I say depressed, I mean that it is quite literally a struggle for me to get out of bed in the morning. Going to sleep every night is something I have to do. It's not because I look forward to what the next day will bring. It's because I either can't keep my eyes open any longer (however much I'd like to), or because the anxiety of "not getting enough sleep" is enough to get me there as soon as possible. If I had to put a percentage on the number of nights I went to bed saying "I'm going to get up early tomorrow to do things (things like exercise, eat breakfast, read the news) before work," it would be 90% of my nights. If I had to put a percentage on the number of mornings I actually did that, it would be 1% of my mornings.
I do not care at all what I look like, what I put into my body, or about creating friendships or relationships with people. Every now and then, I awake into moments when I desperately want someone to be a partner to me. Someone to make this all meaningful and better for me. Those moments, while motivating, feel like I am piled beneath pounds and pounds of weight grasping my way to air. Those moments are fleeting and never last very long. I can't hold onto it very long because I know my reasons for wanting someone in those ways are wrong and are not the way to attain a healthy relationship. I want those things because they will distract me from myself. I know that if I were to begin a relationship right now under these circumstances and with these desires, that it would be doomed to fail. So, when I say I do not care, what I mean to say is that I do not care enough to help myself to get to a place where I will actually care what I look like, what I eat and drink, or who I will spend my time with.
These may all sound like vast generalizations. You may look at my Facebook, or pictures on Instagram, and think "that's not true at all." The truth is, when you feel this way, your life is a generalization. It's dark, and it's hard to recall when you felt good because so much of it has felt so bad.
And now, I'll try to describe the most challenging piece of this puzzle. I do not want to feel this way. I don't want to be this person. In fact, the longer I continue to walk this line, the more anxiety I have about the time I am absolutely wasting by living my life in this way. Perhaps, this will be the part that is most difficult for people to understand: to know all of these things - to know that this is not what you want for yourself and to not be able to do anything about it. I think that's hard to understand because that is what any logical, rational human being would do - do something about it. And yet, I haven't lived a logical or rational life - specifically in regards to myself and taking care of myself - in over a year. What makes sense to everyone else makes sense to me only in theory.
I know there is help for me, I know there is a way out of this hole, and yet I cannot bring myself to do a single thing about it.
"Why the hell not?"
"You're wallowing in self-pity."
"Quit whining and just pick up the phone and call someone."
"Go see a therapist."
All things that I know I should do or stop doing - and I still feel like I can't. The disturbing fact of the matter is that as I continue down this road, I know quite certainly that something terrible is going to happen. I will hit a "rock bottom," so to speak, and will be forced to get myself better. My mind, ravaged by whatever it is that's going on, almost prefers this method. All of the alternatives feel so impossible. The only way to ask for help is to be forced into it. I am terrified at the destruction I would cause to myself and my relationships if I were to let it get to that point.
It's something like looking at a mountain with no climbing gear in tow and knowing that so many people have climbed that exact same mountain without climbing gear. They've climbed it to speak of the accomplishment that they felt. But you know that those people quite literally got over that hill because of the strength they possessed, and you know - more than anything in the world - that you do not possess that strength. Add in a crowd of people who all believe that you do, indeed, possess that strength. It's a poor simile, but that's the best way to describe exactly where I'm at.
On Sunday, I went and saw the film "Cloud Atlas." I've heard there have been criticisms on the film's sentimentality, or oversimplification, or racism, or whatever. Watching this film stirred something deep inside me. It allowed a part of me that I thought was perhaps buried forever to swim up for a brief moment and get some air. People will debate the meaning of the film, but to me it was about reincarnation. And not the kind of reincarnation that your soul is reborn throughout time. Rather, a kind of reincarnation of deeds. That our lives, our souls, our deeds do not belong to us. That our actions in our life are being affected by the actions of those in the past, and our deeds - both kind and criminal - inform the lives of those forever in the future. As one character contemplates:
"Our lives and our choices, each encounter, suggest a new potential direction. Yesterday my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Fear, belief, love, phenomena that determined the course of our lives. These forces begin long before we are born and continue long after we perish. Yesterday, I believe I would have never have done what I did today. I feel like something important has happened to me. Is this possible?"
These may all sound like vast generalizations. You may look at my Facebook, or pictures on Instagram, and think "that's not true at all." The truth is, when you feel this way, your life is a generalization. It's dark, and it's hard to recall when you felt good because so much of it has felt so bad.
And now, I'll try to describe the most challenging piece of this puzzle. I do not want to feel this way. I don't want to be this person. In fact, the longer I continue to walk this line, the more anxiety I have about the time I am absolutely wasting by living my life in this way. Perhaps, this will be the part that is most difficult for people to understand: to know all of these things - to know that this is not what you want for yourself and to not be able to do anything about it. I think that's hard to understand because that is what any logical, rational human being would do - do something about it. And yet, I haven't lived a logical or rational life - specifically in regards to myself and taking care of myself - in over a year. What makes sense to everyone else makes sense to me only in theory.
I know there is help for me, I know there is a way out of this hole, and yet I cannot bring myself to do a single thing about it.
"Why the hell not?"
"You're wallowing in self-pity."
"Quit whining and just pick up the phone and call someone."
"Go see a therapist."
All things that I know I should do or stop doing - and I still feel like I can't. The disturbing fact of the matter is that as I continue down this road, I know quite certainly that something terrible is going to happen. I will hit a "rock bottom," so to speak, and will be forced to get myself better. My mind, ravaged by whatever it is that's going on, almost prefers this method. All of the alternatives feel so impossible. The only way to ask for help is to be forced into it. I am terrified at the destruction I would cause to myself and my relationships if I were to let it get to that point.
It's something like looking at a mountain with no climbing gear in tow and knowing that so many people have climbed that exact same mountain without climbing gear. They've climbed it to speak of the accomplishment that they felt. But you know that those people quite literally got over that hill because of the strength they possessed, and you know - more than anything in the world - that you do not possess that strength. Add in a crowd of people who all believe that you do, indeed, possess that strength. It's a poor simile, but that's the best way to describe exactly where I'm at.
On Sunday, I went and saw the film "Cloud Atlas." I've heard there have been criticisms on the film's sentimentality, or oversimplification, or racism, or whatever. Watching this film stirred something deep inside me. It allowed a part of me that I thought was perhaps buried forever to swim up for a brief moment and get some air. People will debate the meaning of the film, but to me it was about reincarnation. And not the kind of reincarnation that your soul is reborn throughout time. Rather, a kind of reincarnation of deeds. That our lives, our souls, our deeds do not belong to us. That our actions in our life are being affected by the actions of those in the past, and our deeds - both kind and criminal - inform the lives of those forever in the future. As one character contemplates:
"Our lives and our choices, each encounter, suggest a new potential direction. Yesterday my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Fear, belief, love, phenomena that determined the course of our lives. These forces begin long before we are born and continue long after we perish. Yesterday, I believe I would have never have done what I did today. I feel like something important has happened to me. Is this possible?"
It feels silly to have been so profoundly affected by a film (especially one starring Tom Hanks), but it also feels silly to have lived my life the way I have the past year so I'm not too concerned about it. I do, in fact, feel like something important has happened to me. The very next day, a friend suggested I read an advice column (ugh!) by Cary Tennis. I suppose I was primed for just the right amount of sap when I came across a paragraph in one of his columns that read as such:
There is a certain beauty to how this works. It’s simple but profound. When you raise your hand and ask for help, you start a cycle of help that may continue for generations, one personal connection to the next. Theoretically, this chain of personal help could continue for hundreds or thousands of years...as long as human culture continues. So it is not a trivial thing to ask for help, nor is it self-serving. It is part of a great chain. By asking for help, we increase our store of useful knowledge. We then pass that on to others. Nothing we do... is trivial; every action has reverberations which continue throughout time. That’s what people mean when they say, Pass it on.
"So ask for help. Then pass it on..."
Just as the careless actions of previous and current generations are shaping our current climate, allowing for more storms like the one we experienced last week; just as the engineers who planned our city's transportation system did not account for such storms; they could never have predicted (or perhaps they did) that it would cause me to be stuck in isolation-mode for a week, needing desperately to get out and do something. That something being "Cloud Atlas." That something, propelling me to write these very words. II'm not a spiritual person, but this is some shit right here. What I've been given is a rare moment of perspective that I've been lacking in my life recently.
What I've been given is a gift - the reminder of the fragility of life and all that it encompasses. The perspective that every single thing that I do has the potential to affect other people in ways I can't begin to comprehend. This depression, the feelings I've felt, have been selfish and incredibly damaging to me and to the people I love. Within a moment, I was reminded that I am not here for myself. I'm here for others and to make what I do on this planet count for others after me. For someone who is often anxious, I'm surprised by the relief I feel in this. That I don't have to get better for myself (though that will inevitably be what happens), but that I can get better for the world and for the lives who I come in contact with every day. They deserve better.
What I feel like I've been afforded here is a small window of opportunity where I feel strong enough to ask for help. I don't feel "better," but I feel different enough to take advantage of this moment to do something.There is a certain beauty to how this works. It’s simple but profound. When you raise your hand and ask for help, you start a cycle of help that may continue for generations, one personal connection to the next. Theoretically, this chain of personal help could continue for hundreds or thousands of years...as long as human culture continues. So it is not a trivial thing to ask for help, nor is it self-serving. It is part of a great chain. By asking for help, we increase our store of useful knowledge. We then pass that on to others. Nothing we do... is trivial; every action has reverberations which continue throughout time. That’s what people mean when they say, Pass it on.
"So ask for help. Then pass it on..."
Just as the careless actions of previous and current generations are shaping our current climate, allowing for more storms like the one we experienced last week; just as the engineers who planned our city's transportation system did not account for such storms; they could never have predicted (or perhaps they did) that it would cause me to be stuck in isolation-mode for a week, needing desperately to get out and do something. That something being "Cloud Atlas." That something, propelling me to write these very words. II'm not a spiritual person, but this is some shit right here. What I've been given is a rare moment of perspective that I've been lacking in my life recently.
What I've been given is a gift - the reminder of the fragility of life and all that it encompasses. The perspective that every single thing that I do has the potential to affect other people in ways I can't begin to comprehend. This depression, the feelings I've felt, have been selfish and incredibly damaging to me and to the people I love. Within a moment, I was reminded that I am not here for myself. I'm here for others and to make what I do on this planet count for others after me. For someone who is often anxious, I'm surprised by the relief I feel in this. That I don't have to get better for myself (though that will inevitably be what happens), but that I can get better for the world and for the lives who I come in contact with every day. They deserve better.
I have shared this not to cause alarm to my friends and family or the world about my general well-being, though I do appreciate their concern. I've shared it in the spirit of the strange bits of culture I stumbled upon earlier this week that have allowed me to refocus things momentarily to reconsider the effects that I can have not only on my own future, but the lives of others. If someone has read this and felt similarly, I'm humbled to be in your company and in solidarity, I hope you are given a moment of respite to reach out for help. It is there for us.
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