Celebrating the small joys

Recently, Arys has been struggling with an intensified bout of depression, with the mornings becoming increasingly hard. While they used to be an “early bird”, waking up early with no effort and actually full of energy and joy, now they struggle to drag themselves out of bed by 10am feeling tired, depleted of energy, overwhelmed by the day to come and/or lacking motivation. 

So it’s important to write down and remember and celebrate this one positive feeling, this morning, when they saw the reflection of their upper body in the short bathroom mirror: they saw “the boy” — really a boy’s torso. The strong and lean shoulders and arms, the slender, straight torso with no hips… if it weren’t for those small breasts, it would be a young, athletic boy’s body (probably just too slender to be a grown man’s). 

This image brought Arys so much joy that it made their day (at least for the moment), which is really important in this difficult, shaky phase. 

Branches

Taking a deep breath. This will probably be short, in terms of words, but it’s huge in terms of emotions. 

I just left my mother a voicemail coming out as non-binary/bi-gender and telling her that I’ve switched to “they” pronouns… This feels so terrifying..! 

My 70-year-old father is very ill, probably terminally (20% recovery/survival with the illness he has)…

Despite the holidays always being hard for me and this particular Christmas Day having been one of the roughest I’ve had in years, I can feel all the love & presence of my friends today, new and old. They are there, truly. What hurts for me during the holidays is that I cannot see them, be with them, or even talk to them, oftentimes, because most of them are busy with their families — which I realize is mostly loneliness due to social/cultural conditioning and clichés that surface more strongly during the holidays. But for so much of the time, they’re there for me. They really, really are, and I am so grateful for this, for them. 

I guess this is something I have built — we have built together…

And I know that the courage I found today for my coming-out with my mother is also thanks to all my wonderful friends whose love & support I feel so strongly: it is also thanks to them that I have been able to come into myself and feel comfortable & happy with who I am, and therefore have the courage to do the risky coming-out with my mother.

So, once again, thanks to all my friends!

The Outsider

I know that what I’ll be writing here now is coming through the distorted lens of depression, which has been exacerbated this past week or two by the time of year as well as some particular circumstances of my own. I also know that the solution lies, at least partly, in getting out of my head to stop the rumination, and that I can achieve this in several practical ways (exercising; doing practical things that have some immediate, concrete outcome; getting back into reading more and feeding my mind in general; maybe adjusting my dose of antidepressants). But in this moment, I need to write how I feel, to get it all off my chest, before I go plunge into the swimming pool, get into my body, and hopefully out of my head at least for a little bit. 

I feel like I’m constantly the outsider and haven’t built anything lasting of my own. 

I am extremely grateful for all the lovely friends and fun buddies that I have, and very thankful to them for including me in their activities, in some cases even for letting me be part of their family. It brings me a lot of joy and sense of belonging and even of being loved and useful. I guess it gives my life some “meaning”. 

However, none of these are my own family or my own group or a community that I have built: none of this is something I have built, something that will stay with me for the rest of my life, something of which I can feel proud. I’m just the “extra person”, the “addition”, someone they generously include.

Over the course of the past twenty years or so, I have built a few deep relationships and/or situations in which I wasn’t the outsider but very much an insider (apart from all the wonderful friendships that I still have scattered over a couple continents): three important romantic relationships; the groups of friends in college and grad school (especially the latter); two jobs where I actively built a group working together. But none of these have lasted. I walked away from each of the three romantic relationships and haven’t been able to build any more for over five years now. The friends groups from university came to a natural end just as life moved on. One job I quit when I moved to California (and I don’t regret that). The other job has placed a glass-ceiling in my way, which was a huge disappointment for me both professionally and personally, so I’ll have to walk away from that, too, eventually. 

In my current group of climbing buddies — as nice and fun as they are — I am and always will be the outsider because I was a later addition to a group of people who’ve known each other, and some even lived together, for years. 

A standard family with kids of my own isn’t, and has never been, on my “wish list”. 

Lasting, healthy romantic relationships seem to be outside of my skill set. 

And my career is completely uncertain to me now.

If building lasting family/romantic relationships and/or having steady careers are the measures of “success”, then I’m definitely a failure.

I hate the holidays!

The holidays, especially the days around Christmas, have always been a nightmare to me. 

As a child growing up in my nuclear family, Christmas was stressful and painful for me for two reasons: on the one hand, my mother wanted to reiterate all the lavish “gift-opening ceremony” under the tree, etc. from her rich childhood, while my father couldn’t take it because of his own traumatic Christmas memories connected to poverty in his childhood, causing tensions and even fights between my parents which were very painful for me; on the other hand, I had to put up with unwrapping loads of gifts (which felt like such a waste to me, in the first place) that I didn’t like or want, that didn’t reflect me or my wishes at all, making me feel more and more misunderstood and unseen by my parents, which was of course also very painful, especially because I had to pretend, at least to a certain extent, that I liked them or I had to find very tactful ways of expressing my dislike… which is stressful for a child/teenager. 

Then, the more I grew up, the more Christmas became a boring, stressful and even constricting obligation that I had to fulfill with my nuclear family and then, eventually, even with my partner(s) at the time and their family… a real tour de force that felt like a nightmare.

The first really nice, enjoyable, even wonderful Christmas I had was my first Christmas here in California, in December 2016: I spent it almost completely on my own, enjoying a beautiful day out in the sunshine, walking and taking pictures at the beach, before seeing some friends for dinner, and then cat-sitting for other friends who were away traveling and were letting me stay in their beautiful house. It was such a liberating feeling that year! And also warm and lovely thanks to the relaxing cat-sitting in a gorgeous house and having some friends around me. 

But then, the holidays have gone back to being the most stressful time of year for me. Not as bad as when I was living in Europe, since the main source of stress and pain — visiting with my nuclear family — has been eliminated for a few years, at least for now. But it’s a time of year when my loneliness gets terribly exacerbated, especially since the pandemic. The holidays last year were particularly tough — but I’m sure they were so for many other people, too, unfortunately. 

This year Christmas is turning out to be very painful for me, too, though — to the point that, as I was driving home from the climbing gym this evening, I thought to myself, “I hate the holidays”! I have this impression that everyone I know has a family of their own or housemates with whom they live and with whom they can share this weekend celebrating and/or relaxing in one way or another that they enjoy, sharing the enjoyment — everyone I know except for me…

I think my feelings are even more exacerbated this year by a sort of “perfect storm”: there is the usual sense of “momentary loss of purpose or meaning” due to the semester ending made worse now by the uncertainty of next semester; on top of this, there’s my upcoming move to Colorado, with all the difficult emotions connected to that and with my mind dwelling on that most of the time now (even because of the semester having ended and thus not occupying my mental space as much); then, there’s this awful weather, super rainy (I know we need it, but it’s a drag!) and cold, which means I cannot get distracted by enjoying any outdoor activities; and finally, so many of the people at my beloved climbing gym seem to have left, as if there had been a sudden change of shift, so one of the places where I’m spending a lot of my free time is feeling less familiar and less friendly to me than it used to, which adds to all the rest of the loneliness and sadness. 

At the end of the day, I guess I just hate the sense of “obliged festivity” at this time of year and it hurts to not have anyone really close, living with me, with whom I can spend this downtime, this time off, in a way that we could truly enjoy together, sharing the enjoyment… 

Human search for meaning

Today, amidst my own storm of emotions and a new surge of heartbreak, I’m just going to share an excerpt from the book ‘How to change your mind‘ by Michael Pollan on the various uses of psychedelics, particularly from a chapter about using psychedelics in therapy to alleviate existential distress for terminal cancer patients. 

“[… ]The whole question of meaning is central to the approach of the NYU therapists*, and is perhaps especially helpful in understanding the experience of the cancer patients on psilocybin. For many of these patients, a diagnosis of terminal cancer constitutes, among other things, a crisis of meaning. ‘Why me? Why have I been singled out for this fate? Is there any sense to life and the universe?’ Under the weight of this existential crisis, one’s horizon shrinks, one’s emotional repertoire contracts, and one’s focus narrows as the mind turns in on itself, shutting out the world. Loops of rumination and worry come to occupy more of one’s mental time and space, reinforcing habits of thought it becomes ever more difficult to escape. […]”

*[Footnote] Several of the NYU therapists referred to the writing of Viktor E. Frankl, the Viennese psychoanalyst and the author of ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’. Frankl, who survived both Auschwitz and Dachau, believed that the crucial human drive is not for pleasure, as his teacher Freud maintained, or power, as Alfred Adler maintained, but meaning. Frankl concurs with Nietsche, who wrote, ‘He who has a Why to live can bear almost any How’.

Apart from the prevalent (& historical) use of “he” and “man”, I humbly but strongly concur with Frankl and Nietsche.

Inner compass

For the past couple weeks, there’s been an underlying profound sadness in me. Other feelings and emotions have been able to come through as well but the sadness has been there consistently in these weeks and sometimes has been particularly intense, sharp. 

Sadness and some fear. 

I know very well, see and feel very clearly, that this emotional state is due to my upcoming move. With the semester ending and my actual move quickly approaching, my mind as well as my actions are turning more frequently, with a keener awareness, to the FACT: I AM LEAVING THIS PLACE AND CHANGING LOTS OF THINGS IN MY LIFE. AGAIN. 

I know I need to do this now. I need a “writing retreat” — as a friend of mine wisely pointed out yesterday. I “just want to walk by myself in the woods covered in snow and write my textbook” — as I blurted out to another friend last night, almost in a flow of consciousness. “It’s time for me to grow” (not to “grow up”, but to “grow”!) — as I found myself thinking to myself while I was still half asleep this morning. 

I am heartbroken and feeling stuck here, despite all the lovely friends I’ve finally made and the beautiful places and fun activities: I know I’ll miss all of this, and this is why I’m so sad and scared. 

But I also know that when I’m heartbroken and feeling stuck, I need to go, to physically leave: I need to put geographical distance between myself and a place to overcome a deep heartbreak. And often I also need to make a geographical change to recenter myself and to grow. 

… So I guess that all I can do now is follow my instinct, trust this gut-feeling knowledge and also rational certainty, without overthinking, just remembering one of my favorite quotes (that now feels so pertinent but also so scary): 

On ne découvre pas de terre nouvelle sans consentir à perdre de vue, d’abord et longtemps, tout rivage. [André Gide]

{One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.}

In a sense it feels like I’m setting sail in a fog bank, hoping the weather will be better out at sea. Which sounds a little crazy. But as sailors, we also know that it can be true, so I’ll just have to trust and set sail…! 

Nagging question

How can humans produce such perfect beauty, like Chopin’s Nocturnes or Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, and yet also cause such horrors as wars, destruction, climate change? 

We are effectively destroying this planet. 

Two years into this Covid pandemic… What if this virus is Nature’s way of ridding itself from humankind to thus try and save the planet Earth?

From rainclouds to sunshine

One cannot overestimate the importance of affirmation. 

This morning, I had a brief, intake phone-call with a counselor from my medical insurance company to help with “stress management” and it went so much better than I would have expected. It was only 20-minutes long and mostly about getting to know my situation, so I explained the main details. It wasn’t easy for me, it was quite upsetting because it went to stir a lot of emotionally hard stuff. But after listening, the counselor made a few comments that really brought me a sense of both deep relief and strong empowerment. They said something along the following lines: “That is, indeed, very traumatic and stressful and a terrible amount to bear”; “It sounds like your situation has put you in a constant anxiety mode — you’ve had to be constantly in ‘fight or flight’ mode, and that’s terribly stressful”. 

That’s all true, although I’ve hardly been able to word it so clearly or explicitly myself — a few times I did at the beginning and got gaslighted by some old friends who are supposed to be wiser and partly like mentors to me, which really hurt. But yes, I have been feeling like a “hunted animal” for nearly three years now, already pre-pandemic for some of the circumstances, and to have that so explicitly acknowledged by a professional was wonderful: a huge relief as well as sweet empowerment for me. 

Then, I was asked what gives me joy in my life. Here came a long list on my side — and the counselor reflected this back to me, which was nice — but there also came the realization that because of my “constant anxiety” or “fight or flight” mode, many of the things that used to bring me joy in a calm relaxing way are not accessible to me at the moment, and haven’t been for a long while — which is sad. 

Finally, the counselor asked me what brings me relief in my daily life and here I could hardly find an answer at all: I have almost no sources of relief. No sources of relief: no wonder I’m stressed out, in “constant anxiety” or “fight or flight” mode! And here I felt compassion for myself, in the way I would for a dear friend who’s struggling: and I think this twinkle of self-love is wonderful, too. 

As I journaled earlier this morning, I wrote about taking good care of myself and loving myself. Then, I took a nice warm shower and a long-needed shampoo, getting my hair to look glorious again and thus helping me to feel better with myself. 

I know that anxiety and depression can be the two sides of one same coin and that I’m battling with the symptoms of both, now and then. But there are also days like today, when a shampoo, some important affirmations, some good music and running errands in the sunshine can dispel the clouds.