The Zoopness: What I did on my mental health vacation
I'm sending you an eight page letter, and I enclosed it with a kiss
Hi friends. It’s been a minute. I’ve wanted to write a million times. I’ve thought about writing every day for the last year. I’ve lugged my laptop that I hate with the fury of a thousand suns at this point (it seems to embody and represent all my pandemic rage that I don’t know where to put) everywhere the last twelve months in the hopes that I’d have the courage to sit down and write. But I’ve yet to really learn how to write from inside the cave of depression and anxiety, which is mostly where I’ve lived for the last year. I’ve slowly been getting better at talking about the experience of the cave once I’m safely out — but speaking from inside is new, and like most new things, it’s hard.
I somehow ended 2020 feeling hopeful. Despite a wretched fall, or maybe because of it, I found this inner calm and peace that I’d never even dreamed of before (quick plug for breath work + psychedelics, with some cautious caveats on the second), after being brought to my knees over and over again. Vaccines were coming online, a grown up was going to be in charge of the red button again, there was an end in sight.
And then 2021 happened and I watched that hope slowly trickle out like a leaky faucet that I knew was dripping and felt helpless to stop. I crumbled. Death by a thousand cuts. Pick your metaphor of slow death and demise, and that’s what 2021 felt like for me.
January 6th happened. Delta emerged. More mass shootings. Vaccine hesitancy was deeper than I had thought it would be, and polarization crystalized. There was a brief window in June/July when even though I understood the inevitability of the delta wave, I let myself live in suspended disbelief and remember what joy felt like.
And then Delta hit. And everything else followed. There was an earthquake in Haiti. A heat dome descended on Seattle. Afghanistan was the left to the Taliban. I watched the heroes I work with get ripped apart for being good scientists trying to save lives. The world was on fire. There hadn’t been time to even begin to process/grieve 2020, and 2021 just kept pounding. My bell was rung and my nerves were shot. And I just couldn’t do it anymore. I let myself check out. I gave up.
And I’m reaping the consequences of all that now. I’m a little over halfway through a three month leave of absence from work to try to deal with the burnout that became depression that became despair. It’s been a hard, and good, seven weeks, and I’m slowly remembering what it feels like to come back to myself. I’ve mostly been down in California, thanks to the generosity and kindness of sweet friends.
It had been a long time since I’d confronted severe anxiety and depression at the same time, and I’d forgotten what it is about that combination that’s so particularly toxic for me. My kind of depression feels like I’m in a silent, airless, pitch-dark room with a gun to my head and a voice telling me that if I tell anyone it’s there, it will kill me. And anxiety feels like a crowded train station full of confused and greedy people yelling over each other and shouting demands and requests I don’t understand. And it’s in the dichotomy of those two places that I start to break.
But this time away has reminded me that none of those voices are the Truth, even if they have to have their say in order to move on. I went to a hermitage up in Big Sur this last week and was reminded of what true silence sounds like, and it couldn’t be more different from that silent, airless, pitch-dark room.
I wrote you a letter while I was there. It made me so much happier than typing on a laptop, and I’m trying to lean into the California vibe of following my bliss. I also recognize that posting photos of a hand-written letter on a blog is a ridiculous thing to do, and you might not even be able to read my writing/posting these photos might not even work — but let’s just go with “it’s the thought that counts” — I was thinking about you, and wanted to say hi and thanks for helping me get here. That’s mostly it. :)
xoxo,
Alison
P.S. I’m including at the very bottom my list of 25 Things I Love. Would love to see your lists if any of you feel like sharing! Ajones4 at gmail.com