Perennial Conventions: Tending
Foggy morning in Bremerton
The Evergreen Echo
CW: suicide ideation, mental health
Hello fellow creature,
I no longer have social media (future article on this to come), but I do watch a lot (too much) of YouTube. And for me, January 1—and earlier, in truth—began the seemingly endless bombardment of New Year-inspired content. Planner updates, journaling tips, weight loss and dieting advice. Mere weeks after winter has begun we’re inundated with peppy people telling us how to get our lives together. I’ve never really bought into this, though I know how easy it is to be swept up into the fervor of goal-setting energy.
But last year in the midst of a depressive spiral, I had a realization that rattled me. There is no one way of getting your life together. The neverending stream of laundry, dishes, paperwork, and plans are literally the signs of a life in progress. Many of us, or I’ll speak for just myself, think that mastery over all the mess is what we should be striving for; but the end goal of “getting your life together” is something that, in a mental stew, has come to mean existing with an efficiency that burdens no one with my presence. I was aiming toward the level of together that someone else packing up all of my stuff after I died would be as minimally inconvenienced as possible.
What a way to live. Fear not! If, as January comes to an end, you’ve already abandoned whatever resolutions you’ve set, you are not alone. (If you’ve been struck by the productivity arrow and it has you feeling inspired, then I wish you every success). But if you’re like me, where shortened days and dropping temps make you want to hibernate, then here are some ways that I’m recontextualizing and embracing life this year.
I know some people can’t relate to having an inner monologue. I have a combination of constant narration, filtered thoughts meant for being spoken out loud (as well as filtered thoughts that I’d rather not think) and whatever song(s) I have stuck in my head at the moment. Having a lot of thoughts zipping through my head like Japanese shinkansen all trying their hand at that scene from The Polar Express where they drift across the ice, aiming to reconnect with the tracks on the other side…is chaotic to say the least. There are boons, though; the same characteristic that torments me with anxious what ifs stems from the same source that gives me an abundance of writing and conversational topics. In an effort to use my sluggish winter blues for good, it might be nice to reflect on the complexities of the mind.
Foggy morning at Manette Bridge, Bremerton
The Evergreen Echo
My inner voice is historically quite mean. Bordering on cruelty, she is an amalgamation of every personal and societal critique and insult. Her harsh gaze scans my every thought and action for flaws and failure. While there are uses for an inner critic or a guiding internal compass providing correction, I have a tendency to over-exert myself. I push myself to excel, the classic combination of a gifted kid + eldest daughter + Black woman having to work twice as hard for half as much. I dedicated a lot of energy to trying to be good, not wanting to upset anyone externally, and wanting to be great and achieve all my dreams at an early age (having learned from the mistakes of my elders). The downside is I’ve also held myself to the rapidly approaching deadline so that, having done all I needed to do, I could finally kill myself.
I didn’t realize most people wanted to live. I’ve always wanted to live the best life possible in the meantime, but I looked towards a future of dying young rather than growing old. Every day I slipped further away from being a child prodigy a dread grew, tormenting me with the fear of dying a loser.
My definition of a loser in this regard was a standard to which I would never hold anyone else. I fear dying, having never achieved self-actualization. That I would have spent my whole life in survival mode, fighting to eat, fighting to work, dying exhausted, having never accomplished the great work I imagine is brewing inside of me. I would never make it to the summit of Maslow’s hierarchy.
This might seem pretty dramatic, and admittedly the thought of being considered dramatic is a triggering fear of mine. But I know what it is to diminish yourself, your feelings, ambitions, and needs. I used to joke that I never did well on stage in high school theater, because I was too busy pretending to be okay. I tried my hardest to minimize the depth of feelings drowning me. It takes a lot to be vulnerable. Even with yourself.
Which brings me to a way I’m trying to shift my mindset as we trudge into February. If you’ve heard of radical acceptance, I’m here to pitch to you the half-step of radical neutrality. Now being a (self) hater is not something that changes overnight. Neutrality opens the door to freeing myself from the constant internal barrage and allowing myself to be the strange and haunting NPC that I truly am.
Again, this is not a cure for anxiety or depression, but a tool in the toolbelt from over a decade of therapy that makes life a little less unappealing.
Foggy trees juxtaposed as upward and downward branches.
The Evergreen Echo
The second tip I would suggest in the spirit of recontextualization is: gentle acknowledgement of the horrors. Actions taken and policies created before I was born, by people I wouldn’t have and will never meet, have impacted—and will continue to impact—my life. In a world where exposure to the elements, disease, starvation, and lack of clean water still kill people, our biggest opp, the unmatched predator in our lives, is still other humans.
Yet, as overwhelmingly horrific the day-to-day has become (please resist the urge to check out for too long), it is also not something that any one person can or is expected to solve (unless you offer and then back out cough Elon cough). There are many everyday things we can do to add good into the world. We can’t undo the actions of others. We can’t remove the harm being brought into the world. We can act differently. We can add good into the world. We can start with how we look at and treat ourselves.
How are you taking care of yourself this winter?
Thought-provoking and comforting and/or joyful things:
Books:
I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Se-hee
Gentle Writing Advice by Chuck Wendig
YouTube:
