Beyond what I know

Notes on reshaping

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A song I’m loving:

Through the fog, 35mm film

Half a year ago, I was in a therapy session when I asked the question, “what would a life without depression even be like; who would I even be without it?” The question itself makes me cry, but not more than the answers do. I’ve felt closer to living into the answers of the question lately, which has been surprisingly unsettling.

The dark has always felt familiar, almost like kin, like a cloak of protection. I have been comfortable there, wading in it, always longing for something different while not embracing difference when it showed itself. Feeling like an outsider in my own life became The Truth, so much so that proof of the opposite was a threat instead of an invitation. I felt cozy with the version of myself who thought I was my pain. There was almost a contentedness with feeling far away from my truest self, like I, in some unknowable way, needed the distance. To be close to my own wholeness seemed like a betrayal of some sort, one I am still trying to understand.

Over the last six months, The Truth has started to melt in ways I can only describe as being ineffable. Depression is feeling more fluid and less sticky, like it’s slowly dripping down from my brain to my feet, ready to soak into the earth and become something else. I’ve recently experienced myself without it. There’s a foggy path ahead, one I still can’t fully see beyond, yet I know it’s there now. I see a path into something else taking shape. I believe the outline of it. I feel the fog thinning. There is more space in my ribcage when I breathe. I feel roots of possibility planting themselves where dread once grew wild within me, like a dying weed that would never fully die, one I couldn’t ever seem to completely eradicate. It is new territory, new sensations, a new way of seeing. It’s what I’ve often wondered whether or not my body was capable of feeling, yet embracing and trusting it isn’t so easy.

The shifts are, in some ways, subtle: not second-guessing my decisions to do even the simplest of things, like go to the store or take a drive. Being more heart-opened in my relationships. Staying off my phone more. Not anticipating what will go wrong as much. Less overwhelm in the mornings. Imagining possible futures. Trusting what I imagine. Being with fear and sadness instead of becoming them. Standing up for myself instead of cowering to please. Heaviness becoming lighter. Saying no when no is my truest answer. More reciprocity with nature. In other ways, the shifts are big and I still want to keep it close. Yet all of these shifts feel like a new life, and facing that is intense — even in the goodness of it, facing a new kind of life is scary. Even change in the direction we’ve hoped for can be challenging.

It also feels complicated to be experiencing a quiet, personal transformation while people continue being bombed, while an election year buzzes with anxious anticipation, while sifting through grief, while caring for a sick toddler, while figuring out where I’m heading with my work this year, while witnessing inequity everywhere, while Being In This World. It reminds me of how often we have to hold more than one experience at the same time. It reminds me how tender this balancing act is, the act of turning both inward and outward simultaneously. It reminds me of how necessary the inward and outward orientations are, how both must remain within us at the same time in order to be able to truly attune to the personal and the collective all at once.

I keep asking myself, “who am I without x? Without y? Without z?” It is too easy to become intertwined with the labels and boxes I’ve long fit in, with the roles that are dear to me, with the ways of being that feel so real they’ve calcified into my bones. “This is just who I am” was the shape I automatically molded into, an inner response to avoid the possibility of change, of becoming more true.

Yet there is also a distance there, an opening — there is the reality that us humans are so much more than the often-narrow view we have of ourselves. There is the reality that our Selves will change over and over when we get out of the way of what needs changing. There is the reality that our lives shape us, just as we shape our lives. There is compassion for why I long assumed change wasn’t really possible. There is tenderness in the fear, in all the not knowing. There is room to move slow enough to truly absorb what is changing — to not bypass it or rush past it before it can form roots. There is a vision of Who I Really Am, beyond the small suits I tend to lay out for myself. There is a vision that within all of us, underneath the armor, is something profound and true and worthy of our own awe.

What feels perhaps most important, though, is the recognition that all of this will shift, over and over: that depression may feel ever-present again, that I’ll return to questioning it all, that I am ever-rearranging, and not always in an upward trajectory. What feels most important is no longer waiting for an arrival anywhere. And this knowing of no arrival might be what makes allowing change to feel more possible. This knowing that nothing lasts might be what makes leaning into transformation and a vision of What Could Be more accessible while they’re here. This knowing of impermanence might be what lets the cloak of protection fall to the ground more often.

I’m not quite sure what I’m trying to say here. I guess I just wanted to say it — to say becoming our truest selves is a tender thing, and this exploration of moving into new shapes amid a burning world is a tender thing, one I hope to keep showering with whatever nourishment I can find. I wish that for all of us, for the world, for everything.

△ Nikki Giovanni on trusting your voice

△ Turning towards each other

△ This compassion. This honesty.

△ Poems to make you laugh

△ Eminem’s notes

△ Eschatology by Eve L. Ewing

△ A conversation on boundaries from

Katherine May

+

Elissa Altman

△ This brief moment of looking up —

A portal into more.

With care,
Lisa