It’s been a while since I’ve written, both for this newsletter and for the Secret Sharing Circle. I just haven’t been feeling like myself. The last part of May and all of June felt really weird…not so much dark as just empty. I’ve struggled with depression before - low-grade depression throughout most of my childhood and adolescence, a few full-blown dark summers in adulthood - but this is different. 

It started out in May as a rising panic. A very scary emptiness. Something I knew, with every fiber of my being, that I would do almost anything to escape from. 

The first time it happened was when I was sitting at my desk, going through my very clogged inbox; my iced coffee was almost gone, and I had a meeting in 30 minutes. I was trying to decide whether or not I had time to dash around the corner to the Dunnies (sidenote: I have started to abbreviate everything into a “ie” or “y”…like “spensie” for expensive, or “flexi” for flexible, or “Dunnies” for Dunn Brothers, and it is incredibly annoying even to me when I do it but I just can’t seem to stop) or if Postmates could get there in time. “Or maybe we just don’t get another coffee,” I thought. After all, I’ve been trying to cut back on caffeine, and those iced oat milk latte calories do really add up, and also it’s maybe not all that healthy to NEED a coffee in order to get through a Zoom meeting?

And I swear to god, the split second after I found myself thinking that, I felt the panic literally rise inside my body. I stared at a stock photo of a businesswoman and heard a voice inside my head scream, I don’t want to feel this. The thought of having to face a work call and then do something mundane like taxes without having coffee to drink or candy to eat or a promise made that I would order out or buy something cute from Target afterwards…it was a very particular kind of pain, a certain brand of fear over how painful I knew those tasks were going to be without something to elevate or distract me. 

I literally joke about how coffee is my emotional support drink, but this time, that felt really really real: Having to just sit with myself was hard enough, I found myself thinking. Having to sit with myself while also doing something boring and mundane? UGH, NO. 

The second time hit a few days later. I’ve been trying to listen to my hunger, and after a late lunch, I just wasn’t hungry for dinner. I spent the evening decluttering my closet, and during a particularly boring moment, I thought about how maybe I wanted to go eat something…but then I reminded myself that I wasn’t even hungry, and besides, it was already 8:30 and way too late for a meal. And then I felt it again, that panic: This inner distress that I had to live in this very boring, slightly frustrating moment and I couldn’t use food to numb out or distract myself from it. 

In my mind’s eye, there was this grown-up part of me that very much wanted to give in to the temper tantrum’ing, kid part of me…like my adult self was trying to coddle and take care of this small hysterical self. I found myself thinking, you’ve suffered enough. It was one of those defining thoughts that you just know has been swimming under the surface of your subconscious for years, and when it finally floats to the surface, it’s enough to capsize your whole entire being. 

The conscious awareness of it, the clarity of thought, hit like a mack truck: I don’t want to feel how it feels when it’s just me and nothing else, interacting with the reality of my life with nothing to distract me from it. 

The small flashes of panic continued. At times I would be cognizant of what was happening, and those were the times when I would just sort of clench my fists and wait for it to pass. Other times, I was either too physically or emotionally exhausted to fight back and would just give in to it by numbing out through another coffee or food or zoning out in front of the TV. 

Which actually didn’t matter, either way. It just kept growing. That yawning chasm just groaned deeper and wider, seemingly with each passing day. 

Suddenly, it wasn’t just coffee or Chipotle that it was rising up against…it was everything. I would go through my day and participate in the activities that usually fulfilled or entertained me, and then out of the blue I’d feel a plummeting drop, where it all suddenly felt so meaningless. None of this stuff was going to make me happy, not truly, and I couldn’t think of a single thing that really ever would. Accomplishments weren’t going to change this feeling…neither was falling in love, getting in the best shape ever, or netting a monthly 10K. Moving to the ocean, traveling the world, getting my book published? Those might even just make it worse, because then what would I even have to look forward to?!

And worst part of it all was that, deep down, I suspected that this was actually how I really felt, genuinely and authentically, all the time. I had just gotten super good at finding different things to cover it up or distract myself from it. 

When I got serious in May about not numbing out with food, it was like that old cartoon where the guy patched a leak in the boat only for a new leak to spring forth: Suddenly I was booking all these trips, doing all this shopping, and throwing myself into a big apartment makeover. I was cognizant enough to recognize that, even though I was spending well within my means, I was starting to feel a little out of control. More than that, I found myself doing stuff like booking a trip, feeling great about it for about a day or two, and then waking up and wondering where and when I should book a trip to next. I’m fucking doing it again! I told myself. 

I realized that throughout my life, whenever I stopped one coping behavior, there was always a new one that swiftly stepped in to take its place. Take for instance, what happened a handful of years ago: I went from acting like alcohol and cigarettes were my best friends to restricting my eating so I could feel fuckable again to trying to cure all that endless boredom with a new boyfriend. When that super-shitty relationship fell apart (THANK GOD), I started stuffing my feelings down by stuffing my face. That worked really nicely for a pretty long time, and if I’m blatantly honest with you, gaining a shit ton of weight actually didn’t bother me as much as everyone assumes it did. I didn’t love being 100 pounds overweight, but I also didn’t hate it…? It gave me a really nice excuse to be invisible for a while and not date and to not go after the big things I said I wanted. Instead, I got to just stay home and self-isolate, because you know what’s really easy? Watching AD’s Open House and Keeping Up With The Kardashians while stuffing down all that emptiness and anxiety with a quarter pounder, some fries, and a chocolate milkshake. THAT feels good. Compared to the nagging boredom and seemingly-endless sadness and that aching pool of profound loneliness that never seems to have a fucking bottom to it, it fucking felt GREAT. 

So obviously, when I decided it was time to turn things around, start taking care of myself again, and stop numbing out through food, anyone with half a working knowledge in emotional intelligence could have probably placed a fairly safe bet that the emotional gaping maw I had been running away from my entire life wasn’t just gonna slink away without a fight. 

June was when it got really intense. The only time I could predict it was when I got ready for bed and when I woke up in the morning. Otherwise, I would be going through my day, feeling totally fine, and then suddenly I’d feel like I’d been grabbed by the ankles and yanked down into a pit full of dementors. I cried a lot, not because I was super sad, but because I couldn’t escape it. I would grab an iced coffee and go to Target and then sit in the parking lot, weeping to my friends on Marco Polo because it felt like nothing actually made me feel good anymore. 

But the truth is, it wasn’t that nothing felt good…it just was that nothing was allowing me to numb out. I could go get that iced coffee or buy something cute at Target and it would maybe boost my mood a little bit, but those empty feelings were still gonna be waiting for me when I got ready for bed. I would work on my book for hours and feel pleased with the progress I was making, but knew it was all going to seem so meaningless when I woke up in the morning. 

At the very end of June, I drove to my parents’ place up north to spend some time with my niece. The three of them were still on the road when I arrived at the lake house, so I went down to the dock to try to emotionally prepare myself for three days full of family time that I’d be spending right before I flew out to Washington for a five-day trip with a friend. I had cried a couple times on the way up, just from feeling so strange and emotionally wrung-out. I don’t know where my heart is anymore, I kept thinking, as I piloted my truck up the old familiar roads leading from Stillwater up to Hayward. The Big 3 - love, God, and legacy - feel like they’re no longer the sustaining answer for fulfillment. Love is tough and it takes so much trust, and no matter how hard I try, I just never seem to get it right with anyone I love…which makes me feel like I just don’t even want to try anymore. My spiritual life has always held so much wonder and magic, but sometimes it feels like this dimension can be such a drag and God is a real nerd for sending me here. 

And that ever-present pressure to fulfill all my potential and leave some kind of adorable legacy - once the single best thing that would bounce me out of bed in the morning and propel me furiously through my days - is now just another way to fill my time until the yawning chasm greets me as I ready for bed. After all, I keep telling myself, if I’m not going to feel good, I might as well feel productive.

I thought through all this as I sat on the reclining chair on the dock and watched an eagle soar higher than I had ever seen one fly: It was so far up in the sky that you could barely see it. I knew from my past work with trance channeling and shamanic dream journeying that eagles and hawks are meaningful, powerful, and personal symbols for me…but I also tend to take that as a grain of salt when I’m up north, because these days almost every lake up north has a bald eagle or hawk in residence. 

This felt different, though. See from a higher perspective, I thought, repeating the animal symbolism from an oracle deck as I watched the eagle continue to soar, higher and higher. I knew I wasn’t always going to feel the way I currently did…that eventually, I would slowly start to shift back to my old optimistic self. But I was beginning to wonder if maybe the reason why it felt like nothing in my usual life meant anything was because it wasn’t supposed to, anymore. Maybe this whole time I had been attaching meaning to the wrong things, or to too-small things, and my attention was just being cleared in a really intense way so I could finally discover what truly did - or would - matter. Do I need to have kids? I wondered. Start a charity? Buy some land? 

Maybe I just needed to relax and let myself coast through this while I waited to see if the universe had anything new to show me. 

Another eagle appeared, soaring above the lake. A hawk flew into the woods along the shore, about a dozen feet to my right. And then a third eagle flew in from across the lake. After making a few more figure-8s in the sky, she perched on the tallest tip of the lookout tree on Loon Island, and settled in. 

“Traveling is so healing,” Lindsay said later that week, as we sat out on the balcony of our B & B just outside of Anacortes, Washington. The house was on the bay, with stairs leading down to the beach, and the backyard looked like something from a South of France fever dream…lush landscaping full of colorful flowers and beautiful trees. We really could not have asked for a more lovely place to watch the sun begin to set. But as we watched eagles soar over the boats lingering in the bay (I would continue to see at least two bald eagles a day while in Washington, with the record being six different ones spotted that Friday…I also found an eagle feather on the beach below Deception Pass, which if you believe in spiritual symbolism, you know is kind of a big deal), I found myself wondering what was going to heal me. 

Traveling used to be the thing for me. The dream. I usually crave global experiences the way some women crave kids. And Washington…for years now, my version of counting sheep is this scenario in my head of my rescue dog sitting copilot as I drive a packed truck of our stuff out to the Northwest to live in a small coastal town, where we can spend the rest of our leisurely lives gazing at mountains and walking along the ocean every morning. It’s still the only thought, the only future-trip, that has really brought me any comfort or peace in the last month or so. 

And I still appreciate the privilege and the beauty of seeing the mountains and the sea, but right then, it all felt like wading around aimlessly in the shallows. 

“Nothing really makes me truly happy anymore, so who cares,” I joked to Lindsay in Seattle, after the wave pulled me down again while we were discussing where we should make a reservation for dinner. And that’s it, I think, I decided a day later, as I stared at the mountain peaks floating below my plane window. A decade and a half ago, a man I loved who loved me back told me that he just wanted to disappear. I knew what he meant then, and I know how that feels now. But I also realize that this thing wasn’t going to let me go…that even my ultimate mental worry-stone of disappearing into the Northwest with a packed truck, a a couple of dogs, and a view of the ocean wasn’t going to just make this go away. 

So what if I just give into it, I asked myself. What if, instead of trying to claw and crawl my way up from all these deep drops…what if I just gave up, moved in, and lived here for a while? Just resign myself to the fact that life is going to feel like absolute shit for the time being, and embrace the suck. If I’m already going to feel empty and like life is entirely meaningless, then I might as well take this opportunity to finally eliminate every single coping mechanism and face the big fucking fear of what it’s actually like to live entirely in the boring, mundane present. To sit inside of every single feeling that I’ve been running away from my whole entire life…with just me and nothing else, interacting with the reality of my life with nothing to distract me from it. 

Maybe that’s the exact higher perspective that thousands of eagles across America have been trying to get me to realize! 

And I don’t want to do it, because even though I already feel like crap mentally and emotionally, the thought of not only willfully allowing that to happen, but going towards it by eliminating any and all coping mechanisms, makes me want to break out into a deep, cold sweat. My first inclination with even minor discomfort or pain is to always to sprint towards the first thing that I think might make me feel better. And now I’m just going to not…? I’m just gonna sit there, and actively let myself feel uncomfortable? 

But then again, what choice do I have? I either do it now when things can’t get much worse, and confront and then clear the crutches that prevent me from feeling genuinely GOOD; or I can ignore everything, continue to try to distract myself while I wait to feel better again, and then just hope that yet another dark summer doesn’t rise up again. 

So that’s where I’m at. That’s the update. I don’t have any answers yet (and by saying that, I’m not asking for advice, so please do not give me any). I’m still in the thick of it, and only now just getting up the guts to start doing the thing where I just sit inside of it when it hits. And I know this post is long, but wow, so is life, so thanks for sticking all the way through this one. 

I’ll be back next week with more. 

BYE

AC