Being in the World

Reading over what I posted two days ago something new is revealed.  I wrote about the last time I couldn't leave—when I was stuck in New York during hurricane Sandy.  Now, we're all stuck—at home—or somewhere, on hiatus from normal, not sure when it will return, or how it will change us permanently.

The revelation is about the anxiety that gripped me in New York.  Being anxious made it impossible for me to touch things, to settle, to relax.  I was literally stuck in New York, but my anxiety made my world even smaller.  I became afraid to be.

It occurs to me, that there are a lot more people experiencing this quality of being hemmed in—maybe to distraction—maybe for the first time in their lives.  I've heard my friends tell me their shopping strategies based around the logistics of timing and available cleaning supplies.  Others remember suddenly not to touch handrails, or elevator buttons, or sink handles.  Things that were thoughtless manifestations of being (opening a door, hugging a friend, sharing a sip from a waterbottle) are on lockdown.

I have so much compassion for this experience.  The experience of the world getting smaller and smaller. The experience of working through multiple steps to perform simple actions—the new attention you have in washing your hands, putting the groceries away, opening the mail.

I've been practicing this kind of strategic heightened risk-assessment for years—I know exactly how to keep track of all the things that should be washed, or left in the sun, or thrown away.  And, I have had to adapt to this.  I've learned that I tend to over-assess for risk. So I began taking medication to help my mind relax its grip on problems that were impossible—that made it impossible for me to function.

But this is the kicker!  The thing that we're living through, right, now.  This is what my Anxiety is for! It knows how to scan the field for these dangers.  And it feels heartbreaking, to be honest.  I have had to teach myself infinitesimally small step by step that I am allowed to be in the world.

Even as feel my heart expand in understanding and love for everyone who's freaking out about touching something right now, anyone who's worried about germs for the first time in their life, and anyone who feels like their world has grown incredibly small...  I also know that you are allowed to be in the world.

And the world is big, and crazy, and full of actually scary things. And it's a good time, maybe the first good time—in my experience—to be a little anxious, to do a little over-assessing for risk.  But, I've learned something from my years interacting with anxiety.  It's important to do this as an act of love.  May all of your acts of sanitation, all of your second guesses and double-checks be acts of love.

In love and solidarity,

Christy

The Last Time I Couldn't Leave

It's March 30th, 2020 and I feel stuck. The last time I couldn't leave I was in New York—during Hurricane Sandy. That was also the last time I wrote on this blog. The difference now is that everyone is stuck, and we don't know how long it will last. So we're all adjusting—there isn't somewhere outside of this. About a week before New Mexico began shutting everything down I finished writing my final exams for graduate school. One of the essays I wrote was about creativity and healing—and I wrote about my experience of anxiety and panic while stuck in NYC, and how drawing helped me get through it. I want to share an excerpt from my paper here:

  I was caught in New York City during Hurricane Sandy. I started having intense anxiety that seemed to grip me more tightly every time another flight was canceled out of the city.  One day I went to a cafe in Brooklyn, about a block from my brother’s apartment. I saw a mouse poison trap, and it triggered deep panic. In fear of poison and contagion, I felt certain that the storm had washed poison into the streets that everything was contaminated. I felt like I couldn’t move, like I couldn’t touch anything for fear I would contaminate the world further. This is one of the ways my anxiety manifests itself.  Knowing this, I somehow forced myself to move, to enter the cafe, to order a coffee. And then I sat, uncomfortably, uncomfortable in the world, uncertain about how to be. I had my sketchbook and a journal, and I didn’t know what else I could do other than draw—and earnestly ask the universe for help. Taking care not to touch anything, I propped my journal on my knees, and I started to draw. I didn’t know what was going to come, but I kept asking for help, and then my asking turned into a prayer that my pencil would show me what I needed to know. 

I intentionally allowed my pencil to move against the page, holding a space for something—but refraining from any assumptions about what it would be.  So, in front of me, slowly, dark heavy lines of pencil built up, pricked by small round erasures of light. A night sky appeared, and then a mound which melted and morphed into the great decaying body of a bird, some of its bones exposed, feathers still clinging to dying flesh.  I kept looking and asking, and waiting, and drawing, and milk poured out of one eye socket into a pool under its breast. And then the sky started to pour into the bird’s skull, filling it with stars that in turn filtered into the milky white pouring out of the bird, into the craggy ground.  I worked, and worked and worked. My coffee cooled and I worked. I know now I was sinking deeply into a creative moment. I was lost to the world around me, completely engaged with the image that spoke to me, comforted me, told me about death and dying and starlight and earth, and wholeness, and space—space that’s distressingly distant and incredibly close.  When they started to close the cafe I found I could move again. I could touch things, and walk past the poison trap back to my brother’s apartment. My fear wasn’t gone, but something had changed itself in me. Perhaps, something had even started to germinate in me, an understanding that I knew was important—in the way that you can know a dream is important—but you can’t look too closely at it, or know too much too soon. 

This story is the story I feel well up in me when I think of creativity’s connection to healing.  I didn’t cure my anxiety, I didn’t solve anything, or take away my fear and panic. But I consciously sat with it, I allowed it to work through me, I allowed it to settle in me, and hopefully to start to teach me something.  And I wasn’t fine after the experience.  But I was calmer, and I felt deeply—almost giddily—connected to the drawing, I felt awe-filled and excited—like I had discovered a tender, delicate connection to another world, something unconscious in me, or in the world, something vastly wise.   Michael Lerner discusses the inevitability of death and illness—naming them as a part of the human condition. He wonders about a new perspective about them, “it’s a perspective that absolutely includes all the pain and all the anger and the sorrow, but the possibility is to open up whether there’s anything besides pain and sorrow, is there anything worthwhile in this very difficult thing that you’ve been given?” This question evokes the possibility that perhaps pain, difficulty, anger and sorrow are teachers.  They are unavoidably a part of our wholeness. Perhaps sitting with them is a doorway toward recognizing our wholeness.