Treading Water

We are living in trying times.  Pandemics, elections, racial tensions, economic collapse, threats to the health and diversity of our planet.  We are exposed to a non-stop barrage of news, and the bad news trends faster than the good news.  If you are not addicted to the news, and caught up in the the “us vs. them” aspect of it all, you might be one of the many that tries to avoid the news altogether.  On the eve of a historic event, there is nothing I want to do less than tune in to the news.  I cannot escape the divide of opinions, even within my own home.  I have done what I can, as I try to do every day.  I try to invoke a positive attitude, both inwardly and outwardly.  I clutch to my practice of stubborn cheerfulness, and hold it tight, like a flotation device.  But I keep catching myself holding my breath.  I know I am not alone in feeling like I am treading water, metaphorically speaking.  One of the few good things about being fat is you float like a cork, so I am in no danger of drowning, or so I think.  My dreams, however, would beg to differ…

My work neighbor and I crossed paths in the hallway the other day, and we asked each other the usual question.  “How are you holding up?”  It is the question on everyone’s lips these days.  My answer is usually the same:  “Surprisingly well, all considering!”  And most of the time, I really mean it.  I feel better than I have a right to, I think to myself.  I have work, business is good, my family and I have our health.  We have a roof over our heads, food to eat.  We have things that cannot be taken for granted, things that so many others are fighting to maintain, have already lost, or never had in the first place.   With good fortune, how can I not be good?  It seems wrong to feel worried, when I compare myself to others.

For someone who spends so much time self-analyzing, I still tend to walk around in a cloud of denial.  I have always thought of myself as a strong person.  Someone with thick skin.  A woman who could not be brought down by such minor trivialities as hormones or PMS or post partem depression.  Wrong on all counts, as I have discovered over the years.  Now, with the world in such a state of turmoil, I keep thinking that I am above anxiety, that I have no right to complain or be worried, but that is just not true.  Even the strongest among us has to admit that the world is a mess.  In a matter of hours, prayers will be answered for about half of us.  For which half, it remains to be seen.  Some of us pray for change, some of us pray for more of the same.  No matter what happens tomorrow, some portion of the population will be desperately disappointed.  And no matter what happens, the world is not going to right itself automatically.  So waiting with baited breath for a something to happen is not the answer.  Yet we wait, we hold our breath, and the anxiety builds.

I have spent much of my life waiting for the next big thing on the calendar.  The next trip, the next holiday, the next party.  Birthdays, graduations, first days, last days.  Life feels like a jigsaw puzzle, where I need to work on one thing, but before I can focus on that thing, this other thing needs to happen.  Most of these events have been of my own making, and I have always felt like I knew what needed to be done, and I would just get right to it.   Lately, though, the swell of unknowns, global-sized problems, fear, and lack of control over pretty much anything in the world has started to feel like a bit too much, and I feel stalled, unable to figure out what the next move should be, so I just float, waiting to see what will happen next.

Everyone has their own experience, their own set of circumstances, their own way of trying to cope. I work hard to find happiness in the moment, to stop and smell the roses and watch the spiders spin webs, and in doing those things, I do feel a measure of fulfillment, a little joy in each day.   I am not a front-line worker, like the medical professionals, but as an essential (financial services) worker, I have been working harder than ever, starting from the night we first heard the rumor that the stay at home order might be going out the next day, and I stayed late into the night, rearranging the office, buying cleaning supplies, and formulating plans to somehow stay open without dying.   It has been hard to keep up with the long hours, the staffing shortages, the lack of gratitude from customers who could care less that my cost of doing business has gone through the roof, that every aspect of my job has been impacted in ways that I have no control over, and that while I might not be working in a hospital setting, surrounded by confirmed sick people, my staff and I are putting ourselves at risk every day by continuing to expose ourselves to people we don’t know the health status of, so that their purchase or sale or refinance can close on time.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have worked crushingly long hours.  I cannot relate to the stories of being house-bound, of having nothing but free time in which to learn to crochet or play the guitar or try every recipe in the cookbook.   There have been no fuzzy slippers and bathrobes for me, no online yoga sessions, no catching up on my reading list.   I did manage to get in a few weekend camping and kayaking trips, and an occasional lunch-time bike ride, until the smoke descended and summer came to a screeching halt, and doing those things helped me keep a grip on my sanity.  That, and ice cream.   Ice cream has become a food group.  Normally pretty healthy eaters, my husband and I recently consumed a dinner of chips and doughnuts.  In past times, if one of us had chosen those items to constitute a meal, the other would have looked on in horror and disgust.  Now, we just say “pass the Cheetos”, passing no judgment on the other.  Which is nice, I guess.  Or alarmingly co-dependent.

No matter how high an opinion I have about my own coping abilities, I am beginning to see that the increased work, decreased exercise and healthy habits, not enough sleep, and the rising tide of worry have taken their toll.  I have always been an active and vivid dreamer, and I have always believed that my mind works hard while I am asleep, trying to help me make sense of my life.   In my dreams, I work out issues with people I know, I confront my fears, and come up with solutions for problems that have plagued me.  I also often dream of food.  Particular foods, probably containing things I am missing in my diet.  I have had dreams of being offered bowls of crab and shrimp, of foraging for walnuts.  Things that have trace elements that maybe I am deficient in.  If I dream of a certain food, I make sure to eat it as soon as possible.  My dreams can also serve as reminders, or warnings.  I often dream of people I know, and if the dream is disturbing, I make it a point to call that person, to check in and see if they are okay.  I will usually wind up telling them about my dream, which is not universally welcomed.  Maybe that’s why I don’t have that many friends.

Anyway, a few nights ago, I had a dream that I took very seriously, as a sign that maybe all was not as well with me as I was letting on to others, or was acknowledging myself.  My dream went like this:

I was sitting in a writing class, with other students, an undetermined number, but enough that we were seated in several rows, our desks spaced out at a safe distance from one another.  Our classroom had a high ceiling, and a tall wall of glass in the front.  It looked out onto the tarmac of an airport.  We were situated right on the edge of a runway, and the classroom was angled such that we had a clear shot down the runways, and an expansive view of the approaching aircraft, all lined up, waiting to descend.  “This is great,” I thought.  “When my husband starts to travel again, I will be able to watch his planes come and go.”  I should have been focusing on my assignment, but I was distracted by the view, and the activity outside the window.  There was much commotion at the distant end of the runway, and I could see that there had been a crash.  Coming toward us, there were lines of rescue workers, some toting victims in fireman-carry pose, some on stretchers, some by two-person chair-carry. A parade of carnage, coming straight at the window, then passing out of sight around the corner.  In the distance, planes continued to crash, in varying degrees of severity and spectacle.   “Who knew there were so many mishaps and crashes at airports?” I thought to myself.  Suddenly, I was gripped with the realization that if my husband were on a plane, and it crashed, I would be there to witness it.  The anxiety began to rise within me.  The floor had dissolved into water, and each desk was now floating in its assigned place among the rows.  Our seats were just below the surface of the water, and the writing surface a few inches above it.  I could not see the bottom, but intuitively, I knew the water was very deep.   I suddenly felt so tired,  I knew that if I have to leave my desk, I would not have the strength to swim.  I looked around, desperately trying to see if there was a life jacket, or some arm floaties that I could  use.  I found a rope, and pulled myself out the classroom door, still seated, pulling my desk along with me, as far as it would go.  I had a brief respite in the hallway, where the water had not intruded.  I held myself in place by the rope until my arms tired, then opened the door again, and my desk slowly floated back into place.  On a far runway, I caught sight of a man.  The tarmac had now also turned to water, and as I watched, the man began slowly sinking beneath the surface.  He remained vertical, his eyes closed, his arms straight at his sides.  I could now see below the water, as well, and I watched as he sank deeper and deeper.  It was clear he was dead, and that he had slipped through the cracks, literally.   I felt a crushing sadness because there were too many people to save, everyone was so spread out, the rescuers could not possibly see them all, or save them all. “How many bodies are down there?” I wondered.  The water was so deep, it would be impossible to know.  I could feel the panic rising, wanting to be out of the water that was full of dead people.

In the next scene, I wake up in a hospital bed.  My husband is sitting nearby, and we are watching a movie.  There is a woman on the screen, and she is holding a small plastic card, like a grocery store club card one might attach to a keyring.  She needs to warm it up somehow, to make it work, and the only way she can think to accomplish this is to blow on it.  There is no sound track to the film, just a closeup of the lower half of her face, her lips pursed, blowing on the plastic card.  Her efforts are apparently not enough, and so, in slow motion, she opens her mouth to put the card inside.  In the way of horror movies, the camera slowly zooms in on the card, and you just know what is going to happen next.  As she places the card on her tongue, and it slips in too far, blocking her windpipe, I begin to have an anxiety attack, or an asthma attack, or both.  I am lying face down on the bed, and I cannot breathe.  My husband is there, but he does not know what to do to help me.  Like in the movie, everything around me has now gone to slow motion.  Out of nowhere, a doctor appears, and he calmly lays down beside me on the bed, and embraces me, as one might do with an autistic child in the middle of an episode, in a full body bear hug.  He is speaking softly, not to me, but to my husband, telling him that this is normal, and that he can tell by the bend in my elbow, it is not my fault I am fat, that it is genetic, and that while there were studies in the 1970’s about the connection between whatever it is that gives my elbow its telltale bend, and being overweight, the researchers ran out of money before they came up with answers, and so people like me were raised on “cheesecake and chicken Alfredo”.  Slowly, as he uses the deep pressure stimulation to calm me, I begin to breathe.  Later, when I am recovered and upright, my husband and I decide we should eat, because apparently, that is what you do after a near death experience.   A nurse appears, and announces that she has checked our credit, and all is fine, so we can proceed to the cafeteria, where we may choose either breakfast, or dinner.  As the dream ends, I ponder the absurdity that the hospital needs to check my credit before I can be fed.  Which is probably not that absurd at all.

End of dream.

For most of my dreams, I can link many of the scenes to events or thoughts of my day.  It has been very windy lately, and I have watched the water closely, worrying about each boat I see in the white-capped waves, wondering why they have ventured out in such terrible conditions.  A few days ago, I watched from my office window as a Coast Guard helicopter circled for hours, until dark, clearly on the search for a missing someone or something.  As a kayaker, my attention is always caught by missing boaters, kayakers, and canoeists, and I obsess over the news stories.  There have been too many lately.  A friend told me the other day he was taking his kids to see a vintage horror movie, and we laughed about how we had both tried to watch it in high school.  I had gone with a group of friends, and my six-year old brother begged to come along.  We made it to just past the opening credits, and he wanted to leave.  I was only too happy to comply.  That was the last horror movie I ever saw.  With the change of weather, I keep trying to put a wool blanket on top of our down comforter, and my husband kicks it off his side, too hot, even when I tell him weighted blankets are supposed to help you sleep.  The being fat part, that is a common theme, probably brought into sharper focus with my ice cream consumption.  And while I was definitely not brought up on cheesecake and chicken Alfredo, like any addict, my brain is secretly telling me to go ahead, dairy allergies be damned, what’s the worst that could happen?

Suffocation.  That would be the worst thing that could happen.  Since March, I have been trying trying to squelch the fear of catching the virus, having my lungs shut down, and dying a slow, painful death.  I have asthma, and food allergies, and consuming the foods I am allergic to causes congestion, inflammation, and asthma.  I have only had one major asthma attack in my life, in the middle of a dust storm, while camping outside a small village in Mexico during an Easter weekend, when the entire village was shut down for the holiday, and there were no clinics open, or doctors available.  The sheer terror of having to measure every breath, of forcing yourself to remain calm, because panic would increase the heart rate and make it even harder to breath, is something I never want to experience again.  And yet…  I told myself when the pandemic started that I needed to be vigilant about my diet, to increase my odds of survival in the event I catch the virus.  So what have I done instead?  Eat all of the things I am allergic to.  Constantly.  It’s as if I am tempting fate, testing the limits of my body’s ability to cope.  It’s a complicated control issue, one I have struggled with all my life, made messier by the feeling of having no control in a world come undone.   My brain seems to be of two parts:  the devil on one shoulder, goading me into temptation and providing convenient rationalization points, and the angel on the other side, trying to appeal to reason, provide motivation, but speaking too softly to be heard in the daylight.

I woke up the next morning, and decided that it was time to clean up my act, before something terrible happened.  So what did I do instead?  My day got busy, I worked too many hours, did not put myself first or carve out the time to plan my meals.  So I ate what was easy and fast.  This went on for two more days, until on the third day, when in addition to bad food choices, I also let myself get too distracted and busy to drink enough water.  But, it had been a sunny day, and I hadn’t been on a bike ride since just before the wildfire smoke episode, so around 5:30, I decided that I was going to go for a ride.  No warmup, no stretching, inadequate clothes for the rapidly cooling evening temperatures.  That night, I experienced muscle cramps in my legs, from foot to groin, that dropped me to the ground.  I had to crawl to the kitchen, and making my way up into a half crouch, I pawed through the refrigerator, pulling out jars, until I found a pickle jar I could get open, and proceeded to guzzle half the jar of juice.  I grabbed a banana, and choked it down through tears.  Those two remedies were enough that I was able to get myself to the bedroom, where I consumed a fizzy glass of lemon flavored magnesium drink, gulped a handful of cell salts, and sprayed myself down with magnesium spray.  Which, if you don’t know, is a little like spraying yourself with cold glue, after which you will stick to your sheets and be utterly miserable.  I laid there for hours, fighting off the cramps and the witch’s brew in my stomach, tossing and turning, and also ruining my husband’s sleep, in the process.   In my misery, I vowed that starting the next morning, no excuses, things were going to change.  And so they did, for two and a half days.  But tomorrow is a new day, and I will get back on track.  Again.  And if I don’t, my subconscious brain and my body will keep reminding me of the urgency.

There are so many lessons here, I can hardly sort them all out.  If I could, maybe I would not be suffering nightmares and leg cramps and pants that are getting increasingly tighter.  On the surface, I would say that we should not put our lives on hold, always waiting for something to happen.  That we should live in the moment.  It is said that “Life is what happens while you are busy making plans”.  I also like the quote “We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails”.  All easier said than done, but certainly worth thinking about, and trying to incorporate into our lives.  “You are what you eat” and “Place your own oxygen mask first” also come to mind, and I need to get back to both of those mindsets.  These are all great sayings, but in the face of riots, mutating viruses, hurricanes and floods, fires and darkened skies, those seem like twinkly little rings, dangling just above our desperate reach.

There is so much talk about being kind to one another, of trying to find new truths and ways to reach out and connect, to find common ground and forgiveness, to come together.  The first key to unlocking this dream has to come from within, I believe.  Before I can be kind to you, I must be kind to myself.  As I struggle to understand you, I must dig deep and try to understand myself.  As I work to forgive you your trespasses, I must also work to forgive myself for my own weaknesses and failings.   As I view the rising agitation around me, I realize that everyone is suffering, in some way, and we are all trying to make sense of things in our own ways.  Our collective mental state is troubled, and to deny that fact, to downplay the disillusionment that has crept over us like the suffocating wildfire smoke that choked us for weeks, is a dangerous game.

This evening, I saw in a press release on my phone by Mount Rainier National Park, announcing the discovery of the bodies of two young men on Tolmie Peak.  They had apparently died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds.  They were discovered by hikers, and had been dead only a few days.  Neither one was from this state.  To get to where they were found, they had to travel here, drive to the Park, pass through closed gates, then hike up the mountain, eight and half miles.  That is a lot of effort, and shows deep intent.  I have worked as a volunteer for the Park, and have spoken with officials within the park system, as well as with sheriffs in the Olympic Peninsula, about how often people travel to places of wild beauty, to commit suicide.  It is shockingly common, and park rangers and law enforcement deal with it on a regular basis.   As I chatted this summer with a sheriff in Clallam County, we were discussing two different suicides that had taken place that month, both victims from out of state, both choosing places of natural beauty to end their lives, and I wondered aloud that it was hard to understand the depths that a person would have to be in, that in the face of such magnificent surroundings, the natural beauty would not be enough to convince them there was hope, and that life was worth living.  Maybe that was their thought process, a test of sorts.  If they went to the most beautiful place they could imagine, and it was not enough to lift them up, then maybe it would prove to them there was no hope to be had.

A couple of months ago, on a hike at Sunrise, I clambered past a trail closure, curious about the “Under Repair” sign.  I figured if anyone questioned me, I would just show them my volunteer badge, and having helped in the past on repair projects within the park, I could say I was checking on the work.  I walked for a good half mile, before I found the spot in question.  There was no work being done on the trail, but clearly, an investigation had been conducted.  A few yards above the trail, the tall grass was flattened, as though someone had walked off the trail, and settled in for a nap.  The compressed area was surrounded by red NPS flags on sticks, marking the spot as clearly as if they had outlined a body in spray paint.  I am extremely nosey, but not so much that I would consider stepping off the trail to poke around, as clearly the trail was still closed for a reason, and it would be very wrong to have disturbed the scene.  I studied the spot for a very long time, feeling sad, and trying to figure out what had been special about that place.  It was an easy distance from the parking lot, but far enough out on a trail that is not as heavily traveled as others in the park, that some privacy could be had.  A few trees blocked the view of the spot from the bend in the trail, and the tall grass would have made a bit of a screen.   I myself have spent many afternoons on that section of the trail, sitting on a log, thinking and writing, never seeing another hiker.  I turned to take in the view, and could see that Mt. Rainier was perfectly framed, between the trees, across the valley.  The meadow above and below the trail was still full of wildflowers, and the tall grass on the gentle slope would have made a comfortable spot to rest, and reflect, and possibly make peace with the decision they were about to make.  I could understand the choice of place, though I could not fully understand the act.  I stayed long enough to offer a prayer, then headed back the way I came.

This leaves me with the last lesson, the one that I always come back to.  The one that for me, comes easily, but for others, apparently, not so easily.  And that is the message of hope.  No matter how messed up the world seems, no matter how out of control people seem to have become, no matter how deep the divides, there is always hope.  There can always be healing, and it is never too late to start down that path.  Short view actions like emotional eating, road raging, destroying and rioting, abusing substances, gambling, looking for love in all the wrong places, making life changes out of fear, and all of the other stupid things people do in the face of adversity, are not the answer.  I would never judge a person for giving up, because we can never truly walk in someone else’s shoes.  I wish I could articulate the secret of knowing deep inside that there is always hope, and share it with the ones who cannot find the spark of hope within themselves.

For me, having hope makes it possible to admit that I can be undone by stress, like anybody else, that I am not stronger, or immune.  That I can get depressed, that I can be overpowered by simple things like wheat and yeast and milk and wildfire smoke.  That I cannot fight reality by pretending I can eat ice cream without consequences.  That eating ice cream is not going to fix the world, and pretending that it can will eventually wreak havoc on me.  Hope is the spark that fuels the dreams that tell me there is a problem, that the problems have solutions, that there is work to be done.

I could continue with the ice cream solution, until my body fat is high enough that I won’t even have to tread water anymore, I can just lie back and float, arms spread wide and face to the heavens, waiting to see what will rain down next on the world.  Or, I can flip over, stop treading water, and begin to swim.  Hope tells me that I can solve many of my own problems, if I just stop ignoring them, and make the necessary adjustments.  Having hope leads to having faith that everything is going to be okay.

And everything is going to be okay, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.  In my dreams, I will find a way to sort it all out.