hurricane force

Today my home sits on a map at the edge of hurricane-force winds. We use so many distinctions to measure and define these storms; it sounds much more serious to withstand hurricane winds than tropical storm ones—but in reality it’s the difference between 73 and 75 miles per hour. In reality, we label and categorize the storm to distract ourselves from everything we can’t control. The tree on the house, the person swept under the floodwaters—after a certain point, these have nothing to do with our categories, everything to do with split-second timing and the will of the storm.

After four years in a row, we are learning hurricane rhythms like we can rehearse our own disaster lineage: floods, Matthew, Irma, Florence, Dorian. Prep, leave, wait, watch.

Do you pray? I halfheartedly fling bewilderment at a blue sky a few hundred miles from the dark one that threatens my home, my neighbors.

And today, even though hurricane winds stalk my neighborhood, I also breathe something like relief.

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Over the last two weeks depression has slammed into me out of a clear blue sky; I’ve never been so grateful for an excuse to flee. Calls and texts trickle in from friends and family wondering if we are OK. Some of them get chipper replies, but to a few I say, things could be better. I want to say, I’m scared. Stay on the line. I don’t know what to do. I’m angry and everything is out of place. But that’s not about the storm.

We’ve taken our eerily predictable September trip to wander distractedly around my parents’ house. There is a corner of my room where I sat in a beanbag chair for twelve weeks when I was sixteen, listening to music and raking in zeroes on all my homework. See, I’ve never been diagnosed with depression, but mental illness isn’t a stranger to me. At sixteen I was good at pretending—I wanted people to think I didn’t carry an unbearable breathtaking heaviness under my ribs. But I couldn’t hide the dullness, how whatever gripped my heart also fell over my eyes.

I hoped the tears I cried for no particular reason might cleanse that thick veil between me and the world, but they only ushered me into oblivion every night. Each next day I woke up exhausted. I’d be exhausted by the effort of not crying through the day. Then exhausted by the wracking sobs at night.

I don’t have a beanbag chair anymore, but I listened to music and cried for hours over a jigsaw puzzle one day last week when I’d planned to work. But these are only tropical-storm-force winds. I haven’t sobbed myself to sleep.

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During hurricane season, everyone in the country suddenly has an opinion about your decision to live on the coast, to evacuate or stay, your preparation methods and contingency plans. But you also drop everything to check on your neighbors and you joke about your shared dread with the rest of the town. And those calls and texts from friends in other places are such lifelines; you live at the mercy of a raging ocean, but at least you are seen and held.

But depression doesn’t show up on a map, even when your Very Online job is to tell the truth about your life. If only everyone with opinions about mental illness could pull up an image of the elegant, ferocious swirl bearing down on you, bigger than everything that used to keep you safe.

To be clear—if Dorian had flattened our house, I wouldn’t yet have words for this storm. Likewise, this essay is not a cry for help. When you’ve done four hurricanes, you learn how to read forecasts and how to prepare; and when you’ve weathered mental illness before, you can learn how to list your next right steps. I’ve talked to some close family and friends. I’ve made an appointment with a therapist. I’ve taken myself outside on my walk every day. I am feeling out what it looks like in this season of life to do my very best and to be very gentle with myself, both at the same time.

But I’m here dropping my pin on this map because it’s a vicious lie that this world, this life, this spiritual life can’t make room for sadness. Because even as my world shrinks and all my energy goes to keeping myself present and OK, the one thing I can do for someone else is maybe remind them they’re not alone. Because when your hurricane is invisible, sometimes you need a reminder that if you can only do one thing, the thing you need to do is ask for help. Because silence and isolation breed shame and fear—and I can’t keep them from knocking, but I don’t have to invite them in for tea.

Instead I am choosing the way of openness. The way of here I am. Not to scare anyone—but to say that for so many of us, depression is a part of life. One we pray will blow over quickly; but not one we can weather alone.

And because writing down the truth reminds me I can accept what’s outside my control and still make choices of my own—as we say during hurricane season:
We can do hard things.
God doesn’t cause our suffering, but God bears our pain with us.
It gets better.

Check on your friends.

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With gratitude to the many people who’ve walked with me through the unfamiliar work of reaching out recently. I truly would not be writing here if I didn’t feel basically OK, thanks to you.