My fingers grip a desktop so tightly pressed one almost misses the fact that it’s not wood at all. A highly polished blizzard of wooden dust and gluey, formaldehyde-laden soup, almost certainly. It is full of emptiness and poison.
If one of the staffers were to walk in right now they’d see a body erect behind an oversized Apple monitor, the face a frozen stelae.
They may also see the white-creased joints and tips of eight fingers lined up a few inches behind the keypad. Inside, this body vibrates violently, its entire biology screaming a warning. I want to run. Instead I freeze. Breath is drawn as if through a crackling reed or wheeled up like water from a well. It enters and exits my core in deep, directed breathes. Then pause. Then nothing.
Moments pass before the next inhalation comes with a start. The process levels out again with a steady yogic exhalation moving, almost imperceptibly, a creased corner of a lunch receipt.
“I’ve got to get the fuck out of here,” I mutter.
Instead I sit for another ten, twenty minutes. This is work, after all. I’m supposed to be here, at my station, controlling the flow of information, orders, productivity. But I’m just here for show, waiting for my replacement. I’m living up to my word not to leave until then, or at least not before the end of the year.
I stand up and walk. The shortest route from my chair to the stairs, down and out, out and up the street, down a set of stone steps to the river. I walk with attention. A few times I cry, just a little, as I ask God what is wrong with me, why I’m not getting better. Once or twice I deliver it like an affirmation, thanking Deity for taking away my anxiety.
Sometimes that works. More often I just focus on my breathing and observe the moment: the shape of trees, clouds, the way my feet sweep over the cement path, the push of gravity, my thickness. Maybe I repeat slowly, with control, “May all sentient creatures everywhere be happy.” Maybe I imagine my breath is wind filling not my lungs, but my heart. That this wind starts and stops here inside this mystical organ that directs the universe.
By William Warby, courtesy of Wikicommons.
I am sitting by the water. I am crossing a bridge. I am on a dirt path. I am losing focus. A barge moves by — I don’t remember hearing it — and the water folds back, back upon itself, inverting the wall, the path, the bushes and trees of the opposing bank. I am losing focus. One fold into the next, water always changing hands, hiding another emptiness.
Beneath the dancing surface is fluid space, its meanderings imperceptible without the occasional snip of cottonwood leaf or piece of plastic betraying a hidden whorl. It hides (buries?) the homes of river cooters and aluminum cans, engine parts and leaden fishing weights.
Sometimes there are fish. Their only notice a sudden, audible redirection of the shimmering collage and streaming ripples that will travel until they die, this way or another. One less insect sitting on the light.
A convincing teacher (reanimated by my car’s compact disc player and stereo speakers) once told me, “Suffering is the repeated unwillingness to accept things as they are.”
I took it to heart. I made lists. Everything I could think of that I regretted, disliked, resented went on them. I made other lists, too. Lists of acceptance. One from last September read:
I accept completely who I am and take full responsibility for all my actions: good, bad, neutral.
I accept that I am prone to panic attacks and intense bouts of depression.
I accept that I live in [insert resented municipality here] and likely will for at least four more years.
I embrace my heart that is full to bursting with the desire for love, service, companionship, …
I’ve crossed out: “+ resist motivations of self-interested love or ego or …”
Once I distrusted every pulse that came from my heart. After all, there was a time I had chosen self-destruction and nearly secured it. Now that I’ve set my mind on living I’ve started to see the heart as the only voicebox for both the evolved and assembled portions of my brain and my best shot at liberation.
I listen to every squirm. I lose focus. I redirect my gaze. I get lost in the swirl of shapes, the rebounding ripples, the exploding gulps of air at the surface.
Sure it feels like reading tea leaves today, but practice. Practice.
I return to the office uninterrupted. I reach my office alone. I answer a few emails. I watch a video. No one monopolizes my time any more. Not since I gave notice. Not since I gathered my team together to tell them I’d been having panic attacks for months. But slyly, one by one, they’ve begun to tell me their secrets. Their troubles. Nearly all of them.
They’re secrets that I’ve kept. They travel within me, stirred up in my own emptiness only when my attention dives deeper to sift through the cool murk. Only then do such secrets reenter awareness. Every walk I take is a sifting through what has come before and been deposited in the depths. But then I’ve lost focus. I have to focus again.
No one can imagine what depression is like. One has to ‘be there’ to truly empathize, though I guess there might be a few truly compassionate people in the world who can enter our heart-space and feel what it’s like inside of us. You write so beautifully and I’m impressed that you can write from your pain. As for me, I must wait for the pain to pass or at least to lift momentarily before a single word comes my way. It seems a lot of writers with their deep thoughts and emotions have this particular ‘instability’…and where would the world be without its writers. You’re so valuable and probably don’t even realize it. I’d love to follow your blog but I haven’t been able to find the ‘follow’ option. It’s probably miy own brain fog at work, but if you have the chance, would you mind letting me know how I can follow you? You’ve visited my blog and I thank you for that. Love and light.
It’s okay…found it! :)
folo option should be at the top left on a thin black banner. as to the rest. i wasn’t able to write about this stuff for years and years. finally the dam burst. i don’t know why. i’m very grateful you took the time to stop, read, and respond. best to you.
I feel you man.
thank you.
thanks.
We are not definitely not meant to be in offices…
A study out of Chiba University in Japan shows the positive effects of nature therapy on anxiety and immune function.
From the abstract
“We conducted experiments involving 420 subjects at 35 different forests throughout Japan. As a result, these subjects sitting in natural surroundings showed decreases in the following physiological indices compared with the urban control group: 12.4% decrease in cortisol level, 7.0% decrease in sympathetic nervous activity, 1.4% decrease in systolic blood pressure, and 5.8% decrease in heart rate. This shows that stressful states can be relieved by forest therapy. It should also be noted that parasympathetic nerve activity increased by 55.0%, indicating a relaxed state. The results of walking experiments were also similar. Li et al. demonstrated that immune functions are enhanced by forest therapy. Middle-aged employees volunteered to participate in these experiments. NK (natural killer cells) activity, as an indicator of immune function, increased by 56% on the second day and returned to normal levels. A significant increase of 23% was maintained for 1 month even after these subjects returned to urban life, clearly illustrating the preventive medical effects of nature therapy. We expect nature therapy to play an increasingly important role in preventive medicine in the future.”
You can read the full research report here:
http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/36947/InTech-Nature_therapy_and_preventive_medicine.pdf
Casey
thanks, Casey! I haven’t been back yet. :)
I agree that it is a gift that you are able to release some of what is inside you through your writing. But I can understand why working in an office may feel stifling. The rigidity and monotony are difficult for some people. Others tell me working in an office gives them precisely the structure they need to stay in control.
I wonder, why did you tell people you were leaving your job? Or did I misread that? Is that due to the trials or have you made a life decision?
yeah. i’ve been gone for more than a month. i can’t recall if i had two meetings or one. but i told them well in advance of my notice to leave and also had to tell them about my panic attacks. all of my efforts to hide the attacks and appear “normal” became too much to bear. the results of that confession were interesting.
Last year I had the only panic attack I have ever had. It was brought on a thyroid medication. It lasted 6 hours and was probably the most frightening, disturbing experiences I have ever had. There was no way for me to end it. All I could do was ride it out. I haven’t had one since, but what helped me then was turning on my iPod and listening to music that had a really strong beat, steady beat—hard rock, no words. It was a long song and I listened to it over and over and over. That helped me get control of my racing thoughts and refocus my attention and calm down until the drug cycled out of my system. I was at work during the attack and could not do anything during this time. My point is you might not be able to stop the attacks, but you might try using music as a way to get through them.
that’s a great suggestion. thanks! (six hours? ouch. hurts just thinking about it.)
I can definitely feel you, I was like that years ago. I realized though that when you come to a panic attack, it feels like you are in front of a wall you can’t break. These are the so called emotional blockages. The thing that actually helped me without medication is energy work following my spiritual awakening. Another thing that I realized is that past life regression helped me understand why I’m into that situation and why depression took over me.
I especially hate the moments where you realize something serious while at work, and it feels like the people at work or school have the audacity to not believe that you could be feeling anything important, or that anyone should have to worry about
You truly do have a gift. I can identify with every word you wrote. Many of my office days were spent in exactly that state. I’m retired now, but find myself doing that exact same thing at my desk at home. I write outside on the patio now and that has helped me a lot. I absorb the green and the birdsong like mana from heaven.
yeah. it is healing. everytime i get outdoors i think ‘why don’t i do this more.’ that is our home, not these huts we spend our nights/days in. thanks for sharing.