Dread and melancholy aren’t the usual words you see when folks are sharing their vacation pics, but they’re the two words that come to mind today as I sit here living my most ridiculous, best life on a beach in a Greece. It is a vulnerable thing to admit to less than 100% gratitude, as though privilege and adventure and respite ought to saturate the experience of travel so thoroughly as to negate the sadness stuffed in my pockets.
They truth is, there’s been much less of the dread and melancholy with this trip than with others. Those of you who’ve been around here a while know that I navigate the world with my constant companions, depression and anxiety, and that means that, as much as I adore traveling and planning retreats, I also get to experience haunting gloom in the dark when anxiety is the loudest. But, honestly, psilocybin therapy + ongoing therapy therapy, has changed the landscape of my brain. So much so that I was caught off-guard by the creeping tendrils of gloom fog that caught me at breakfast. I felt sad (missing my people?), nervous (that I’d flub the retreat?), and guilty (that I get to do this when others don’t?). I’m slowly learning, though, that feeling my feelings won’t kill me actually dead. That shushing them and shunning them gives them more power and extends their stay. That I can kindly and gently let them in. That being tender toward them as an extension of myself is an act of love. That I can believe all this is true not just for other people, but even for me.
Do you know the conscious/competent scale? The one related to the development of a skill? You move from unconsciously incompentent (you don’t have the skill, but you don’t know it) to consciously incompetent (you know the skill exists and that you don’t have it) to consciously competent (you’re good at it, and you know it) to unconsciously competent (you’re good at it, but it’s so ingrained you don’t think about it anymore). I think about it all the time related to Having Feelings. I used to be unconsciously incompetent; I was proud of my ability to stuff my feelings. I reveled in strength. I despised weakness, mine and others’. I kept a stiff upper lip. I thought emotional regulation meant not freaking out, full stop. In other words, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I moved to consciously incompetent when I realized that feelings are a safety valve and a major factor in mental health. That’s when I began to suspect that refusing to feel was oxygen to depression and anxiety. I just didn’t know what to do about it. Fear ruled the day, because I didn’t know how deep the sadness abyss went. If I really allowed myself to feel it all–the loneliness and inadequacy and grief and loss–would I fall forever? Was there a bottom? Could I even take the risk while also trying to parent and work and wife? I’m not being figurative when I say I wondered if it would kill me all the way dead. Ultimately, I made the most loving decision I knew how to make: I decided to bet on myself. I decided to believe in me. I decided to give myself the same grace I give my children, to believe I am good to my very core; that my gut and heart are worthy guides; that I am worthy of trust; that my feelings deserve curiosity and kindness; and that I know what I need. Scary, right? The scariest! And the most freeing.
Today, I’m consciously competent. I’m feeling my feelings, friends, and I’m feeling them all the way. Including the dread. Including the melancholy. I cry frequently, and that alone would have terrified me a few short months ago. But it turns out, feelings wash through like waves, tickling the shore before wandering away, leaving new baubles and detritus in exchange for the old. None linger long. So I cried at breakfast because dread and melancholy feel Big. I mean, please note, I cried discreetly over my Greek yogurt with honey and peaches. I learning it’s OK to have feelings, but remain skeptical that it’s OK to be noticed having feelings, bless my heart. But I did it. I was competent at it. I felt my fucking feelings, friends, and I noted it for the record.
And then, wouldn’t you know it? Right on the heels of dread and melancholy came hope and joy. Hope because I’m getting better. Healthier. More wholly me. A person who feels things. And joy because I opened my teary eyeballs and looked around. At the azure sea, yes. And the ancient olive trees, of course. But also at the craggy-skinned, hard-muscled, tattooed man grinning at his son, laughing at something he said. Children; they break us and remake us. And at the hard boiled egg I cracked and salted and ate while a breeze caressed my skin. Eggs, friends! What a miracle! And moving air, pulled by invisible strings! At the blazing sun, the very same one I see at home. And summer fruit. And the holiness of water. And the beauty of breath. I watched dread and melancholy roll out with the tide, but I’m learning to accept them as part of the same ocean. Dread and melancholy linked inextricably with hope and joy, tumbling together.
I guess this is the point. To live our lives fully. All the pieces of it. To embrace hope not despite dread but amidst it. Beside it and inside it. To chase joy at it pops up like polished agates and tumbled glass, every piece different and precious and worn softly around the edges by all the hard things that smashed up against it.
