My Battle With the Undertow

reflections on (mostly) surviving the pull

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This post has lots of pictures and your email client may (or may not) throw a fit. Click on the title above to read it on the Substack website.

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As I wrote about recently, this winter dragged me into my deepest depression since I was a kid.

I’m using the past tense in this post, entirely as an act of (terrified) faith.

It’s better, but I still don’t fully trust it’s gone. Probably won’t, for a couple of weeks at least.

I keep sensing the abyss skulking in the corner, arms folded, eerily biding its time until my guard slips just enough for it to grab me again.

But it is, at the very least, better. Maybe even over.

I’m still quite bruised and beaten up by the whole thing, and every day still feels tentative. But I can draw again, which is major. Last night, I started an abstract portrait of a friend—someone who will be an appreciative and forgiving recipient, and enjoy having been the first person of whom I attempted an abstract portrait.

That’s a fuckton more wherewithal than I’ve had lately.

So…maybe it’s really over.

When I’m certain it’s behind me, I might dig deeper into surviving a genuinely brutal depression spell and write something about it. My discussions of c-PTSD have been helpful to many, and a deep post-mortem on a serious depressive episode may be, too — hard to tell.

But writing that would have a price tag, and my account still feels overdrawn. So I may not write it for a long time, or at all.

For now, here’s my take: no single culprit—it was a pile-on.

An anvil trio landed on me, and I went splat.

The first anvil: severe and unexplained anemia — the kind where cooking everything in a cast iron skillet and taking daily high-dose iron supplements get your numbers into the very low end of “normal” and no higher. It’s bad enough that

Josh Slocum

and I had to scramble emergency paperwork, naming him my “legal next of kin” and typing his blood—in case I need a transfusion.

The blood typing, at least, gave us excellent news. Josh shares my blood type (bitch-positive), may all the gods be praised. That, plus his ability to flip into fierce Protector Mode when needed, means I will NOT end up getting a secondhand COVID vaccine via transfusion, even if I’m sedated. (Figuring out what’s wrong is going to involve some exploratory testing, at the very least.) I know I can count on him to make sure every doctor, nurse, and orderly understands just how many lawsuits they will spend the rest of their lives defending against if he can’t tell his anxiety-disordered friend that he watched, with his own two eyes, while his blood and only his blood went into her IV, thus leaving her in 24/7 psychological distress.

He will go on at great length about the lucrative career that brought me such joy that had to be abandoned when they crippled me for life by ignoring the simple, easy, reasonable-accommodation-of-my-legally-defined-disability-and-we-have-a-law-about-that-do-we-not-why-yes-indeed-we-do-have-a-law-about-that request of just giving me his blood.

What will the juries think when he testifies, “Your honor, she literally brought me with her specifically for that purpose after typing my blood herself — twice?”

I’m not worried about this, because if push really must come to shove, Josh can be trusted to do the shoving. There is literally nobody on earth—except, perhaps, an attorney who specialized in suing hospitals—who I’d rather have as my advocate in that situation.

Surely I won the friend lottery as an adult, and to the same extent I lost the parent lottery as a kid.

And yes, I have a filthy mind. Yes, if it comes to that, I’ll absolutely relish reminding Josh, forever, that I’m the sole reason he can say he’s been inside a woman.

I might even use it as a debate point, when I’m feeling evil.

“Speaking as the only woman you’ve been inside….” 😈

So the anemia, for months, has made me physically sluggish. Tired.

And more than a little scared.

The second anvil was grief. Three months back, a dear friend—fit, healthy, and 39 years old— died out of nowhere. I miss him. He got me in ways that still feel unreal. An impossibly uncanny, and wonderful, connection.

Adam was the only person I never had to explain my “birthday thing” to. Like me, he came pretty close to ending his own life (in his case, indirectly via drug abuse). He understood without my explaining that every birthday is a victory, and he never forgot mine because he knew that his remembering it was so much more than most people understood. It was an expression of something I really needed — the awareness that he recognized, and celebrated, the victory it represented.

Adam’s birthday is coming up next week.

I vaguely understood that he supported me through winter depression — I mentioned it in the eulogy I wrote for him — but holy fuck, I had no idea how much.

The third anvil: I was reporting to someone whose mentoring style is probably perfect for overconfident young men who need to be broken down and rebuilt.

Not me. Not even close.

I did my very best to adapt — my childhood gave me black belt skills in figuring out, and then performing as, what someone else thinks I am, or should be — but I just didn’t deal with it very well. The stress, and ongoing sense of failure being inevitable no matter how hard I tried, made everything worse.

Luckily, my company has a top 1% leader who figured out, without my having to officially ask, that I’d be a much bigger asset to the bottom line with a change.

Two anvils are a lot easier to carrier than three. Heh.

Rationally, I understand why I couldn’t adapt— I am, to express it in a way appropriate for the upcoming Pi Day, the mathematical inverse of an overconfident young man in need of breaking down and rebuilding.

Still, some part of me thinks I could’ve, should’ve, would’ve figured it out. That is one of my problems — continuing to try waaaaaay too hard when all evidence suggests I’m in a no-win situation. Alas.

Note to self: remember this next time. Remember this next time! Remember!!

After my depression post, about twenty emails rolled in—prayers, advice, photos, or just quiet support from a distance.

Three gun-owning fellow depressive folks, aware I’ve got a gun now, pitched a safeguard that they all use themselves: hang a photo of whoever would be hit hardest by a stupid mistake, right by the place where I keep it.

I’m stumped on who that would be—no family makes that a tough call—but I’ve got a rare selfie I actually like, snapped with my friend Bret Weinstein the last time we hung out.

I moved that photo there, and it helped. Not so much as a block against a fatally low downward spiral, but to consistently, just a little, nudge me back to myself. To remind me of one of my life’s high points—one of the ways I’m insanely lucky. Another adulthood lottery-win.

All of it—your prayers, emails, suggestions, and good wishes—helped. Thank you.

A Song You’ve Probably All Heard

But I hadn’t, and now I have, and I love it. That is all.

Van Gogh’s Sunflowers

To end this on the most positive note possible…..I’ve written extensively about LEGO and how it’s a great tool for coping with PTSD and complex trauma in general.

I’ve spent so much on LEGO that they bumped me to Platinum—or Kryptonite, or whatever the hell their top VIP level is—which lets me order some sets before the general public. I’m not sure if the Van Gogh Sunflowers set is officially on sale yet, but if not, it will be soon.

It sat untouched for weeks, but I finally did it—and it’s amazing. An easy, gorgeous, fun build. Here are some pictures — enjoy!

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