Please try to go
to hell frequently
because you will
find the light thereyes yes — please
try to kiss the ideas
that you find there
yes yes — pleasetry to get that
it is the center
of the universe
yes yes — pleaseExcerpt from CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE by Hannah Emerson
After laying for what felt like hours, I turned over my phone to look at the clock; 3:47 am.
It was on this day, the 120th-ish day of the months-long battle with my sleep, that I finally broke.
4 hours later, I was on a plane to Chicago.
Several minutes after that, I decided I couldn't go back to Brooklyn. It was time to come home.
Because. Several months prior, I’d decided to pack up my things and move to NYC. There, I went through one of the most hellish periods of my life.
***
Before I pull you into the depths of my neurosis in the summer of 2022, it feels important to contextualize what was happening during the summer of 2020 through the summer of 2022. George Floyd had been brutally murdered by Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis, MN; that murder ignited a rage in the form of protests all across the world. Before then, in March of 2020, a virus -- the coronavirus -- began making its way around the world, vaulting the doors of society shut. And then in the background of all of this, alarm bells began sounding about the urgency of the climate crisis; these alarm bells led me to the Sunrise hub in Chicago, where I began volunteering before I joined staff full-time in January of 2020.
That summer, my mind dipped into a sadness, an emptiness, I’d never experienced before. Unsure of how to cope, I ran to nature, to the lake, to parks across Chicago, in hopes of nurturing my spirit back to life.
Eventually, around the fall, those feelings and the heaviness that surrounded me, began to fade. I found joy in organizing again, in going out with friends, and my excitement for escaping to roller skate at The Rink after work returned. And though I was back to myself, I was not off the hook.
The summer of 2020 initiated a rhythm pattern of summer blues… and two years later, the summer of 2022 would be the worst of it.
Leading up to that summer, in December, I had gotten into a car accident off Lake Shore Drive. A stolen car that was being chased by the police, hit me, flipped over, and caught on fire. Though my car had only a small dent in the back, my nervous system, for months after, was completely disregulated.
My job was also going through a massive layoff process. And in the midst of these events, despite the chaos around me, I stubbornly chose to move to NYC.
So yeah. I arrived at the door step of the summer of 2022 a mess, with a flurry of grueling symptoms manifesting themselves within me, which included:
Anhedonia. By definition, “the lack of interest, enjoyment or pleasure from life's experiences.” Any presence of joy? Pleasure in Sunrise, in hobbies, in reading, in hanging with friends? None.
Insomnia. Grueling nights of an intense inability to slip into a deep, dark state of unconsciousness. Breakdowns in the darkness of the night. Pleading and crying for help on the phone with parents. Heaviness in the back of the eyes from the lack of rest.
Loneliness. A desire to cocoon oneself, to hide, to resist connection, to resist being witnessed.
Purposelessness. The inability to see or feel any hope for the future. A time when my dreams turned gray and much of my aspirations melted away; I could barely make it through a day.
And finally.
Self-annihilation. A mind hell-bent on ruthlessly, like a shark out for blood, terrorizing its victim; me. A mind with a mind of its own. A record player of thoughts reminding me, on a loop, of my worthlessness, of my flaws, and of my immense inadequacies.
In all of this, I did not know what to do. I had never experienced these feelings so intensely, let alone all at the same time. So I sought out help.
I learned about the Dark Knight of the Soul, which put spiritual context to the suffering I was enduring. The Dark Knight of the Soul is a term used to describe what one could call a collapse of a perceived meaning in life…an eruption into your life of a deep sense of meaninglessness. The inner state in some cases is very close to what is conventionally called depression.
I leaned on my friends and family, who let me sleep over so I didn’t have to battle with my insomnia alone. Who let me sit on their couch and cry… or sit and feel and say nothing at all. Who listened to me, helped feed me when I could barely find the energy to do so myself, and who helped me process what was happening inside of my mind and body, without judgment.
I read stories about other humans who had felt the things I’d felt. It was in the stories of Demar DeRozen, a basketball player for the Bulls, who shared his experiences with depression. “We all got feelings...all of that. Sometimes...it gets the best of you, where times everything in the whole world’s on top of you.” he says.
In the stories of Maria Isabel, who opened a blog piece on Gurls Talk with the quote, “Hi. My name is María Isabel. I’m an R&B singer/songwriter and I struggle with depression and anxiety…I don’t know when exactly I started feeling it, some days I think I must’ve been born with it, but I do know that in high school I started needing more time off, more “me days” than ever before… Sad became my new normal. I felt empty, like I had a hole in the center of me, but I couldn’t tell anyone, because I didn’t know why I felt the way that I did.
No one around me was talking about any illness that couldn’t be seen or detected on a hospital screen. I tried so hard to be happy and act normally but it left me so drained I could barely find the strength to get dressed in the morning. Everyday became about making it to the end of the day… All I could think was, life isn’t supposed to be this hard. I felt like I could barely function on such a basic level and if that was the case, how could I deserve to be here? How could I want to be?” she wrote.
Or in the stories of Rafael Nadal, one of my favorite tennis players, who describes, in his book Rafa, his own mental health challenges as he reckoned with an injury that nearly ruined his tennis career. “I was depressed, lacking enthusiasm. On the surface I remained a tennis-playing automaton, but the man inside had lost all love of life. My team members were at a loss how to react to the gloom that descended on me.”
I read books on the brain and mind; I learned, in The End of Mental Illness by Daniel G. Amen, the ways in which trauma, pollution, and many other things, affect our brain; that mental illness is connected to brain health. That sometimes, it’s not what's wrong with you, but what happened to your brain, that is the problem. And that there are solutions, and ways to heal your brain to heal your mind.
In finding solace in the stories of people I admire, in seeking support from friends & family, and in books that are grounded in the science of the brain and mental health, I began to stop associating with my depression so intensely. I was not bad, something was not wrong with me, and I was not broken.
I was simply a human, with a mind that had been hurt and impacted in a few ways, some incredibly traumatic, but in spite of that, I could heal. I could feel better, feel hope, feel life within myself, feel joy again. And contrary to what my mind might convince me, this hell I was in was not permanent.
***
At present, I’m still trying to reckon with the purpose of my suffering. I have let go of trying to understand why the mood in my mind dips during the summer and instead have sought to build a stronger, more compassionate relationship with the suffering I experience.
The two quotes below have been immensely helpful in this:
“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.” - Pema Chodron
“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making darkness conscious.” - Carl Jung
It is in the human condition to seek comfort and pleasure; anything that is unpleasant and discomforting, we avoid. We want to feel good. We pursue things, day in and day out (sex, money, relationships, food, social media), that fire off dopamine in our brains. But life is not always good. People around us die. People around us leave us. We lose our jobs. We get rejected. To live is to suffer, to feel pain, in spite of the blinders we put on to avoid that truth.
I’m learning to welcome the pain and discomfort these days. If it weren’t for any of the challenges and struggles in my life, including the ones I have with my own mind at times, I wouldn't have the depth of experience, of compassion for others, of wisdom, that I have. Through every battle, I have become a bit more indestructible.
In befriending my suffering, I’ve also begun to gain a clearer sense of its purpose; that my pain & suffering are one and the same with the capacity I had to feel love, peace and joy. To know deeply that my suffering gives texture and richness to the highs of life. (Pulled from a scene in Ginny and Georgia.)
At present, I feel a vibrancy and energy for life, a deep clarity on my purpose, than at any other point in my life. I stayed in NYC! I did not give up and move back home. I can sleep deeply! And I’m alive. (And this may not be true in a few months, as the summer approaches, but I’m becoming ok with that.)
At times I still feel afraid. Because these days, spiders no longer terrify me. My fear of the dark, my fear of socializing or walking into unknown parties or events, even my fear of love & relationships, no longer give me anxiety, as they did when I was younger. But I am learning to navigate the fear I have around what my mind is capable of; given its power, its enigma, and the simple fact that at times, I can’t control it. I can’t control this mind that has pulled me into immense anxiety, depression, panic, insomnia, etc. Instead of fear, I’m trying to remain present to what is, and not what will be.
And so. I’m learning to reckon with the fact that at times, hell on earth is a place in my mind. But at times, it is also heaven.