The Intimate Oys
The global Oy Vey encroaches. But sometimes you gotta attend to the intimate Oys.
I struggle with depression. Struggle, as in wrestle, as in physical takedown, WWE style. At least, that’s how I often picture it—the intrusive thoughts like spandex-clad entertainers jumping into the air off the corner of the wrestling ring, wielding their weapons of “not good enough” and “you’re doing a bad job” until they come crashing down on the guy guarding the entrance of my brain who tries their darndest not to let them in.
It doesn’t always work. Like in real life, sometimes the villains win.
A few weeks ago I led a retreat for my paid job, bringing together people who work in reproductive tech for two days of meetings in Asheville. I organized the whole event, which meant planning and facilitating some of the meetings, as well as putting on a closing night party where I tried in vain to get everyone to at least touch the dance floor.
Afterwards, people were kind and generous in their feedback to me. One participant said facilitating was my super power, and another said I created a very rewarding and thoughtful experience, and that they were grateful for all the work that I put in. How nice! How kind!
As I settled back into Portland and the last week of the school term, I felt numb to these affirmations, plagued by the familiar wrestlers in their knee highs telling me otherwise. The littlest insecurities become Arnold Schwarzenegger-sized bullies telling me that nothing I do matters, throwing my brain-bouncer to the floor (can you tell that I don’t actually watch wrestling and have no idea what actually happens?).
I get so frustrated that the negatives are so much easier to believe than the positives, and then more frustrated that there’s no easy fix. I often return to the quote by Jiddu Krishnamurti: “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society,” and remember that existing as if nothing’s wrong isn’t the way to go either. I try to contextualize my bad feelings in the weight of the world’s despair, the global Oy. I can’t abolish ICE singlehandedly, or return Palestinians to a safe and rebuilt homeland. I suppose I turn inward and feel bad about things that (in theory) I have more control over. But the tough part about depression still stands: the messages I tell myself are often lies anyway.
So, what is there to do when the personal and intimate Oys exist alongside the global ones? Where’s the joy to be found?
Here’s what helps me in my moments of personal Oy Vey:
Friends + loved ones
Playing music + making art (here’s a link to me playing a bad cover of Modern Girl by Sleater-Kinney)
Disassociating through TV as needed (I’m currently on season 5 of The 100, a post-apocalypse sci-fi soap opera that actually has interesting things to say about human nature and good v. evil)
Resting, including hopefully lots of visits to hot springs
Dogs
Remembering that, as Octavia Butler famously writes, “The only lasting truth is change.”
Nothing lasts forever. Not depressive episodes, not facism, not bigotry. The world will outlive all that. But sometimes the now just sucks.
Here’s to riding it out together.