dealing with sadness
BOO SADNESS YOU SUCK
Sadness is an old friend of mine. We’ve had moments in which we were well acquainted and moments when we were complete strangers. I am a person who loves life. I love people, I love laughing and making others laugh. I love learning and connecting. But the sadness I experienced in the last 6 months was a sadness I can only describe as a spiteful bitch that turned my whole life upside down.
I had a full life back in California. In addition to being around my friends and family, I roller skated everyday. I had a beautiful garden to hang out in, I had two fabulous cats, a telescope to look at the moon. SPORTS!, tons of books, a car to do donuts in empty parking lots and of course in & out.
I was already feeling discombobulated trying to find my footing in a new city. You meet people but they’re acquaintances at best, friends take time to develop and don’t even get me started on community.
I was on a leave of absence from work, burnt out from dealing with a terrible boss, and investing so much of my time into work I didn’t care for anymore. THEN I was broken up with the same week I was laid off.. yes, it happened while I was on a leave and yes, he knew I had just been laid off. No, it hasn’t made getting over him any easier. Dating in a transient city like Lisbon is a story for another day.
I knew of healthy coping mechanisms, I’ve read books, watched youtube videos, my sister is a therapist, I have a therapist — I had the resources, but the depth of THIS sadness, nothing helped. I believe I’ve cried more in the last year than I have in my whole life. Frankly I was amazed my body was capable of releasing so much water from my eyeballs. Trying to cope with the immensity of these emotions led me to acquire some phenomenal pieces in my closest, to do things I am proud of, and other things that have made me feel complete shame and probably will never tell anyone.
People have told me to scream it out, to write it out, to start working out, to sun my butthole it out. I will probably karate chop the next person who tells me to get curious as to why I feel the way I feel or to get a hobby. Nothing I tried worked, and after a while people telling me to do things I already knew would get me out of it but weren’t working would just enrage me. The most infuriating part about this feeling was the only thing I could do was sit in it. I had to accept that the only thing I could do was be sad. Some days looked like anger, other days like self pity, and sometimes it was self destructive. In the thick of it, the days felt 36 hours long and weeks felt 3 months long. I hated that I couldn't just get out of it, get out of bed, get over it like I have many times before. I despised that I truly couldn't enjoy achieving a dream. I was in a country I so desperately wanted to be in but I didn't have the discipline or willpower to get over myself and enjoy.
I was far from home, away from anyone I felt comfortable with, the only person here whose energy I felt safe in, no longer was an option. So now what, I did the only thing I could.. I cried, I drank, I shopped, I drank even more, I ate oysters, I worried my parents and best friends (my bad hehehe). Even typing this out, I feel strangled by the knot in my throat, crushed by the magnitude of this experience. It felt as if I was being punished for wanting to have a life I wanted to live.
There is a term I first came across reading a book by Demetra George, ‘metakosmios’, a Greek word that describes a liminal space, the place between two worlds. I imagine it as a venn diagram, in one circle my old life in the old country, in the other a life in the new country, the overlapping piece in the middle was where I was living in, the metakosmios. My parents asked me to come home, to recover surrounded by my favorite babies (my niece and nephews) and hang out with friends. But when you’re deep in such a suffocating space, it doesn't matter because the void, the hopelessness and helplessness, the despair doesn’t care where you are or who you are. The void wants to test your faith and swallow you alive. I was deep in this void, nothing seems to shine or grow and the only thing I could do other than the aforementioned list, was be grateful — I had a body that is mostly healthy and works perfectly fine, I had a space I could be in to experience it, and the ability to take time out of the grind to savor it properly.
I didn’t think I was going to make it to the new year. I woke up on January 1st, I cried tears of gratitude, not because I was going to kill myself, but because it felt like that horrible year was never going to end. The date doesn’t really mean anything, it's not like the seasons were changing or it was my personal new year but it felt like the page turned and a new story was ready to be written.
I know this may sound problematic but I am stubborn and when I decide something I will do it, come hell or high water. January 1st, I started my n=1 experiment. I was going to convince myself I was myself again and I had a plan to do it. First i was going to consume 125 grams of psilocybin, pop a molly, stop shaving my legs and tell someone to fuck off everyday, just playing.
my plan consisted of 3 things:
sauna
cold plunges or showers
pretend to be anything but sad
I signed up for the gym and I started lounging in the sauna. 15 minutes in, 2 minute cold shower, repeat until I reach one hour in sauna. I have been doing this almost everyday for the past month, so far it has been working! Some days I go twice a day, morning sauna leaves me feeling euphoric, night time sauna, I spend less time in the showers more time in the sauna. Nighttime sauna leaves me feeling like a baby being rocked to sleep, I just need my onesie and my pillow.
I have a new found love in sauna. I might be cooking myself alive but I leave the gym looking jolly, red faced and sweaty from increasing my body temperature. The walk home listening to Andre 3000’s New Blue Sun is the most enjoyable meditation I’ve ever done.
Convincing myself to be anything but sad has its challenging days but as my friend Izzy says “one bad day isn’t a bad life”. I’ve noticed the days I don’t go to the sauna to be the days that correlate with negative moods. The days I do go to the sauna, I pop my pussy a little harder out in the world, lmao.
After hanging out in the sauna for two weeks, I decided to look up podcasts about sauna’s, I definitely don't have the attention span to read academic journals. I love when my intuition is in line with science!
