#24: hitting a snag

thoughts on wintering and splintering

“untitled ‘i’m in the midst of it’” by david shringley

A few weeks ago I was opening an old, jammed window to let in the spring air when I felt a rush of pain. A splinter of wood lodged itself under the cushion of my right palm (the Mount of Venus for those familiar with palmistry). I quickly pulled my hand away from the window, taking the bit of wood along with it. The shard went under the skin and reemerged a centimeter over, like a sewing needle weaving through fabric.

I extracted a large piece with my fingers. Another piece shimmied out with the aid of a safety pin. Yet a small dark line remained under the skin. I spent an hour gingerly poking my flesh, trying to coax the final bit out.

As I prodded, it occurred to me that perhaps there was no remaining splinter. The dark mark was instead a clean little cut below the skin’s surface mimicking a splinter. An optical illusion. My palm burned, but maybe that was from the repeated squeezing and stabbing as I attempted to remove the phantom object. I doused my palm in rubbing alcohol and went to bed.

Nestling under the covers I thought of the time I had my palms read, many years ago. It was an unexpectedly intimate experience, my hand cradled and traced by another. I remembered two of the palm reader’s observations clearly: the first, I’d be the lucky recipient of “nursing home booty,” aka septuagenarian sexy times following the loss of my lifelong partner. And second, my Mount of Venus was especially prominent, indicating that I savored life’s beauty and romanticized daily experiences. I drifted off, sourly noting the injurious price I paid for appreciating life’s beauty that day.

In morning’s direct light I studied the reddish-brown line. Definitely a splinter, I thought. I balanced my glasses on the end of my nose—a makeshift magnifying glass—and once again prodded the skin until a trickle of blood convinced me to stop. So, not a splinter.

This back and forth continued all week. One hour I’d swear I was a weakened vessel for this demon splinter to torment, the next a spiraling hypochondriac making a mountain out of a Mount. Google assured me that rogue splinters would eventually work themselves out. Still, I toiled.

The fallibility of my senses eroded every thought. The triviality of the episode shamed me. This is so stupid, I’d think. But also, why can’t I tell if that is a splinter or not??

*

In truth, the months leading up to Splintergate were characterized by scarily foreign feelings and sensations I couldn’t make sense of. Waves of panic rippled through my sternum and heaviness filled my limbs. I spent afternoons crying for unknown reasons. At any given moment I felt like a magnet was pulling me to the ground and the only feeling approximating contentment was when I was fully flush with the floor, playing possum and waiting for life to reinhabit my body.

Spiteful thoughts played on loop and even though I told myself they weren’t true, I couldn’t stop them. My anxiety was a runaway horse with my foot caught in the stirrup, dragging me through the mud and thorny brush.

“The thing about depression,” my therapist said, “is that you can’t trust your mind and body. They’re lying to you.”

I reeled. My mind and body, you mean the only things I’m equipped with in this world? The things I trust above all else?  

The running joke in my family is that I’m a finely tuned machine. A baby’s dose of medication knocks me out, a missed meal results in a migraine. I feel comfortable telling you I’ve never done hard drugs because odds are I’d turn into Jim Carrey in The Mask. I’ve spent decades calibrating my physical and emotional habits to account for these biological idiosyncrasies. In doing so, I prided myself on how well I knew my body and mind, how attuned I was to their needs. Being parked at a 6.5 on the anxiety scale since puberty occasionally scrambled internal communications, but for the most part I aced the lesson my high school English teacher was most eager to impart: Know Thyself.

Now, though, doctors and friends and family members were telling me that a lifetime of self-scholarship couldn’t be trusted. Oof. Even though my brain whimpered not to, I placed my faith in their judgment. I wanted to feel like myself again, so I surrendered and let outside forces (my GP, my therapist, medication, a couple of reliable friends) prop me up. For a few horrible weeks I had to disregard every one of my natural instincts. Eat when I didn’t want to look at food. Go outside when I’d rather rot on the floor. Answer emails when I’d rather the universe swallow me up whole. I couldn’t tell if I was getting better or worse. I kept thinking of that joke, “I wish they’d invent a way out that wasn’t through.”

I mention all this now because I was blocked from writing anything else. Any potential news story or curiosity or attachment was filtered through grey goggles up until recently. Another instance where I couldn’t tell what was real and what I was projecting. Was everyone a little bit miserable, should I write about our shared misery, or was that my skewed perception?

During this weird transition period, I found solace offline (no surprise) and in the natural world (just as much in theory as in practice). Katherine May’s excellent book “Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times” was a cathartic guide. She describes wintering as “a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined from progress…”

She writes,    

Everybody winters at one time or another…We’re not raised to recognize wintering or to acknowledge its inevitability… We treat each wintering as an embarrassing anomaly that should be hidden or ignored. This means we’ve made a secret of an entirely ordinary process… at great cost. Wintering brings about some of the most profound and insightful moments of our human experience, and wisdom resides in those who have wintered.

The most irksome thing about my wintering/depression was its unplanned arrival. I was emerging from a difficult year, triumphant and hopeful, only to trip and land in the snow. I was host to a malignant, irrepressible thing that I couldn’t make sense of. That’s why the phantom splinter drove me nuts. It was a visual reminder of the unexpected and painful experience I’d incurred, a foreign object taking up space in my body. An aide-mémoire that I didn’t have clear answers, despite endless squinting and probing. Maybe that was the point.  

Writing this letter I wondered if the palm reader said anything else of note all those years ago. I consulted an old journal and discovered a third premonition. (Younger me prefaced that I’d just started applying to business schools and thought the prediction was silly.) The palm reader observed that I’d spend the beginning of my life following a traditional path, an expected path, before realizing that my life’s purpose was to create, to make things with my hands, to embrace the artist within. I’d live a completely unique life, but it wouldn’t look like anyone else’s and therefore it would feel more difficult to stay the course. It would be rockier at times. It would, however, be more beautiful and abundant and enriching than the alternative.

Ten days after I punctured myself, I looked down at my palm and noticed the cut had fully healed over, save for a small dark line still embedded under the skin. Aha! I thought, that is without a doubt a small splinter. I sterilized my needle and peeled back the thin layer of skin, freeing the sliver. A little scar now besmirches my palm, reminding me that I won’t always be able to make sense of what I’m looking at or how I’m feeling. I must chase the beauty of the unknown anyway.   

Sidewalk Reporting

It is Wednesday, my dudes. (Many questions.) (Like, does this happen every day? Is it a Special Wednesday Thing?) (Do we swap out animals, or is this the Dudes’ mascot?) (A Brooklyn thing or national missive?)

(Also HI. I missed you, I missed writing this letter. I’m happy to be back in your inbox ¨̮ )