Where We Go When We Go Nowhere

We’ve landed on a planet that’s completely engulfed in flame, and that’s a good thing. My more experienced space-adventurer friend, Luke, explains that this planet’s superheated fire storms make for perfect storm crystal hunting conditions. Those crystals sell for a lot of units at trading hubs, and I’ve had my eye on several ships to replace my starter vessel.

We wait for an alert to flash across our windshields: “WARNING. Wall of Flame Detected.” Then we take off into the ashy sky in our individual ships, our hulls creaking from the extreme heat of the atmosphere.

Even with our durable exosuits, we can’t last long outside of our ships during these storms. Once we spot the white, glowing crystals on the ground below, we land as close as we can, hop out, and jog through the thick, heat-wobbled air to collect our prizes as quickly as possible.

After the storm passes, we return to one of the few trading posts on this hell-world to exchange our treasures for universal currency. The landscape around the post is charred and unlivable, but on this little platform, members of the local sapient species bumble around, doing their own thing.

Here on planet Novil, that primary species is the Gek. I like the Gek. They’re short and reptilian and kinda cute, for being a bunch of arrogant plutocrats. I like them so much that I’m disguised as one of them. I look like a little yellow lizard in a green jumpsuit.

It me! The lizard of your dreams!

Luke, on the other hand, resembles neither the Gek nor the other two primary races in the galaxy. He’s taller than me and has a broad face with dish-like eye sockets and a crown of branching, antler-like appendages. He’s oddly pretty for being an alien mashup of the Forest Spirit from Princess Mononoke and a Furby. Technically, his disguise is more accurate to what we “really” are.

We are both “Travelers,” mysterious beings trying to piece together our own history, and that of the universe. A daunting task, but that’s just how this game goes. No Man’s Sky is massive in both content and concept. It’s a space exploration game with over 18 quintillion procedurally-generated planets to discover.

Just how big is that number? Large enough that it would take you almost 585 billion years to see each planet. So, large enough to be essentially infinite, and definitely large enough to occasionally swamp me with existential dread.

But I can handle a little dread, because I’m playing the game with my friends.

This is part of how I’ve been staying connected with people during the Year of Isolation. Usually, I hate phone calls. I feel uncomfortable and antsy even when chatting with my most beloved friends. I can’t focus on the conversation, and have trouble processing their words, no matter how clear the call is.

But for some reason, when I’m also zipping around in space, shooting asteroids to collect their precious resources, I can chat on a call for hours. Do I still get distracted and lose what I was saying? Oh yeah, definitely. But I get less anxious when that happens. It feels much more like a “normal” conversation with my loved ones. Like we’re all together, just hanging out. And also running from angry robots that want to laser us to death.

As we descend into what promises to be an even more isolating than usual winter, I’m increasingly aware of how vital it will be to keep this little ritual going. I’ve already chucked so many other rituals out the window. I lack the energy and focus for even my favorite activities, like writing. This was a rare November in which I didn’t attempt to reach 50,000 words for National Novel Writing Month, despite my love of the challenge. It was just too much pressure on my exhausted brain.

But video games? No pressure, just digital nincompoopery with my friends? That I can handle. Plus, I need that nincompoopery right now. So much is happening, and I’m overwhelmed and brimming with dread. This year has been so tightly packed with tragedy that it’s hard to hold a conversation that doesn’t circle back to the horror stew in which we all simmer.

So, having a conversation with my buddy Ryan about how the water mechanics work in Minecraft as he, Luke, Alé, and I burrow through cubes of stone in search of diamonds is a massive relief. For a few minutes, I can set aside the brain-scrambling anxiety and focus on karate-chopping giant spiders with my unicorn-themed avatar.

That’s not to say that we don’t hold serious conversations during our play sessions, though. We still chat about the heaviness of this year, and update each other on how our days went, and how we’re feeling. That question, that friendly “how are you doing?”, is sometimes very difficult to answer. In truth, even though I’ve been relatively fortunate this year and have worked hard on taking care of myself, I’m still struggling. Mental quirks that have previously been manageable are becoming disruptive in my work life and at home.

And so it was during one of those play sessions, as my space-lizard persona drifted through the void in their little red shuttle, that I decided to schedule my first voluntary, individual appointment with a therapist.

I’ve been wary of therapy for a variety of reasons. I’ve felt unworthy of it, or like I shouldn’t even bother unless I’m on the brink of a crisis, or that I’m “not allowed” to seek treatment unless I’ve completely exhausted all of my existing coping skills (how am I even supposed to measure that?). I’ve also had some poor therapist matches as a young person, and then as an adult during my bid to save a marriage that didn’t want to be saved. I feared I wasn’t emotionally ready to handle the potential discomfort or outright rejection that could come from a not-quite-right counseling relationship.

This year, the stakes are too high for those excuses. Even with video game playdates with my friends, and occasional, cautious meet-ups, it’s going to be an extra lonely season. When I have nowhere to go, I go inward, and that can be a dangerous and disorienting journey. You see, I start that journey with the intention of knowing myself more fully, so that I may better myself as a person. What tends to happen, however, is that I self-reflect to the point of bullying myself.

It’s a big, overwhelming universe out there. Now is not the time to rip apart the only vessel I have for exploring that universe.

Which is why I’m enlisting outside help.

If you’re feeling lonely and overwhelmed in your own metaphorical spaceship, I encourage you to do the same. Reach out, whether to professionals or to friends. Find new ways to connect to your loved ones. Don’t succumb to the feeling of stagnation. As lonely as you may feel, you aren’t alone. There’s a host of other travelers feeling much the same at the moment.

We can only do our best to make it through. In the meantime, I highly recommend the joys of building blocky Minecraft kingdoms with your friends. I promise it’s much more pleasant than staring at the wall and spiraling into an Extra Large Depression Pit. And if you find yourself spiraling anyway, here’s a link to a place that can help you match up with a therapist.

Good luck, everyone. Be safe, and much love!

The Year of the Unicorn - Lesson 4: You Make Your Own Meaning

The worst happens.

That’s the lesson I thought I was learning for a couple months. The phrase came with a sense of peace, though it didn’t seem like it should. I gazed out of my crumbling tower and saw my friends in the windows of their own falling fortresses, the foundations of their lives cracking beneath their feet. Every headline in my newsfeed punched me in the gut, never allowing me to catch my breath between blows. The angry goblin voice in my head that I thought I’d finally muted pushed its way to the front of my brain to scream, “Ha! Told you so! The worst always happens! You are helpless to stop it! Life is just a sequence of random, meaningless cruelties!”

It was hard to argue with that. Doing so felt naive and deluded. I talk a lot about positive psychology and how we can improve our lives by improving our attitudes and expectations. It’s easy for me to proselytize that concept when I’m in a position of privilege, when I already live a life filled with fortune, in which I don’t fear running out of food or being shot at a routine traffic stop or being detained in a concentration camp. Positive thinking isn’t enough to save anyone from poverty, racism, disease (and its associated expenses), or any number of real-world threats to our physical needs.

When faced with the horrors of reality, both on a personal and a global scale, searching for meaning can feel not only pointless, but potentially insulting. How can you justify telling someone with a terminal illness that it’s all part of a divine plan? How dare we assign meaning to the preventable deaths of migrant children or dozens of US mass shooting casualties? Is it foolish to even ponder these individual or national catastrophes with a massive climate disaster on the horizon? What meaning can you glean from the avoidable destruction of the only planet currently capable of sustaining life as we know it?

Even typing that paragraph is enough to tip me toward an existential spiral. Understandable, then, that I’ve been really considering this lesson, letting it marinate in my brain juices. “The worst happens” isn’t a particularly unicorny idea, nor is “Your anxiety was right: everything is awful and we’re all going to die soon, probably.”

The Year of the Unicorn is supposed to be about seeing the world with childlike wonder and contributing our own brand of magic to it. It’s about joy and connection in spite of the hungry darkness pursuing us all. It’s about this bittersweet concept:

You Make Your Own Meaning

There’s this quirky video game called Night in the Woods (NitW) that I fell in love with last year (only last year? Wow, jeez, time is weird and fake). Playing it feels like coming home to a place that I didn’t know was my home, and that’s partly because I so strongly identify with the protagonist. So strongly, in fact, that if I’d found the game any earlier, I probably wouldn’t have been emotionally equipped to handle it.

The main character, Mae, struggles with mental health issues that look a lot like mine (the description of a depersonalization/derealization episode that she experiences is what made me recognize and then forgive myself for a similar experience of my own. No joke.). She’s haunted by the passing of a grandparent that she was exceptionally close to. She climbs things she’s not supposed to climb. She says things like this, which could easily have been part of my previous Year of the Unicorn lesson:

Just because that online test said that your best chance at being happy is a situation where everyone already likes you but they mostly leave you alone except when they're delivering food to you... that doesn't mean you can hide in your room and wait for that to happen. That's how hermits are made, Mae. And they die alone in the middle of winter. Waiting for pizza from friends they don't want to see.

Plus she’s an anthropomorphic cat, so… I was doomed from the start.

I bring up this game and this character for a couple of reasons. First reason being that I dragged my friends into cosplaying it with me at Gen Con this weekend. Check it:

Second reason is because of another quote that stuck with me months after finishing the game:

But when I die, I want it to hurt. When my friends leave, when I have to let go, when this entire town is wiped off the map, I want it to hurt. Bad. I want to lose. I want to get beaten up. I want to hold on until I'm thrown off and everything ends. And you know what? Until that happens, I want to hope again. And I want it to hurt. Because that means it meant something. It means I am something, at least... Pretty amazing to be something, at least...

NitW deals with a lot of issues, ranging from mental illness to economic inequality to organized religion to supernatural murder cults… But I’m getting off track. The point is, hopelessness and the search for meaning are front and center throughout the story, and it’s not always a chipper story.

The terrible events in your story are the irritants in the oyster’s innards, painful parasites or detritus that get coated over with time and effort to make something that’s not just pretty but gentler on the mullosk’s insides. The process of making a pearl of meaning requires effort and hope. And it hurts, but the hurt is what makes it real. The hurt makes way for something softer.

Maybe that’s just a story I’m telling myself to explain the pain away. But even if it is, what of it? If it helps, if it gives me a moment of peace and perspective, then it’s worth it. It’s a gift I can give myself.

Perhaps that’s how meaning works. In the face of the worst tragedies of your life, it may be one more unfair burden on your already bent heart, but it’s up to you to make meaning. Find a glimmer of light in the muck and carry it with you.

While I was digging around for those game quotes, I came across one more gem:

So I believe in a universe that doesn't care and people who do.

Worst case scenario, the thing I feared when I first contemplated the idea that the worst can and does happen, is that there’s no great cosmic reason for these hardships. The horrible randomness of it threatened to drown me. But even in a universe that doesn’t care (and I’m not saying that’s true), there are people who do.

There are people who care for you now. There are people you’ve yet to meet who will care for you. There are people who used to care for you, people who left you for one reason or another, people whose paths diverged from yours, people who are gone. Simply, achingly, impossibly gone. But for a time, they were there, caring for you, shaping your life, creating something with you.

And if nothing else, you always have yourself. You have these resources at your disposal to make a greater meaning out of all of this. Even if that greater meaning is something as simple as: “Life is hard, but jalapeno poppers are cheap.”

Or maybe: “I didn’t get the time I wanted with this place, or this career, or this person, but I’ll carry the good parts of that time forward and be better for it.”

So I’m making meaning for myself in wine-drenched 3 A.M. heart-to-hearts with my besties, in time spent walking my dogs in the sunshine, and in moments alone in the woods appreciating the susurration of the wind through the treetops.

It doesn’t obliterate the evil in this world. It doesn’t eradicate the gnawing grief in my bones. But it’s something to keep my soul alight so that I can live to see (and help create) a sunnier future. Sometimes, at least for this unicorn, that has to be enough.

Bad at Winter

As I velcro a tiny coat around my chihuahua-mutt Billie’s torso, she looks deep into my eyes and transmits a message so clear and direct that she may as well have spoken it aloud. “Mother, why?”

Billie on the left, Binx on the right, both bundled in their coats of shame.

“I’m so sorry, sweet angel babies,” I say as I press the leash clasps between my palms to unfreeze them enough to clip to both dogs’ collars. Then I open the storm door and shove them out onto the icy front steps.

Binx - the smaller and shaggier of the chihuahua-mutt sisters - staggers across the lawn first, trying to keep a minimum of paws on the ground as she goes, nearly somersaulting forward as she accidentally tries to elevate both hind legs simultaneously. When she finally pees (directly on the sidewalk and in a quantity rivaling a German shepherd’s capacity), she does so with one trembling back leg lifted skyward, maintaining unblinking and mournful eye contact with me as I watch from the safety of the glass door.

Billie - larger and bizarrely barrel-chested for her breed - stands at the base of the steps, her face almost too human in its expression of sorrow and shame, the canine version of a defeated Charlie Brown. “You're doing this to punish me,” she says with her downcast eyes and her honest-to-god frown. “I just know it. I’m a bad dog, and bad dogs have to wear coats and stand out in the cold.”

I don’t know how to explain to her that it wouldn’t be so bad if she just kept her booties on, or if she used the puppy pads by the door like we’d tried to train both dogs to do during last winter’s icy weather. I don’t know how to tell her that we’ve done all we can in terms of shoveling the walk and using pet-safe salt to melt a path. I certainly don’t know how to convey to her that I’m suffering as well.

OK, maybe I don’t have to relieve myself out there in the tundra with the puppies, but the winter’s running me ragged nonetheless.

Here’s a snapshot of a typical winter morning for me:

• Wake up in the dark. I move my legs, dislodging Wednesday the cat, who takes the opportunity to assault my toes and then wander up the bed to give me a kiss directly on the lips or, if I’m especially lucky, my open eyeball.

• Fall back asleep while scrolling through Timehop, despite the cat continuing to lick my face and breathe into my mouth.

• Frantically re-awaken and rush to start my morning routine, which involves feeding Wednesday, who helpfully races down the hall with me, begging for me to scissor-kick her in half as she weaves between my legs.

• Leap into the shower, where I somehow fall asleep a third time halfway through shaving my pits as my podcasts play loudly over a waterproof speaker (even though my wife is still asleep on the other side of the wall).

• Leave the shower, but then fall asleep again on the toilet before entering a single number in my morning poop Sudoku puzzle.

• Put on clothes in the dark. Hope they match, but it doesn’t matter, because they’re all coated in a consistent layer of dog hair (exclusively Billie’s), enough to craft several to-scale models of every mammal in the house.

• Ask my digital personal assistant about the weather, knowing full well she’s selling me out to the Russians, but forget to pay attention to her answer, which is always something along the lines of, “Girl, it is colder than a witch’s tit out there, just like it was yesterday, and just like it will be tomorrow, and for the rest of your miserable little life, you worthless American weakling.”

• Let the dogs out (see introductory paragraphs).

• Feed the fish while my car defrosts and my toast, uh, toasts.

• Forget my toast on the way to the car.

• Return to get the toast, which is now colder than a witch’s tit, just as my personal Russian spy- er, digital assistant predicted.

• Finally go out to the car, which has had 20 minutes to warm up, but is still encased in an insidiously tough layer of ice that has bonded at a molecular level to the windshield and windows.

• Race to chip away the ice before my limbs lose feeling entirely.

• Attempt to operate the car with numb hands and frozen feet, only to discover that the tires are spinning out in the ice or mud of the driveway (how is there mud when everything else is frozen? GREAT QUESTION).

• Cry.

• Try again until the tires rediscover traction.

And then there’s work. I’m lucky to have an office job, but I’m situated at a receptionist’s desk, directly in the icy wind blast zone when the front doors open. Above me, a vent pours cold air down my back at random intervals presumably related to the building’s heating cycle. I have taken to wearing my bulky winter coat while I work.

By the time I get home, the sun’s going down, and the Long Dark is waiting for me. When the night comes this early, it’s hard to feel productive. I’m tired from fighting for warmth, and all I want to do is burrow under the blankets and play video games. Anything to escape the bleak routine for a little while, before I have to start the cycle again.

I know I’m not alone in this. There’s a reason why millions of people experience Seasonal Affective Disorder during the cold and dark winter months. Humans need sunlight, physically and psychologically, and these months of short, gray days can really screw you up.

There’s only so much I can do for the dogs during the winter, but there are a few things we can all do to be personally better at wintering. On a practical level, you can literally bring more light into your life with a light box, or with Vitamin D supplements. In terms of emotional well-being, you can be more deliberate in keeping in touch with your friends, for your own sake as well as theirs. Go on, send that text, see if your buddy wants to come see Into the Spider-Verse with you (is that still in theaters? I hope so. GO SEE IT). Call your mom (I should take my own advice). Schedule a D&D night. Heck, go to a bar with a dance floor. Then you get human contact AND exercise, both of which are good for boosting your mood (and warming you up!).

And of course, when dance parties and over-the-counter vitamins aren’t cutting it, consider a visit to your doctor. There might be a prescription that can help wrangle those pesky winter brain chemicals, or a therapist you could talk to. If you’re concerned about expense (hard same), then look into Cognitive Behavior Therapy groups, which tend to be much cheaper than one-on-one therapy. Check out Psychology Today’s therapist finder if you need an easy place to start your research.

Stay cozy out there, y’all. And send me photos of your dogs wearing coats. You know, for self-care reasons.

Turning Resolutions into Intentions

As usual, November knocked me on my booty. But hey! I won NaNoWriMo and have a great starting point for a podcast experiment, so at least there’s that. I also regrouped with some neglected friends and have plans to get back to some D&D shenanigans, and am penning the last sentences of my wintry lesbian love story. 2019 will be a productive year, if I can stick to my intentions.

And gosh, do I have a lot of intentions.

I’ve been experiencing a bit of Baader-Meinhof (the phenomenon in which one encounters a word or phrase for the first time and then sees it everywhere) about the word “intention” recently, even though the concept isn’t new to me. Still, the term keeps turning up, and the little me in my head that believes in magic and meaning can’t help but sit up and listen.

Just the other day, a blog I follow (Karmen Fink’s “Spark & Celebrate”) posted about setting intentions for 2019 rather than resolutions. It comes down to a difference between setting goals and promoting a certain state of being.

Now, goals are great. Stars know I love a good list to check off. However, I’m increasingly attracted to the idea that personal change must come from the inside out rather than the outside in. I could set a goal of drinking so many glasses of water a day, and maybe that would work, but what if I set an intention to desire water instead?

Here’s where we start to get a little hippie-dippie (even for me), but let me unpack more of what I’m trying to say.

Unfortunately, I am my great grandmother’s great grandchild when it comes to drinking water. One of her oft-quoted lines within our family is: “Water? Never touch the stuff.” Great Grandmother preferred Manhattans, and I’ve inherited her taste for the cocktail, for better or for worse (but hey, she lived for over a century, so maybe she was on to something).

I don’t really get thirsty. I drink for energy (coffee, energy drinks, Diet Coke) or for relaxation (tea, alcohol), and… yeah, actually, those are pretty much my only reasons. Water neither energizes nor relaxes me (at least not to immediate or noticeable degrees), so I don’t often bother. If I’m caught drinking water, it’s for one of the following reasons:

1. I’m desperately trying to atone to my body for taking it out drinking with a bunch of college kids and mistakenly believing it and its 28 years of begrudging service could keep up with the younguns.

2. I’m about to start my period, which is an irregular event that catches my PCOS-suffering self off guard whenever it suddenly chooses to cycle, thus confusing my body into believing that it should start to do other normal human things too, like drinking water, eating vegetables, and sleeping more than five hours a night.

3. The primal part of me that still desires to live despite the current political climate, the rapid deterioration of the only life-sustaining planet humans have access to, and my own sense of worthlessness has seized the opportunity in the middle of the night to awaken me and pilot my unwilling body to the bathroom sink in order to lap water directly from the tap like a feral nocturnal beast.

Security footage of me captured in the wee hours of last Thursday morning. Source

Yes, things are so bad that my reptilian brain has to step in and force me to suckle water from the faucet at three in the morning. Something must be done.

I want to like water. There are so many well-researched health benefits that I’m a fool to continue mistreating my body like this just because I find water boring and don’t experience a strong sense of thirst. So, I’m setting this intention for 2019:

I intend to desire water and enjoy its benefits.

Whew, there it is. OK. But how does it work? Do I just magically start enjoying water?

Alas, like everything good, this will take conscious effort and positive thinking. As I’ve mentioned once or twice or a thousand times, I’m the Empress of Negative Self-Talk. Some little sprite in my consciousness is constantly out to drag me for every mistake, real or imagined. I know firsthand how negative thoughts can manifest a negative reality. I also know that positive thinking can manifest a positive reality by creating a mental environment that’s better at coping with stress, and thus better at keeping the rest of me healthy and happy.

In order to act on my intention, I must internalize it. The first few weeks or months, I know I’ll need to specifically “schedule” drinking a glass of water into my daily routine. When I drink that scheduled glass, I’ll need to be present in that moment, and grateful for my access to clean water. I’ll notice the taste and appreciate the coolness of it. I’ll also need to think about those health benefits I mentioned, and look with optimism toward a future with clearer skin, increased energy, and fewer headaches.

In short, I’ll practice mindfulness and optimism, things I should be working on anyway. With enough repetition (as you probably already know, it takes 21 days to make a habit), my mindset should improve, and I’ll desire water and the good feeling it gives me in the present and the future.

And that’s just one example! There are plenty of things I intend to do in 2019, and I want to train my brain to approach my tasks with enthusiasm and gratitude, whether I’m planning a D&D adventure or studying for a financial exam.

What about you? What intentions do you have for 2019? Whatever they are, I wish you the best with them.

Happy New Year, y’all!

Anti-Death Spray

Recently, as I was avoiding chores by digging through my laptop's archive of fanfic- UH I MEAN my totally legit unfinished pieces of fiction, I came across a document with a weird title: Anti-Death Spray. I didn't recognize it, but the date stamp claimed I edited it in 2017. 

My arms got kinda tingly. At last, my life was taking on the elements of a psychological horror anime, just as I'd always dreamed.

As soon as I opened it up, however, I remembered it.

At the top of the page, instead of "Anti-Death Spray" followed by the unraveled mysteries of the universe typed in Wingdings font, was this phrase:

"Things I love:"

Followed by a 42-item list.

The 42 things I love fit on one single-spaced page. The list starts with the blessed givens: Kelsey, my family, my friends. My dogs. Corn dogs. The big, obvious, right-out-the-gate things that I cherish. 

Then it gets a little funkier, and smaller.

Pokémon. Cool jackets. Sitting around a fire. Being the big spoon.

When I say funkier and smaller, I mean it. The last item on my list is "Diet Coke paired with cheddar cheese." Which is silly, and debatable (if you want to debate it, though, be ready to catch these hands first). Putting cheese and low-calorie cola on a list of beloved things seems like kind of a stretch.

But I remember when I first had that thought, back in high school. Yes, specifically this thought: "Heck, this block of cheese that I'm consuming as if it were an apple (not that it matters to my impervious 16-year-old digestive system) pairs very nicely with this Diet Coke."

I was stressed out at the time. I know this because I have been continuously stressed out since I was a zygote, and have cycled through various degrees of denial for the subsequent 27 years. The cheese and soda snack was fueling a study session for my upcoming finals. Rather than absorbing information, my brain was preoccupied with forecasting my inevitable, world-shattering demise. It told me I was going to fail my tests, and never go to college, and never get a job, and rain shame upon my family. And that all sounded reasonable to me, so I didn't question it. (Believe it or not, I got even worse at handling anxiety from there, to the extent that in the worst throes of my adulthood anxiety, I didn't consider my problematic teenage thought-patterns to be anxiety at all. But you already knew that, because I post about my mental health circus about once a month, partially because I want to normalize conversations about mental illness, and partially because of my compulsion to overshare on the internet.)

Anyway, high school me with the flawless internal organs of a god, eating a slab of sharp cheddar and sipping Diet Coke from a can. The savory tang of the cheese balanced by the mellowed, false sweetness of the carbonated drink. I told myself that there would be a time that I could have this snack again after the tests, whether or not I passed them. There were still things in the world to enjoy.

I passed my exams. After all, I'm a neurotic overachiever who had a dissociative meltdown the one time I got a B in college (and it was in Drawing 101. DRAWING ONE OH ONE.)

Things have improved tremendously for my head in recent years, but every so often, my defenses are breached. During one of those times, I wrote my list of things I enjoy and will enjoy again, like the company of my spouse, and the smell of a bonfire. 

And, like a total weirdo, I named that list "Anti-Death Spray" and trolled my future self into thinking I was in the plot of a gritty magic-realism video game.

There is a lot to be afraid of today. There are many opportunities to feel worthless. But there are also camping trips with your friends, and used bookstores, and really cool candles. Maybe there's pain ahead, but someday, you'll have your cheddar cheese and Diet Coke again. 

In the style of my favorite 90s public television Science Guy: "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a love list to add to."