remember quicksand?

dispatch 34

Hi there!

Well, we did it, it’s 2023 I guess. I’m writing this in the strange in-between of Christmas and New Years, in that week that doesn’t feel like it really exists at all. What it has done is open up some spare time in which to care for myself and I’m really grateful for that. Moving my body, actually eating lunch, and taking a moment to breathe here and there has been making me notice how much I skip those small things when I am stressed or anxious. Which has been increasingly often? Here’s to working on it!

Today’s essay is about when fear and anxiety keep us stuck, something I’m thinking about and trying to navigate a lot lately. If you’re sitting in uncertainty right now, may giving yourself care open up small spaces to consider what comes next for you and be gentle with yourself as you get unstuck.

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Remember this asshole? Image credit: tobdinphoenix via Creative Commons.

remember quicksand?

I spent a large portion of the 90s actively worried about quicksand. That might sound silly but you can’t really blame me. I was a child and quicksand’s prevalence in movies, television, and the other forms of media that found their way into my suburban living room made it seem reasonable to assume that this was a hazard worth preparing for, one that was waiting around every corner (or at least a statistically significant number of corners). Even then my worries tended to be the growing kind; I’d fixate on them until they eclipsed the sun, blanketing everything with their dark. And so, I dreamed of quicksand, even took to carrying a straw (for breathing) in the event that I found myself submerged. In my room, I’d imagine sinking and practice staying very still, operating on television wisdom that movement would make me disappear faster.

Quicksand wasn’t the only danger I feared as a child, but it admittedly assumed a rather outsized role on the list, for which I disproportionately blame Neverending Story. Through the lens of time, many of these old fears feel ridiculous, but also quaintly comforting in that I thought I could feel in control if I just prepared enough. 

All these years later, I still spend a lot of my time worrying about unlikely things. Quicksand was just one of the first in a long line of fears that have kept me from experiencing joy or moving freely through life. When I am living in my deeply-held anxieties, they hold me captive in a way that makes my life smaller.

This is a part of my experience that I actively want to shift. But to really do that, I have to recognize the purpose that this anxiety and fear serve. I see anxiety, in my personal experience of it, not as an issue with my brain, but as a very reasonable coping response to living within the systems we all exist in. Of course I am anxious, my ability to access housing, healthcare, food, and other basic needs are tied to an employer’s whims and my ability to perform labor. It feels really logical to me to feel anxious about my safety in a world that proves over and over again that we are not safe, that sits us in precarity and calls it a life. These challenges are constant, quicksand of a different kind from which there is no true escape.

I can feel legitimized in my anxieties, while acknowledging how they deprive me of the most precious thing I have, the living of my life. When I spend my time waiting for that future moment when the floor will drop out (which I often do!), I erase myself from the present. I no longer exist here and now. 

Preparedness, planning, worry, striving for external validation and achievement, and even the productive flurries of mania are ways my brain tries to manufacture an illusion of future-control in situations where I often don’t have much control at all. Just like carrying that breathing straw, they tell me that with enough strategy I can prevent anything bad from happening. They are lying. And like the fears of my youth, these behaviors stifle me, keep me stuck in the worst case scenario. The shape of the worries might be different (financial, medical, interpersonal, professional), but control cannot save. It can only divert me from the hard work of building strong relationships and community, the only things in the end that ever really get us through. 

In some ways I feel that the ways I channel my feelings towards anxiety feels similar to how I used alcohol. It’s a way of being in the world that seeks to assert some sort of agency but instead just makes me lose myself. But like alcohol, my anxious feelings have served a purpose for me. Our brains are really smart…they don’t always cope in the best of ways but they always try to cope, even in the most impossible conditions. I am forever grateful for that.

I would like to divest from fear so that I can invest in something else. In this world where every bad thing feels possible, how do we create the space for a life centered in community and joy? How do we navigate our very real worries and anxieties without letting them take control of our life? I am trying not to let my own brain hold me hostage, to not let fear of the future write the story of the present. To honor the ways that these worries have been tools and then to let them go.

I want so badly to pull myself from the stuckness quickly. To leave behind the things that worry me, and skip to the part where I am beyond them. Today, a quick google search tells me that it’s physically impossible for a human to drown in quicksand. It is also untrue that if you ever get caught in quicksand, there is safety in not moving. Removing yourself from quicksand requires slow, deliberate motion. As in so many things, the answer is patience; even when something is difficult or doesn’t shift with the speed you want it to. It takes time to extract ourselves from the things we are most scared of.

Assorted, rad things: 

A section of this newsletter where I share what I have been reading, watching, or otherwise consuming lately.

• Kanelbullar recipe: ‘Tis the season! Growing up, I thought my grandmother was the only person in the world who made these buns (One of the many magical things about her). She’d cover them with colorful pearl sugar and pull a seemingly endless supply of them from the hall freezer that everyone seems to have in Nordic countries. That these turned out to be a pretty common Swedish treat doesn’t make them less special to me and this recipe has helped me connect back to those childhood family moments. They’re like a cinnamon bun with some extra cardamom complexity.

• Fordlandia on the Zoned Out podcast: I love this podcast. The host gives me hilarious, deadpan Daria vibes and I always learn something. This episode about the city Henry Ford tried to build, and just him as a person was wild. Ties city structure and planning back to capitalism, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since I first listened.

• Comet in Moominland by Tove Jansson: I received the first of the Moomin books for Christmas and it is, as always, a delight to escape into the world of Moominvalley. This edition is about an impending apocalypse that the central characters are trying to understand, prevent, and adapt to which feels…relevant? Consider this my first hot take of 2023: Adults should read more children’s books.

I’m moving into an incredibly hectic January in my day job and looking forward to some space on the other side. I might even try an at-home writer’s retreat to make some book progress in this dedicated time. Have any of you ever built a creative retreat at home? What worked? What didn’t? I’d love to hear about it!

with love,

lisa

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