Out of the Caverns

Have we become like the virus and replicate only art that is related to COVID-19? A series of weird thoughts emerge as I navigate my way through life with the novel coronavirus. How has art been impacted by the pandemic? Is there any room left for reminiscing about what it was like before the world got sick? I am a writer, after all, and am altogether familiar with pondering odd abstractions for long periods of time. But these private thoughts are inchoate, not exactly comforting for others to hear, so I stay quiet and unobtrusive. And I wonder if it was depression talking or just random thoughts that cling to my mind like tiny bats.

***

In spring, our university gives us the order to work from home. Those of us in the counseling department receive the new orders with a sense of overwhelming relief. In my case, working in my sunlit home rather than a stark, windowless office begins to loosen the grip of an icy depression that has hung around longer than I care to admit. An ancient knowing existed deep in my gut, like water at the bottom of a cave. When I took the job last year, part of me knew that being in a windowless office meant more frequent bouts with depression and that time away from the outdoors would wound my soul.

But at the time, I made a thoughtful decision not to ask the university for another office. I wanted to make the space my own. I hung Van Gogh prints on the wall, set out a bright red flower bouquet, mountainous landscape pictures from my times in the mountains, and inspiring quotes—reminders to pray and give thanks. Beloved books graced a narrow bookshelf, and a small collection of wooden animals kept me company on a tiny nature table I created on a credenza. It was not enough, yet it was more than I could ask for. Daily walks sustained me as did writing furtively on my iPhone and laptop. Although I learned from research that working in windowless rooms increases stress and depression in workers, I kept working. I did so for many months.

Until the outbreak, that is.

***

How do I explain the sheer complexities surrounding the great news of getting to work from home while others cannot? When I check my email late Sunday night in mid-spring and learn of the decision, I exhale loudly. Standing near my front windows and reading the news on my phone, I look out onto the darkened landscape with growing ease. This is the respite I have been yearning for, but it comes at such a terrible cost to so many individuals, families, and communities that I feel guilty for the blessing. How can I feel so good when so many others are suffering, while the pandemic extends its deadly grip to the farthest reaches of our world?

As a counseling professional, I am trained to sit with the suffering of others and attune myself to their woes, to dive into the muck and drag others to safety. Now, I long for wings. All I want to do is dance outside in the warm night air, singing of my release.

***

The honeymoon period lasts a good long while, and I am sleeping more, eating healthier, and feeling more rested. This is one of the paradoxical gifts of the quarantine for me, that in this strange reversal of fates, I, like many others, find safe shelter and rest from overwork. I garden, planting a mass of mauve petunias and canary-yellow calibrachoa in hanging brown baskets. Huge tawny pots of basil and spearmint adorn the porch of our small house. Work becomes prayer as I marvel at my strange good fortune. Remembering those who are suffering in my nightly prayers is as far as I can go. I cannot enter that particular cavern of grief and heartache myself. I am on leave, it seems, from bearing witness to such overwhelming sorrow, and my heart heals in this strange, liminal space of waiting.

***

Strangely, my counseling caseload diminishes, and I speak only with a few students a week. When I end calls with my students, I feel like I have drunk cool water after a hot day of hiking in the mountains. The relief at making contact with others takes me by surprise. Calling them on the phone feels, at least for me, more intimate because I can hear their voices change with passing emotions, how excitement creates such movement or how sorrow brings them down like leaves falling silently in autumn. Crying sounds different by phone; it’s more audible in gasps and sighs and harder to hide.

My students are hiding right now, and it is understandable. The outbreak has irrevocably changed the fundamentals of college life. But the ones who talk to me, who allow me into their private worlds, grant me passage into their rugged interior landscapes of pain and suffering, joy and delight. It is not exactly safe, but it is healing—not only for them but for me. Later, I learn why it is helpful. From a neurobiological perspective, I set up camp in someone’s mind when I mirror back their feelings of sadness, fear, or frustration. In no small way, I become part of their emotional experience, and they become part of mine. We commune on a deeper and more primal level, which moves me to prayer and wonder. The fissures in my depression widen until I can slip through, and I am free of its smothering grip.

***

As the days and weeks pass into oblivion, I feel more connected to others than before the coronavirus. Friends are calling and texting almost daily, and I’m reconnecting with old friends. Others are searching for hope and friendship, and I am lucky to be on the receiving end of so much love and support. It seems it took a global catastrophe for me to turn from depression’s omnipresent lie that I am alone. The pandemic, it seems, has become a searchlight in the dark, showing me the only way out is through reaching for others, celebrating those connections, and ceasing to rely on myself for nourishment.

In the evenings, I drop into an online self-compassion practice with at least sixty others who are also searching for kindness. Sitting in my comfortable lounge chair with a soft blanket, I cradle these people in my lap. The luminous wonder of joining so many others through the shared experience of suffering and practicing kindness to ourselves, via a Zoom meeting of all things, feels like church to me. We identify as Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist, but we all share a desire for mercy—for ourselves, others, and the world. These times of connection are holy whispers of hope from an enormously loving God, retraining our minds to receive his truth that we are all deserve compassion and can extend grace to others as we traverse this beautiful and terrible time together.

Although these times are peaceful, I often weep, baptizing myself in the salty tears of compassion for the lost decades of being punitive toward my body, knowing that much of my suffering has been self-imposed. But I am in awe of these palpable moments of connection, hearing that others have suffered, endured, and found peace amid the chaos. It is my daily bread, an altar in my life.

***

The quarantine has granted me safe passage from the awful cave of depression and loneliness. Through a God whose love, as Anne Lamott has described, is “bigger than you’re comfortable with,” and through contact with others, I walk out of my cave of self-imposed suffering. Now, I inhabit my own life in intense moments of deep joy, laughing with a friend sitting six feet away at an outdoor Starbucks patio, snapping a picture of a glorious rainbow amid storm clouds, feeling pleasure as I plant flowers in damp soil. This goodness is like a wellspring of water in the ground of my heart. I touch this place when I pray, when I drop into self-compassion meditation, when I join others for friendship and laughter. I lose the connection when I become lost in old lies of not belonging.

This is the very reason we need to write about life post-virus. Because when we do, we name our suffering, moving us out of ourselves and toward the Divine, toward others in connection and relationship. The only way out of our caverns is to turn towards one another with gratitude, acknowledging that we are not alone and never have been. And as we tell our stories to each other, we will light up the darkness together.

Jenn Zatopek is a recovering perfectionist, writer, and therapist from Texas. Her work has been featured in Ruminate Magazine’s The Waking, Fathom Magazine, SheLoves Magazine, The Glorious Table, and The Mustard Seed Conspiracy. When she’s not writing, you can find Jenn planting flowers and herbs in her garden. Jenn is a student at Brite Divinity School and writes about the intersection of psychology and spirituality at theholyabsurd.com and
@theholyabsurd.

Photograph © Madelynn Woods, used with permission