Welcome to the After Party
When I was still too young to tie my own shoelaces, my mother would tell me the story of The Thirsty Crow. In the story, a thirsty crow comes across a pot of water, but is unable to reach the water at the bottom. The crow then dropped stones into the pot until the water rose to the top for it to drink. So did I one day find myself at the bottom of a pit so deep where no ladder or rope or fireman’s pole could reach me. I thought about the crow, about how the water rose up and started plotting my escape from the pit. I began to cry, slowly at first, a gentle drip-drip-drip. With each passing day, I cried a little more until a pool of salt water had gathered at my feet, stinging open wounds I did not know existed. My fingers and feet began to prune, my clothes were constantly wet and the air was always damp. As time went on, I willed more water out of my sockets, waiting to float up to the faint source of light twinkling above. When my eyes began to run dry, I reached in with my hands and squeezed them like limes until blood ran down my wrists, down my forearms, down my torso, down my legs and into the water. In a few months time I had summoned a kind of biblical flood so violent even Noah’s Ark could not survive it. And one day when I woke up, I found the sun shining on my face. I had floated to the top of the bottomless pit.
Winston Churchill (screw his racist ass) used to call his depression ‘a black dog’ that followed him around. I had my own black dog; one who faithfully followed me everywhere for months, even all the way into the pit. When the time had eventually come for me to leave, I found myself afflicted with a fondness for him. After all, even the most ferocious and unforgiving pets are loved and forgiven. I remember holding his face in my hands, kissing him on his forehead, whispering a goodbye into his velvety ears before taking off his leash to let him go.
I spent a lot of time writing about the during while the after had begun. The during was an ugly beast that demanded attention and expression until it was eventually exhausted and crept away. When the after truly began, for the first time in years, I could hear the sound of my own heart humming away in my chest, a crystal-clear sign that I had survived. I was welcomed to the after party. The world suddenly shifted into high definition- the colours were brighter, the shapes were sharper and my mother’s face had four new wrinkles on it. I found that the sadness had carved out space in my heart to let me feel a depth of emotion and empathy I did not know was possible. I still curl up in my bed and cry a few nights a month but I no longer resist the grief when it comes to visit- instead I pull up a chair and we catch up like old friends.
One day I found myself wading into the ocean, waiting for the seawater to fill my lungs but each time, I woke up with my face in the sand, the waves gently pushing me ashore, telling me that my time was not up yet.
This article was originally written for Ether Magazine. Thank you to the editors at Ether for their help.
