Indicator Species Summer
on the right to fall apart
My mind plays around with a chicken and egg question about the darkness: Is it my depression (a lifelong condition) or my grief (est. 2023, the worst year). I know it is pointless to answer the question because what matters is the quicksandy darkness itself.
Most of my life, my response to the darkness had been flight, except in instances when, much to my horror, someone or something eggs me into fight. But my forties have been the decade of freeze. I freeze, I Stop Everything, in hopes that when the shadow comes it will miss me (I am like the baby that covers her face but believes she is invisible). The shadow always finds me though; The shadow is me.
On this latest ride on my dark carousel, to thaw the freeze, I adjusted my medication, found a new therapist to help me take a fresh look at very old and very new pain, listened to Rod Stewart’s “I Don’t Wanna Talk About It” specifically to help me cry, and to Marley’s Babylon System, to stop the crying. I couldn’t sleep most nights and when I did eventually sleep, my exhausted mind spewed terrifying nightmares that made me wish I stayed awake. I wrote poems.
I am still at freeze. I feel self-indulgent for feeling any of it, when Netanyahu’s murderous attack on Palestinians continues, and he subjects anyone who survives the bombs and bullets to starvation, illness and continuous terror.
When the situation in Sudan is catastrophic, as is the situation in Yemen, in Haiti, in Ukraine.
When the planet is burning and everyone can feel it on our skin and in our lungs, even if we’re not yet flooded, burned by wild fires, or swept away by harrowing storms.
When in the cities of the richest country in the world, people are criminalized for sleeping on the street when we have given them nowhere else to lay their heads.
When Sonya Massey asked for help, cowered, called him “sir,” answered all his bullying questions, said “I’m sorry” twice, and he still murdered her.
I am alive and relatively safe, so who am I to be broken-hearted?
The other day, my friends and I were talking about the myths we carry about who we are allowed to be. Martha1 shared the work of Guggenbül-Craig, who warns about the peril of these myths because they are, by definition, one-sided:
It is the one-sidedness of a mythology that poses a danger. To put it more precisely: any single myth is one-sided. It is the obligation of the person influenced by it to compliment it with its polar opposite.
—Adolph Guggenbül-Craig, The Old Fool and the Corruption of Myth
I come from women many have attempted to drown in one-sided myths. Women like me are said to survive the impossible, to take care of business even if no one takes care of us, to see your “twice as good” and raise it, and still be called a D.E.I hire. I come from women who are said to bend but not break. But we break. I break.
In a recent exchange over at Ask Polly, Sarah Quirk shared some wisdom about Indicator Species:
In every ecosystem there are Indicator Species that are, effectively, "too sensitive.” They are deeply and quickly impacted by minor environmental changes. Scientists closely measure their populations specifically — like a vitalsign — to understand the health of the overall ecosystem. They act like the canary in the coal mine for biologists to know when something is wrong that may affect everything else in the future
Quirk, who writes the wonderful Reminders for Humans, shares that 10 to 20% of studied humans are estimated to have sensory processing sensitivity (SPS). These humans, like Indicator Species, they feel more, feel bigger, feel too much for our society’s comfort. These folks are likely to have “ASD, anxiety, depression, higher levels of emotional processing, ability to read others' emotions.” She speculates that just as we care for skin with protective SPF, highly sensitive people, like me, need the proactive care of interacting with people who show empathy, who give affection without predation, who try hard to be as humane as possible, especially when it is hard. When we cannot access this care, whether because of our genetic predisposition, our childhoods, our personal or collective grief, or all of the above, we fall apart, and in so doing, ring the alarm.
Who am I to not be broken-hearted?
I did not read that book, but Martha and warns that it is “a bit dated” but you can “read around the cringy moments” for some good Jungian stuff, if you’re into that sort of thing.
I wish humans were 100 % indicator species. Thank you for such a beautiful written piece
Someone told me in my youth, when my father was dying of cancer and I didn't understand how can I have the audacity to suffer when he and others were the ones really suffering, that pain is not something to compare. My pain is as valid and doesn't become less important and less heavy because it isn't in the shape of someone elses or at the level of someone elses. Your suffering is surely valid and how can you not suffer in a world in such pain? It all compounds. We're functional, but our bruises are still there, and there's no shame in acknowledging them.