Anxiety and the Crisis of Memory

Four years ago, the world turned dark.

It was January, 2009, and the spring semester was about to begin. The fall term had been difficult but victorious: I wrote in my journal that I felt myself to be "between the hammer and the anvil," yet the pressure exhilarated me. For one of my courses I had written over 300 pages between August and December, and in the other I had earned a nearly perfect grade in Old English.  After two years of uncertainty, I was finally beginning to believe that I was actually smart enough to be in a doctoral program.  I lived and worked with a wonderful community of students and scholars. I had a challenging and loving church home. I was on good terms with my parents and all my friends. 

Lights were all around, but I could only see the darkness. 

Intellectually, I knew everything was okay and more than okay, but that January, just before the first week of the new semester, something broke.

I felt like my world was tottering on the edge of a cliff. I couldn't stop crying, and I began to tremble uncontrollably. I couldn't articulate what was wrong precisely because it seemed that everything was wrong. A blackness hovered around the edge of my vision, as though I might blink and find the world extinguished. The first week of classes began: I went to school, taught my freshmen, attended my own classes, always on the verge of tears. I managed to do my work but little else, and when a friend asked when I had eaten last, I couldn't remember.

I couldn't remember. I don't mean I couldn't remember what was upsetting me: if anything could be called a "cause" of my anxiety and despair, it was probably three years of unresolved stress that I had written off as being "normal" for a diligent grad student. At the time, however, the fact that I could not remember goodness haunted me more than anything. During that dark January, my memory seemed to have betrayed me. One day, for example, I was walking from the library to my car when the name of a Victorian writer--Walter Pater, I think it was--flashed through my mind. Walter Pater has never been particularly important to my work, but in that moment, my mind quailed, and I started to panic. I felt guilty and exposed, as though my dissertation director might materialize in the parking lot and demand a full biography of Walter Pater. (He never did, in case you were wondering).

Throughout that January and into the spring, my memory turned sullen and silent. Walter Pater, I soon realized, was the least of my worries.

I couldn't remember how it felt to enjoy being alone.

I couldn't remember why sunshine had once made me smile.

I couldn't remember the confidence that had come from past semesters of successful coursework. 

I couldn't remember anything ever being easy; my anxiety never disrupted my teaching, but little tasks like picking up a pencil to write a note felt like training with lead weights.

I couldn't remember looking forward to the future. 

I couldn't remember how to quiet worrisome thoughts. 

I couldn't remember.

Most terribly, I couldn't remember the good gifts--peace above all--that God had given me in the past. Gone was the calm certainty my faith had always delivered. I don't mean that I no longer believed in God; I mean that my emotional response the world--fear and trembling--didn't match my claims that God was faithful, and loving, and compassionate. With every tremor, I seemed to contradict scripture. I was worrying about everything. I was neither strong nor courageous. I let my heart be troubled. I did not consider the lilies. 

And yet, once I realized that my anxiety was a crisis of memory, the black margin around my eyes began to fade. Work was good because it distracted me from fear, but in any spare or solitary moment, I poured all my energy into memorizing psalms, especially Psalm 84.

At the same time, many able hands began collecting and carrying memories I had lost in the dark. An excellent counselor helped me identify some of the thoughts that were feeding my anxiety, and challenged me to remember the promises God makes through the Bible. My friends remembered to invite me for supper or study sessions several times a week. My father came to stay for a week, then my mother, then my friend Julianna, and their presence--their mere, marvelous presence--reminded me that I was not alone. Other friends took time away from their own jobs, studies, or families to call and tell me about the times they had struggled with depression, and how they had come through. The books I read for my classes, especially The Pilgrim's Progress, The Book of Job, and Walter Brueggemann's The Message of the Psalms, reminded me that feeling pain did not mean I was unfaithful. The music of John Michael Talbot filled my mind so beautifully that anxious thoughts fell silent.  

I have no idea if my experience with anxiety and depression was typical. Thankfully, I have not endured anything similar since that strange spring four years ago. Regardless, I know that what I endured for a season, some people battle for years. The dark margin which I suffered so acutely is a chronic condition for some. And the betrayal of memory, the spiritual amnesia--perhaps that also haunts  other children who have forgotten they were created in the image of God. 

I often write about memories on this blog, and that's not because I am merely nostalgic by nature (though I am). I use this blog to remember the yellow weight of sunlight, the joy of friendship, the delight of good work, the strength of gardens, the wisdom of sparrows who make their nests on the altars of the Lord. 

Like Noah's Weary Dove

An Address for All/ Like Noah's Weary Dove

Like Noah's weary dove
That soared the earth around,
But not a resting place above
The cheerless waters found,
 
Oh, cease, my wandering soul,
On restless wing to roam;
All the wide world, to either pole,
Has not for thee a home.
 
Behold the ark of God,
Behold the open door;
Hasten to gain that dear abode,
And rove, my soul, no more.
 
There safe thou shalt abide,
There sweet shall be thy rest,
And every longing satisfied,
With full salvation blessed.
 
And, when the waves of ire
Again the earth shall fill,
The ark shall ride the sea of fire
Then rest on Zion's hill. 
                 (William Augustus Muhlenberg)

I discovered this nineteenth-century hymn during my first months in  Texas.  I would listen to it as I walked my mile to church each Sunday, wandering somewhere between homelessness and hope.  Some years later, the words became doubly precious to me as I struggled through a season of brutal anxiety and depression.  During that darkness, Psalm 84, with its image of a sparrow finding a home on God's altars, became my psalm of hope--I memorized it, reciting the words when panic threatened to overwhelm me. This song, so similar in its picture of God providing a home for the smallest of things in the holiest of places, speaks the same message of hope. Now, with so many external joys and triumphs and plans on my mind, this song reminds me that this earth and this life can only ever be the hope and beginning of my true home. 

The Treachery of "Enough"

"Enough" masquerades as a humble word, meekly slipping into sentences that suggest humility, restraint, and wholesomeness:
     "No, I won't take another slice of pie. I've had enough."
     "We may not be rich, but we have enough to get by."
     "Time for bed--you should be sure to get enough sleep."

I know better. "Enough" is a traitor. The word ought to connote security, sufficiency: qualities that help form a stable sense of home in a relationship, place, or profession. Some strong-willed speakers (generally of the scientific bent) can force "enough" to behave by applying it to subjects such as "How much Vitamin K is enough for an average adult?" But for some people, "enough" betrays these ideas of satiety by constantly edging out of sight and off of the horizon.

I am one of those people. (Surprised? No, of course not.) I have never feared failure in any dramatic sense: I have always been pretty good at the things I care about, and with the exception of high-school physics and some early culinary efforts, I have always managed to succeed, if not excel, at whatever I put my hands to. But I fear "enough." I fear disappointing the people who believe in me. I fear wasting my talents. I fear suffering by comparison. Ever since leaving college the specter of "enough" has haunted me. As I near the end of my doctoral work, this specter is growing downright ghoulish, interrupting my reading, my meals, and my rest with questions:

Have you read enough books?
Have you applied for enough jobs?
Have you published enough articles?
Have you walked enough?
Have you given enough money away?
Have you attended enough conferences?
Have you thought enough deep thoughts?
Have you prayed enough? 
Have you spent enough time preparing lesson plans?
Have you made enough professional connections?
Have you written enough?
Have you spent enough time with your housemates?

There are, of course, sensible and rational ways to answer each of these questions, and different mentors and friends in my life have often helped me establish these answers in wise and realistic ways. Unfortunately, I am not always a sensible and rational person. I allow fear to tell me that the only way to do "enough" is to work non-stop, forgoing walks, friends, and even proper meals for the sake of doing just a little bit more. Pride, meanwhile, gilds my trembling with a false glory, telling me that I should boast of the number of hours I worked last week, and that the sleep I lost from over-diligence is a sign of virtue.

I have learned that even on days when I am neither sensible nor rational, I can be grateful, and gratitude is one of the best ways to chase away the unattainable idea of "enough." When I remember that everything--from the bread on my table to the thesis of my next chapter--is a kind of grace, my striving after "enough" gives way to something much better: the recognition of abundance. 

Consider this weekend. My dissertation director praised my arguments in Chapter 2. I went to the Farmers' Market with two dear friends, and had money in my pocket for a basket of pears and a bunch of brilliantly-colored swiss chard. I walked through the neighborhoods surrounding our house, and picked up leaves golden and scarlet from the sycamores and crepe-myrtles. My colleagues congratulated me on a forthcoming article.  My students came and discussed their papers with, then laughed with me about the news on campus. Friends came to the house to celebrate my birthday.  I had a part in all of these things, but their beauty required more than my effort, my wisdom, my work. They are more--much, much more--than enough.

How do you decide what is "enough" in your home, work, or relationships?