Survive Your Storms by Tacking Your Sails

There is a proverb that says, “The one who says a thing is impossible should not interrupt the person doing it.”

And another says that success isn’t permanent and failure isn’t fatal, which is only half right. Success is never permanent. However, failure can be fatal, but only ever once.

And there are situations in life that will feel impossible to overcome. Situations you know cannot be altered to your favor. Situations you know can and likely will destroy your dreams, end your career, end the relationships that give your life purpose and meaning, or that will do all of the above with the added bonus of ending your life.

As you get older, you will arrive at situations that result in you having to rebuild your life. Because like a fire burning through a forest and razing it to the ground leaving nothing bust ash in its path, eventually there will be new growth. Animals will return and rebuild the ecosystem.

You will have to rebuild your life at some point. Maybe you already have. But, in all likelihood, you may have to again. Life moves in cycles and in seasons.

I have had to rebuild my life, my relationships, my belief system, and after several hospitalizations, I have had to rebuild my mind. It took me years in some cases and decades in others.

There are storms we will not survive. But after having to rebuild so much so many times, when I look out and see a storm on the horizon, and I find myself alone and afraid on a tiny sailboat, I used to say that everything will be alright no matter how bad things look.

These days, I look out at that oncoming storm and I know, in my bones, that I will be okay no matter how bad things get.

And when the winds pick up and the rains fall, I do the best thing I can do: I tack my sails and ride that bitch out.

Around Easter of 2010, after a year and a half spent off all of my meds, I checked myself into the hospital. The nurse who did my intake said, “We don’t have a bed for you.”

I told him I was suicidal. He asked if I had a plan. I said no. He said he was going to get a doctor to write a prescription for medication that might help.

When he came back, I told him that the plan I acted on during my suicide attempt in 2002 was a plan I improvised and due to my best efforts would have worked were it not for quick thinking on the part of EMTs, nurses, and doctors.

I added, “So, just because I don’t have a plan now, doesn’t mean I won’t come up with one be the time I get to my car in the parking lot.”

And suddenly they found me a bed.

I had a falling out with a few close friends and had gone through a bad break up on top of it all.

I lost the relationships that meant the most to me. Part of what inspired me in 2002 to take 112 over-the-counter sleeping pills and downing a fifth of Puerto Rican Spiced Rum was the idea that I would keep losing everything and everyone I loved for as long as I kept living. I felt like the only way I could stop my catastrophic mistakes and loses was to stop being alive.

Those mistakes were all created or exacerbated by me being off meds. It was more than me thinking I could manage my illness without them. It was largely due to me not having the money to buy them out of pocket, which I had to do because I was uninsureable. I had a “preexisting condition.”

Before the ACA, that meant no insurance would cover me. I was priced out of the care I needed. And so, my mental and emotional health cratered because I couldn’t afford the care managing my illness required.

And in 2010, a little over 7 years after my suicide attempt, I found myself in the same emotional place of not wanting to exist, which just further reinforced my feeling that I should die. I felt like I didn’t deserve to be alive. And I felt like an unfair burden on the people I loved.

But I had enough wherewithal to check myself into the hospital before I improvised another plan that likely would have worked.

But during my intake to the psych ward, I changed out of my dirty clothes and into fresh scrubs, they ran my vitals, took blood, and had me stand on a scale to weigh me. I weighed in at 119 lbs. I am 6’3. For reference, Matthew McConaughey is about my height. In Dallas Buyer’s Club, he weighed 135 lbs. I weighed 16 pounds less that he did in that movie. I was skeletal.

And looking in the mirror and seeing my heart beating between my ribs with so much force I felt like it was going to burst out of my chest like the chestburster in the Aliens movies. I realized that if I didn’t get control over my mental state, my mental health, that my body would give up my ghost before I had a chance to follow through with any of my hair-brained plans.

I still wanted to be dead. And every morning I woke up was enraging and upsetting once I realized I was still alive. I had the best dreams I ever had in my life in that hospital. I dreamt I patched up my relationships with my friends, family, and my ex girlfriend. I had a high paying job I loved.

Then I’d wake up in the psych ward and realized it was a dream and the reality I had to live with was that those bridges were still burned to ash and I would have to live with the thousands of dollars in medical debt that no job was ever going to pay me enough for long enough to pay off.

I would relive my loses every single morning. So, I wanted to just lay in bed all day. I could barely find the energy to use the bathroom or feed myself during meal times.

I would have stayed in bed and wasted away had the hospital staff left me alone long enough. But they didn’t.

My mental and emotional state started to change once the medications reached therapeutic levels. They improved once I started writing on the legal pad they gave me using the sharpie they gave me. Because my eyes couldn’t focus and I couldn’t read anything. So I decided to write instead.

I was mentally, emotionally, and physically drained. I wanted to just throw in the towel and fall flat on my face. But I had a tiny pilot light that served as a lighthouse in my storm. It didn’t go out. It was just strong enough to give me hope that I could change the behaviors and mindset I needed to change to make my life better. To make myself better.

And, thanks to the Stoics, (who are a large influence on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) thinking of death so much and so often helped me make my life a better one.

I struggled with every fiber of my being to find the strength to carry on. But as Napoleon once said, “Courage isn’t having the strength to carry on - it is carrying on when you don’t have strength.”

And, like any type of success I’ve ever had, I got it for only one reason: I refused to quit. No matter how hard I got hit, I picked myself back up. I kept moving forward even if I was limping, even when I was crawling, even if all I was doing was breathing.

When I get pushed, I push back. Even when I’m the one pushing me back or pushing me down. It’s not strength of character. It is reflexive—on both counts.

Bob Marley said, “You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice.”

Being strong isn’t the only choice you can make, but it is the only choice worth making. It pays dividends. To be strong is to win in the end. And it pays to be a winner.

People often compare their talents, strengths, and abilities to gold. But gold is found in a mine before it is for sale above ground. And if you haven’t found yours yet, it is not a matter of you not having any. What it means is that you need to dig deeper. You will find it if you keep digging. Some artist, musicians, and writers dig for a lifetime and only find it in stolen moments here and there. But they do find it.

And so can you.

When the storm moves in, you can look out on the horizon and imagine the myriad of ways you can die.

But when you look out on the horizon and see the storm, you can think to yourself, “I will be OK no matter how bad things get.”

You can tack your sails and ride it out. It’s the only thing that will work. It’s the only thing that ever has. Because it’s the only thing that ever can.