Signs from Everest

I tap open the Baidu Music app, search for "Beat It" by Michael Jackson and stream it over my living room speakers. I move in front of the coach gently dancing and then into a full out dance when the lyrics start. My two daughters look up and laugh. I keep dancing. They join and soon we are all laughing and dancing and happy. I play YMCA next.

And this is how I knew my descent from Everest had begun.

For the elite climbers of Everest they try to summit without oxygen which is problematic because people need to breath. I've seen a documentary where those climbers have some telltale signs that the lack of oxygen is interfering with their decision making and they need to get on oxygen to avoid during something really stupid.

I've was aware of my own personal lack of oxygen for some time but was at a loss of how to pull myself out of it. I would walk to the subway after work and everyone I passed seemed unattractive. Physically unattractive. Emotionally unattractive. There was no one that I wanted to get to know, only people I want to bump my way past so that I could listen to my podcast in peace while playing solitaire. There were other signs too, that my spirit needed oxygen. I got emotional – angry at work – about silly work things that I wasn't able to channel into something constructive. That hadn't happened to me since early 2002 when I also recently lost something precious and I railed into a coworker about the shortcomings of IBM's VisualAge for Java. My Everest moments this year were too many to count including work which was really unfortunate since besides my kids there was little that I valued besides work. There were other transgressions, honorable discharges one might say, that I would not have pursued had my spirit been full. I found myself mostly just enjoying physical sensations from food, to drink, to exercise. I felt bored to pursue anything more intellectual than the latest season of Breaking Bad. On some days I had some really dark thoughts and was relieved that they were not obsessive dark thoughts. There was a doctor who after a checkup asked me if everything was ok with me emotionally because "it didn't look like it". I gave her the 411 and she referred me to get some help and followed up with me several days later to see if I was doing so. I am forever grateful for her humanity. Of course, I did not seek up. I did not seek help except for in the comfort of the night and comfort of familiarity. The familiarity of the pain.

I told myself that I was a strong person and strong people get through these things. That I am not afraid of my emotions. That when something sucks the thing to do is to embrace the suckiness of it, not to run away from it. This would all be true except I wasn't really processing my emotions. I was feeling them sometimes, hiding from them sometimes, full our sprinting away from them sometimes.

About three months ago I started noticing attractive people on the subway. Not everyone seemed to be in my way, only most of them. I started to want to write again. I started to want to read again. I had started to laugh again. Work seemed like a process again and a place I could do some creative things. I wanted to dance. I wanted to dance with someone.

I'm not quite at base camp, but I can see it, and it looks warm and inviting.