“There is a prevailing hypothesis to why whales, in droves, will beach themselves on land. When the first whale becomes stranded, it sends out a distress call and then the other whales beach with it in solidarity.”
1. In early October, I walked down the beach at Point Reyes. I was there with my brother and his girlfriend but they sat, mostly, in the shade on a log. I walked by myself down the beach, quietly turning over the events of the past few months. There were big deposits of bull whip kelp studding the beach. The tubes of the plant are so big, their appearance so plastic, that they could almost be man-made, except for the fact that they were covered in flies, feeding off the rot. They were almost the only thing I saw on that walk and I was grateful for it. I didn’t want to do anything but turn things over in my mind and be alone. It is difficult to be so anxious for so long. You can see how much your pain deflates the people around you. The wind was strong enough, the slap of the waves loud enough that I could talk to myself, as if saying things out loud would finally make me understand them. At the end of my walk around the small bay we’d hiked to, I saw a seal come out of the surf onto the land. In my memory, the seal’s jeweled by the sun, bokeh of light all around him while he played in the crashing waves for a few moments. It was good to see something so joyfully alive at a time when I felt dead at least part of the time.
2. In the desperate attempts to understand the human brain, researchers found something they call mirror neurons. These cells activate when we see someone else experience pain. This is the scientific explanation for empathy, the reason that we can understand someone else’s emotions is because we ourselves are actually feeling them.
3. My mother came to visit me in the early fall because I was so depressed. She suggested it at the same time I did, based just on the way my voice cracked all the time on our phone calls. I did not like to eat much those days but she brought me baked goods and bought me wine and cheese and asked me to—please—eat some bread. She let me cry. She told me, every day I should do one thing I must do, one thing I should do, one thing I want to do. It was so good to see her. We walked around the nearby cemetery talking and I kept going over and over things that had happened in my life, as if by raking over them again I would come to fully accept things or I would see a loophole I hadn’t see before and know just exactly what to do to make everything ok and good.
4. It is not just us and our mothers, it turns out. Rats have mirror neurons, too. That’s how we found out about them.
5. I was housesitting for a professor of mine around the time my mom came to visit and so had space to myself. It was easier to be upset there because I was alone. I never had to fear I would be causing my roommates pain. The only thing with mirror neurons in the house was a small white poodle who seemed to understand what was happening and would come sit on my lap or sleep in the bed with me, let me snuggle more than could have been comfortable for him.
6. Just a few weeks ago, I lay on the couch with B and watched a documentary that was partially about the kelp forests and the animals that live in them. Things have gotten better since the fall. Mostly, I can leave the house without having anxiety attacks, can relax into someone else’s arms for an evening to watch a sea otter swim in and out of big yellow kelp leaves.
7. A friend of mine says that sea otters remind her of an ex, that they probably always will. In solidarity, I have the impulse to forget forever how much I love them, too. I want nothing more than to be on her side. But no, she says, remembering his sweet love for an animal isn’t only bitter, it’s a reminder of all the good. She, I think, is a better person than I am.
8. When my mother was visiting, we went out to dinner one night to the best Italian restaurant in town. I had never been there and was in such a state that I spent most of the dinner trying to keep myself from feeling like I was going to pass out. Despite the internal battle I was experiencing, the pasta was good and my mom let me bob my feet or grip my fingernails into my palms as much as I needed. I liked how I looked that day, in tight black pants and a tight black bodysuit. I was thinner than I had been before, a fact that I wish was less important to me. I ate most of my pasta that night, which felt like a success, and I felt myself slowly coming back together in the smoky dining room.
9. We feel pain when we see other experience pain, those mirror neurons creating in us a phantom of someone else’s reality. Another strange thing about the human body: we can also experience fear when nothing is wrong. A panic attack is the body thinking it is in extreme danger. Our brain lights up the whole sympathetic nervous system, puts the body into fight or flight. If I didn’t have to experience them so regularly, I would find them more casually interesting, approaching them with the removed interest I can approach mirror neurons.
10. I asked my mother once, haven’t you ever had nervousness like this? Or is it just me? When I first asked the question, she said, no, I haven’t ever had panic like you do. Then, months, maybe years, later, she said one day, I thought more about what you asked me that day you wanted to know if I ever got nervous and I kept thinking about it. I remembered when you and your brother were little there were days I used to have trouble catching my breath. I think that may have been a panic attack.
11. My brother is the one who took me to the beach that day. We stopped in a little bookshop, too, and he let me look around for as long as I wanted to, reading Ilya Kaminsky’s new book, sifting through Thich Nhat Hanh’s How to Love. That, I think was him hearing my distress call. He did not beach himself there with me, but he didn’t make me talk any more than I wanted to, didn’t hurry me.
12. When my mom was in town, a band was staying at my house. They played a show the same night that we went to the Italian restaurant and we walked over after our dinner to catch it. The three of them dedicated songs to my mom. We both drank from a bottle of red wine with a pig on the label and my mom got up to dance with us when the show was over. One thing you want to do each day. That night we left before midnight and walked back to the place I was housesitting. We brushed our teeth and washed our faces and changed into our pajamas. One thing you should do. That night, or the next morning, or sometime before she left for the airport, I hugged her and thanked her, held her tightly. One thing you must do.
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