“I hung up on him — or rather pushed the little button on my cordless receiver — banishing him from my life with a single petty, melodramatic act. Almost instantly I burst into tears, crumbling into a lump on the floor. I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore, until my eyes were an angry red mess. When it became perfectly clear he wasn’t calling back, I pulled myself together and marched into the kitchen to boil some eggs.” –Cadence Roth
For those who weren’t around at the time, Baywatch was an action/adventure primetime drama that aired from 1989 to 2001. At one point it was the most watched show in network television history, with more than one billion viewers worldwide. The plot centered around Lieutenant Mitch Buchannon, played by David Hasselhoff, leading a team of highly-trained, unspeakably hot lifeguards who spent most of their workdays running in slow-motion and having windswept hair.
I tuned in every week. Religiously.
In the third season finale, Australian lifeguard Wiley Brown transferred to Mitch’s station on an exchange program and set about winning everyone over with his charm and daredevil attitude, all while attempting to creatively murder Mitch. As it turned out, many years prior, Mitch had rescued Wiley’s wife Sheila during a windsurfing accident, but as he was pulling her to shore, he bumped into a piling and knocked himself out, thus allowing Sheila to drown.
There were a couple of big takeaways from this episode, the first being that I would never, ever be heterosexual. But, more importantly, it was revealed that a lifeguard should always put a given victim between themself and any obstacle they encounter in the ocean. If the victim gets banged up, they can still recover. But if the lifeguard gets injured, the chances of survival drop dramatically for both of them.
Even though I watched this episode as a teenager — and even though the message was analogous to putting on your own oxygen mask before helping anyone else with theirs — the inherent lesson didn’t really hit me until I was in my early 40s. Prior to then, I’d kind of made it my mission in life to Save Everyone, while putting little to no effort into my own well-being: Lots of lugging around other people’s emotional baggage so that I wouldn’t have to unpack my own.
Kicking alcohol helped with this, but in early sobriety I was pretty bad about taking on responsibilities at the expense of self-care, and accepting any request for assistance as reasonable, whether or not it actually was. So I was participating in multiple organizations and running two covens and acting as pro bono therapist for numerous friends, and since so many people were depending on me, I was reluctant to reach out when I needed to lean on somebody.
Eventually, I had to learn how to channel Big Lifeguard Energy and set some boundaries. If I was at a social function, say, and an anxiety attack was about to hit, I would simply leave. I would do my best to tell someone what was going on, just so that no one would worry, but if they were like, “Oh, you’ll be fine, stay five more minutes,” I would be like, “Nope, see ya,” and bail. And if they got butthurt about it, that was their problem — I could deal with it when I was in a better mindset.
Yesterday was rough. Nothing resolutely dire happened, but some stuff didn’t work out the way I hoped it would, and I experienced a loss. But I was also at work, so I had to rely on the old recovery trick of the Next Right Thing to move forward, which basically resulted in another conversation with myself:
Are you okay?
“I’m not sure.”
Do you need to cry it out?
“I don’t think so, no.”
What do you need to do?
“… Finish putting out the rest of the Nasty Pig swimwear?”
Then that’s the Next Right Thing. Let’s do that.
So that’s what I did. And orienting myself on the Next Right Thing kept me in one piece.
And then the text messages started.
I feel like it’s safe to assume that we all have that one friend we only hear from when they’re in crisis, and mine coincidentally chose to reach out while I was having a crisis of my own.
The conversation did not go well. He was looking for someone to commiserate and confirm that the world was out to get him, and I really wasn’t in a place to do that. I finally just had to step away from my phone for a bit — mainly because I was still at work — but my lack of response triggered another round of texts, since silence on my part clearly indicated that I was Not On His Side.
So I told him what was going on with me, and I explained that I needed to focus on that. And his reply (“Well, at least that’s not as bad as what I’m going through.”) was all the encouragement I needed to put him between myself and the piling.
I will probably check in on him at some point, but it won’t be a priority until I’m feeling better. Because I won’t be any good to him or anyone else until I’m good. Which means a strict regimen of comfort foods and true-crime documentaries for the next few days, but hey, whatever it takes, y’know?
Just like I wouldn’t walk into a ritual if I wasn’t feeling 100% good to go, I’m not going to push myself too hard right now. But I will be back to splashing about in the brine before I know it.
And if you’re not feeling in top form, or you’re struggling with outside demands on your time, I promise it’s okay to take a break and pay attention to yourself for awhile. There are plenty of life preservers to go around until we’re officially back on duty.
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