by Megan O’Laughlin
One of these days, I will find a dead body on this beach. It’s written in the stars, or at least in so many true crime stories: woman walking dog finds dead body on neighborhood beach.
Every morning I walk the new puppy to our small neighborhood shore where he sniffs seaweed while I hunt for sea-glass. I walk because I’m tired and my depletion comes from something that has a lot of terms: secondary trauma, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, all terms for various forms of caregiver exhaustion, definitions for intense weariness. I used to believe such symptoms indicate how I’ve given too much, but perhaps it means that the needs outweigh any possible gifts.
The neighborhood beach is nearly a mile down the busy main road. Without a sidewalk or shoulder, the puppy and I must jump off the pavement as cars whiz past. The beach itself is rocky, edged by crumbling cliffs. All manner of garbage washes ashore: golf balls, tampon applicators, plastic bags, and once—a whole unpeeled onion. On a clear day, Seattle is visible across the sea, its downtown buildings dark sentinels next to Mount Rainier, the periodically active volcano that may someday kill us all. To the west, the Brothers and other snow-tipped Olympic mountains. Most mornings, the resident blue herons fish in the brackish water. They squawk and fly away when we get too close. I sit on a damp driftwood log and observe the beach with all its loveliness and grittiness, and as I spot a discarded shoe on the rocks, I wonder if it contains a severed human foot.
There my mind goes again. Of course there is no detached foot inside the waterlogged shoe. My thoughts can tend to slide to that place of hyper-vigilant preparation—a well-honed response after years of professional crisis, darkened further by my tendencies towards genetic depression, made stickier by my obsessive mind. Perhaps all those horror movies I’ve watched also inspire these gloomy fascinations. At the tender age of twelve I’d read Stephen King books and leave the hall light shining outside my door. My brother would turn off the light, reminding me not to forget again. I’d act like I did it by accident, but then turn it on after he went back to his room. Perhaps I leap into the shadows because of my years of immersion in therapy work; or it feels routine after so much exposure to the dark corners of people’s lives. Now I know that if I don’t carefully tend to my needs, the fear and dread could stick to me like seaweed on rocks.
*
Every day I see the same person at the beach, an old, bearded guy with a big truck. My husband calls him Uncle Jesse, after the uncle in Dukes of Hazzard, not the handsome Elvis impersonator in Full House. He fishes off the dock, even in the off-season, and sometimes walks along the beach to collect clams from under the rocks. Sometimes he disappears around the bend or appears to sleep in his truck. People in the neighborhood complain about drugs at the beach. We see needles left on the rocks. He might be one of the drug users, but I don’t know.
One day Uncle Jesse lifted his pant leg to show my husband his ankles, swollen red with edema, an answer to his slow and gaping walk. “It’s my heart,” he told my husband, an occasional fishing companion on the neighborhood dock, where Uncle Jesse bullies and even punches any outsiders who dare to fish there. I hear he throws rocks at hungry seals. He is almost always at the beach, so I might find him dead here someday. A morbid thought that I hope is not true. If it’s not the drugs, it will be his heart.
This is where my mind goes.
*
Although he is part of my daily life, Uncle Jesse and I rarely interact. Once, the puppy ran to him to sniff his shoes. I called the excited puppy back, my voice high-pitched. Don’t ever say sorry for a nice dog, the old man grumbled and I nodded, my shoulders relaxing as I wondered why I so readily take advice from someone who throws rocks at seals.
Another time, Uncle Jesse pointed to a vivid rainbow stretched across the sea, one end in the water and the other in our run-down neighborhood, perhaps a pot of gold in a neighbor’s yard. Look how bright it is, he suggested, to ensure I would not miss the rainbow in my routine of bagging dog shit and staring at the water. The rainbow gleamed bright, and behind it, a second, faded bow in a soft curve of color. There’s two of them, I chirped as I pointed to the prism in the sky. Uncle Jesse grumbled as he ambled away.
I wonder when I’ll find him here, dead, I think as Uncle Jesse hauls himself into his truck.
This is where my mind goes.
*
Years ago, I drove to a meditation retreat with a fellow student named Matt, who seemed much older than I was at the time but was probably in his late thirties or even forties—right around my age now.
My old Honda Civic was a small, moving Buddhist confessional where I told Matt about my issues: I thought about work all the time. It even crept into my dreams, when I’d find people trapped in buildings and I’d run frantically to get everyone out. I never succeeded and usually woke up panting and sweaty.
A few years into my social work career, everyone in my life informed me that I was too affected by work, and I had to find a way to worry less. Was I depressed? Too anxious? Was it the work itself? I was prone to blame myself because no one else seemed as affected. No one else seemed so tired.
Back then, I hoped my spiritual practice would prevent a mental breakdown, one I could feel coming with my nightmares and my frequent tensions and panic. Through my hours of meditations and readings, I aspired to become a bodhisattva—one who delays their enlightenment so they can be in service to others. A bodhisattva lives with a broken heart, and I figured if they can do it, then I can, too.
Matt told me he thought about work all the time. He also dreamed about his job. He said he’d always been like this, even years ago when he bagged groceries.
I felt validated by Matt’s statements, and the relief released me, at least temporarily, from the ongoing scrutiny of my mind’s hunt for dark problems, and my fixation on some terrible affliction from which I could not escape. Maybe there wasn’t anything wrong with me at all, or my problem of overwork and weariness is actually a shared problem, a systemic problem. Or this could be yet another aspect of the state of being human, another example of samsara. For a time, I no longer wondered why the details of my job stuck to my psyche and why my mind seemed to resemble a rocky beach, where anything can wash up and stay.
If I could return to that car, now that I’m Matt’s age or even older, I’d tell him it’s not normal to dream about work all the time. We deserve rest and fun. And like a tense scene in those horror movies I love, I’d turn to my younger self and I’d whisper run! The younger me would scurry away, leaving her pile of books behind, all dogeared and highlighted. It’s not just you, I’d tell her. It’s not just about acceptance, I’d yell after her. I’d throw a piece of paper at her with a Stephen Levine quote, “Behind the restless movement of the mind is the stillness of being, the stillness that has no name, no reputation, nothing to protect. It is the natural mind.” Find your natural mind! I’d yell at her as she runs away.
*
Gradually, I’ve learned to watch my mind with various techniques gleaned from years of therapy trainings and many, many hours of meditation. My mind can be unruly, and that is the nature of the untrained mind. I watch the thoughts but I don’t have to follow them. I listen but I don’t have to believe. Look at what my mind is doing again, I tell myself. Look at where it goes.
When I can disentangle myself from my own stories, I can feel the weariness in my body, and my heart continues to break for the world. This heaviness reminds me of my limits: I can only work so many hours a day; I cannot take on everyone who needs a therapist; the computer screen gives me headaches, and my focus only lasts for so long, even with my medication. Even then, my medicine—that other medicines of witnessing and being witnessed and well-researched coping skills—can only provide so much. The world stings and punches and burns us all in so many ways, and this is why the bodhisattva has a broken heart. There is too much suffering.
I’ve grappled with this reality for years as I’ve witnessed the pain of so many dear people. I like to think that care and love can make us lighter and stronger, but within the conditional and limited space of modern-day psychotherapy, with payment structures, time-limits, and waiting lists, it can sometimes feel like yet another form of disembodiment for us all. This sits like a weight on my chest.
The weariness is with me at the beach. It is with me as I sit and the puppy sniffs. From my damp-log seat I stare at that blank space just above the gray sea, where the boats of the Coast Salish people once traveled up and down the peninsula with the salmon. They were here before the garbage came.
I want the wisdom of years but with those years, I also have the weariness of experience. The only remedy may be to burn it all and rebuild. Release what ails us and yearn for something beautiful. I think I can see it, I want to tell the sea. It’s easier if I let my eyes unfocus. If I stop trying so hard.
We helpers ache as we abet others with their suffering. Wounded healers, we are, we arrive in the darkness because of our own shadowy truths, yet we never heal entirely because of our constant exposures. We revere the therapeutic process while we live on the cliff’s edge of depletion; we topple over the endless frustrations with systems requiring authorizations and specific diagnoses. To remain present and upright, we must tolerate the jagged terrain, as we forever learn to maneuver ourselves. This requires constant awareness and attention. Do this or be ripped apart completely.
Perhaps we must accept the progressive damage of these constant exposures to pain, violence, betrayal, and loss. Perhaps we won’t ever heal completely, and we must learn to live with what hurts. Or we must yearn for something more, something different.
Or we must do both.
*
According to the neighborhood Facebook group, two bodies were found on the beach this year. One was death by overdose, the other a death by suicide; both deceased were very young. I wasn’t there with either of them, for which I am grateful. No bodies washed up on the rocky shore. Instead, they were left in cars, eventually discovered and unlocked by the county sheriff. My heart aches for those young lives and everyone devastated by their tragic ends. Deaths of loneliness, perhaps, and at a time when therapy and substance treatment are so difficult to access. So many failures in assistance and compassion must have led up to those final moments on the beach.
My job is not as sticky as it once was, my mind not quite as vulnerable. I think I am getting closer to some kind of peace. I set limits on how much I work, how much stress I am willing to take on. I spend more time writing and tending to my plants. I prioritize sleep, dog walks, gym workouts, and time with my family. I won’t be a sacrificial lamb in this life, for that’s what I once believed a bodhisattva to be. No delay of enlightenment; I want direction within these ruins of crumbled rock and garbage. I’m not ready for nirvana anyway, not even close. This dirty and beautiful place can offer what it will, and I will try to imagine the emergence of something better from the ruins. A world where there’s more tending and less greed. A world where we don’t forget our histories.
Perhaps this acceptance of difficulty is what Buddha meant when he said, “The world is afflicted by death and decay. But the wise do not grieve, having realized the nature of the world.” According to the Buddhists, the nature of the world is suffering and impermanence. I’m not a Buddha, for I can’t help but grieve, and I resent messages that encourage this emotional bypass, for there is wisdom within the weariness. Lama Rod Owens, my favorite living teacher, says that we can try to find love and beauty within our current apocalypse. He says, “I am called to survive to help bring about this new world to which I believe we are giving birth. I want to be of service to help, not deplete myself in meaningless ways.” So with each thing I do, each new task I take on, I do not consider if I should try to help, but rather if I can, and if I can bear whatever burden it may bring, and if it will also bring me joy and connection, things we all desperately need. It can feel deeply uncomfortable to regard service work in this way when many of us have been taught to only think of others, and rarely of ourselves.
My spouse has encouraged me to stop my walks to the beach. He worries about the cars on the road, about the weather and the craggy fisherman; he hears concern in my voice. He doesn’t realize that I’m not only looking for bodies—I’m also trying to give my weariness to the cedars.
I won’t stop my trips to the shore, although I might someday stumble across death on the rocks, or, at the very least, my mind will sometimes dwell in dark places. I will continue to show up both at the beach and for others, and I’ll hope for a world that’s better than this one. I’ll see the potential within this one already here.
The seagulls will fly as a seal’s head pops out of the water with those sweet sea-dog eyes. I’ll throw sticks for the puppy, who chews on them with glee. Sometimes, I might gush about bright rainbows with the craggy fisherman, even if he grumbles as he limps away.
As I imagine a better world, I’ll touch the memories of the rocks and soil. They tell the earth’s stories before the garbage appeared, and I’ll sit on a driftwood log as the tide washes in. For a second, I will see what this beach was like before this land was stolen, when groups of Coast Salish people moved up and down the peninsula coast with the salmon. They are still here— the Suquamish reservation is around the next bend. The People of the Clear Salt Water: this land belongs to them; this sea is theirs, although they might say it belongs to both no one and everyone. From the warmth in my chest, I wonder if I can feel their spirits roaming the rocks near the washed-up piles of plastic by my feet.
It’s either the ghosts I feel, or my beating heart, or both.
Megan E. O’Laughlin (she/they) lives on a peninsula by the sea where she works as an essayist and psychotherapist. She is the Managing Editor for The Black Fork Review and co-host of the I’M TRIGGERED! podcast. Her writing has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, Watershed Review, Defunkt Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, and others. She is currently working on an essay collection about burnout in the mental health world. You can find her @meganeolaughlin or meganolaughlin.com
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