How to Step Into The Abyss

A couple of weeks ago I talked about how, just before my last surgery I was completely over having heart surgeries, and how I grilled my surgeon on the phone beforehand looking for some sort of reassurance. I talked about how I asked him a bunch of questions but I couldn’t remember what they all were. Well I remembered one of the other ones.

I also asked him to tell me something that would make me believe that putting myself through all this again would somehow be worth it. That I wouldn’t suffer through all the pain, the emotional trauma, and all the indignities and then, after all of that, I wouldn’t start to feel a little better; I wouldn’t start to dance again and feel happy about life, only to have the same thing go wrong again and end up right back where I was in a year.

It wasn’t for nothing that I was concerned about this. My last two surgeries were both for the same reason and there was a potential for the problem to recur again and again. And that’s what my surgeon told me. He said the plan he had in place for this surgery could fix the problem and make it so I never need another surgery again. Or my heart could be more stubborn, the same problem might come back, and he might have to come up with a new plan and try again.

Welcome to the abyss. Please step in.

This was exactly what I didn’t want to hear. And, again, I don’t remember how I responded to this information, but I remember my surgeon saying to me “Leah, you want me to give you a guarantee, and I just can’t do that”.

I understood that, mostly. I knew that there were just too many variables involved in any human body and human life for anyone to be able to guarantee anything at all apart from death and taxes, but I still felt a need to be more sure about this whole thing.

I don’t think this reaction is uncommon. I think, no matter how devil-may-care a person’s usual approach to life may be, the higher the stakes start to get, the more difficult it is to just run ahead, guns blazing.

This is Where a Podcast Came In

I was listening to a podcast called ‘The Opportunist’ one night. I tend to find podcasts randomly and I prefer to listen from the beginning and go through every episode in order, so I was listening to the first season, which was about a woman who ran an online doomsday cult, because I guess everybody likes to work from home.

I was on the third episode of the first season and the host, Hannah Smith, speaks to Reza Aslan (I understand he’s a professor of some sort) about why people follow these doomsday cult leaders, no matter how many times their doomsday predictions fall flat. And, indeed, this was something I wanted to know too. I mean, maybe the first time everyone would run out and buy all the bottled water and toilet paper, or whatever people need during an apocalypse, but after the third or fourth time, wouldn’t you start to say “yeah, yeah. Endtimes. Gonna take a nap first”?

Well, Reza Aslan said, and I’m paraphrasing heavily here, that life is hard. And if someone tells you that the world is going to end on x date, and you feel like you can believe what they’re saying, that gives you pretty much the ultimate sense of security in a crazy world. The ultimate certainty about your life and your future. I don’t really know anything about Reza Aslan, but this seemed sensible to me.

And as much as I was scoffing over people believing this kind of thing, especially over and over again like they do, I had to realize that the ultimate certainty they were talking about on the podcast was what I was asking my surgeon to give me. And if I think it’s ridiculous for a cult leader to tell their followers there’s a sure-thing a-comin’, and if I think it’s ridiculous for the followers to believe it if the leaders do come up with nonsense like that, why am I expecting that exact scenario to play out with my surgeon?

I was asking for doomsday-cult-level certainty when one of the things I’ve always liked about my surgeon is that he doesn’t run a doomsday cult. At least I don’t think he does. We never have conversations about our personal lives.

So What Does This Have to Do With the Abyss?

The abyss is your uncertainty. It’s that shifty feeling you have when a doctor asks you to choose something like which pain management option you want to go with, and you know that there’s no way in the world you can ever make a fully informed decision on that, and that there’s only so much coaching your doctor can give you on the subject because, until you try it, there’s no way for anyone to know how you, personally, are going to react to these meds.

The abyss is also the question of how this experience will change your life from here on. Will you change your entire lifestyle? Will you not? How will you approach difficult stuff? Will you still feel the same anxieties you did before, or will every other fear pale in comparison to this one?

Most of us don’t manage well with uncertainty on this level. So we have to find a way to start feeling comfortable with it and we have to do it quickly.

So How Do I Feel Okay About Stepping In?

Well, I’m not a therapist. I think that’s probably really clear by now. So I can’t really tell you any kind of tried and true ways of doing it. I can tell you that it helps if you believe your surgical team is capable and they have your well-being at heart. I can tell you that it helps to have a solid support structure of friends and/or family around you. I can tell you that it also helps to know that your home is set up with all the things you’re going to need to help you recover, for when you leave the hospital.

Miss Kitten will always be here to lie on my chest and purr for me.

Even with those things, though — and even if you’re not having surgery for your particular condition — there’s no real way to feel certain about what’s going to happen in the future. So, here’s how you step in to the abyss:

Step 1.

Lift one foot off the ground and let it hover over the edge, above the nothingness.

Step 2.

Let your hands hover in the air beside you.

Step 3.

Take a deep breath.

Step 4.

Step in.