An Ocean Metaphor

The first metaphor I ever found helpful in coping with my brain was in an Outline piece written by Anna Borges, which you can find here. In it, Borges talks about passive suicidality, explaining her experience of struggling with wanting to live. She says that she is not always that attached to being alive, and when I read those words for the first time, I cried. I felt seen, heard, known. For a few years, I’d read through it periodically, letting the wave of relief wash over me once more. Nearing the end of 2020, however, the metaphor of treading water in the middle of the ocean ceased to be accurate enough. I was and am suffering from more than major depression. This meant that I had to tweak the metaphor to fit me a bit better. And so, I made Borges’ elegant analogy into a hot, convoluted, mess.

My depression is actually only one part of a larger illness, called schizoaffective disorder bipolar type. Schizoaffective is a jazzy combo of schizophrenia and a mood disorder, which can be bipolar, mania, or depression. As I said, I have the side of bipolar, although I resent whoever placed that order. So how does that impact the metaphor? My depressive swings match the water-treading difficulties, but they’re paired with borderline personality disorder, so I’ve got floaties, instead of treading alone. Some days, I need a dainty life preserver or some toddler style arm bands. Others require those floats that are more like amusement parks atop the water to combat the anchor dragging me beneath the waves.

On the other end of the bipolar piece is, of course, mania. When I’m manic, I am invincible. I blow all my money on things that are not floaties and I pop all the ones I have because I don’t need them anymore. Spoiler: I do, in fact, still need them. I’ll swim in a random direction, sure I’ll make it to a shore that I can’t see; a shore that doesn’t exist.

Add into this the schizophrenic symptoms and you’ve got a real party. My brain will just make things up. A shoreline or a cat in the water with me or any number of things. Plus, it is not bound by the confines of my moods, it can just surprise me with something that’s not there or leave me wasting large swaths of time pondering whether or not something was really there. Moreover, the schizophrenia feeds into my struggles with care tasks, adding to the anchors dragging me down, down, down.

At this point, it’s important to introduce two characters, if you will. The first is a shark and the second another person. The shark is my generalized anxiety disorder, swimming at a variable distance away from me, always visible. On a great day, the shark is a ways off or I can manage to ignore it. Average days bring the shark a fair distance away, but still close enough to be concerning. If the day is a miserable one, my cartilaginous companion is nosing my feet, trying to decide if I’m edible.

Now, onto the new person. This person is someone that I must save, but they cannot know about the shark or how royally fucked we are in terms of the possibility of leaving the ocean. They’re also maybe an idiot, but I can’t be sure and it doesn’t matter anyways. This is my social anxiety disorder, my fear of crowds and judgement, of doing something wrong or embarrassing, which activates my borderline personality disorder.

My borderline personality disorder impacts me most through impulsivity and emotional dysregulation. So my BPD will egg on my mania, encouraging me to take off my floaties or to pop them. When the other person asks a question or disagrees with me or expresses doubt, I can’t help but take it to heart in a way you might not. It’s a catastrophe, an instant anchor and deflator of floaties.

That’s my deeply bastardized version of the ocean metaphor, hectic and inelegant. I hope it makes sense to you or helps you a bit. I’d love to hear your metaphors, too.