“Leaning In" When Everything Sucks

“Lean into it.”

I stared at the message and cringed. The popular phrase had a moment ten years ago when the phrase became a catchy title for a book. Like most trending quips, it quickly emptied out of meaning to the point of cliche.

I clicked my phone closed and set it down. Leaning in, to me, was something you do on your last two or three reps at the gym when you’ve loaded your weight and your body is screaming. Leaning in meant pushing through, accepting the discomfort, with the reassurance that something good was on the other side of it. It’s easier to push through muscles that are on fire when you knew going into it that was the price you’d have to pay to get what you really want on the other side; to be strong, lean, and healthy.

Or maybe it’s the shakes, the sweats, and the nausea right before walking out on stage. (God help you if it’s the shits, too.) If you’ve worked to be the person people listen to for over a decade, and the lights are so bright before you give the big company-wide presentation, you’re supposed to “lean into” it. It was the toll you agreed to pay for the position you hold. You wanted to be the person people heard- so you better start giving them something to hear.

That wasn’t me when the little annoying phrase popped up in a blue bubble from a close friend. I was not sweating through a new personal record, and I wasn’t about to deliver a career-changing speech. This wasn’t the apex of some hard-earned goal. No, I was sitting out in my backyard, trying to psych myself out for a bleak day ahead of tamping down my inner demons while making do with a situation so fucked up my attorney grabbed her popcorn every time I called.

Why the fuck would I want to lean into a dumpster fire.

I got up and made more coffee.

I was still annoyed a few hours later so I picked a fight with her… in my head. What kind of new-age bullshit made people think that the most appropriate way to cope with a traumatic situation is to plaster a shit-eating grin on while golf-ball-sized hail of turds and sewage slime rained down on me? In a game of make-believe, what would I even pretend to do if I was “leaning in”?

Well, I was coping with depression so severe I nearly unalived myself three times. I guess leaning in would mean not resisting the sadness as it came, waves crashing over me with no consideration of my desire to be a functional human being. In fact, the more depressed I became, the more depressed I got for being depressed. I felt my worst having to crawl back into bed at 10:30 in the morning because the sobs that wracked my body made me curl up in a fetal position, which is really inconvenient when you’re trying to sit upright at a desk. Then cried harder for being the person in bed crying on a Monday morning. Plans to unalive myself weren’t about not wanting to live, but about not wanting to feel the way I was feeling. I was resisting the experience at the expense of my own life. I guess, if I were to really lean in, I would let myself feel the depth of my grief during normal business hours without guilt.

My life stretched out before me with too much negative space. Voids gaped at every angle, and I felt like I was walking into my future untethered. If I pretended to lean into that fear, that emptiness, what would I act like? I think I’d probably accept the openness. It probably would mean that instead of feeling loss and lost and alone, I’d probably feel excited at the opportunity to fill it with something new, something exhilarating, something filled with the meaning I’ve wanted so badly for so long. And, maybe since I already knew what I didn’t want, I’d be more conscious about choosing what I do. Maybe it was the chance to start over, to remodel the life I spent so much time fantasizing about when living my old life.

Toying with it a little more, I thought about what it would mean to lean into the source of the rage, the problematic relationship and circumstance that was the catalyst for the dumpster fire I was burning alive in. To lean in would mean to let go of the fear that they would get away with it. To lean in would mean to know I’d be able to stand up for myself, to push back, to say not today, and still be OK with uncertain outcomes. The anxiety felt like the more time that passed, the more they got away with it, and that wasn’t true. If I were to really lean in, it would be less about being exploited, and more about knowing I will fight for myself, I will protect myself, and I will be my own best advocate. (And, if they get a bit banged up along the way, it’s a perk, not the point.)

My friend won an argument she didn’t even know she was having that day.

Another irritating little quip, “roll with the punches”, comes to mind. Allowing the hit to come, and instead of holding your ground, is the idea that you allow the force of the punch to roll whatever it makes contact with. Rolling with it allows your body to do what it will naturally, moving out of the way under the impact so it doesn’t get any more damage by being immobile. The blows are coming, and at best sometimes all we can do is let them move us in a new direction.

Leaning in then becomes less smile-and-eat-shit, and more letting myself feel all the grief without making it worse by trying to drown it under coffee and sedatives until 5pm. (Overcaffienated depression is its own kind of psychedelic.)

Leaning in starts to mean appreciating the nervousness of starting over, because it means I know what’s on the line this time. My happiness.

Leaning in starts to look like having the courage to know it’s not about them, but it’s about me, and trusting myself to have the stamina to see through what I need to do for myself.

And so, I’m leaning.