GOOD ADVICE FOR SOMEONE LIKE ME
behind the pain
someone is rejoicing
behind the torture
there is love
who’s going to buy
this bullshit
if you don’t become the ocean
you’ll be seasick
every day
Poem | Good Advice for Someone Like Me by Leonard Cohen
if you don’t become the ocean
you’ll be seasick
every day
Someone introduced me to this quote and I found it particularly stirring. I honestly don't know what the entire poem is supposed to mean and I don't super care to seek it out.
The reason it spoke to me is because it's, in some sense, how I decided I would approach my depression. Rather than trying to resist the feelings and deny the thoughts it brought, instead of trying to run from them and climb out of the muck, I decided to lay in it. I stopped fighting the waves. The energy it took to out swim the current was tiring and wasn’t working anyways. So I decided to be consumed by it, to let the flow take me where it wanted. I stopped making attempts to push it out. I accepted all of it and let it all pass through. I decided to let the murky tendrils drag me to some unknown and seemingly dismal place.
Do what you are here to do.
I’ve been there, to a depth of zero visibility. And I’ve come back. Of course not the same person I was. There is, as their should be, transformation in the storm. Emerged. I became the ocean.