The Drop.
It started like the set-up to either a really fabulous or absolutely awful joke: two sober ladies, a body/sex/fat positive writer, and a youth minister walk into a pub…
Heads full and emotionally spent after spending the previous days in creative community at Write Doe Bay, the four of us had gone chasing french fries in Eastsound on our last night on Orcas Island. We weren’t exactly somber but we also weren’t totally chatty as we sipped on our sodas and waited for our food to come out. There was simply too much being processed in our pretty little brains to make much meaningful conversation.
It was Rachael who had the words for what happening: we were all experiencing or about to experience “the drop.” The emotional and physical low that can come hours or days after a sustained endorphin rush and that can last for days or even weeks after. As she explained it (and credited the concept to the kink community), everything I was thinking and about to start feeling clicked.
The last time I had been at Write, I had been warned of the “Doe-Bangover” but “the drop,” at least as Rachael described it, made so much more sense. It doesn’t really feel like a hangover — filled with shame and regret over things done/not done coupled with thirst for the one thing that always kept me thirsty — no, this was more just complete exhaustion and tenderness after having my heart splayed open in all the best ways.
No matter what I called it, I knew from experience that it was going to hit hard and likely stick around for a while.
The last time I felt the particular sensation, I sat in a lounge on a layover at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and threatened to re-route myself to Madrid instead of heading back home to Brussels. The drop + jet lag combination had proven to be a powerful siren’s call into nothingness.
This go-around I knew better and tried to prepare myself: I had booked an extra night in my tiny cabin at Doe Bay and given myself the grace not to rush back to SeaTac for the flight home. Plus, I had arranged good company for the drive the next morning.
Still, re-entry is hard.
And as much as I wanted to get home to my guys, I also wanted to stay wrapped up in the ease of worrying about nothing other than time with my thoughts and my words.
So I savored that last meal together with friends from the Write 16 cohort and took my time with the salty fries and sweet Dr. Pepper. The drop was coming but maybe I could stave it off just a tiny bit longer.
***
It’s been two weeks now and I’m finally, finally starting to feel almost normal again.
Which is good. Because we’re leaving Santo Domingo in less than two months now. That’s the plan at least. We don’t actually have any of the details banged out so I’m finding myself in a weird space of trying to be super mellow about the whole thing while also prepping against a black hole.
The truth is, I’d rather be writing and working on my craft or getting lost in poems like I was doing up in the far-most corner of the U.S. a couple of weeks ago.
Maybe that’s OK enough for now.
