I'm Shira Erlichman and this is The Slowdown.

In my early 20s, in a year of intense aloneness, of confronting a bipolar disorder diagnosis,

family estrangement, and moving to a new town, I took refuge in what I could touch.

When I'm suffering, the world takes on a tangible hue.

After work, I'd skateboard straight into the Connecticut River.

I found myself eye-to-eye with otters, who plunged under the dock into further darkness.

Pebbles glittered in the water, my feet touching their thousand eyes.

At night, my girlfriend took me square dancing.

As I spun between partners, each stranger's gaze met my own.

I clasped hands and released.

My depression's claustrophobic velvet seemed to lift momentarily.

Times of deep suffering present an odd awareness.

Everyone has eyes, I realized.

The doctor describing side effects, a stranger before she spins into another's arms.

The otter meeting my gaze with the intensity of a slippery monk.

These eyes swell with meaning, with inference.

My own eyes at the time scared me.

They felt feral in the face of grief.

It's why Jews warn against looking in mirrors after the loss of a loved one.

That year, I feared my darkness was pouring out of my peepers, giving me away.

I cried a lot.

Thomas Adams said, there is no coming to heaven with dry eyes.

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