Battered
I found myself lost on the Esplanade formation, a vast layered sandstone deck of hoodoos, slickrock and meandering incised canyons beneath the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. There were no apparent markers on where to go, how to proceed. I felt something familiar and forgotten, something I had not felt since I was a child when I had recurring nightmares of being lost, with no one to help me.
I was also blind, or could not see well, in those nightmares. It was as if my vision was uncorrected, or had gotten worse, and I was trying to evade oncoming traffic when everything was a blur; sometimes I was driving a vehicle, and sometimes someone had pushed me in the middle of the road. I had returned to the Grand Canyon after over a decade, spurred in part by my previous trip to Kauai. I was hiking Waimea Canyon and I realized I felt nothing. It was merely pretty scenery to me; there was no awe, no meditation, no epiphany. I wanted to see the Grand Canyon again and reaffirm our connection while I still could.
That urgency was further spurred by my recent diagnosis. My migraines had been getting more debilitating and failed to respond to treatments. I was referred to different specialists who did not find anything conclusive, until I was referred to an ophthalmologist. The results were conclusive, I have glaucoma – an irreversible degenerative disease when abnormally high ocular pressure irreparably damages the optic nerves. And I have had it for a while, the results from the Visual Fields test (which involved looking into a machine that simulated random specks of light like blinking stars) revealed significant areas had gone completely dark. I would become blind when they all go dark.
The diagnosis made my depression phases even more wretched. My childhood recurring nightmare became a prophecy. The progression of glaucoma was unpredictable, sometimes it worsened dramatically between checkups. I felt I was running out of time, and spiraling towards a forgone conclusion. What was my purpose left? What would I be left to cope? What would I do if I could no longer read music? What would happen to my photography and my skills in the darkroom?
I became inexplicably obsessed with collecting and using vintage cameras and lenses in my manic phases. Looking up obscure catalogs and references and trawling the Internet for sources and deals consumed me. Ostensibly, I was trying to recover historical practices but there was probably a deeper reason I was not fully aware of then. Unlike modern photography equipment and aesthetics that fetishizes sharpness, contrast, coverage, and resolution; photographs taken with historical equipment did not have those characteristics, yet still had their own unique beauty. One had to intuit the lens aperture and shutter speed instead of relying on “standard” metering and exposure technology.
I had let my body go since I despaired of finding someone who loved me for who I am – I was tired of being liked for my body, for the cachet I conferred to them, for how I made them feel or what I did for them. Why bother trying for the intimacy I had always craved but never received? After the glaucoma diagnosis and deeper depression that went with it, I neglected it even more. I felt even more broken, more convinced that no one would ever want me. Working hard was a distraction, keeping busy instead of doing something, anything to delay confronting the empty repetitions and meaningless rituals of hanging on. I reasoned that I should hang on despite my mistreatment because I was single-handedly responsible for $5M worth of projects. That long-term neglect manifested itself in various health issues. A massage therapist exclaimed “Stephen! Your work is killing you!” when he felt my body. Tell me something I don’t already know. Still I bore it. My epiphany came when I had to have 5 root canals done due to nerve damage over a period of weeks (insurance only partially covered the first one). It was during my fifth root canal when I realized that was the most relaxing thing I had done. And I realized how fucked up that was. And I wondered what was the whole point of all this.
As a child
Flight (from Terrible Sanities)
I wake from soaring
through canyons, water
falls and galaxies.
I now know better
as adult
I no longer dream
of flying.
I had enough of being exploited and being cornered. The unfairness and unjustness of it all triggered the same fight and flight response which had led to my fleeing Singapore. I struggled to regain control and suppress vengeful fantasies but I began to flame out and have outbursts and behave erratically; a cry for help that everyone ignored. Part of myself was still detached, observing my breakdown but powerless to stop it.
Finally I informed them I was going to resign in about three months on Feb 14 which should be more than sufficient time to fully transition the projects (that were sustaining the company) to other people. Yet no one came to do the handing taking over work until Feb 12 when the VPs suddenly showed up. As I tried my best to get them up to speed as much as I could in the short time, they began to panic when they realized how complex and technical those projects were and they did not understand anything. They had the temerity to throw a tantrum and accused me of being uncooperative. Bitch! You should have started working on this 3 months ago instead of 2 days ago. Don’t push the blame on me just because you lack the skills and smarts because you were so smug in yourselves. They complained to the new CEO who sent me a veiled threat via email – it would be unfortunate if they had to give me a bad reference after all the work I had done, could I stay on a few more weeks to help them out unpaid. Well fuck you, fuck your self-importance – I don’t need you, I don’t need your reference, my skills can speak for themselves. I replied that it was not my problem that the VPs chose to transition the projects at the last minute, I had given 3 months advance notice. If they needed assistance, this was my consulting rate. No response. No one came by on my last day. Whatever. I left the laptop and security pass in my office and left.
I was not just physically lost on the Esplanade but emotionally as well – I had quit my job a few months ago, I did not know what came next, or if I could find the correct route on the Esplanade and in life, or consider what I could do when my resources ran low. I had stopped to take some photographs, and when I looked up I could not see the rest of the group, nor were there apparent signs of travel along the slickrock expanse. This was my first time hiking with a group. When I decided to return to the Grand Canyon, I reached out to Eb, my guide / hiking partner on my first backpacking trip into the canyon; he remembered me after all those years and suggested the Thunder River – Deer Creek Loop on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I ended up with a group trip because the logistics of soloing and accessing the trailhead were impractical. Getting to the trailhead involved navigating a patchwork of overgrown and rough dirt roads, a difficult task in the age when GPS was not widespread and the margin of error was such that one could easily get onto the wrong adjoining road or turnoff. Even the professional guide leading the group got on the wrong roads and turns at spots and had to backtrack a couple of times. And that is just getting there. I doubt I would be able to find my way out after being tired out after 6 days of backpacking.
Even the professional guide leading the group got onto the wrong roads and turns at spots and had to backtrack a couple of times. The going was slow. It was past noon when we arrived at the trailhead, we grabbed a quick lunch, loaded our backpacks and headed off to the edge of Monument Point. We paused to take pictures of the view, and paused even further when the guide pointed out the steep descent. Woah! It went straight down the Kaibab formations for a few hundred feet and involved picking your way down by finding sufficiently large footholds eroded from the sandstone cliff. After controlling my breathing, I was ok with that; just as I was on the third day when we could not find the cliff break to get atop the plateau and could only progress by hugging sandstone cliffs above the rushing river, moving along a crumbly ledge no wider than a boot, feeling for handholds and footholds around protrusions.
[Thunder River picture]
It was on the second day I got lost on the Esplanade, I eventually found the rest of the group after attempting different possible routes they might have taken. It was the second day when the memory and sensation of falling in the canyon got triggered as we descended from Surprise Valley past Thunder River, a waterfall spring that gushes forth from the middle of the canyon walls. I fell behind again as I tried to calm myself down. When I caught up with the group, I reflected on why I was having such difficulty keeping pace with the group. It was not that the pace was particularly fast, just a regular step step step, yet it felt like a Death march to me. I realized that when I solo hiked, I would slow down at times to take photos or take in my surroundings, and speed up at others. A regular pace is anathema to me. I have to set my own pace, I cannot follow others; it is exhausting. I also realized there were no points gained, merely ego, for making it seem effortless; I have to accommodate my own limits; I broke out the gloves to protect my easily bruised hands when climbing rocks, and the compression sleeves when my knees hurt and faltered from steep descents and climbs.
I felt at home in the canyon. An epiphany. Home is where I want to be, not where I have to be. I had despaired of finding a place to belong; a stranger in Singapore, a stranger in America, a stranger and strange wherever I go. Privileged people talked blithely about moving and migrating; an Under the Tuscan Sun sort of reality as if it were that simple. Escape is an impossibility – for me it was a violence a trauma an endurance, to take the odds against me and sustain on my own. I started to view wildlife documentaries differently – I no longer saw them as cute animals, but kindred souls bound by ongoing struggle and survival, trapped by circumstance and geography, unable to break free. I desperately wanted to live a life of my choosing vs. one bound by circumstances or convention. I wanted to transcend it somehow, past the vague promises of heaven and rebirth, because I am more than my past, I am more than my self, I am more than my mental dis-order.
The sky was clear my first night back in the canyon, so I left out the rain cover and slept under the mesh portion of the tent. I arose as if a bright light had disturbed my slumber and opened my eyes, and realized I was woken not by the sun but by the light of stars. I was born with defective eyes with high astigmatism and until my vision was corrected when I was ten with prescription glasses, my eyes were unable to register points of light such as streetlights or car headlights – they appeared as hazy orbs. As I gazed at the stars without my glasses, each star became a flower, a snowflake, a mandala in the sky. I did not see specks of light against the black of night but a field of flickering flowers that stretched to infinity. I did not know it then, but I became unable to sleep in the canyon during that trip and subsequent trips. Even if I managed to doze off, I would invariably bolt awake to the firmament of stars and wait for the sun to rise.
Later that year I wound up with another full time job that originally started off as a 3-month contract. I did not want to sign on full time as I still felt unsettled but the company and the recruitment agency wore down my resistance; thus I reasoned I might as well do so to pay down my debt and rebuild my savings as I was unsure what lay ahead.
I was employee number 10 at a management consultancy during its startup phase, and the company grew rapidly while I was there as I not only took on extant clients but enabled them to take on 5 new ones valued in the millions. When I reconnected with the CFO years after I left, she told me the most work and the most original work the company had ever done was when I was around. The company’s schtick was to work with the C-suite of retail chains, and the company would figure out what was ailing the company if given all the data, and come up with appropriate solutions.
It fell on me to analyze all the diverse datasets the clients had: sales, marketing, location, logistics, digital, customers etc. in a short period of time. Figure out what might be the problem, and devise new models and methodologies so that the company could design appropriate strategies and solutions for the clients. I often had to go head to head against previous or parallel work done for the clients by elite management consultancies like Bain and McKinsey, and my work trounced all of them each time. A colleague nicknamed me the “McKinsey Killer”.
I apparently had a knack of getting into abusive personal and professional relationships. To do so much, in so little time, and with little help is exhausting. My boss, a partner in the company, was a bully. He fancied himself the next Steve Jobs except he lacked the talent and vision and was afraid of what he did not know or understand (even stating it himself). Part of the reason why I wound up doing most of the work myself despite leading a team, was he forced the rest of the team to do things via his inefficient methods. He did that to try to prove me wrong, his second-in-command. He would also waste my time by withholding information and data, I would spend weeks replicating it only to find he had it in the first place after I presented the results. He would be combative and go out of his way to contradict me and my work during meetings because he “liked the excitement”. He would fly into rampages if he did not get his way, and only I stood up to him while everyone cowered. He insisted on instant replies to his random emails and thoughts. Once I turned off my phone as I was tired and fed up with his non-stop pinging at 3am. When I showed up at the office the next day, everyone told me he had called them at 3am asking why I was not responding to his messages. I left my phone on after that and took one for the team; I had to buffer my team against his capriciousness just as I fought for them during his rampages. A former colleague told me after I left the company, my boss had my desk removed so no one could sit in the same spot, because “no one can replace Stephen”. She thought it was sweet of him. I think they finally realized the extent of my work; they had to split my position into three separate roles in order to backfill what I did.
I was also disillusioned from working with various C-suite executives. I was tired of them thinking and treating me as if I was an assistant, so I let the White consultants take the lead and speak for my work. A CMO even called me out the blue asking why “you people” held such opinions about his company, in reaction to a minority analysis of customer survey data he had commissioned another company to do.
The company’s strategy and clients also changed. Instead of helping other companies become better, they were now helping holding companies flip other companies for profit with no regard for the people who worked there. They no longer wanted the rigor and new methodologies I brought to the table, just templated proforma work for a quick turnaround. What did they need me for then? I thought. Why was I helping undeserving rich middle-aged white men get even richer?
The constant fights with my own boss, and other White colleagues trying to knock me down did no favors to my bipolar episodes. Moreover I felt empty and hollowed out. I was heading an advanced analytics division and my work was validated against the market leaders – the pinnacle of an ambition I had when I began working in Singapore. And I had accomplished it while I was in my 30s, against the odds with no assistance. I should be happy but I was not; I felt I was running out of time, not just about the glaucoma. I had given my time and energies for others but not myself, not my dreams – what was it I really wanted to do? I did not value myself and my accomplishments then.
During those years of “normal functioning” I had to divorce myself from my art my mode of expression. I knew I was unfulfilled and empty because of that, but I did not know how to move forward let alone how to integrate and reconcile it with the demands of a professional corporate job. I wanted to be embraced again by beauty. When I was young I was surrounded by music, I heard a soundtrack to my life and I responded to it in gestures and movement. My father told me to stop waving my hands about so I did, other kids made fun of me for not moving like a boy so I did, my internal soundtrack became replaced with the standard music repertoire I had to learn; now I put on headphones not to listen to music but to attempt to recreate that soundtrack of my life I used to hear, and to shield myself from others. Their shallowness, their self-centeredness, their pretentiousness, their self-justifications on norms – their proforma life, their proforma dreams, their proforma desires which makes the alternative impossible, and excludes those like me. In the sanctuary of my soundtrack, everything is perfection – every gesture, every emotion, every photograph, every poem, every note I sang or played was the perfect expression that only I comprehend.
Bob brought back someone he met while cruising at the park. Bob declared he was going to move in, they were in love and they were going to get married. I asked Bob about the equity I had built up by paying for the mortgage as he had promised. He replied he had no such recollection no such promise; all the money I had paid all those years was rent. He had recently reaffirmed that promise after I had taken him on his bucket-list trip when he came home crying the day he was diagnosed with HIV. Not only was I cheated out of the house and saddled with a 6 figure debt from the Line of Credit, which meant I had nowhere to go, I had to move out of the bedroom and sleep on the floor of my office that was only large enough for a sleeping bag. I had no money to get another house, I had no choice but to stay for the bunnies. After my third night of sleeping on the office floor, Bella would lie down next to my sleeping bed near my head. Her presence comforted me, an angel in my bleak existence and future. Bella would stay every night with me in the same position when I fell asleep and until I woke up, until her health deteriorated shortly after Thumper suddenly passed away.
In the midst of the self-destruction, the paranoia and the fatalism, I received an unexpected email from Jeremy, a guide I had met on a group trip earlier in the year, he was thinking of doing the Gems Route we had briefly chatted about, would I be interested in joining him? Yes I replied without hesitation. I had been intrigued by the Gems route since Eb told me about it and never though I would ever get to do it given its remoteness and logistical challenges. I waited for Jeremy to send me the trip dates after he secured the necessary permits. Once I had those dates, I went about reprioritizing and accelerating project workloads so I was able to clear out those two weeks to do the trip before I notified my boss I was taking vacation for those days. He responded to the entire department and copied the company’s executives that he disagreed and wanted to discuss further my taking leave. In my reply all, I outlined all the work that had been completed, and there were no deadlines or projects requiring my attention during the window I was away, ending with “That was not a request, that was more of a FYI.”
I was fed up, burnt out. miserable at work and at home, I just had to hold out and hang on for a few more months. I was returning to the Grand Canyon, a chance to do the route I had dreamt about for 15 years since that first hike changed the trajectory of my life. Perhaps my life would change after this as well.
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