Black Hole Theory

Learning to embrace the unknown

At the ripe young age of 17, I graduated high school on a sunny weekend in May. It was 2015 and my whole future lay sprawled in front of me: I got accepted to study journalism at Marquette University in Milwaukee, and would be moving in just a few months.

This uprooting was something entirely new to me. I’d lived in the same house in the same town for my entire decade-and-half-ish of life in the suburbs of Detroit. But I felt the itch to go to college in an entirely new city and state — and my parents thankfully obliged to help me achieve that goal.

My urge to leave mostly came out of a desire to get as far away from home as possible. I felt suffocated living in my childhood home and sick of the town I grew up in. In high school, I didn’t find the sense of belonging that I hoped; the social groups I floated in and out of for four years did little to anchor me to any sense of community or place. As I drifted away from my peers, an insatiable craving for a fresh start crept up on me. I felt like I couldn’t become the person I wanted to be unless I went far away.

College seemed like my ticket to a more fulfilling future. So I toured schools far and wide until I settled on Marquette, which was just far enough away from Metro Detroit that my parents couldn’t surveil me, but I could still take the train home for the holidays.

In the no-mans land after high school graduation and the start of college, I tried to envision what my life would look like in Milwaukee. Even though I’d been to the city before, I couldn’t picture living there on my own. Not even the faintest sense of my life as a college student, which would commence in three months, could come to mind. My imagination was completely blocked.

It felt like a black hole opened up in front of me. When I started into it, no light could escape. All that I saw was darkness; it was like the future didn’t even exist.

That must mean I’m gonna die, I thought. That idea cropped up over and over and over again all summer long. Because I couldn’t see a future in my imagination, that must’ve meant there was no future.

If you couldn’t tell, I was an anxious teenager. My panic attacks started when I was about 14 and were a frequent thing all throughout high school. Not to mention the low-grade fear I always felt and the constant catastrophizing that I did on a near-daily basis. I imagined myself dying in fiery car wrecks, collapsing in public due to an undiagnosed heart problem, or getting murdered in the middle of the night during a violent break-in. None of those things actually happened, of course. But in my head, everything felt so real.

When there were quiet moments in my life, I filled the void with anxiety. Ordinary restlessness turned into a series of “what-ifs” and mentally playing out every worst-case scenario that could come to pass. Most of the time I couldn’t help it — anxiety disorders work that way, and it takes years to find coping strategies to break the thought patterns that consume us.

Faced with the unknown, I spiraled.

My future after high school was probably the biggest unknown I’d ever experienced. Never in my life had I lived so far away from my family or all the things I was familiar with. The future was a big, empty void, and my survival instincts told me to stay away.

And yet, that void turned out not to be empty at all. I did move to Milwaukee, I did go to college and get my degree, and I did learn how to live on my own. So many things happened between the end of high school and today that it’d take me months to recount them all. I’m an entirely different person than I was 10 years ago — but I wouldn’t be if I’d never faced the unknown.

Endless galaxies, endless possibilities. This is a JW Space Telescope image that I really love. It shows us how much light exists in the darkness of space. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

The secret to getting here was to embrace the void. To jump into the black hole. Even when I felt like it was literally going to be the death of me, I just had to keep going, to show up and let things happen.

All these years later, I’m still gently encouraging myself to jump feet first into scenarios where I can’t picture the outcome. This past week was a good example, when it finally came time to prepare for a trip to Oregon that I booked back in December.

I’m going on a retreat this week and taking a solo excursion to a destination I’ll share more about later (for privacy reasons). But booking this trip wasn’t the easiest decision for me. When I heard about the retreat, my heart said yes, but my mind said no. I instantly pondered the what-ifs, and felt myself holding back because of logistics, money, time, etc. etc. etc.

Or at least, that’s what I told myself. The truth was that nothing practical was holding me back from going on this trip. It was my own fear. It was the black hole, opening up and threatening to swallow me whole.

When I pictured myself returning to the Pacific Northwest — a region I visited in college and fell in love with — the images that came to mind felt like a fantasy. Me, taking a week to go tromp around in the forest with a group of like-minded strangers? Me, carving out the time in my work schedule to visit a new city just for fun? Me, putting valuable business money toward something that felt like a vacation? Impossible. Irresponsible.

There were too many unknowns and too many holdups. And yet, I listened to the little voice in my heart that wanted to unravel the unknowns and challenge her own limitations. So the night before the retreat registration closed last December, I signed up. And now it’s really happening.

The black hole crept up on me again this week, just like I knew it would. At first, the size and intensity of its darkness frightened me like always. All I could imagine was the ways it could destroy me. Either a version of me that goes on this trip doesn’t exist, or she will have a terrible time, I thought.

But this time, I also jabbed back at the void. Maybe there’s a version of me that goes on this trip and loves it, I said. Maybe there’s a version of me that comes back completely changed, for the better. What’s stopping me from believing in a version of the black hole that’s not so dark once I peer inside? A future studded with stars instead of empty space? I’m questioning that more and more these days.

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