167. Transcending Darkness – Katie Calautti
I was in over my head, terrified—but there was a kind of astonishing joy in my fear. I felt alive for the first time in months, and it made me consider that perhaps I’d want to stay that way.
I’m scared of the dark. When I was a kid, I innately sensed there were long-gone things lurking in the shadows just beyond my bed—and as I grew up, the darkness I’d always dreaded slipped inside. In the summer of 2017, overcome with a deep depression that seemed to descend from nowhere, I only left my couch long enough to contemplate jumping from my Brooklyn brownstone’s third floor balcony. When, in a particularly numb haze, I scrolled past a stranger’s Instagram post calling for farm sitting help over the Thanksgiving holiday, I—with no familial obligations and even less to lose—rattled off a quick DM response.
One phone interview and a two-and-a-half-hour drive north was all it took. With no experience, I found myself solely responsible for the care of sheep, goats, ducks, chickens, turkeys, cats, a dog, and a massive 1830s-era farmhouse surrounded by acres of uninhabited Catskills forests and fields. My first night there, I sat on the couch—every light in the house blazing—surrounded by cylinder glass windows framing a viscous rural dark, the only sound the distant wail of coyotes. I was in over my head, terrified—but there was a kind of astonishing joy in my fear. I felt alive for the first time in months, and it made me consider that perhaps I’d want to stay that way.
Two years later, the farm sitting stents were a constant, and I was keenly aware that being in the Catskills sparked a flame that returning to Brooklyn snuffed. When I once again looked at my balcony with longing, I knew it was time to take a more figurative leap. Within two months, I drained my meager savings and moved my city life of fifteen years to a rented 1847-era cottage in the rural New Jersey countryside.
Standing in a sunnier spot, I can view my depressive episodes more clearly—as liminal spaces connecting a past and future version of myself. I realize now that the darkness has always been bone-deep, a dowsing rod bending my limbs toward the next fortifying stream. And wielding it as a force of discovery is all the illumination I need.
– Katie Calautti
