What the Ladybug Taught Me

How saving a ladybug in Lake Zurich became a mirror for my life.

The burnout has made me irritable. Everything and everyone annoys me.

I go to the lake after work to find some relief from the scorching heat that has taken over Zurich.

Why I thought I’d be able to find a spot to sit comfortably as the sun draws out the crowds is beyond me. I settle for a sliver of sun on a bench, but it requires the ladies on either side of me to budge a little. Neither of them does, despite having at least 30 centimeters of wiggle room on either side.

“Fine,” I think to myself, I’ll just swim now without soaking up some rays—I have a phone call in an hour anyway, so best to get wet now and dry off after.

I take deep breaths as I descend down the stairs into the lake—the people in front of me are slow and the immediate body of water is populated by others cooling off, making me feel claustrophobic.

As soon as I get in, I maneuver around the bobbing bodies and beeline for the buoys that are past the rafters. This area is always less busy—most swimmers rarely venture past the rafters.

My usual swim route is to the second buoy in the middle—there, I hang onto the handles for a bit and admire the spectacular Zurich view before swimming on to the last buoy down to the left. I usually have another scenic hangout before heading back to the mayhem of sun worshippers.

When I get to the second buoy, it’s already taken. Two girls are hanging onto it, with one saying, “He loses it if I’m late. I said I’d be home at 1AM and I got home at 1:15AM and he lost it.” Who “he” is, I don’t know—an overzealous roommate? A boyfriend? Either way, it doesn't sound healthy.

I don’t want to intrude on their conversation, so I swim on.

Then a tiny, yellow fleck catches my eyes. It’s a ladybug, and it’s struggling.

I don’t have the heart to swim past and let it drown, so I scoop it into my palm. As the water drains from the hollow of my hand, the little critter remains. Okay, now what? I’m in deep water—literally—so there’s no way to think on my feet or casually plop it on a nearby leaf.

My immediate thought is that I could leave it on the top part of the buoy, but the girls are there and honestly, it would look really weird interrupting them to go “sorry, just going to leave a ladybug here”. Plus, the buoys are unstable, so I wouldn’t be able to do this gracefully.

I decide to swim to the next buoy.

I’m a strong swimmer, but I can’t claim that this is graceful. One-handed breaststroke works somewhat, but not great. I flip onto my back to see if that’s better—nope. Back to compromised breaststroke it is.

There’s only one man on the next buoy, but as I make my way to it, two other men decide to go and cling onto the handle. Of course they do.

I swim on to the last buoy which is occupied by two men in sunglasses having a leisurely talk. The buoy is attached to a string of red and white tiny buoys to mark off the area. I decide to grab onto this string and see if the ladybug is dry enough to fly away. It’s not.

My dad would be proud of me. Ladybugs dot his desk and corners of his home—it’s his good luck charm. So I feel rather noble rescuing it from a mass of water, even if I look like an idiot in the process.

I examine it as it pries its wings open, desperately trying to dry them off. It feels like a fitting metaphor for my life. And now, here I am—stranded in the lake, a pale yellow ladybug on my arm.

The chatty Kathys on the last buoy aren’t budging, and I’m getting antsy. I have a music call coming up but there is no way, after all this effort, I’m flicking this yellow speck back into the water. It’s clearly trying its best to dry off and make headway, but I’ll need to find a place to safely leave it—ideally on top of a buoy.

Farther down the rope is another buoy and it’s empty. It’s also painfully close to a rafter and at this point I definitely have onlookers who are wondering why on earth a woman is swimming with her hand above the water and spending an obscene amount of time hanging onto a line of small buoys while examining her hand in the sun….if only they could see the yellow, tiny-legged dot running along my fingers, palm and back of my hand.

I make it to the buoy and hang out.

Water is my solace so I don’t mind being there and I don’t mind being alone. I do mind the eyes from the rafters staring at me as they try to figure out what it is I’m doing. I examine the ladybug closely. It’s a pale yellow, with white dots. I don’t know much about ladybugs—I wonder if this is the stage it’s in before it turns red or if I’m dealing with a different sort.

I feel sorry for it. I’d be terrified to find myself surrounded by deep water with no way of getting out. By now my hand is dry and it skitters along it in a hurry—probably super confused. When it reaches my finger tips, I press my index fingers onto a ledge on the buoy willing the ladybug to walk onto it. But it doesn’t.

I’m left deeply observing the bug, the texture of my skin, my floral tattoos on my hands and how the light bounces off the water drops as I follow its route. It would be deeply poetic if not for the fact that I don’t exactly have any other choice until I decide what to do with the bug.

I don’t want to grip it with my fingers and get it wet again, but in the end I have no choice. I grab it gently and make sure that it lands on its feet (are they feet?) on the yellow ledge of the buoy. I’m completely aware people have watched me be kind of weird out there in the water.

Once the ladybug is on the ledge, I take a deep breath and go under the water. Being underwater is the purest form of peace for me. White noise. For a few seconds I can pretend no one is around, and no one witnessed my not-terrible-but-also-not-quite-successful ladybug save.

I genuinely worry whether the ladybug made it out okay.

A Metaphor

For a long time now, I’ve felt stuck. I tried to excel in every area of my life as a form of process-of-elimination, so I could finally say, “I’m not crazy—this really isn’t working for me,” whatever “this” is.

I tried to perfect my morning routine, my evening routine, my diet; cut down on alcohol; cut out caffeine; applied myself at my job, applied myself in music, applied myself in dating; practiced gratitude—reminding myself of all the elements in my life I’m so lucky to have. I exhausted every possible avenue to make sure there wasn’t a single area I was neglecting to improve—and it left me depleted.

It became painstakingly clear that something had to change—and it’s likely my surroundings.

I love Switzerland, but I never really fit into its corporate structure. My ideas about life and how it should be lived are mostly at odds with those around me. I’m at a point where not pursuing my purpose—speaking truthfully about life, whether through lyrics or longform writing—is no longer an option.

It suffocates me having to stifle my expression for the sake of being likeable and palatable.

So, as a first step, I quit my job and decided to lean fully into my creativity.

I don’t quite have it all figured out yet, but what I do know is that for my creativity and self-expression to flow, I need complete and utter freedom. Just like I thrashed about in the water saving the ladybug, I’m thrashing about in this new chapter. In a week, I’ll be fully immersed. And just like I had onlookers as I clung to the yellow buoy, I’ll have onlookers as I enter this next chapter—some who may think I’m silly or weird. I’ve made my peace with that.

I guess this phase is about getting comfortable with people watching you as you stumble.

I finally like who I am, and I’m done bending this way and that to accommodate dreams and definitions of success that were never mine. I tried to follow the well-trodden path and edit myself into a version that fit the mould. But I don’t—and more importantly, I don’t want to.

#mentalhealth #burnout #transformation