Abby Rosmarin's Blog, page 4

Cleanse

[image error]

The sun is out and I can barely stay inside.

Let’s go on a hike. Or a run. Or a walk. And a drive. Maybe just sit on porch and take in the breeze through the trees as the neighbor’s cat rubs up against my legs and hisses at my own cats indoors.

If I’m inside, every shade is up, every window opened. If I forget to close them, I wake up with the sun, regardless as to what time I got to sleep, as if my own circadian rhythm is going, “How dare you stay asleep when the world around you has awoke?”

The power of the sunlight drifts into the night, and the warm air and a bonfire are plenty substitute for a noonday sun. I still feel the energy, as if skin pinkened by the flames is the same as skin warming under the sun.

I try my best to mitigate how the winter’s weather affects me, but beautiful days remind me that it works in the opposite direction, too. I don’t realize how much energy I can have until the literal fog is lifted. The fog and the rain and the mist and the cold, dreary air.

[image error]

On a Saturday that I’m wracked with the flu, the rainy spring gives way to a perfect day, and I’m so convinced the weather is enough to energize me that I go for a drive with the windows down. It wipes me out so terribly that I spend the rest of the day in bed, windows up, the gentle spring breeze passing over my fevered skin.

A Saturday later, and I’m driving back from a walk around the city, deliberately picking uptempo songs and tapping out the beat as I drive. It’s one of the kinder heirlooms from my father, the staccato drum solo against a steering wheel, an ability to get lost in the song while you’re driving. I’m not fully recovered but now the sunshine can supplement what my immune system hasn’t been able to provide.

And on a Monday holiday, I’m by a lakeside dock with my feet in the water. I didn’t want to fall asleep the night before and I didn’t want to stay asleep once the morning came. It’s me and the sun and the loons calling in the distance and they’ll be my only companions for a while. The house is asleep but the world is awake, and three hours of fitful rest feels like nothing against the ripples I make in the water.

[image error]

It’s spring. It’s finally spring. And already toeing into summer. And I’m okay with that. Summer is my season. Summer is when I return to the mountains. Summer is when I travel. Summer is when something in my soul cracks open and the crisp lines of winter give way to the saturated colors of summer.

It’s going to be a lighter summer than it has been in a while. I know it. I’m making sure of it. I don’t think it’s coincidence that Marie Kondo’s show and “Thank U, Next,” came out and became such hits at the beginning of the year. This has been a year about clearing things out, removing what doesn’t bring you joy, creating space for the things that do. Of saying, “thank you, but next,” and letting go.

My pantry and closet have been cleared out. Maybe not in the Marie Kondo way, but it still got the job done. Now food spoils less often. I’m surprised with what I actually have available in my wardrobe.

Sometimes you don’t clear out just to make space for the new. You clear out to be reminded of what good things you already have, things that might’ve gotten lost under the clutter.

[image error]

I have plans for this summer, as I always do. The sun energizes me. I’m solar powered like that. I’m finishing the 48 4,000-footer list. I’m releasing another collection of poetry. I’m going to keep trying to find representation for my two manuscripts — ones that are just waiting in the wings, brought out for dress rehearsals as I edit them yet another time. Im going to keep submitting my work even when it feels like I’m sending them into the void, a black emptiness that feels like a new moon on a cloudless night.

I have so many things I want to do. So many things I want to see flourish. And, by the same token, so many things I’m glad to let go of, glad to put behind me. Glad to admit they don’t bring me joy and release them. Anger, regret, resentment. The unkind and unwelcome heirlooms that might’ve made life a little difficult, now and then. The past. Anger and resentment over it. The vicious cycle it creates.

Letting them go. Making space. Both for what the future will bring, and for the appreciation of the present moment. There are too many things that bring joy in my life now to grant the clutter any more space or consideration.

In some ways, clearing it out all has been the southern swell that pushes the clouds out to sea and send a warm breeze into the night.

How dare I stay asleep, when the world around me is starting to wake up.

[image error]

Slog

[image error]

It’s the slog runs that are the important runs.

That’s what I try to tell myself on a miserable Monday morning, lacing up my shoes, running around my neighborhood yet again because the trails are iced over, because I don’t have time to drive somewhere new.

The easy runs, the simple runs, they’re maintenance. It’s the slog runs that matter. The ones that are dreadful, the ones where all you can think about is the end. How you run when it’s a chore defines the kind of runner you are.

Slog runs are important runs. And every run these days has been feeling like a slog. Between injury and illness, I haven’t been able to train, and I feel like I’m starting from scratch over, and over, and over again.

It makes me wonder if there’ll ever be a time when I’m not returning to the start. If there will ever be a time when I can get past all this and really progress forward.

–

 [image error]

–

I’m in the middle of editing a manuscript.

My young adult novel, about a ballerina who quits the dance world after tragedy, who builds a new identity for herself. I’ve been paring down words, lines, whole paragraphs. I’ve been getting annoyed at myself for how I worded things — for how I’ve been wording things, for all of my novels.

I have all these needless words. Phrases. Actions that convey absolutely nothing. It’s like I’m scared to just tell the story, and so I buffer it. My husband has been instrumental with getting me out of this habit, with reading over my work and asking me, “What are you trying to say with this sentence?”

“What am I trying to say with this?” In the wrong tone, it sounds like accusation. In the right tone, it’s freedom. What is my goal with these words, and am I shying away from that goal out of fear — am I willing myself to babble, to add in unnecessary prepositions and “almost”s and “maybe”s — because I am scared of what happens when I broadcast the story head-on?

Is that why I’ve been redoing my main character’s dialogue? Why I refuse to have her be a passive witness to her life, like my character in my first book, even my second?

Am I going to make damn sure my little ballerina is my emblem of standing tall with both feet planted?

–

[image error]

–

It’s a beautiful day — the first day of spring — and I know the only way I can get a run in is to go straight into it after my noontime meeting. I surreptitiously wear my running shoes to the meeting and take off from the parking lot.

I’m amazed at how easy the first mile is. Perhaps half the reason my recent runs have all felt like slogs is because I’d been running the same roads around my house, day after day.

Perhaps that was my problem — I had been allowing myself to go over the same paths again and again (and again).

But I run the streets of this New Hampshire city, deliberately weaving further and further away from my car, telling myself I have to hit a certain number of miles. I’ve been doing these small, slog runs, for too long. I’m not to where I need to be. I have a relay race in just two months, one where I’ll be running at least 15 miles over the course of 48 hours. I am one of 12 people on our team, and I won’t be the broken cog who makes the whole machine rattle.

It’s not just me who’ll be affected if I allow myself to be weak.

I hit the perimeter of the neighborhood quickly. I forget how small this city really is. I want to hit at least 5 miles, which will most likely be the minimum run I do during the relay. My headphones are warning me that battery is low, and I wonder just how far I can get before I lose my music, before I lose the very thing I lose myself with while running. My mediator between the physical exhaustion and the mental gymnastics, the thoughts in my head.

As I round the curb and hit the main street, I hear my headphones click off. It’s just me and my thoughts now. A part of me immediately imagines Ralph Wiggum from the Simpsons, alone on the school bus, chuckling to himself and proclaiming, “I’m in danger!”

But I’m not. My feet become my own beat, a staccato waltz as I hit the sidewalk slabs. The outside world becomes my background. My thoughts are just as much in the forefront as before. I’m not in any danger.

Besides, it’s been a while since I ran away from what was going on in my mind, anyway.

–

[image error]

–

I keep getting setbacks after setbacks. Back to back colds. Angering an old injury. Eating pavement during a warm up. My shoes are bursting at the sides and I need new ones, and then need to break those new ones in.

I’m getting frustrated. I’m no where near my mid-distance days and I don’t know if I’ll ever get there again.

Patience, patience, patience. Has that not been my mantra for years now? Try to rush to the end result and you’ll get the opposite of it. Let it be a slog. Let there be setbacks. Make your peace with it. Make your peace with the idea that you might never get the result you intended for. Make your peace with the powerlessness you actually have in the grand scheme of things.

Make your peace, or else you will never find peace.

–

[image error]

–

The weather is getting warmer. My favorite running trails will be usable again soon, if they’re not already. But it will take a little while longer before my mountains will be as hospitable.

(Everything on its own timetable. Patience. Patience.)

But I’ve been aching for my hikes, aching to fill my soul, especially after a winter that ran it ragged. Aching to disappear into the mountains again, where the slog is a clear communion with God, where you’re given a summit for all your hard work.

Soon enough. All in due time.

Scrape

[image error]

I originally set out this afternoon to do my usual Sunday aerial posting — potentially with some line about not being able to practice for a while, and how getting back into the swing of things can feel like starting from the beginning again sometimes, but then my attempt to go on a run afterwards ended up being a better symbolic tableau of life as of late.

I set out for a run right after aerial, in love with the warm weather, excited to finally wear shorts again on my runs. I attempted a light warm up in the driveway, only to feel a twinge in my ankle. I tried to compensate with my other foot, which somehow caught on the asphalt and sent me crashing to the ground, smashing my knee into the driveway, scraping up my left leg from shin to hip, shredding my hands, and sending my phone halfway across the driveway.

And I immediately sat up, buried my face in my hands, and started crying.

I can’t tell you exactly why: because it hurt, because it was embarrassing, because it messed up my plans, because I hate being clumsy — because the last few weeks have been so exhausting and soul-challenging that I had no bandwidth to handle a boo-boo. And a part of me laughed: what a perfect way to cap off this mini-chapter. Me sprawled across my driveway, all banged up, when all I wanted to do was try to prevent injury.

I came inside the house with tears rolling down my cheeks, like a kid coming off the playground. On instinct, Isaac gets up and tends to my wounds, listens to me as I keep repeating, “I just feel like such an idiot.” He asks if I’m still going to run and I stubbornly say I am. He pulls out the clear tattoo bandages from our last set of tattoos and fashions something over the two biggest gashes.

“It’s enough to get you by for the run,” he says.

And I go out, still upset, now in a spiral of “if this never happened, I’d be on mile 2 by now,” and “it’s getting cold and it would’ve been warmer for my run if I hadn’t tripped up,” — beating myself up more than gravity and pebbles ever could. As soon as I clear the garage doors, my neighbor’s cat — a little boy named Leo who has taken a liking to me ever since he became a fixture in our neighborhood — is there to greet me. I decide he’s trying to cheer me on — and that I would’ve missed him had my original attempt at a run had been successful.

And I do run. And my knees throb, and I learn the hard way just how far up my hip the scrapes went. And it’s getting cold, and colder by the minute. But I finish, and I finish with Leo waiting patiently for me at the finish line, to shower affection for as long as I’m willing to be there.

And somehow this mortifying moment perfectly summed everything up. Scraped up and bruised, embarrassed, angry, sad, and yet, I still ran — with the help and support of those who love me, who can patch me up and cheer me on.

Sometimes getting back into what you’ve been neglecting can feel like beginning again sometimes, and sometimes you have to begin again after getting all banged up.

Onward.

[image error]

Connection

[image error]

“I don’t think you’re an introvert,” says my husband. “I think you’re an extrovert who got the extroversion beaten out of her.”

I’ve learned to take these insights from him seriously, even when they run in stark contrast to what I actually assume about myself. The number of times I’ve heard him pose such an insight, and I’d swear that it’s not the case — only to have life gently (or, at times, not so gently) unfold to me the truth behind reality. I’ve learned to hold such assessments with both hands and with cared regard.

An extrovert who got the extroversion beaten out of her. “But, like, not literally beaten,” I’ve said when telling others about it, like the only way a spirit could get crushed is under the weight of swinging fists.

I cling stubbornly to my trappings, my proof of introversion. My awkwardness in social situations. My proclivity to quiet observation. My almost pathological need to disappear into the woods, alone, sometimes for the entire day. My assertion that I’m a social introvert. But the concept is something I keep playing with, what it actually means to be introverted, or extroverted, and what about the amorphous people whose shape can’t be defined, even when painted with both colors.

–

[image error]

–

Dates, events, plans, people.

A hurricane of the four — that’s what life has felt like for us. Life has become a reverse game of whack-a-mole, attempting to grab a free day, free evening, before it disappears down the hole and something more substantial pops up in its place. Life has been a flurry of text messages, conversations, me frantically texting my husband, constantly trying to pin down plans. Did you see these friends want to grab dinner? When are we free? How about this concert? This comedian? Do you want to sign up for this event? What’s your Tuesday night looking like? And Thursday? And Saturday?

A constant flurry, and me perennially on edge, waiting for the moment I’m told I’m too much, too annoying. Waiting to be told to buzz off, for a snap that never actually comes, that I actually know would never come. But some echoes are hard to stop hearing. After a certain point, you always flinch when a fist is raised, even if those hands have done nothing but hold you.

–

[image error]

–

“Ah, so you’re a secret introvert, then, huh?”

We’re skating around an outdoor rink on an unseasonably warm day. Skating is quickly turning into an obstacle course, avoiding the deep grooves we’re creating as our blades make canyons in the semi-slush. I’d been talking about the mountains, about needing to hike to recharge.

I turn to my friend with a curious look. Have I been presenting myself as an extrovert this entire time? I feel like I once did at camp one summer, when a boy told me I must be the popular cheerleader back at home. Oh, if you only knew the truth. I’m clearly guilty of false advertising.

Secret introvert. It’s a step beyond social introversion. No longer the inwards-focused wallflower who enjoys gatherings. Now you’re the outgoing one that no one suspects is secretly the pattern of those flowers.

–

[image error]

–

“It’s all about the community.”

It feels like that’s been our mantra as of late. It’s what drives everything we do these days, even if it doesn’t look like it on the surface. But it’s all about the groups of people, the interconnectedness. Smiling at everyone you pass by, because you know them, or simply because we’ve all collectively welcomed each other in. Shake hands and say good morning or hug and say good night.

It energizes me. It’s what causes me to stay up until 1 in the morning, purely because I’m engrossed in conversation. Why I can come home from an event and be too charged to get to sleep and wake up bone tired and go to the next thing without hesitation.

But I still assert that I don’t get my energy from it. At least, not from the mere presence of people. Being around groups doesn’t fill me up. It’s about the connection. Connection makes me feel like I’ve tapped into something. Connection feels like one more electrical cord has found its outlet.

–

[image error]

–

The deep dives into the Enneagram still prove fascinating. The writer in me lives on it — if nothing else, to get an outline of how certain personalities interact with other personalities, what motivations would cause a person to act in certain ways and under what circumstances.

The irony is that people in my personality category love categories, and will adjust themselves to better fit in the box. So I have to be careful. Fascination can turn into a crutch with startling speed. But still, I love it.

I used to contend that interacting with people drained me. That was all the proof I needed that I was an introvert. But it stopped being a sound argument once held up to the light. Being around the right people never drained me. Being around those whom I felt safe and welcomed with never did.

People with my personality category obsessively people please when insecure or stressed. And the realization, the moment I put the two pieces together, came to me as I was pulling onto the highway one cold winter morning: I used to drain myself around other people, not because the act of interacting was taxing, but because I was depleting myself making sure everyone, absolutely everyone, was happy with me. That no one was mad at me, or anyone else. I ran myself ragged to appear as nonthreatening and unassuming as possible, even when it was threatening my longterm health.

It’s an old habit that I still have a hard time shaking: that monitoring in times of insecurity, watching for any sign that they are no longer pleased with me, accommodating by any means necessary.

Extroversion doesn’t have to be beaten out of you. Sometimes it’s rearranged in order to navigate toxic environments during your formative years.

–

[image error]

–

My relationship with labels is a difficult one. They are simultaneously impeding and freeing, toxic and supportive. Labels are just clusters of words to make complex thoughts a little more linear. But there’s a great temptation to reshape in accordance to those words, or reject everything when the line isn’t perfectly straight.

Labels are liberating, at times. To say, “I am this,” and realize there’s a word — or, with Enneagram, a number — for something so beyond explanation. It’s like getting a diagnosis and finally knowing what your treatment plan is. That others have experienced this so often that they’ve created vocabulary for it. Vocabulary is freeing. Just ask any writer, or any reader who leaned on a writer for the words they couldn’t find.

But as soon as the label is up, so are the edges. There is prosecution and defense: one to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt and one to throw the whole thing out. Maybe labels are like that vital friend that you have to keep at arm’s length: their role in your life is instrumental, but too much time around them proves toxic.

–

[image error]

–

The mountains. I haven’t hiked since the first snowstorm in the Whites this past fall, and I’m itching to go back. The weather refuses to let up, and I refuse to go at those mountains alone in it. I understand what forces they are. I won’t let folly be my downfall, at least not here.

Even with snowshoeing the local forests to bide my time with, I count the weeks until I can hike again. I feel the drain, perhaps more than the lack of sunlight, the cold days, the freezing rain. I need that time. I need to be alone and in the mountains and in the silence and eventually return to the trailhead with a soul so full that I don’t even want the radio on during the drive back, lest I disrupt the experience.

Maybe it’s not a sign of my introversion. Maybe the whole concept of introversion and extroversion is exhaustingly binary and should be scrapped entirely. What is the label for someone who finds energy through connection? Whether that’s in profound chemistry, or finding something in common, or a shared laugh, or a good song, or poetry that punches you in the gut.

Sometimes I think of the Alan Watts quote, about going into the forests and learning what the hermits have learned: that we are connected with everything. And perhaps those hours alone on the trail, sometimes seeing no one else, being a hermit on the move, and eventually summiting a spot above the clouds, are proving exactly that. In order to truly recharge, I need the ultimate connection — the reminder that everything is a complex set of cords and outlets, everything interweaving together, the same electricity pulsing through every channel.

Shift

I have a nasty habit of falling into old habits.

I train up too hard and too fast when I run. I get stubborn about my mileage, my pace, my frequency. I get impatient when I feel I can do better. Taking it easy is akin to giving up, and I handle both concepts with equal grace (or lack thereof). It’s how I sprained a hamstring tendon five years ago, trying to train for the Chicago Marathon — and how I turned that sprain into a minor tear by attempting a yoga class the day after and forcing a stretch where the muscles had locked up.

The injury took me out of marathon training, and out of mid-distance running in general for years. But recently, I’ve been trying to get back into it. Run more than 5 miles, or 6, or 7. I sign up for a 200-mile relay. I research local half marathons. For the first time in over a year, I hit 10 miles. For the first time in who knows how long, I’m hitting sub-8-minute miles on pavement. Right in front of me was a new set of goals, expectations, including maybe, just maybe, finally keeping my promise of running in the Chicago Marathon.

And then — not even during the run itself, but during a very, very gentle stretch, after a run that was anything but gentle — I feel a ping in my left hamstring. Not enough to have fully re-injured myself, but enough to awaken an old monster. Enough to remind me that tendon injuries never fully heal.

–

[image error]

–

“We’re definitely in a new chapter.”

My husband says that as we meander away from Faneuil Hall and into the downtown area. It’s a brisk Saturday and lunch plans with a friend had fallen through and we’re just enjoying the city. My arm is linked around his arm, the sharp January sun hitting off the side of my face.

I agree: we’re in a new chapter. We start mapping out chapter outlines, where some ended, others began. My God, are we hitting new chapters with every season? Perhaps this is what happens when you live in adventure, when you explore and analyze and debrief and go out again. Your chapters end up a page long. A paragraph. The scenes change rapidly, the tone shifts frequently. The minor characters are a torrent of introductions and farewells; the main characters evolve fast.

But it is a new chapter. And it’s not the chapter from the fall, nor the chapter from the spring and summer. This is something new. And who knows how long it will last before another starts up.

But I’m okay with it. Things are shifting. The world is full of moving parts and they’re zipping around in a fevered dance. Things don’t always shift according to plan, or even according to what we initially wanted, but they always seem to shift in the way they were destined to go. And that’s why we have faith in this dazzling spectacle. That’s why we continue to read this story as the chapters start and end like a madman’s rambles.

–

[image error]

–

I always get referential, this time of year. Well, at least for the last three years. And every year it’s a little different. One can’t help but look back, the way one would if a city was going up in smoke and the plumes can be seen from 100 miles away. But each year it’s a little different, the same way smoke has no choice but to dissipate and spread out.

There are some things I know will always have some level of an echo. Some things, like a father’s decline and death, like a tendon tear, don’t ever fully heal. The muscles around it just work a little harder, and there’s always a chance that something — a misstep, a reminder of old habits — will reawaken it, remind you it’s there. The gentle ping to remind you that you’re not the same person anymore.

Every year, a little different. And perhaps this is the first year where there is reverence in the retrospect. Reverence to the time when everything upended, the moment when life grabbed me by the shoulders and forced me to contend with things I’d been sweeping under the rug. And because of it, I’m the person I am today, on the path I am on today. I begrudge none of it. I hold no more anger to the timing, to the tragedies, to the people involved. I don’t even begrudge the feeling of injustice, the sense of unfairness at that time. Sometimes yarn is cut short and ragged for the sake of the bigger tapestry.

That time of my life forced a new chapter, and I went into it kicking and screaming. But now I’m grateful for the shift, grateful that the violent page turn created a cascade of new, exciting, better chapters.

–

[image error]

–

These shifts, these adventures. This rapid-fire change of scenery and people and places and events, all things designed to make me evolve as a person. And I can’t believe I was ever someone who would run from this.

I used to think my luck was terrible, because of it, but now I know better. Because if you’re lucky, life will yank the security blanket and demand you feel with your skin where there are holes in your garments. If you’re lucky, life will put you into scenarios that force you to be better, do better, get better.

If you’re really lucky, life will force you into a staring contest with your demons and keep you there until you realize these entities are figments of your imagination. And then, if you’re really, really lucky, life will give you just enough time to enjoy them going up in smoke before turning you to the next set and going, “Round two.”

–

[image error]

–

Getting back into running after awakening an old injury has been a slow process. I’m avoiding my old pitfalls, old habits. Learning, slowly, to be gentle with myself, to be patient, to allow things to settle back down. Nothing can be forced, here. Force things to go in one direction and you’ll guarantee that it’ll snap in the opposite direction instead.

Slowly, slowly. Little jogs, here and there. Indulging on snow days, cold days. Staying home. Taking a day off, two days off, three. Going moderately for 3 miles and calling it a day.

If anything, it’s been a chance to see how much I’ve shifted as a person. If at least a few of the habits fell behind as one chapter became another, then another.

I decide, on one run, to see if I can gently up my mileage. Nothing crazy: 5 miles, what used to be a light run once upon a time. No focus on pace — in fact, let it stay slow.

And I jog, and I jog without issues, without my hamstring tendon acting up. I jog, and I get home, 5.5 miles under my belt like it was nothing at all.  I check my pace: 8:30 average, a solid minute faster than I was planning. No pings, no reminders of the trauma inflicted, not even as I stretch everything out.

I smirk. Maybe I’m a little more healed than I thought I was.

[image error]

Marked

“Afternoon has settled long and heavy on my shoulders,” Sarah Bareilles sings about December, and I listen to it the same way one bites down into a lemon wedge.

December has a way of leaving things raw. It has a way of sharpening the lines and heightening everything on one side and the other.

December has a way of making you feel like you’re about to pick up a heavy weight — or perhaps more like you’ve just been reminded of the weight you’ve been carrying all along. And I still don’t know if all the White Christmas and Jingle Bell Rock help push back against it or if it creates a glare with their tinsel and lights.

It’s a heightened time. It always is at this point in the year. The sun seems to shine brighter, more sharply. The overcast days bring more of a sense of gray. The darkness from the setting sun is saturating and dominating. The music pings a little more at the soul, the resonance lingering in the air just a little bit longer. The wind cuts a little harder than its January and February counterparts. Every sensation is just a little more alive, for better or worse.

May all be heightened and bright, and may all your Christmases be white.

—[image error]

—

My first tattoo was ten years in the making.

Everything was agonized over. Agonized over placement, shape, size. I spent years deciding if this was really what I wanted, if I’d be okay with this ink on me, if I’d ever change my mind, if I would end up not wanting this mark on me, and so on, and so on, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam.

My second and third tattoos practically introduced themselves to me. Both I stumbled across — one during my sporadic spells where I try to read Neruda in its original Spanish, one while doing homework for a yoga teacher training — and both had me blurting out with absolute certainty: “This is my next tattoo.”

My first tattoo was ten years in the making. My next two were months, if that. It was like I had opened a door somehow. Peeled back the seal.

You could say I got less afraid. Or maybe more impulsive. But I think it’s something deeper. I stopped letting hesitation dictate what I marked my skin with. I stopped seeing my skin like something to keep impeccable and pristine and started seeing my body like a canvas — and instead of worrying about each brush stroke, I started seeing what images could emerge on their own.

—

[image error]

—

It’s a simple Saturday afternoon in December. My husband and I are talking about families, shifting dynamics, mistakes.

“They can’t be blamed — it was the first time they ever dealt with that,” says my husband. “But, then again, almost everything in life is something we are dealing with for the first time.”

“Life is one gigantic trial by fire,” I say.

We’re organizing and putting together and discussing gifts for those we love. Afterwards, we hang up a few prints I got while in Chicago — little sayings that pinged at me while my best friend and I perused a store in Logan Square. “Forever is composed of nows.” “There are always flowers for those who want to see them.”

—

[image error]

—

I was supposed to get my fourth tattoo in San Diego.

It had been a week of adventure, of seeing what other doors could now open for us. We decided during our drive from Vegas to San Diego that we would cap off our vacation by getting tattoos that we had been thinking about getting.

I was in. I scrambled to find pictures of Fraconia Ridge — a section of the mountain range that carried sentimental value as heavy as mountains themselves. I scrambled to find the style I wanted the tattoo done. We researched a few parlors in the area.

But plans got ahead of us. And in the end, it got scrapped for other adventures, time spent elsewhere.

Instead, I got my tattoo at the end of the year. Perhaps closer to the end of the year than I meant to — my inability to predict how in demand my artist would be had me picking a date in December, just two weeks before the year would end.

But the timing was perfect. A canceled San Diego tattoo meant a summer in the mountains before getting said tattoo — a chance to take my own picture of Fraconia Ridge, to deeply appreciate the mountains in a way I hadn’t before tackling New Hampshire’s highest peaks.

It meant my tattoo capped off the year I decided to hit all the 4,000-footers, to finally bite the bullet and solo hike the Whites and see where that adventure took me.

And these are the things I remind myself of, when it feels like plans have gone awry and curveballs fling wildly to my temple. Trust the timing. Trust the tapestry being created.

—

[image error]

—

I learn pretty quickly, come time to actually get the tattoo, that my original idea is not going to work.

One of the ideas had to be scrapped: either Fraconia Ridge or the style I wanted it tattooed in. The range was too delicate, too uniquely structured, to make it work. I put myself into the artist’s hands as he gives me suggestions, maps out what he could do. I trust him to do what will look right — there’s a reason he was so hard to book, why I had to grab a random Tuesday a month later than planned.

The result is the range coming alive on my ankle, one of the most accurate representations one could ask for. But it’s a lot more ink than I was planning — a lot. Gone are the simple, minimalist lines, the inconspicuous mountain range. In its place is a masterpiece.

I’m way more inked up than planned. But I love it. I love it despite it not being what I expected.

“It’s a metaphor!” I say to myself with a self-effacing chuckle. The Saturday before, during a Christmas party, I talked about the musical Rent and how I always end up quoting Maureen: “It’s a METAPHOR!” The scene she shouts it in is silly and the line is supposed to show how over the top an artist Maureen is. And I use it, constantly, to deflect the parallels and symbolism I find in life.

And here I am again. Deflecting yet again with, “It’s a metaphor!” Because I can’t help but draw the parallels. I’m marked up in a way I wasn’t planning. But it’s beautiful and I wouldn’t take it back, even it is goes against the original plan, even if it’s not what I was expecting.

—

[image error]

—

There’s a passage in an Amy Cuddy book, where Amy talks about a friend who will get a new tattoo every few months. She’ll hit the parlor not even knowing what she’s going to get, and decide something on the spot.

“I don’t know how you do it,” says Amy.

“Well, it’s all temporary,” says the friend.

“The tattoos?”

“No, the skin. This body. It’s all temporary.”

—

There’s something freeing when you stop treating life like the collector’s item, something to be kept pristine as possible, unopened in its box.

It’s all too ephemeral and temporary to try to keep it protected, to not let yourself get marked up from time to time. You are given borrowed time, a borrowed body. You don’t get to keep it so you might as well void the warrantee.

Maybe I’d feel different if every tattoo didn’t have some sentimental meaning to me, but I’ve yet to regret any of them. And I hope I never do, even if the design grows out of favor with me, even if it starts feeling cliched and banal. Those marks are representations of things I wanted, little reminders of things that once set my soul on fire. And there can never be regret in those moments.

Let myself get marked up, even if it doesn’t always go according to plan, even if it doesn’t always pan out the way I wanted it to. This body will be given back to the earth soon enough; let it be a temporary shrine of the times I gambled and won, gambled and lost, took risks when I knew the stakes, knew what was at stake. And let my soul carry the meaning of every moment as it carries on to the next phase, the next chapter. Let my forever be composed of nows.

—

[image error]

—

I’m already planning my next one.

I know a tattoo is right when the inverse feels empty. It’s how I can tell the difference between a passing idea and something that is just right — when I can look at my skin and where the tattoo will be, and not just feel excitement over the tattoo, but a sense of emptiness because the tattoo isn’t there already. I know it’s time when I can look at that spot on my leg, my back, my shoulder, and see nothing but a vacancy that the tattoo is destined to fill.

The space on my shoulder blade has felt empty since the moment I got my first tattoo. I went through countless different ideas, all that seemed nice in theory but didn’t give me that same feeling, like this was the mark my skin had been waiting for.

Every idea had a novel feel that didn’t stick. Nothing made me blurt out, “That’s my next one.”

I ended up playing with a few temporary tattoos, just to get an idea. None amazed me. I decided to try out simple outline of roses — partly as an homage to my last name that no one ever gets right on the first pass, partly for the symbolism that roses and their thorns bring, partly because it just feels right.

I put the temporary tattoo on my shoulder blade. It’s smaller than I expected, and not exactly in the right place, but everything else is there. Everything that makes my soul rise up from the slumber of a melancholic December and go, “This is your next tattoo.”

There are always flowers for those who want to see them.

—

[image error]

—

December is a fight between the crisp, sharpness of being alive and the tantalizing siren of hibernation. It calls to be lived to its fullest spectrum of emotions and it calls to slow down. And life has done both in winter’s wake. It’s not the manic days of this year’s summer nor the whirlwind days of this year’s fall. But it still has its sense of adventure, sense of peril, moments where both my husband and I laugh as we turn to each other and go, “This is our lives right now.” Moments that mark us in permanent, unexpected, but still beautiful ways.

It’s still a trial by fire as the weather gets sharper and colder. But I’m also okay cozying up to that fire, all these fresh marks on my skin, my soul, my mind, my heart — my hands and cheeks turning pink from the flames, my back to the cutting winds of winter.

Roads

[image error]

When I was a teenager — when I was the only one of my friends with a car, albeit a bedraggled former rental car with terrible brakes and not even a tape player — I would drive my friends through the South Shore, finding random roads and seeing where’d they go.

Depending on the night, we could get as far as the Cape, before eventually finding a route we knew would bring us home. We didn’t have so much as a road atlas in my car. Just blind faith that eventually we’d find 3, or 93 — or a gas station attendant that could get us to where we needed to go.

It felt like everyone around us was showing their rebellion by throwing parties that we were never invited to. We hit the road instead, wandering the roads, straying and getting lost, never doubting we’d find our way back.

—

[image error]

—

When we moved up to New Hampshire, I’d load up the car with some of the same friends and explore.

It was like moving up to just past the border opened all of northern New England for us. Our phones now had GPS, so in some ways it became a little less risky, a little less daring. We always knew how to get back. But the thrill was in the unknown roads, unknown towns, of going forward and seeing what was just past the bend.

A few years later, when I moved up just a little more north — when everything blew up and everything was a perfect storm of wrong — I’d load the car up with nothing more than myself and my worries and dread, and venture out. No GPS, no destination. Just backroads, wandering, that delicate time like a gentle plea with God — please, please, just let everything turn out okay — and eventually finding familiar roads again.

That was probably the most assuring part during those darker days of wanderlust. Not the new roads, the passing scenery, but knowing eventually I’d stumble across something I already knew. Eventually, I’d realize how connected everything is. That all this unknown would link up with the known. I wouldn’t just find my way home; I’d recognize how each road, each piece, would fit together. That you’d need this street, this bend, to get to this other road — and, likewise, you’d need this dark time to get to something better.

—

[image error]

—

Chapters are ending. No, not just ending. Chapters have ended. Past tense. Some with the whisper of a page turn. Some with the slam of the book. But, either way, there is finality. There has been a shift in eras. No turning back.

Through situations beyond my control — or, perhaps, some that could’ve been through my control, but the results would’ve been the same — I find myself with a completely different work schedule. I lost a third of my classes within a two-week span. A shift that I had planned to slowly implement over multiple years ended up happening in a month. And I’m still getting used to it.

I can’t shake the feeling that this will not be the only shake up in my professional life. That more change is on the horizon. My hunches are usually correct, so long as I’m not confusing intuition for anxiety. But there’s nothing I can do but wait it out and see if there’s another chapter ending, and with what intensity it will end, and what the new chapter will bring.

—

[image error]

—

“I feel slightly outside of time and space.”

It’s a cold and rainy Saturday when I admit this to my husband. He’s feeling the same way.

So many new chapters beginning. So new that it feels insulting to say they’re part of the same book. I feel like a Keane song — everybody’s changing and I don’t feel the same.

Perhaps that’s the biggest juggling act for me these days, what can give me these moments where I don’t feel entirely in the present moment. It’s not just the outside world, the changing scenery, work schedule, set of circumstances. It’s internal. I’ve been evolving, finding that stronger sense of self, of self-identity — learning to be my own person, to want what I want and not what I think I’m supposed to want. I’ve shaken off a lot of old hang ups and outdated ways of thinking. I’ve embraced this new version of me, a version the younger incarnations would never recognize. It’s a balancing act, to hold your new self in high regard but also hold space for the fact that you don’t feel the same — and, in not feeling the same, you feel a little off-kilter.

The sign of genius is the ability to hold two opposing thoughts at the same time. Sometimes I try to joke off contradictory emotions, tell myself I’m just a fricken genius for feeling them. Sometimes the joke works. Sometimes the joke falls flat.

—

[image error]

—

There’s a line from an Ingrid Michaelson song — “Here we go… into the dark and wonderful unknown. Let us go. Let us go.”

The dark and wonderful unknown. If there’s ever been a better phrase for this new phase. All these new streets that I’m — that we’re — driving down, no map, no GPS (and, honestly, the gas station attendants in this scenario aren’t exactly sure how to get back to the highway, either). There are moments I’m thrilled. Moments I’m a little spooked. Moments I’m outright scared. Moments I’m excited, moments I’m stressed, and moments where I wonder if I’ve bitten off more than I can chew (and moments where I deliberately chow down if only to prove there’s no such thing as “biting off more than I can chew” for me).

And moments I’m elevated and elated. Moments I look around and can barely grasp how lucky I am. Moments where I cannot wrap my head properly around the sheer happiness, sheer joy, sheer adventure. Moments that make me step back and go, “This is why it’s all worth it.” Moments that remind me how alive the world is around me. Remind me that the fear is nothing more than the nerves before jumping out of the plane, working parachute strapped to your back. Jumping from the rig, knowing no matter what happens, the cord’s got you, and you’re going to be okay.

Here we go, dancing in this house that we have never known.

There’s a freedom in realizing you can’t predict a single thing around you. That all your expectations and plans have already proved irrelevant, so you might as well toss the syllabus out the window and just see what comes next. If the car soars down the road, it soars down the road. If it skids, it skids. I might hit my desired destination or I might hit a telephone pole. Either way, the horizon is calling me, and I know I must go (and I know I’ll eventually get there in one piece).

The dark and wonderful unknown. Let us go. Let us go.

—

—

In some ways this has always been the way I’ve lived my life. Even before the ’99 Cavalier came into my possession and I loaded it up with my friends. Let me go down this unknown road and find where it goes. Let me go on this adventure and see if I emerge with my shield or on it. I need to know where this path leads, even if I have to venture into unknown territory.

If I’m being honest with myself, I’ve always bristled at only having the same paths to travel down. I’ve never been content with the predictable. I long ago decided that “finding yourself” meant stepping into the new and uncomfortable — putting yourself in different context after different context and seeing what parts about you overlapped. What emerges, what struggles, what shines. Embracing the sheer fluidity and evolution of our identity, while learning that the core of our souls will remain constant.

And maybe that’s it: wander far and wide until everything is stripped away — every conditioned response, every demon, every temporary reaction — until there is just you and your soul, meeting candidly for the first time.

—

[image error]

—

“Let’s go on a drive.”

Those are magical words to me. We’ll load up the truck — our brand new Ford pick up, with just my husband and me — and drive off.

Where we live feels like the periphery for everything else. Do we want to turn right and navigate the small towns? Left and go into the city? Do we want to hit the highway, the backroads — do we want to go to Boston? Vermont? Maine? It’s like just standing in one spot fills us to the brim with possibility.

There’s GPS available on the truck’s console screen. And maybe that’s a good thing — knowing there’s a safety net, something to turn to when you get so undoubtedly lost and need something to bring you back. Maybe we don’t have to go barreling down the road just on blind faith. Maybe it’s a good thing to have that provision. Kind of like it’s good that your co-pilot understands the importance of safety, to have at least a map on hand (especially when you’ve tossed your proverbial syllabus out the window).

At this point, all these backroads are familiar enough. They’re not the vast expanse of unknown like they were when we first moved here. I can now piece together what roads link up with what, as they stretch out from town, to town, to town.

And yet I still want to travel down them. The passing scenery, the warm sun against the leaves — the gentle reassurance that I know how these roads bend and curve, that they’ll link up with roads that I know will bring me home.

[image error]

Jumper

[image error]

Don’t look down. Stare straight ahead. Clear your mind and do it.

I remember saying that to myself after failing the prelim jump for the airbag jump at Attitash. I had looked down, psyched myself out, and jumped feet first instead of flipping onto my back. I said it to myself when I first learned drops in aerial, when I’d clutch the silk tight and refuse to let go, every inch of me screaming, “You’ll die if you do this.”

Don’t look down. Stare straight ahead. Clear your mind and do it.

It’s a cold, windy day on the structure. The other jumpers are bantering in French. I’m the sole English-only speaker on the rig. I’m trying to focus on the cadence of French Canadian dialogue, the rolling hills around me, the peaceful highway to the right of me.

Don’t look down. Stare straight ahead. Clear your mind and do it.

The man strapping us into our harnesses switches to English when he realizes I don’t speak French. The people around me shift in how they speak, too. We get to talking about jumping and sky diving and adrenaline and nerves. For most of us, it’s our first time. We all have that giddy energy, the kind that deliberately forces the rise in adrenaline towards a specific path: excited. Certainly not anxious. Certainly not.

I’m third to last, which gives me way too much time to ponder. As the numbers dwindle, the conversations get a little more intimate. Like the last people on a sinking ship, absorbing as much humanity as they can before it’s their time.

Don’t look down. Stare straight ahead. Clear your mind and do it.

When it’s my turn, they ask if I want to dip into the water. I’m shivering, but I agree. I’d rather be even colder until I can change my clothes than regret not adding that in.

I think I’m ready, but I realize how unprepared I actually am when I’m strapped in. I shuffle to the edge. Now I understand: this is why people chicken out at the last minute, why my friend’s girlfriend had to be literally tossed off the edge when she did it.

Don’t look down. Stare straight ahead. Clear your mind and do it.

I’m the only one who gets an English countdown. I attempt a jump, but it ends up looking more like a lean. Doesn’t matter. Either way, I’m off the rig. Canada’s highest jump. No going back now.

I think of all the times I’ve wondered what it would be like to jump from something really high up. Not just a cliff by the water or the airbag jump at a ski resort. Hundreds and hundreds of feet up. Now I know — I know the gut-dropping shock and the sensation like you are now above the laws of physics.

That is, until cord catches you. I hit the water — my forearms and forehead submerge, the water shockingly warm — and flip back up.

I yell more on the flip than I did on the jump. I go parallel with the water before falling again. At this point, it all feels like old hat. Which is funny — didn’t feel like old hat 30 seconds ago.

I’m like a little kid by the time the boat takes me and drops me off at the dock. Darting up the stairs two at a time and skipping when I reach the top, giddy. I practically shout out to Isaac, “And THIS is why I do stuff like this!!”

Stuff like this. Stuff that surges the adrenaline and makes me panic at the last minute and makes me go, “Why the hell did I sign up for this? Why the hell do I do these things that I do to myself!?”

The stuff that makes me giddy, reminds me how wonderful it is to be alive, to be able to experience such things. Stuff that reminds me to look straight ahead, clear your mind, and be bold enough to do the jump, even if it looks more like a lean into the unknown.

Onward.

[image error]

Evolution

[image error]

Sunday afternoon. It’s the first cool, crisp, sunny day in a long, long time. My neighborhood stretches out before me, the clouds wisping in slight arches, making the world feel circular, make me feel like I’m watching what’s in front of me through a fish-eye lens. Or maybe it’s the strange stirring in my soul that creates the illusion.

My hand is intertwined with my husband’s; we’re taking a quick stroll during a small pocket of free time in what is turning into a busy Sunday, a stroll that started by my husband getting up from the couch and going, “The weather’s nice. Let’s go for a walk.” A man who understands how much I need to be on the move in some way, how tough it is to be cooped up.

The world in front of me feels new. In a way, it is: it’s been a over a month of downpours and thunderstorms and oppressive humidity. This sudden calmness feels like someone switched out the movie, and now I’m witnessing a completely different scene.

“Everything feels so different,” I say, “even from just a year ago.

…but it’s a good different. This is a good evolution.”

—

Last week, the announcement was made public and official: one of the studios I teach at — in fact, one of the very first studios I ever started teaching for — would be closing down in September. It’s something I knew for a little while — even before I was told the news, I could feel it in the air, an energy that felt a lot like endings, and hearing the news brought more relief in the confirmation than anything else.

My first set of classes after the announcement composed of me holding space for my students — students, some of whom I’ve had for nearly four years –as they processed, me trying to create a sense of grounding, trying to apply yogic principles (embrace impermanence, bare witness to the present and breathe through it), and leaving the studio feeling like I had squeezed out every drop of my soul to make that space — but now it left too much spaciousness within me.

—

[image error]

—

Everything is evolving. Life is creating new turns. Turns that have me turning to my husband and going, “You have my blessing to be the good Christian, but I’m going to leave the room.” Turns that have me turning to myself and going, “I can move past things but still hold people accountable and responsible for their terrible behavior.” Turns that have me turning to Kesha’s “This Is Me”, blasting it in my car: “I’m not scared to be seen / I make no apologies.”

Turns that are beautiful and scary and amazing and surreal.  Twists and bends that are not unlike the ones on the trail, the ones that egg me on even when my legs turn to jelly and I’m tripping over roots. I feel like I barely got the words, “I think the universe is creating space for something,” out to a cherished friend before the world rushed in and utilized that very space made.

—

Everything is evolving.  In a little under a month, I will no longer be spending my Fridays teaching at that particular studio.  I will no longer walk into that building, like I have for the last four years. I still have the original set of keys to the place on my carabiner, and soon the newer set will be useless as well.

I know I keep returning to this aspect of the evolution because it is the one tangible form of this era shift. I can touch the walls that will eventually not be mine to teach under.  I can feel the hardwood floors and the hear the clack of the keyboard as I sign students in.

What isn’t tangible are all the things that either don’t happen anymore, or the new things that have cropped up.  What isn’t tangible is the new set of emotions and experiences and revelations, and the deep understanding that I’ve become like the birds on the Galapagos Islands — evolved and adapted to the point that I’m unrecognizable from my original self. None of that can be put on the calendar like the last day of class.

But these are all positives. Even the tough moments. All of it, and I’m so stupidly lucky to be here — or maybe it wasn’t just luck. Maybe I kicked and clawed and worked like a dog until I was back on dry land. Maybe this time in my life is the reward for sticking with it. Or maybe it’s the calm before another storm hits. Who knows. Either way, I embrace it.

—

It’ll be three years in September since my father passed. It’s funny, though — the summer before he died hits me harder than the fact that he’s gone (perhaps it’s because, in a way, I had already said my good-byes, long before the spiral down, but that’s for another time).  So much has changed, including how I look back on that time. But, still, some things can blindside me. I heard Katy Perry’s “Wide Awake” while driving home last week and — like that — gone was the fisheye lens, the circular world, replaced with the nostalgic and familiar haze of anxiety and dread, like my emotions were the summer’s blazing heat. Just like that, it might as well have been 2015 again, and I had a moment of de-evolution.

God knows how I tried / Seeing the bright side / I’m not blind anymore

Perhaps the hardest part during that time was how quickly it all evolved. Back then, evolution felt more like mass extinction. Evolution felt more like climate change to the point of catastrophe, to the point of severe storms and the water baking underneath me. I didn’t understand it then, but I look back and understand it now. And the quote from Stephen King always loops back in my head: Birth always looks like death from the inside.

Everything is evolving. Everything is being reborn.

—

[image error]

—

Sunday night. I’m back home late after an evening with a close friend. My husband is awake and on the couch, playing video games. I immediately crawl onto the crouch, grab the blanket I keep in one corner, and use it as a pillow as I lay my head next to him. Was there ever really a time I took this for granted? Was there ever a time I didn’t cherish these little moments? That time feels foreign to me, like it was someone else’s life, and I’m grateful for that feeling.

As I’m grateful for every step in the evolution, grateful that somehow we’ve been able to evolve together — an individuals, as a couple. Maybe now we’re the Darwin bird whose beaks have reshaped and adapted, who have found their way to the top of the food chain through the years.

Everything is evolving, and I will gladly advance as a species.

I am brave / I am bruised / I am who I’m meant to be / This is me

Forty-Eight

[image error]

“You always make me so nervous when you hike like that.”

I had some pretty strict rules when I started hiking solo.  I could only hike well-worn, well-known paths, and always south of the Whites.  The rationale there was I’d be less likely to get lost, and, on the off-chance that I did get lost, I wouldn’t be in that much trouble.

It was an objective understanding of my inexperience.  I’d been hiking since I was a child – since I was a baby in a backpack carrier, technically – but I can name a whopping total of two trails that I ever traversed as a child, and never to summit.  Granted, I did those two trails many, many, many times, to the point that the sound of the water over the rocks on the Falling Waters trail is distinct from others, and the sound carries me home like a reverse Siren.

I’d only done a handful of hikes when I lived in Boston as an adult, and only a handful more after moving to Nashua.  And the last thing I needed was to be yet another poor sap who gets lost in the White Mountains and perishes.

But eventually those rules started eroding.  With more experience under my belt, I started going for the more obscure trails, the less-populated trails – but still south of the White Mountains, in case I got lost.  And then it was trails along the southern perimeter of the Whites – again, if I got lost, I could venture south, and be in relative safety.  And then it was trails within the Whites – but only the popular ones, the easy ones, the ones that you make you feel like a runner at the beginning of the race who was put in the wrong pace group and now you’re spending the first few miles weaving around the crowds.

It was only a matter of time before I’d want to start scaling the 4,000-footers – New Hampshire’s notorious set of 48 mountains, ranging (no pun intended) from the relatively moderate to the potentially deadly.

There was a part of me that smirked at the decision.  Hiking, camping, the wonderful outdoors, those were all things from my childhood that I kept sacred.  And my parents had scaled all 48 mountains, joining the 4,000-footer club as a result.

I had spent so much of my life making sure I never repeated the same mistakes they made, and here I was about to follow in their footsteps – almost literally.

—

[image error]

—

I’ve been meaning to call.  A few Fridays from now is when we could have you guys up here. I’ll still make sure to call, but, just let Mom know, okay?

It’s the middle of July.  There’s a voicemail from my mother on our landline.  A slightly rambling message, asking when she and my little brother can come up to visit.  I know I need to call back. It’s outright cruel not to.  At this stage in her neurodegeneration, keeping distance is like denying love to a four-year-old for the things they did when they were two.  They don’t understand and the acts are too far gone to do anything about it.

I’ll let Mom know. But make sure to call her back. 

I will, I will.  Just…I need to make sure I have a lot of free time to do so. And to not have anything that requires emotional bandwidth scheduled for the rest of the day.

Talking to my mom is far more complicated than just not having the time to talk to a parent while they fuss with concern about how you’re doing, if you’re eating right, what’s happening in your neck of the woods. Talking to my mom, if done without the right mindset, results in me collapsed on the couch in tears, my husband then picking up my pieces.

Talking with my mom is like being called by a radio prank show, where they have a soundboard with various soundbites from a celebrity.  There’s a limited number of things that can be said, and the conversation quickly becomes nonsensical, as I say one thing, and she responds with a repeated soundbite, a non sequitur.  And the more stressed she is, the fewer soundbites are available.  When she had to put her dog down, she had 12 soundbites, total.  When my father was first rushed to the hospital, she had 3. When my father was dying and I was desperate for information, all I got was a set of malfunctioning soundbites — and it made me want to throw my phone against the wall and scream, “I don’t even need you to be my mom right now. I need you to be a person.”  I honestly don’t think I’ve recovered from that.

I know I need to call back.  I need to simply bite the bullet and do it.

I don’t end up calling her that afternoon.  Or the day after that.  Or the day after that.

—

[image error]

—

It’s a few weeks before my seventh wedding anniversary.  I only have two 4,000-footers under my belt, and I’m traversing a quick, 2,500-foot mountain with my husband.  We are chatting about everything and anything, and the topic of my childhood hikes comes up – primarily, how we always did the same hikes, never to summit, and how, looking back, I resent that.

“You know why your parents did that, didn’t you?” my husband asks. My perennial therapist, only with better hours and no co-pay.

“I don’t know. Because they didn’t care if I saw a summit?” I asked.

“Now that’s being uncharitable,” says my husband. “Think. Why would they keep going up the same trails, even if a young kid couldn’t finish it?”

I shrug my shoulders.  All I have are uncharitable answers.

“How did they meet.”

“The Appalachian Mountain Club.”

“And what did they do together.”

“Hike.”

“Specifically…”

“The 4,000-footers.”

“Now, they hiked in the beginning of their relationship.  By the time you were old enough to hike on your own, they’d been together for over a long while.  And, by then, their relationship had crumbled.”

“Yeah…”

“Now, what would two people do, if they have enough awareness to know that something is wrong in their marriage, but not enough self-awareness to actively address the issue.  Would they or would they not try to just put a bandaid on the problem?”

“Yeah…”

“And their relationship was good when they hiked these mountains…”

“…so returning to the same trails was their way of hoping to reclaim the magic,” I finish.

“Exactly,” he says. After a moment he adds, “You gotta remember: they were entire people.”

“They just feel like caricatures of people sometimes.”

“Even caricatures have full bodies, just like the rest of us.”

—

That night, I’d write a short story about a young couple attempting (and failing) to save their dying marriage by going on a hike they used to love.  At the summit, they meet an older couple, the wife a little too eager to tell them the secrets to a happy marriage.  The young woman watches the old couple leave, knowing her marriage is unsalvageable, that they’ll most likely divorce, that they’ll never be like the old couple who can tell people the secret to a happy marriage.  But the story then cuts to the older wife, who is repressing her emotions about her husband’s newest affair, who is trying to piece together any proof that he still loves her.

—

Almost three years prior, the day after my 30th birthday, my husband and I traversed the Falling Waters trail, this time going past where I’d stop as a kid and finally making it all the way to the top of Mount Little Haystack. The symbolism of it all was — and is — enough to bring me to tears.

—

[image error]

—

I think a lot about the memoir I want to write, about the previous four years – and it will be written, and it will be raw and revealing, and I will be unapologetic, and I will not be concerned for those who experience the truth like being caught in the crosshairs – and what I want to serve as a backdrop to the meat of the story.  The cross-country road trip?  The hikes?  Perhaps not the hikes – I’d be stepping on Cheryl Strayed’s toes on that one, and lord knows I’m already uncomfortable with how much her stories overlap with my own.

But there’s a part of me that feels like having anything as a linear backdrop is misleading.  I didn’t solve my problems – I didn’t survive my Saturn Return – by going on a road trip, or scaling some mountains.  Things weren’t solved by a sequence of events that were, honestly, too good NOT to have in a memoir, that seem almost fictional with how they came to pass.

Things were solved by hard work.

They were solved by running from my problems until I realized I couldn’t anymore, and then facing them head on and asking questions when I was scared shitless of the answers. It meant doing the hard work – the ugly, messy, frustrating work – on the self, to figure out my motivations, to nip bad habits in the bud, to cry big, ugly tears and divulge until my soul felt a little lighter and then to do it all again.  I did it by piecemealing something that looked a bit like healing.

And, incrementally, I got myself on the path I am on today. All those adventures were and are ancillary. They make for good novel fodder, but, in reality, were the background noise to the actual work at hand. Bandaids placed in the general vicinity of the sutures from surgery.

There are so many things I’ve moved on from, and other things I’m (apparently) still angry or venomous about.  Things that get under my skin, and other things that make me just shrug my shoulders and go, “Whatever it takes for you to get to sleep at night, pal.”  Those are things that can only be solved one of two ways: by a sudden balancing of the scales, or by time.  And the universe is in charge of both.

The best I can do is keep doing what I’m doing, and have faith God knows what He’s doing.

—

[image error]

—

“So what’s new with you?”

I hold my breath when my mom asks me that.  I’ve finally called her back, and had just spent the previous 30 minutes listening to her non sequiturs, trying my best to not get frustrated, not interrupt her and get curt, trying my best to keep that guard up so I’m not in tears on the couch.

And then I get asked that. I’d just returned from my hike from my third 4,000-footer, the first I’ve done since deciding to commit to all forty-eight. I was tempted to say nothing.  There is so much in my life that I keep from her, if only because it’s unbearable to open up and then watch it get glazed over, unprocessed, unrecognized, as she goes off on another repetitive, jumbled tangent. It makes me ache with envy for women who have healthy relationships with their mothers, who can be open and vulnerable around them, who know they’ll be supported if they so choose to lean on them.

“I, uh, I actually just got back from hiking,” I say. “I’ve decided to do all of the 4,000-footers.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” she says, and repeats it again.  She then tells me about how proud my father would be, how he loved scaling those mountains, how some peaks have amazing views and some don’t have any, how she used the AMC’s huts and how wonderful they were – how, when my mother and father started hiking together, my father would redo certain mountains so my mom could cross off certain ones from her list, and she’d redo mountains so he could cross off from his.

Everything ached as she told me about this.  The type of ache only those who grow up with something vitally missing from their upbringing can feel – like the echoes of happiness and love ring too sharp to be heard without wincing.

But it’s more than the hint at how things could or should be. It’s an insight into a marriage that I have painted in severe black and white.

These were two people who fell in love and it went awry and they didn’t know how to fix it.  So they never did.

The moment doesn’t last long. It never does. She’s back to her soundboard, repeating the handful or so soundbites that clog her mind. When the call ends, I tell her I love her, and I mean it, and try to turn my attention back to the next hike planned.