The Lived Collective

I started writing this a week ago and lost it as I was wrapping it up. Unfortunately, for both of us, I did not back-up the writing anywhere but here, so it’s gone for good. And so, this one is born in its place, and maybe that is how it was meant to be.

If you read my previous writings and though what a charmed life of adventure and travel, allow me to disillusion you from that idea. Not to say I don’t recognize the unbelievable privilege of standing in the places I have stood or to minimize the accomplishments and adventures I have embarked on. This is to say, however, that I now live in an area west of Atlanta, GA. I work a wildly unglamourous job in commercial and industrial sales and coach at my local CrossFit gym when I can. My running shoes haven’t been put through an ultramarathon in a couple of years. I haven’t set skis to snow in over three years; I haven’t put trad gear to a climb in even longer than that. Camping happens maybe once a year and trails are hard to come by.

And maybe this is all starting to sound a little sad to you. Sit tight.

If home is people, I am at home here in GA. But if home is a place, I don’t know that I have ever been there. I can tell you this, in my 30 years of living the only time the world was quiet for me was on a mountain top at the end of my physical ability.

Most people long for comfort in a way that has always been foreign to me. Don’t get me wrong day to day comfort is great but when I think about goals, they rarely have anything to do with comfort and always more to do with risk and pushing my limits. I used to hate being bad at anything, now I hate the idea of never trying.

I heard people talk about growing up and how our goals and outlook change and I used to scoff at the idea. I had everything I had clawed my way through my early 20s in search of. I skied for a living and helped people too. The mountains I loved were literally in my backyard.

Enter Covid.

My work was considered “non-essential” and in resort towns, no one was hiring. I made the first of what would become a series of survival decisions. These decisions would lead to the most painful years of my life so far, they lead me straight into hell and I am still undoing the harm that season of life brought me and the people I love. That’s the thing about living for yourself, it not until it’s far too late, that you realize who you have hurt, yourself being chief among those barely hanging on.

There was a boy. He took everything from me. And he still takes in ways I hate him for. There is a healed version of me now, years later, that thinks very little about this season and this person, but on days when I react to the one I love, harshly, the survival instinct welling up in an incontrollable way, I hate that boy all over again, for making me unkind to a man who has never once acted to deserve my anger.

Years of abuse and neglect take their toll on the strongest of women. I was known for my ability to push my body to its absolute limits, but I couldn’t find the resolve to walk away from a person who hated me and hated the thought of losing me more. To leave, I would have to leave with nothing, no car, no money, no job, and debt that should have never belonged to me. The one parting gift? My shame.

Enter my mom.

She is many things and among the highest ranking, she’s brave and resolute. I finally broke down and in secrecy she helped me plan my escape. That’s the thing about mom, she didn’t just plan, she showed up. She didn’t show up for me when I was little and now, I know she was surviving then too. She hasn’t made the choice to miss out in many years, and it is a bittersweet gift. All we can do is heal the parts of us that hurt the ones we love and vow to do better in the future; she did that for me. With the cops on standby, we loaded the few things I could take with me into her car and drove away. I cut my phone off for weeks and my dad, in his quiet strength took the brunt of communicating with a textbook narcissist (not a word I throw around lightly), for months. He protected me from conversations, not in a malicious or controlling way, but rather in the way only a father can carry the burdens of a daughter. They both shielded me when I was exposed and vulnerable.

In time, I learned that the shame was my own, it was not descriptor others used for me. My parents were proud I got out and broken, how could this happen to a girl from a good family. It’s funny, my mom never liked our tacky art as kids, but now she wears us with an undeserving badge of honor, I know she’s proud of the woman I am, and I don’t know many people who can say that. She did her fair share of breaking me, but we grew up together, and in a lot of ways I think we are both helping each other heal. And my dad, he’s haunted by his own passive nature and ghosts I pray to never know about. Daughters were never meant to see their fathers’ break. He protected his peace and sacrificed ours in the process. In the never-ending sea of our mom’s anger lows and euphoric highs, he remained constant. He taught me only I can control my own emotions and how to love quietly and constantly. I have never once doubted his love and care, and I don’t know many daughters who can say that either. Perhaps the best gift a father can give a daughter is gentle love.

Enter a Man.

In the same way the wrong boy can break a woman, the right man can heal her. I don’t think we need to be fully healed versions of ourselves to find love. I think that’s a lie we tell ourselves, so we don’t have to heal in the presence of another, or to delay the painful work all together. Are any of us ever fully healed at any one point in time? I think it is far more accurate to say we are all healing or choosing to ignore the areas in our lives that need work, the arrival point is fiction. The man I am speaking of has walked a hard road with me, and to this day I struggle with leftover reactionary tendencies and words that could crumble a kingdom, words are power and at some point I learned to wield them with destruction. It is a part of me I am not proud of. I am all the tired tropes of a women with self-destructive tendences because she had only ever been treated poorly by mem in relationships. As tired as it might be, it seems to be universally accurate. This man though, has a resolve for loving me that seems indestructible. He is patient but strong. He calls me on my harsh words but does not shy away from me because of them. Because I know his love is steadfast and constant, he has become the safest place I know and also the biggest place of growth. He loves me as I am and knows the potential I carry to let go of my past ways. It is a love I pray you find one day and I pray you quickly abandon anything that feels less than this.

Hopefully, now this is all starting to sound less sad to you.

Losing a past version of yourself is not always a bad thing. Peacefully laying to rest the life you once lived has a certain grace about it.

I guess what I am trying to say is, home never was a place, I don’t think it was ever meant to be. I think home is peace with yourself and being fully known and loved by someone who isn’t going anywhere.

I also believe there is a quiet strength in the people who wake up every day, no matter where they are, and decide to see beauty. Contentment is perhaps the rarest gift we can give ourselves in a world constantly screaming and clawing at our peace.

If you don’t have a “home” yet, maybe the most noble thing you can do is become home for someone else. And perhaps if we all tried to be home for each other, no one would be without.

New goals.

They were all right. Your goals and ambitions do change a lot as you age.

Maybe in the future we can talk about mine, but what I hope to leave you with today is the opportunity to exhale, to release what was and with gratitude accept what is. You see, now, I think in its own way, my life is still full of adventure. The adventure of starting a life and a family with someone. The beauty in small things, and the ability to be in awe of people not just mountain tops. The contentment to cheer for others and not envy them and the peace of slowing down and being present. I lived life so fully back then, and I haven’t stopped doing that to this day.