born for brave things

BREAKING NEWS: I did not die

Here is the sum total of bears and rattlesnake I saw on my camping trip: zero.

Though I did encounter a variety of non-venomous snakes and some very tenacious chipmunks. As per reviews, there was literally poison ivy everywhere. 

The food ran out sooner than expected, and having brought zero bags of Doritos, I came home with about twenty percent less body fat. At one point I ate a cold leftover pancake from a group of campers down the beach. Maple syrup never tasted so good, even if the pancake had been partially eaten by a chipmunk.

There was only one minor brush with death, which is a story for another day. I came home feeling brave, and proceeded to do several brave things. 

First I watched two parts of a documentary mini-series about a cult whose second-in-command I worked with for nearly a year, in the last six months of my marriage and the early part of our separation. I’ve been meaning to watch it for some time but I was afraid; Sometimes it’s easier to look away. My instincts did well to warn me to wait for the right moment. The series really should’ve come with a trigger warning but it didn’t. It shocked parts of me awake that other parts really wished would stay sleeping. 

I woke up sweating in the middle of the night, my blood boiling with adrenaline, deep in a dream in which I was being hunted by a psychopathic killer (who was also the cult’s leader and also my dad) intent on brutally torturing me. I’d been hiding in the basement of my childhood home, among upside-down oak furniture, dusty old chairs and shelves of canned tomatoes. It was the sort of dream that can’t be chased away with the flip of the light switch. It kept pulling me back in long after I’d woken up and lugged myself to the bathroom and back. 

The fear was still pulsing in my fingertips in the morning, at which point I decided to do another totally unrelated brave thing. I asked my friend whether or not it would be okay to give her some feedback on safety and inclusion at her birthday party, about which I was feeling neither but she had said was important to her. She said yes and she listened and asked questions, which was a huge relief but also set my blood boiling with adrenaline once more. 

I kept going. 

Actually, I took a break and went to Costco first. 

Then I kept going. 

I texted my mom and asked her if she would bake me a loaf of bread, which probably doesn’t seem very brave at the outset, but asking to be mothered in the way that I need to be mothered it something I’m working on. It puts a lump in my throat just thinking about it. She said yes.

Finally I dropped a book off with a friend who I dearly love but haven’t connected with in several weeks for a variety of complicated reasons. I wrote her a post it note and told her I missed her. 

One day I will write more about the brave things I did camping by myself. I shared meals with strangers and chipmunks, and sang for them around a campfire. I paddled in 44km/hour wind, which was actually very foolish, and had to rescue myself after getting lost among 30,000 islands that all looked the same. I slept alone in my tent in the dark at a campground where (most nights) there were ZERO OTHER HUMANS. I trudged back and forth to the bear lockers for food and coffee and toothpaste dozens of times. I swam every day and did not put my bathing suit on once. I figured out how to hang a tarp and use an Aeropress and light my camp stove with a flint when it broke, accomplishing all the most fundamental camping activities almost entirely in the rain, which only ever stopped for a few hours at a time.

But the bravest thing I did was let myself be quiet, lonely and bored. 

There hasn’t been much space for those feelings as I have been too busy churning out work product so that I can make my outrageously large spousal support obligations and keep a roof over my head. Sitting with those feelings was a way of welcoming back some of my exiled parts, and that felt really good.   

Maybe it’s because of all those brave things that I came home ready to do more brave things. I parked my car in the driveway, unloaded my gear and hopped straight back in and drove to canoe practice.

Many times since separating from my husband I’ve thought to myself, “Wow, I’ve really turned a corner. I think I’m finally getting somewhere,” only to run smack into another wall. But today, just maybe, it feels like that might actually, finally, be true. 

Or not, who can say? 

But whatever brave thing I’m called to do next, I feel certain I will be ready. I am Tarzan, after all. I was born for brave things.

XOT