A storied journey across the country.

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The year before embarking on this journey, I felt the weight of being human collapsing inside of me. For the first time in my life, I didn’t know if I had the stamina to pull through.  When I thought of the possibility of dying, it felt like a mercy. I realized then that I wasn’t afraid of dying at all. It was life I had grown afraid of, with all of its dark surprises, uncertainties, contradictions, and seemingly endless obstacles. A feeling of simply being done washed over me. It wasn’t an altogether unhappy feeling. I had, I felt, managed to live many lives inside of this one shell.  I’d worn all the collar colors, loved and lost, loved until my heart couldn’t have been bigger, celebrated a few joys, and faced a number of extraordinary challenges with as much optimism as I could muster. That’s not to say I handled everything well, or as well as others might have, but I did have the belief that it was better to bend toward ideals rather than let myself fall into the mire of hopelessness.

I stoked my hopes, even when other people told me they were impossible. Child abuse, molestation, rapes, an abbreviated education, single parenthood, poverty, and an excess of toxic circumstances and people could have led me down many paths, but I became a writer. Not one that’s well known, or able to sustain herself on words alone, but still. . .I didn’t become a total stereotype. I took a sideways kind of pride in that: in knowing that no matter how grim the reality was — no matter how empty the cupboards, or dead-end the paychecks were — I could still write stories that mattered to someone, somewhere.  Through those stories, I could stoke my hopes, express my ideals and, when necessary, scream out my pain and frustration.

Of course, there were criticisms. Not only of my circumstances and some choices I made, but of my insistence on becoming a writer, not just someone with a hobby. It was, according to some friends and family, an out of reach dream, a dying art, and an impractical dream for someone “like me”.  Even among those who were not as gloom and doom, there were criticisms.  Some people didn’t like when I wrote about the harsher truths that helped create who I am. They felt like it was somehow separatist, or a way to make myself seem “special”. Others felt that stories of challenged lives long ago became cliché, and that my purpose would be better served by telling the story of a woman who “got over it” and found the happy high road to self-fulfillment. They liked the happy ending of a fairly well rounded woman, but felt like more polish and shine needed to be added to the beginning and middle. They preferred when I wrote about Elephant Girls and not Straw Sanctuaries, no matter that both stem from the same place inside of me – a place that’s not limited to only one set of facts, emotions, thoughts, or consequences.

In the balance, I have overcome some long odds and succumbed to others.  I’ve been the “strong woman” as well as the one who just couldn’t seem to pull it all together. I’ve been bold, fought battles, and taken risks, but I’ve also spent a lot of time trying to find relief from a world that often felt, to me, nonsensical, driven by habit, and destructive. In the last decade, I’ve found myself more and more drawn to bare bones simplicity – to living a plain and spare life as far away from the noise and the crowds as possible.

However, this trip was precipitated by an overwhelming sense of too much. This didn’t come from my challenged past, but a feeling of being overfull in the present– of having visited the same table too many times, and having the last few times feel toxic. My body was shot after a long illness, my nerves were frayed, 47 years of searching for a sense of place had grown exhausting, and I didn’t see anything new, energizing, or particularly hopeful on the horizon.  And although I had conquered so many fears before, I felt myself becoming timid in a visceral, heart-racing, mind-numbing sort of way. My confidence was gone. My steadfast belief that living by ideals made them more possible was fractured. All that I once felt deeply connected to seemed irreparably broken or out of reach. I wondered if I hadn’t spent the better part of my life chasing after things that really didn’t exist, or that couldn’t exist in the world outside of my imagination. I wondered if I had it in me to write another story, or if any of the stories I had left would be worth telling.

It may disappoint some people to learn that this journey was not the enlightening, eye-opening, bright hope bringing, soul-fulfilling answer I went searching for. It wasn’t Eat, Pray, Love. There have been no easy answers, and there’s no snap-on happy ending.

What there has been is a new layer of life, with all of its amazing potential, messy complications, evolutionary pains, tender connections, searing disappointments, soul-tearing struggles, beautiful memories, and challenged ideals. There have been feelings of alienation and of being misunderstood – but also of being invited in, warmly greeted, and gently, unselfishly supported. I’ve made new friends, let go of others, and been let go of. There have been surprising swells of love, crushing blows, fits of laughter, bursts of hope, and days spent in tears.

And I don’t know how, but the weight of this new layer, which isn’t really that different from all the rest, has fallen on me like a blanket rather than like a sinking anchor.

I did not find the America I went searching for. I did not find the abundant opportunities, the idyllic circumstances, the solid ground, the perfect answers, the strokes of life-changing luck, or the sense of home or belonging that I’ve always craved.

I did find my way back to my own off-center self, and gathered an abundance of support from people who were warm and full of hope for me, even when my own hopes were strained.

America is not always a kind or forgiving place. It can be irrational, senseless, and sometimes brutal. Hard work and talent doesn’t often get you as far as family connections, a pretty face, or a suspension of ethics — but sometimes it does. People can be unkind, messed-up, rigid, judgmental, and fighting their own demons — but sometimes they can pluck hope and love from their own hearts and share it in unexpectedly touching ways.  Intentional cruelty and incredible greed exist, and often go unnoticed or unexamined — but there’s also a lot of innocence, compassion, and generosity to be found.

I needed, I think more than anything else, to know these things. My world had grown small, and there was not enough diversity in its confines. I wanted to break out of my own weary fears and see if the ideals I learned in childhood books, as well as the ones I created on my own, existed in any tangible way outside of the 800 square feet I inhabited, and the small town I felt I knew too well.

They did. And they didn’t.  Nothing comes easy, except the questions. I’ve learned that, for me, the answers may never be complete, or at least not completely satisfying.

Nature made me curious and early circumstances made mysteries, especially the human kind, almost intolerable to me.  I know now that no matter how I spend the rest of my days – whether I continue to travel, or return to a life similar to the one I had before, or keep searching for the kind of sanctuary I’ve always wanted – I’ll never stop exploring the terrible, beautiful, wounding, uplifting territory of being human.

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