Head for the hills

I’m writing this from the top of a ridge near Soddy-Daisy, where I am seeking refuge for a few days in an apartment atop a family’s carport. (Say what you will about AirBnb, but it may have saved my sanity this weekend.)

I’ve been in the shit lately, with the miscarriage and the pain stuff and the surgery, of course, but also with just normal life in a pandemic — the working remotely and the virtual school and the never leaving the house and the boredom with eating the same garbage over and over and the mundanity of living life in pajamas and house shoes with no boundaries between work and not work. The dread and worry about the decisions other people are making, and trying to withhold judgment about literally everything everyone else is doing while ALSO worrying that other people think about me the same way. There’s so much guilt and worry tangled up in every decision I make for my family to keep us safe or to keep us sane.

I don’t have the bandwidth to do better than I’m doing right now. I am in survival mode and have been for months. I try to give myself grace but it’s taking a massive toll. I feel like I’ve aged ten years in eight months.

It’s just been a slog, this repeating sequence of chores and work and school and homework and grocery delivery of the same boring shit we’ve been having delivered for months, the same meals, the same everything. I stare at my phone because I have nothing left to give. I can’t create. I feel only fatigue. Not inspiration, or curiosity, or joy.

It’s exhausting and it’s all happening in the space that used to be my respite, my escape. I’m depleted, cashed out, and feeling completely demoralized that we have many months left of this because people can’t just WEAR A MASK, PAUSE THEIR PARTYING and not act like selfish idiots.

I started to crack up. But I caught myself. And I realized I had to have a change of scenery, if I could do it safely.

So on a whim I booked a little apartment for myself for a few days. I found one up on a ridge in close proximity to outdoor places of interest where I can just wander and observe. There is no one here to ask me to do anything for them. I don’t have to worry about anyone else but myself. I have been driving around and seeing what I can see, staying away from other people, and putting new sights into my brain so my brain can feel better. I have just left myself open to whatever the world wanted to show me and for two days I have stumbled on beautiful thing after beautiful thing. I offer my gratitude, again and again, to whatever cosmic force is pulling those strings for me. You’ve done me a solid, cosmic force.

I didn’t know that my hardware would malfunction if it went too long without new input and information. I now realize, clearer than ever before, that I am an observer, a collector. I need to see the things and smell the things and hear the things. But I also need solitude. That part I knew. I need to think about the things I have seen and consider what they mean — quietly, at my own pace. I use the things I collect in my brain, eventually, for stories, for descriptions, for inspiration. I take photos not just as a record of where I have been, but so I can use them some day in some project I don’t even know about yet.

I’ve always thought of travel as being something I liked to do but I didn’t realize how not going anywhere ever would make me really, really sad, because it was depriving my little collector brain of new information. I also didn’t expect how, at the moment I saw some new and interesting things, my brain would be extremely pleased and grateful. Just picture me driving through a little mountain town, sobbing at how cute and new to me it is. Because that happened. More than once.

I needed this break. It has been a balm for my frayed nerves. I believe all parents deserve a break like this. I’m grateful I have the means to just get out of dodge for a few days; I realize that’s an immense privilege and I don’t take that lightly. I’m happy to have seen the things I’ve seen this weekend. In spite of all the horrors we visit on each other, this world we inherited really is beautiful and we would be wise to drink up the sight of it before it’s gone.