Shedding My Velvet

This past year I’ve made strides away from the traumas of my past.  However, right up until I left for The Grand Trip I was struggling with my demons, both past and future.  Let me say up front that I have no illusions that my troubles are all behind me.  I do feel different after the trip.  I was changed in the Bighorns.  I was changing every step of the way from Pine Mountain in July until I set foot at the summit of Cloud Peak.  It was a long journey, but it was much needed and very productive.

My plan was to answer some questions for myself while I was on my big solo road trip/mountaineering vacation.  The questions were based out of things I had been reading and writing myself.  The fulcrum point for developing the questions was this quote that I found that I think is from Regina Brett.  I don’t know her work, but she is an author and columnist.  I just found the quote and it struck home.  The quote is this:

…don’t try to reclaim your youth and go back to what you were, try to fully be the person you fantasized you’d be now.

I saw it not too long before I left for the trip, and it instantly resonated and changed my thought patterns.  I have spent my whole life fantasizing about what I want to be down the road.  And while that in itself isn’t the healthiest outlook to have, it is important to distinguish between what you want for yourself that you envision will make you fulfilled and happy, and where you came from that fostered the need for those daydreams.  Why would you try to get back to a place where you were always looking to the future?  And once you find yourself in that future?  Unfulfilled and regretful?  It only makes sense to look at the dreams and hopes you had for yourself and try to become that than to look back and try to relive a time or age you were trying to escape.

I came up with a three-pronged plan for myself for the trip.  I would ask and answer:

• Who was I before all my trauma?
• Who am I now?
• Who do I want to be going forward?

In some ways those questions seemed too elementary to be helpful, but it would turn out they were exactly what I needed to focus on. I mulled over the first question.  The idea of reclaiming my youth spans a few epochs of my life.  I am deeply nostalgic for the Eighties.  But no one wants to reclaim their middle school years.  High school was even more grotesque to me even though I am kind of stuck in that era of music.  But then in my early twenties I became a rock climber and discovered a deep love for the outdoors that had always been in me and a strong desire to travel and find new and exciting experiences.  I was somewhat naïve and inexperienced in life, but I had such an insatiable curiosity and a passion for exploration that it set the tone for the rest of my life.  From an early age I rejected the mundane.  I sought out new and novel experiences.  I was creative with my time and found little opportunities for adventure all the time.  

Therein lies the answer to the first question: I was insatiably curious, and I had a passion for outdoor adventures that drove me.  That person wanted to live an extraordinary life that was not filled with suburban accoutrements and punching a time clock.  He did not want to be tied to a desk or cooped up inside.  In fact, he wanted to be a guide. And after he was a guide for a few years and settled down into a “big boy job” he thought he’d gotten to live his dream and that should be enough.  But it didn’t change his heart.  I used to say Twenty-year-old Chris would have punched Forty-year-old Chris in the mouth.  Fifty-year-old Chris carried the youthful version of himself to the summit of Cloud Peak and released him there.  That’s where he would have wanted to dwell anyway.  He is no longer a threat to the dental work my parents paid for all those years ago.  Now, Fifty-year-old Chris and Forty-year-old Chris still have some stuff to work through.

I know who I was.  And I know that that person didn’t know who he would be at fifty—he could barely fathom being thirty or forty—but I know the things he didn’t want from life.  He didn’t want to make widgets.  He didn’t want to jockey a cash register.  He didn’t want to watch sitcoms and go to little league games.  He wanted to ride his bike to work.  He wanted to be under the sun as much as possible.  He wanted to dwell in wild places and find peace and quiet away from the Taos Hum of capitalism. 

That’s not who I became.  I let myself be boiled like a frog—incrementally giving in to the pressures of modern American culture.  By the time my marriage of nearly nineteen years ended I had given up on my hopes and dreams and wishes.  I had stopped believing my life would ever change enough for me to be the person I had fantasized about being.  I was perpetually depressed and occasionally suicidal.  And my efforts to escape the mundane only resulted in more heartbreak and despair.  I was cooked.

I’ve been divorced five and a half years.  While I believed being single might be the end to my traumas, what actually happened was they seemed to mound up on top of me and threatened to crush the last glimmer of life out of me.  I lost my good job before the divorce.  I quit the replacement job in the middle of Covid because…well, Covid.  I struggled with trying to start a mowing business but just lost money on the endeavor.  I had a stint as a rock-climbing guide again, and while it was what I desperately needed, there were some problems there and a lack of work in general. I broke rocks at Muir Valley and met two great guys that became good friends.  And then I found an unlikely professional position with my hometown.  None of those jobs were enough for me to thrive. I simply survived for five and a half years.  At times I worried I would lose everything.  At times I didn’t care.

Last January I developed a nearly debilitating social anxiety stemming from my job working with the public.  I was able to go to work and hide in my office, but beyond that I found I could barely get off the couch to take care of myself, much less my kids.  After five years I had not healed.  I was not doing well.

I went on an intense journey of self-care.  I bought a steam tent, a cold plunge tub, and a workout bench for my house.  I began reading deeply into Eastern philosophy, particularly Taoism, and I started taking time each morning to stretch, work out, and read.  I was hiking more.  I was making lists and scheming again.  I knew it was time to take back control of my own life and stop letting outside factors persistently derail me.  

I can’t say I’m a master at self-healing and that what I’ve done has been the best and most efficient path back to life, but what I can say is that after nine months I have made some significant progress on my own.  I have already started to make big changes which are already having an impact on my confidence and my mood.  I finally got a more reliable car (fingers crossed).  I have a new job; a much better job paying significantly more than I’ve ever made.  I’ve worked hard for a long time to earn that.  While it isn’t the exact career path I would prefer for myself, it will more assuredly put me on better financial footing and help me to fortify my future against calamity.  I think it will also fulfill some of my deeper needs related to self-confidence.

The next phase of my healing and strengthening will involve a therapist.  I’m going to need help.  However, I feel that my confidence is growing, and I am beginning to feel my strength again.  Who I am is in flux now.  Who I have been up until the end of this summer was someone who felt broken and small, someone who felt like all his passion and energy were spent, someone who had lost hope and had forgotten his dreams.  

That’s not who I want to be.  I’m fifty years old, not dead.  I’m relatively healthy for a man my age.  My mind is still sharp.  I’m a good person who treats people as well as he can.  I’m good at the things I set my mind to.  I have a lot of love in my heart.  There’s no reason I can’t have the life I want.  I’ve said for a long time that I have simple desires.  I don’t want or need an expensive house or car.  I don’t need expensive toys or gadgets to be fulfilled and happy.  I don’t need fame or notoriety to feel good about myself.  I love who I am at my core.  I’ve just been smashed down in the mud so long it’s hard to see anything but mud even in myself.

I don’t want to be ashamed of who I am.  Yes, I have ADHD.  Yes, I am an introvert.  Yes, I may be borderline autistic.  Yes, I am highly intelligent.  Yes, I have a lot of energy and passion.  Yes, I have a lot of life experience.  Yes, I have hurt people.  Yes, I often make mistakes and forget things.  Yes, I am impulsive, and it causes problems for myself and others. 

I know I’m a good person.  I want what’s best for everyone around me.  I want to help people to the best of my ability in whatever capacity I can.  I try not to be greedy.  I try not to be rude.  I’m laid back and adapt to whatever situation I’m in.  I try not to impose on people.

Here are some other things I have read this summer that have influenced my thinking up to and during The Grand Trip:

How do we forgive ourselves for all of the things we did not become?

~ Doc Luben

In order to love who you are, you cannot hate the experiences that shaped you.

~ Andrea Dykstra

Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.

~ Rumi

Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.  Follow the path that is no path, follow your bliss.

~ Joseph Campbell

You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place?

Just this: what is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above.  One climbs, one sees.  One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen.  There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up.

When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.

~ Rene Daumal

Maybe the journey isn’t about becoming anything.  Maybe it's about unbecoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.

~ Paulo Coelho

And finally, this one, which I do not know who said it:

Decide what kind of life you really want…and then say no to everything that isn’t that.

The kind of life I want is the kind of life I’ve been trying to have since I was that young man dreaming about a future.  I want everyday adventures.  I want to see as much of the world as I can.  I don’t want to fade away in a Netflix coma as my midsection spills over onto the floor.  I want to create light and art in my photography and writing.  I want to play music less badly.  I want to stand on as many summits as I possibly can while I’m able.

Then I also want to cast off regret and grief over lost time and opportunity.  I want to dwell more in the moment and less in the past and future.  I don’t want to pass up opportunities to be outside in the sun for being lazy indoors.  I’ve lost too much time in my life to things I didn’t really want.  I’ve lost too many opportunities in my life to unreasonable fears.  As a good friend often says: life is short and fragile.  We have no guarantee of anything beyond the moment we’re living in.  It’s foolish to squander a single second of life on things you don’t want.  Admittedly we all have to make compromises in order to live a life, but when it comes to free choice, we only have ourselves to blame if we choose against our hearts.

ADDENDUM: I'm definitely finding my confidence.  This trip was perhaps the best boost to it I could have had.  The timing was definitely right, though it would have been great to have had this experience much earlier in my life.  I'll take it without regret or bitterness.  It was a beautiful moment in my life.

I'm shedding my velvet as Jack White sings.  And I'm leaving the guilt and shame and despair I've carried behind me.  I feel like I outran it somewhere on the road last week.  It just couldn't keep up with my mad pace to bag new high points and racing toward this new chapter of my life.  You see, this trip wasn't the only new thing in my life.  I'm starting a new job in October.  While it may take up a little more of my time than I would like, it will make me more financially stable and will better provide for my future than where I have been up to this point. I desperately need that.  But it will also challenge me in good ways.  And I think it will boost my confidence even higher than it's ever been.  I've started therapy again.  I'm worker harder to take care of my health both physical and mental.  I'm listening when people tell me good things about myself. 

I've been trying to finish this previous chapter of my life for a long time.  I knew the next chapter holds amazing things, but I had to get through these last pages.  This trip was the turn of the page I had been anticipating for longer than I am comfortable saying.