I get that.
It seems like a minimal thing to "save a life", in most respects. Especially if one is coming from a place of maturity, of family, of responsibility. What saves a life when someone is older? Often the thought of children, of aging parents that need cared for, etc. The thought of my daughters is what kept me from losing myself to depression during the divorce, I had to be "there" for them. I do understand that.
I also understand the misunderstanding.
I am here to clarify.
No real preamble, I've written bits and snippets from time to time about the other things. This is jumping right into the point.
October, 1976, we left California, San Joaquin valley, and came north.
No real preamble, I've written bits and snippets from time to time about the other things. This is jumping right into the point.
October, 1976, we left California, San Joaquin valley, and came north.
At the time that we arrived within the shadow of Mt Rainier, I was young, 6th grade. My responsibility was limited to existence.
Which I could not justify in myself.
Things that had happened, that I was internalizing, left me feeling that there was little purpose in that existence.
Existing hurt.
Existing while in pain was a tunnel of dim light with no sign of end or exit.
One foot. Another foot. On and on and on and on and on and on, no change, no understanding, no abating of fear, or soul screaming, feeling fractured and shattered from so far back in my memory, I had no reason to expect anything better.
That, there, is where I was. Trapped in a cycle of blackness, shame, anger, pain.
I could visually see the beauty in things, I could sense that there was more to the animals, to music, to the world, but I could not feel it. It was a mirage, in many ways, to me. A cruel vision experienced by others...I couldn't break through the glass wall and walk into the light they had.
Until I took a walk back into those woods. Through trees, ferns, a fallen log across a creek, a meadow of grasses taller than myself flattened by...something(i met my first elk later that year in the meadow and learned why the grass was flattened)...
I sat in the grass, under the grey sky of early November, cold. I remember looking at everything around me, the way it smelled, the dampness seeping into me through wet jeans and shoes and something began to move inside me. I won't lie, that scared me. I felt that something was watching me, or...I don't know. I jumped up and ran back across the log, almost falling in the creek, through the woods, across the backyard, up the back stairs and crashing through the back door into the kitchen as if Satan himself were hot on me.
Dark corners, stairs, the large attic upstairs, all of these things held terror for me during this time. I lived in the cold, cruel grip of fear, knowing with all certainty that night brought agony that only I could sense. I didn't sleep, I stayed awake with my dogs on my bed with me, hand on each, frozen and watchful.
Slowly, as each day took me back into the woods again, the dampness, the sharpness of scent, the quality of sound, the colors of the grass, the water, the rocks, the sky, it all began to break through the crack made that first day. I would sit quietly and watch everything, seeing what could only be heard, staying out later and later, missing school some days to hide in this haven of...something.
It took time.
The summer, 1977, was very hot, very dry. The sun, in those woods, that meadow, walking the roads in the town...something began to truly live inside of me. Hope, for one thing. Excitement and anticipation, what would I find the next time out? What was that animal? That sound? It pulled me out of myself through that crack, into the world, shining light into my dark corners...and out there, in those woods, up on the hills, sitting on huge boulders looking out over a view that seemed to go forever, I took my shame out and looked it over, on all sides. I forgave myself, in large part, although that journey wouldn't be completed for a few years. It began here. I screamed to the sky, gut primal screams that ripped the black oil of hate and death out of me. There were times when I could almost feel the physical tearing of something deep in my body, an abscess of putrid emotion begging to be lanced and drained. No pretty words, I cut myself open, begging the sharpness of that self-inflicted pain to take the place of the other,deeply indescribable emotion that was boiling. What I learned, through hindsight, was that in opening myself to the feelings of hope and peace, the senses of living, the door was also opened to the emotions suppressed and buried. They had to be felt. They had to be freed. It had to happen.
There were times when I wasn't certain I'd come down off those hills.
I wasn't sure I'd bother to go home.
But I did.
I had learned to believe that I could be like the people I saw...I began to see what hope was. I'd had just enough of a taste of something else to know that I wanted more, that I COULD feel it, taste it. I could have it.
By the time I hit high school, I was living mostly in real time. My friends were getting high, trying to get out of their heads, trying to experience everything.
I had struggled so desperately to find my way into myself that I had no interest in fucking with any of that. I still don't. I did drink, it didn't do anything but numb my body, which would still hit a shock point at times, shaking, cold, weak. I was tested for many things, diabetes, hypoglycemia, etc... but it was all part of the process. I know it.
In my Jr year things began to finally be truly real for me. I had started to honestly feel beauty in all forms, something that is so natural now, I lose myself in it before I consciously recognize it. I still couldn't talk anyone into letting me tag along to the parties, I was the "good kid". I couldn't explain to them, I couldn't explain to myself, how very important it was for me to enter that world, not for the drugs, but to check my path, my footsteps. I knew it was more than simply wanting to go. In my wanderings I had come across the remains of enough keggers to know what it was about. I wasn't afraid, I knew what it was all about. I had a deep need to test everything. But my one closest resource refused categorically to allow me to go. He was going to "keep me a good kid". Each time he said that, I'd just stand there, debating...If only he'd known. Finally, after I pulled a total bitch fit on him, and he wrote me a letter explaining his position and his absolute intent to preserve my virtue and innocence, even if it meant that we were no longer friends, I quit asking. I simply went other places. Where I had few friends, and where it was a bigger risk. Not wise, but being young and driven to pursue a path, that's how it went down. Not well, in all cases, but live and learn. Whatever. Spilt milk. Another time to approach that nonsense, maybe.
But,
I had to know that I could do things and not be haunted.
I had to know that I could do things and remain in control. I had learned to control myself and I vowed to not let go of that, only ever with people I knew in my soul I would be safe with.
That, for the record, has only happened once. And that person has no idea that they are in that position. Well, that's an arrogant assumption to make, they are quite perceptive, much more than almost anyone else I have ever known. Another conversation completely, just as an added aside.
How does this play in to how the mountain saved my life?
At the end of my Jr year, we moved. Out of the town, away from these people, the trees I knew, the hills, the sounds, the smell. Away from the mountain.
Away from everything that had given me a reason to leave hell and choose something else.
I started my Sr year as an out-of-district student, driving myself back to school each day. Then, for some reason, the approval for my status was rejected. I think they gave a reason, but i honestly can't remember what it was.
And, as I've written before, I fell to pieces.
It wasn't the move. Good Lord, we'd moved my whole life. Even up in that area we lived in so many places in the process of moving to this house or another, it was second nature to me.
Again, in hindsight, much as the process of weaning off a medication for something is often part of healing and moving on, this was that. I saw it later. The clay had been shaped, it was time for a firing. And significant cracks appeared, but again...it was part of the process of becoming whole, healthy, independent of person/place/etc.
In the cracks, what was real really in my life and what was not were sifted.
What I had learned, what I had been given, shown, what I had taken from life for myself, and what I had left behind, up on that mountain, in those woods, those hills...that's what I had.
That was what got me through that period of time. That belief in hope for more of the good things i had experienced is what determined, along with not wanting to put my mother in the position of finding my body, whether I was going to continue to live and move through the process or take myself out and be done with it.
As I've written before, I chose to live. I made that choice not just for that specific time, but for my life. I rejected the option of suicide. And I did it, a few times over. I was very clear on how I was going to do it, if I was. Knife. Artery. Sharp, slow, deep slice, clean through every one that I could reach and had strength to open. I have never shared that with anyone, or anything before, but I suppose right now, right here, it's time to let it go. My intent was that I would bleed myself out, empty my body of the symbolic pain, free it in all completeness, all finality. I had the knife chosen. I was that far in.
But my mum.
I couldn't do it to her. I was never so far wrapped up just in myself that I didn't know that there was so much more to whatever this thing called life is, separate from me. I knew that not everyone was having the experience that I was. I can't remember ever not knowing that on a very conscious level.
Mom...She would never have recovered, and I couldn't put that kind of pain on anyone. My only goal would be to end pain, and all that would do was to end mine at the expense of the one person who didn't understand me often, didn't know the depth of any of this, but still never gave up on me.
I had chosen life, up in those hills.
Or rather, life had chosen me.
So, I put the knife away and began to focus my energies, limited and fragile as they were, on the process of learning how to live this life, regardless of what was to happen or where I was to be. I began to see a psychiatrist, who didn't make me rehash the past, but took me from where I was and propelled me forward.
It hasn't always been easy, but that's okay. Who's life is? It hasn't always been certain, but again...life just isn't.
IF I never saw the mountain again, I would be okay. The lessons are what matters.
It's not bs.
It's real.
And that is what I mean when I say, the mountain saved my life.
There were times when I wasn't certain I'd come down off those hills.
I wasn't sure I'd bother to go home.
But I did.
I had learned to believe that I could be like the people I saw...I began to see what hope was. I'd had just enough of a taste of something else to know that I wanted more, that I COULD feel it, taste it. I could have it.
By the time I hit high school, I was living mostly in real time. My friends were getting high, trying to get out of their heads, trying to experience everything.
I had struggled so desperately to find my way into myself that I had no interest in fucking with any of that. I still don't. I did drink, it didn't do anything but numb my body, which would still hit a shock point at times, shaking, cold, weak. I was tested for many things, diabetes, hypoglycemia, etc... but it was all part of the process. I know it.
In my Jr year things began to finally be truly real for me. I had started to honestly feel beauty in all forms, something that is so natural now, I lose myself in it before I consciously recognize it. I still couldn't talk anyone into letting me tag along to the parties, I was the "good kid". I couldn't explain to them, I couldn't explain to myself, how very important it was for me to enter that world, not for the drugs, but to check my path, my footsteps. I knew it was more than simply wanting to go. In my wanderings I had come across the remains of enough keggers to know what it was about. I wasn't afraid, I knew what it was all about. I had a deep need to test everything. But my one closest resource refused categorically to allow me to go. He was going to "keep me a good kid". Each time he said that, I'd just stand there, debating...If only he'd known. Finally, after I pulled a total bitch fit on him, and he wrote me a letter explaining his position and his absolute intent to preserve my virtue and innocence, even if it meant that we were no longer friends, I quit asking. I simply went other places. Where I had few friends, and where it was a bigger risk. Not wise, but being young and driven to pursue a path, that's how it went down. Not well, in all cases, but live and learn. Whatever. Spilt milk. Another time to approach that nonsense, maybe.
But,
I had to know that I could do things and not be haunted.
I had to know that I could do things and remain in control. I had learned to control myself and I vowed to not let go of that, only ever with people I knew in my soul I would be safe with.
That, for the record, has only happened once. And that person has no idea that they are in that position. Well, that's an arrogant assumption to make, they are quite perceptive, much more than almost anyone else I have ever known. Another conversation completely, just as an added aside.
How does this play in to how the mountain saved my life?
At the end of my Jr year, we moved. Out of the town, away from these people, the trees I knew, the hills, the sounds, the smell. Away from the mountain.
Away from everything that had given me a reason to leave hell and choose something else.
I started my Sr year as an out-of-district student, driving myself back to school each day. Then, for some reason, the approval for my status was rejected. I think they gave a reason, but i honestly can't remember what it was.
And, as I've written before, I fell to pieces.
It wasn't the move. Good Lord, we'd moved my whole life. Even up in that area we lived in so many places in the process of moving to this house or another, it was second nature to me.
Again, in hindsight, much as the process of weaning off a medication for something is often part of healing and moving on, this was that. I saw it later. The clay had been shaped, it was time for a firing. And significant cracks appeared, but again...it was part of the process of becoming whole, healthy, independent of person/place/etc.
In the cracks, what was real really in my life and what was not were sifted.
What I had learned, what I had been given, shown, what I had taken from life for myself, and what I had left behind, up on that mountain, in those woods, those hills...that's what I had.
That was what got me through that period of time. That belief in hope for more of the good things i had experienced is what determined, along with not wanting to put my mother in the position of finding my body, whether I was going to continue to live and move through the process or take myself out and be done with it.
As I've written before, I chose to live. I made that choice not just for that specific time, but for my life. I rejected the option of suicide. And I did it, a few times over. I was very clear on how I was going to do it, if I was. Knife. Artery. Sharp, slow, deep slice, clean through every one that I could reach and had strength to open. I have never shared that with anyone, or anything before, but I suppose right now, right here, it's time to let it go. My intent was that I would bleed myself out, empty my body of the symbolic pain, free it in all completeness, all finality. I had the knife chosen. I was that far in.
But my mum.
I couldn't do it to her. I was never so far wrapped up just in myself that I didn't know that there was so much more to whatever this thing called life is, separate from me. I knew that not everyone was having the experience that I was. I can't remember ever not knowing that on a very conscious level.
Mom...She would never have recovered, and I couldn't put that kind of pain on anyone. My only goal would be to end pain, and all that would do was to end mine at the expense of the one person who didn't understand me often, didn't know the depth of any of this, but still never gave up on me.
I had chosen life, up in those hills.
Or rather, life had chosen me.
So, I put the knife away and began to focus my energies, limited and fragile as they were, on the process of learning how to live this life, regardless of what was to happen or where I was to be. I began to see a psychiatrist, who didn't make me rehash the past, but took me from where I was and propelled me forward.
It hasn't always been easy, but that's okay. Who's life is? It hasn't always been certain, but again...life just isn't.
IF I never saw the mountain again, I would be okay. The lessons are what matters.
It's not bs.
It's real.
And that is what I mean when I say, the mountain saved my life.
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