You know that scene from New Moon where Bella sits in her window, and the seasons pass as she sinks in her chair more and more as they do? Perhaps I’m speaking to the wrong audience but that’s a good summary of my last six months. 

P.S. I’m writing as a form of expression, but let it be known I am no writer; I am a painter without access to a studio. 

Four seasons, and four states; somehow landing in Pennsylvania, the same state I started in twenty-three years ago. Pennsylvania is large and oddly disconnected from itself as you move across it from the Great Lakes through the Appalachians. There is a surplus of potholes, and bars with sports games on, libertarian white men, hills, farmland, cities that peaked during the industrial revolution and –climate change permitting– four seasons on a loop each year. I suppose most of this state is poor, and the highway stretches for hundreds of miles across it- now that I think about it most of Pennsylvania is highway. I’ve come to return each time with more gratitude for this place, this state. Although the people can be small-minded, they know this place, they believe in it. As if the Pirates are ever gonna make it past the playoffs. 

I used to be fascinated with the “Born” and “Died”: locations of notable human beings growing up. As a child, I was frustrated with where I was born, no choice in the matter, and this frustration developed into motivation. I used to sit on a bench, made from a fallen tree from a summer thunderstorm years before in my neighborhood, and look out towards the lake - no horizon in sight- and wondered what life would be like if I grew up somewhere like Nyc or Berlin, or the highlands of Ireland. This thought train landed in a pool of self-pity and self-doubt. Thus, I’ve been on the move since I became an adult because where I die could perhaps be somewhere more than where my parents never left. 

The first summer after college I returned to the site of the bench to find it replaced with a picnic table.

Spring was glorious, as I moved on from a place I had called home for four years, I moved into summer and thus a brand new place. Montana is possibly the most majestic and alive place I’ve been able to live in. 

Streams fed into rivers that cascaded through the glacier carved mountains and valleys

 I have had an obsessive toxic relationship with my body since middle school. But now as I’ve finally grieved the divorce of my parents and my body from myself, I am confronted with a new obstacle: learning to walk again. Ok not quite literally, but I had ACL surgery, and as common as this sounds… (everyone knows someone that at one time had a knee injury. The classic middle-aged white male response, “back in highschool..” Surely you can fill in the end of that story.)

It’s human nature to relate, I remind myself

Then again little did I know how much my body did for me despite its unrequited love for me. As a victim of unrequited love, I know that usually you’re not completely diluted in your fairytale romance with them; you usually are only slightly diluted. I find myself jumping backwards and forwards when I recount any type of strong feeling. Surely that must mean that feelings don’t have fixed space in time, and that the past and future seem to work the same way your legs take the steps for you and before you know it you have arrived to your destination. Enough of grandiose metaphors, and life meaning; more on the bullshit I have encountered going from able-bodied to stagnant. 

No one tells you that when you suffer a major health setback-the kind that requires your life to consist of taking a brace on and off, finding where bags of ice cost the least, Reddit threads about painkiller addictions, a strong othering towards your own bodily functions, the obvious constipation of the painkillers, and not to mention the most pain I’ve felt in my life. I started writing in my journal specifically to catalog my pain on the day; hoping it would give me hope that I am going to be better one day and that each day is better. Everyone talks about a light at the end of the tunnel but perhaps that light doesn’t need to always exist for us to keep waking up day by day. As the esteemed feminist writer, Melissa Febos, put it in her sacred essays in Girlhood:

There is a deep and abiding pain in realizing how much of my life I spent estranged from my own body. But there is also immense power in reclaiming it, in deciding that I alone would define its worth.

When I moved to Montana after graduating college and was suddenly over-stimulated by the aggressiveness of Chacos, Gore-tex, flat hats, and incredibly toned bodies… I dialed in. I told myself my body can do that too. And so I did- and I felt more alive than I ever had. Let it be known I am the thrill-seeking type, proving further my unrequited love for my own body. I’ll jump off the bridge, I’ll go to the edge of the cliff, I’ll dive into the freezing water, I’ll hang my body half out of the car just to feel the wind gust so hard against my skin I can’t think about anything else. And I’ll even ski down a black my first day out on skis in 5 years and tear my ACL. You know, just a few months before my skiing accident I totaled a car to save a deer. Although I don’t regret saving the deer, I wonder why that as each time the car rolled all I could think was: “Is this really happening as “Blister in the Sun” is blasting out of my queued Spotify playlist. Then as I lay in the upside down car, all I could think was “How the hell is this happening to me?” Believe it or not, I came out of this accident with not even a flesh wound, doctors ran tests on me all day, as if there must be something wrong after such a traumatic accident. I was discharged the same day it happened. 

You really think these won’t happen to you until they do. And even then- it’s hard to believe that it will be a part of your life story now and forever. 

Why do I only have profound thoughts when I’m in the shower or driving, therefore can’t jot them down? Of course I am convinced it must be because the universe doesn’t want me to elaborate but I’m feeling inspired and I think I’m going to hold onto that kind of brain activity. 

Buckle up

Truth be told, my whole point to a toxic unrequited love type of relationship with my own body is sometimes you’re not given the choice- that must be the universe? Come on, let a girl romanticize her shortcomings!!

When I moved to Montana I didn’t know what would happen there, I didn’t know that I would live life so free everyday, and that I would feel the air unlike I had before, that the water there never quite gets comfortable, how much I liked to make a fire each night before bed, that when you’re on mile whatever of a hike that you either are thinking of lunch or how many more miles you have. When they say that this way of life is more simple, its quite literal. Survival is simple. I suppose that I started to lean into an all consuming feeling usually driven by some form of risk behavior because it’s all your body could focus on. When living is all that matters, things become quite simple. 

I’ve never been too faithful, spiritual, or anything other than a bisexual who will watch the tarot reading TikTok on an occasional scroll.. But when all you need is a light at the end of the tunnel to keep one foot in front of another, it’s easier to believe there must be a reason for this consuming type of pain. I could write about how my knee has felt over the last few months for this whole entry, but who really cares?

Okay fine- a quick lesson on ACL surgery: when I tore my ACL I was with someone I used to love, and in the moment he talked me out of thinking the worst. We both grew up athletes so we both are no stranger to The Knee Injury.  It was my first day out skiing for the season, and we hopped on a blue run.

(Note to self and fellow East Coast skiers heading West: a blue in Utah is simply a black.)

 I hit a turn too fast and took a tumble, twisting my leg with my ski. In these kinds of falls, your skis should pop off to ensure a safer fall. Spoiler, my skis didn’t pop off, and because of a terrible one minute decision, I would be in recovery for the next year and live with nuts and bolts in my knee forever.

As I was emergency skied down in a sled by ski patrol, all I could think to myself is “this is fucking embarrassing.” Once I got to the emergency clinic, Dr. Ken assured me it was a slight tear to the right MCL (a less complicated ligament on the inside of the knee) and I would be skiing again in less than a month. 

Look- I’m not gonna fluff it up, I was distraught, I was beaten down, I was out of touch, I was embarrassed, I didn’t know who I was anymore… a new place and a new disabled body, I persevered. 

Perseverance is this tricky little character trait I haven’t seemed to figure out about myself. I’m just one of those people that does not see another way out than through. Is it possible to allow myself more grace one day? Perhaps wallow in my loss or pain? I think the closest I get to wallowing is spending a day without looking in the mirror, perhaps staring at a body of water and thinking existential thoughts like, how it doesn’t stop moving and is so powerful. Of course a day of wallowing wouldn’t be complete without complaining immensely to a dear friend. Although I seem to push through almost always, this was different, it was initially physically agonizing. Sometimes I wonder what it feels like to truly be unable to move forward, but that day wasn’t today.