woodland fever

I was feeling pretty low last night. This post will be a stream of organized consciousness. Thank you for being here. I hope all is well with you reader.

I don't generally depend on my anxiety medication, but I feel it be best for my health and wellbeing to take it daily before bed to regulate my emotions. My emotions have been heightened. I'm incredibly irritable. It's been exactly 9 years since my first manic episode and diagnosis.

I am casting a net. Rather, building a web. A silky, stringy, strong and simultaneously delicate web of support. I need this support more than ever. This is the turning point. Almost a decade of suffering, treatment, resistance, and then stability. Peaceful loving stability for the past 5 years. I hope I can sustain it.

The leaves have been beautifully changing all around the cabin in which we live. I got a doctor's note and took off from school to care for the home. I vacuumed and dusted, and set a quaint apple cider vinegar trap for the fruit flies I've been battling the past few days.

I would like to invite a shaman to my home. To bless and cleanse the space, but I know no such people. Perhaps, my local acupuncturist might know.

I have accidentally stopped taking my herbs (still taking my meds)... The herbs have been helpful with regulation of my physical embodiment. Now I feel physically drained and mentally drained.

I feel like I don't have enough resources that will last and I am operating from lack. I am hoping to find space to pay some extra attention to my healing.

Dear reader, if you're reading this - believe this cliche that if you are in the dark night of the soul, you are not alone. We must support each other during the winter.

There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.

Quicksand. First the sinking in and then the struggle out is the fulcrum. It was strange. The zoom webinar felt like a vortex. There was a portal open to another dimension with a wealth of information and knowledge in my living room, yet I was not receptive to it at all. I paid in gold, blood, and tears to be in this vortex, and yet I was itching for an escape. The voice of the speaker felt like quicksand. The quicksand started spilling from the computer screen onto the chair all over the floor by the desk. I gasped and exclaimed. I began searching for miscellaneous things I have been neglecting around the house to occupy my mind from sinking. I emptied the dryer and tossed the clothes that needed folding on the bed. I wiped the counter, a few times. I began pacing. As I was pacing the sand was getting higher and higher. It was up to my chest when suddenly a text message appeared on my screen. It was Sam. "Would you like to go swimming?" he asked.

I had nothing to lose, except opening my heart to a new friend and feeling the effects of caring for another person take hold. The feeling is equivalent to pouring lighter fluid on a fire. The sparks fly high and create a spectacle, but the inner mother that I had to become for myself is stern saying, "Watch it!" The grass is greener on this side - a silver lining to exploit.

I've been neglecting to mow the lawn. To be fair, the earth has been neglecting to replenish. With this drought, I feel aligned with nature, for the first time. Depletion encompasses me. I was invited to go swimming at the beginning of summer. Towards the end of the summer, the friendship began to feel like another part-time job. Another apprenticeship. Why did I go in all over my head again? When would I be the proprietor and not the help? Do people exploit my kindness? Do people sense someone they can just take advantage of and walk all over?

There's a cliché saying, the grass is greener on the other side. Well- what about this side? Can we not stick it out? Can we water our lawn from the ground up, instead of relying on the rain? When it finally rains, what is there to come? A storm and a flood. Fuck it, flood the banks. Raise the tides. Stand at the edge of the cliff and scream into the abyss until there is quaking in the earth and the ground cracks and everything is won.

Nostos, authentic code, the journey home.

So many times I've felt silenced by my loved ones, friends, and strangers when I've tried to express myself authentically. I felt like the more I tried to shine the more the people around me tried to turn off the light. Sometimes I still have those lingering wounds. For example dressing more boldly with mismatched items, practicing speaking Japanese out loud at home, or even when dramatizing a story for my friend's amusement. Once I ran to my biological father with excitement, holding a new cosmetics bag I was thrilled to show off. I slipped and fell in the kitchen and scraped up my elbow. Instead of looking concerned, both of my biological parents looked disappointed. That their daughter was not only flamboyant, and proud but also clumsy and slippery. Not graceful, and taking up space. Their space.

"Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."

— Rumi

Who I am and who I am becoming is a reflection of the shadows within. The lurking uncomfortableness of being born into the suffering realm is being minimized as I begin to understand the true gifts that sensitivity can bring. The glowing beauty of an empath. The neon vibrancy of restorative rooms in buildings built by people. Just regular, gentle people. May the substance and the action of my writing be fueled by even more action. May the words overflow, and flow until my last breath. 

There are so many things I wish I could tell you. I am afraid none of them would make sense. One day there will be no more porch hangs, friends coming around, or energy to exert from this body. Yet, why do I feel so optimistic about everything? In my wronging and sinful delight in pleasures, why does it all feel so right when the world spins on and carries the embodiment of darkness? The answer to that question is simple love, if there were no shadows we would be blinded by light. 

I have friends in all age ranges. I have adopted people as my family. My biological family breaks my heart. I have always felt so distant from them. In this rural town I found my settling. Being in this town is like the first minute of laying down in bed after a long day. A big sigh of relief. 

My friends make fun of me for sighing. I seem to sigh all the time. I only recently became aware of it. I was in a hotel in Ohio with my partner and friend. I was the first one up the last morning there, sighing. That’s when the poking fun started. People poke fun at me constantly, I only sometimes enjoy jokes at my expense. That’s slowly changing. I am purging the last 25 years of my life. I finally have the space and grace to do so, in a healthy way. 

My biological mother visited me this weekend, Catherine. Catherine could not stop talking all weekend. It was not until she left until I realized how much I value my silence and my space. How much my partner actually respects my need for independence, space, and serenity. 

Father’s day was a picture perfect June evening. My relationship with my biological father is broken. I wouldn’t say beyond repair, but there has been enough sustained long term damage that being in the same room as him makes the air feel thin and uncomfortable.

The air in the forest, however, was fresh and cooling down after the afternoon sun hid behind the trees. My partner’s family were *finally gone, and I quickly hopped in the shower. I was on a mission to wash off the residue and stench of the flames from the fire pit. I believed it was polite to smell, at least neutral, when trapped in the car with someone for a while.

Footnote: *I enjoy the company of my partner’s family very much. I wrote finally because our abode is humble and it feels sort of chaotic when there are too many people there for too long. It is a cozy home made for two. 

On father’s day, my evening plans were to spend it with someone else's father, a man named Sam. Deep in the pit of my mind, I wonder if his son will be upset. I know his son. We are really good friends. Would he think my friendship with his dad is weird? Is my friendship with his dad weird? Is it weird that my mechanic is becoming one of my best friends in this town? It certainly is convenient, but that’s not the only reason we talk almost every day. He does not mind me stopping by the shop and talking for hours. He is patient and he listens. 

On father’s day evening, I pulled up to the garage to pick him up to go off-roading. After wiping himself off from garage dirt we are on our way. Sam makes fun of my cautious driving around the bends. 

"We cannot all go 70 mph down a narrow back road", I joke back. 

Off-roading is one of those things that people either casually dislike or obsessively make it their personality trait. I fall somewhere in-between. I enjoy looking at videos of big lifted cars climbing over rocks, but it’s not everyone’s thing so I keep the amusement to myself.

When Sam offered to take me on my first trail I was delighted. My vehicle did rather well and the trail was rather busy. I had to make way for two cars. That’s a rural town’s definition of busy. After we got to the end of the trail, I was pretty low on gas so I made the decision to head back to the shop instead of turning around and doing the trail again.   

Driving back to the shop, the mountain road slopped down and I felt free and embodied for the first time in a long time. It was my first time on this road and somehow the curves, bumps, and slopes did not scare me. Not one bit. The pit in my stomach was released and I felt a deep sense of safety. In Sam’s presence I felt as if nothing bad could happen. In his presence I could sense the road ahead and my vehicle and I were performing as a unit. I could sense everything that the vehicle wanted to tell me and how the wheel wanted to turn. I also was not sweating, did this mean I wasn’t too nervous? The A.C in the vehicle was working perfectly. I think he could tell where my mind was. Spending time with Sam made me excited to get older. Even though the road ahead was unknown, spending time with him made me feel that I could handle whatever was around the bend. 

"Wow, this A.C is working great! Who’s your mechanic?" Sam exclaimed.

I smiled, quickly stealing a gaze off the road towards him.

"He’s just some guy."

"Some guy."

It was interactions like these that made me question wether this relationship was insane, inappropriate, exhilarating, or all of the above. What was wrong with finding qualities that you admire in people and wishing they were the ones that raised you? What could possibly be wrong about spending time with an older man who is also your friend’s father? 

Conversations between Sam and I flowed like a river after rain. Agreeable and sustainable. I catch myself articulating in structured sentences and not using vernacular. He asks me about my ideas for the future.

"I hesitate to state what it is I want in the future because I am not sure the future I want exists yet," I reply.

Sam nods in understanding.

Welcome to Woodland Fever, a daily blog about my life in a rural town that is surrounded by trees, and all of the beautiful & bold people in it.

I am starting this blog because I need to purge these stories somehow. Anonymously and with altered names because I want to protect all the people I love. But still, I believe these stories should be shared and stored away. Archived and pickled. I have been storing these stories in jars in the cabinets of my heart and those cabinets have now become full. The only sweet relief from the suffering of silence is the sound of my fingers hitting the keyboard in hopes that maybe just one person will read these stories and become part of a whole.

I grew up in one of the largest cities in the world. I grew up with adults who taught me to think that this world is cruel. That this world is unkind. That this world and the people in it cannot be trusted. I knew for a long time that I had to break free from the shackles of the city but the sweet escape took many years to fulfill.

This is that story. The story of the escape, the settling, and the revival. I have had to destroy the old version(s) of myself to become a new whole. And I am whole. My cups are full and I am willing to share.

My goal with this blog is not to become discovered for my writing. I simply want people to know that a life where you are seen and heard, truly is possible. That this world is not that cruel. That there are kind people who want the best for you. I want people to leave this page feeling the possibilities of love. To hold on to whatever ounce of hope they have left, that a life with peace is possible.

I found love in this rural town. More love than I ever thought possible.