Where to start? I’m a little turned around. No a lot. It’s going to end up sounding like I’m lost. Which I am. But also not. I’ve been lost. Physically. In the woods. Off the trail because I left it. I followed a deer trail and then lost the main trail. I followed a moose trail. I’ve followed no trail to look for mushrooms. I followed pawpaw patches to look for pawpaw patches. I just don’t stay on path well. I shouldn’t leave because I don’t naturally get back to one well. I don’t have an internal compass. At all.
In the woods all directions look the same. You can walk in circles and never even know it. It’s frightening. I’ve done it more than once. At night once. Because I left camp too early afraid of murderers running rampant through the woods in the night when it was just squirrels or maybe a fly I heard. Or nothing. I left the trail somehow and knew it since I could clearly see I was in the woods and not just in the woods. I circled for hours I could have been sleeping or at least laying hoping I wasn’t about to be murdered by no one.
This murdered in the woods has been thoroughly thought out. It’s ridiculous. I’ve faced this fear. I have thought about how I am certain I would hear a person coming over a squirrel. How you can’t walk in the woods quietly at night. And no one would be waiting for me. No one will fall from the sky. No one will float up in the harbor and find me. No one is hiding because no one is there. I still have to go through these stories quickly to stay put at night. Specifically so I don’t wonder the woods at night.
I go to get lost. I take a compass but don’t use one. I’m sure I can but actually not sure I can. You hold it a certain way and then follow the direction it points to to keep you going a single direction. But it doesn’t know where it is taking you. What if heading north is to somewhere longer? Or East takes you to water? The compass doesn’t tell you where you are headed it tells you you are still heading somewhere. I don’t have an internal compass either. I’ve tried. To find one. It’s not in there. I don’t have a true north feeling. If anything I naturally veer west but only because each time I have been lost I come out to find I walked west to get to out. Then had to go back East to get to where I was supposed to be. Then north to my car. I shouldn’t be going to the woods.
Getting lost in the woods and being lost in the woods are very different. I can get lost. I need to get lost because I am lost. I am way off my trail right now. Because I just don’t seem have one. I did. And I will find it again or at least a something to get me out. I always do. There is always a way out. I look back and see I came from somewhere. I see it looks like I blazed my very own path currently but look ahead and it looks like no one has. Because no one has. I’m a trail blazer.
I need comforted. I just do. I don’t like that I feel I need it but I spent so many years saying I needed nothing by saying nothing. It’s a risky thing to need something from people. I don’t even like people to carry a bag for me. I don’t ask for help. I don’t like to feel weak. I don’t want someone to say “she should have never fell asleep at bedtime, it never would have happened if she has just stayed awake, forever.”
I haven’t slept in almost four days. I did a little last night and woke panicked I slept through a tornado and everything was gone. I thought I was going to die. My chest hurts this morning from shoulder to shoulder but could be from the ridiculous sit ups I’ve decided I need when what I really need is to be held. To cry on a shoulder not cry on the shoulder of the road. I’ve never been held by someone who isn’t 5 to cry. Or my dad. Not never, some have tried. But tried at times I wasn’t ready to be tried. I didn’t lean into it at all. I leaned away.
“Lean into it”she says. That’s what therapists say. Stupid shit. Yet brilliant and what sounds like permission to leave my path and wonder around aimlessly looking for comfort in others. It’s ill advised advise but grief is pulling at it. Saying look for comfort. Comfort food. Comfort clothes. Books. Songs. Time. Places. She says to follow this feeling.
I say “what if I get hurt again?”
She says “what if you don’t?”
It’s her job. To say opposite of any doubt I have. She has also shown vulnerability to me and I know she is also heart broken. Going through something not too much different from me. She wouldn’t have had to tell me, I knew. I could tell. I’m nervous I’m listening to her tell me what I should be hearing but is really what she should be. People do that, give advice that they really need for themselves. I’m supposed to be thinking of me not her. But zoom meetings confuse me when I look at the screen and see me in the top corner. I don’t know who to look at and we also look the same. I told her I can’t zoom anymore. She said. Good we are allowing people in person next week. I need in person. I need more than I ever tell anyone.
I want to wear other people’s sweatshirts. Grown men specifically. To pretend I’m wrapped up in something bigger and stronger and wiser than me. I know this is not true to all grown men but right now my dad is dead and I don’t have a grown man. I don’t feel I have anyone. Even though I know I do. I want to breath in someone else and wrap up in their arms and just be, comforted. Because its comforting? I think. I like comfort food. I made one. I remembered my favorite one after years of not remembering my favorite one.
I did this once. No twice. I bought a shirt, then wore it on my backpack trip. It was worn everyday of a trip that was the hardest trip I ever took. Slept in, left to dry on the shore of the lake on warm rocks, wiped my stove clean, waded in to wash, wondered through tall grass after leaving the trail to look for bugs that love this tall grass. Then I packed this shirt away. Then I thought I lost it. I called the place I stayed in after this trip. They didn’t find it. Did they look? I was prepared to drive 12 hours to look myself. For this shirt. They didn’t understand the importance. It belongs to someone else. In my mind. I wear it for him. So he can feel and smell my purpose of life. I found it. I had stuffed it in a bag I never stuff things in. I’m sure at the time this unknown bag seemed the safest place. I pack this shirt up and mail it to him. So he has it. We exchange it. I worry he has forgotten it. Or lost it or it’s not important anymore. But it is to me.
I could write about him for days. That’s how much he has impacted me. How much he keeps me on my path. Except I’m off right now? Or maybe Im on a new one? He is still there. Not gone. My dad is still there but gone. I’m trying to feel that. Yet feeling it reminds me he isn’t. That his sweatshirt almost doesn’t smell like my dad anymore. So I’m now turning to other people’s sweatshirts to feel comfortable? To feel safe.
My dad is just dead. I accidentally told someone he could do something for them. He could string her guitar. Because he can except he can’t. Because he isn’t anymore.
I will never wrap this story up neatly. It’s too messy? Not messy. Griefy. I’m wearing a strangers sweatshirt pretending this stranger is holding me and crying like I’m a 5 year old who lost her favorite shirt. I’m crying like I lost my dad and now feel lost. But am not lost. I’m sad. My dad died and I should be crying every single day and telling people what I need. But I don’t know what I need. Because I don’t tell people what I need. I am going to head west to look around. I don’t know what’s there. Because before my dad died I wasn’t supposed to go this way. I was supposed to go some other way. But even then my compass I don’t follow inside was just saying to stay that way not wonder off. Now my compass says, nothing. Because I don’t have one inside. Just carry one. But don’t want to follow anyway for awhile. I need someone else who follows a compass. That’s what I need to be led. Just for awhile. A good trail guide is what I need. Someone who has been so lost they now know how not to be and will show me out. Because out seems to not out right now. I’m too lost. I need someone with a compass.
Aspenleaf 