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*TRIGGER WARNING* - THIS BLOG POST CONTAINS ANECDOTAL CONTENT THAT MAY BE TRIGGERING TO SOME INDIVIDUALS

Shattered.

-the first emotion I remember feeling in 2021. Lost, hopeless, beat down, exhausted…. all encompassed the mental and emotional space I was drowning in. I felt as though my life had been fragmented into pieces that one by one, had drifted out of my own consciousness. I was struggling with seasonal depression, struggling through a traumatic relationship, losing myself in the weight of believing I’d never be enough for anyone, including myself. 9 months out of college and stunted by a global pandemic, I had no idea who I was, no idea what I wanted from life, and was convinced that I was too tired to figure it out. The vibrant garden of life that I had worked so hard to grow had died over the cold and dark winter. My only lifeline became the single thread that my relationship dangled by - fraying, disintegrating, in conjunction with my mental/emotional state. It had become my identity during a time when the world had gone quiet. The only flower left in the garden, and I tended to it with everything I had. I told myself that if that relationship ended, so too would I. I had nothing left, had given everything I thought I had in me to the survival of that relationship only to find myself in a world that wasn’t my own.

2021 had begun in darkness, I barely remember January. One week before Valentine’s day the relationship ended. The way that I felt, that I thought couldn’t get worse, headed towards a darker tunnel.

I was on my way to work on the Monday after we split, as a nanny for a family in Lakewood. Zoned out, eyes puffy and glazed over, barely the owner of my own body still. The 25 minute daily commute had become routine and my body was in autopilot, just going through the motions. Meanwhile, my mind was screaming, clawing, begging for it all to end. Yelling at me to turn the wheel into the guardrail and pray that everything would just go black. That the pain would stop, that I wouldn’t have to feel anymore, that I wouldn’t have to fight anymore. It wasn’t the first time I’d thought about a way out of everything I wanted to stop feeling. But this time I had no reason to deny it. Hot tears streamed down my face, I screamed at the windshield, feeling my insides split as the burning desire to have it all stop surged through me. My knuckles turned white as I death gripped the steering wheel…. I-25 became a blur.

My mom met me off the Santa Fe exit, where I had pulled off, and took me back home. I had escaped from myself, with my own life. Some last ditch effort hidden deep down had pulled off the highway and called mom - I’d hang on for one more day at least. I remember feeling so defeated, so guilty, so worthless. I had completely given up my desire to live. Everything that was left of me had been sucked out the window in what felt like a final internal battle for my life. I went numb, my internal system shut down and left behind an abandoned and empty shell, an emotionless pit.

For two months I wandered. Wandered through what felt like a barren wasteland, unsure of where I stood with myself. I learned about co-dependency, trauma, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and I let it simmer. I sat in the nothingness, let information and emotion pass in and out of consciousness with no idea how to connect to it. I traveled, using new places and people as a distraction, a way to fill up an empty space with stimulus that felt like something, anything. I tried going on a few dates and ghosted him, still attached to my ex. I didn’t know who I was, but I released the idea of needing to care about that, I didn’t have the drive to. I just surrendered, floated for a while. For two months, I sat on the frozen ground in the dead and empty garden and waited for spring.

Q2 - April-June

Coming out of the darkest place I had ever been in my life, slowly but surely, things began to thaw and pieces started to fall back into place. After a rocky and indecisive end to my relationship, I finally found closure and safety in my own self-worth. As I pulled out many of my old “self-help” books, I re-explored my spirituality and began to rediscover pieces of me that had been lost in space, I got curious. My relationship with running re-kindled and I fell into a new and uncharted space where I was running as a form of self betterment, not self punishment. I explored new trails, new mindsets focused on joy and discovery, and began the slow work of healing my relationship with running as a conduit to healing my relationship with myself. I signed up for a 50k, reconnected with friends, reconnected with the mountains, and prioritized my relationship with myself as spring warmed and softened the earth around me.

Looking for a training partner, I reached out to the person I had shamefully ghosted a few months back - a wicked runner and alpine adventurer. As I chased him around the mountains, a glorious escape from the previous 6 months, I found a new friend, a fresh perspective. Training brought me back into flow with my body and I reclaimed what had previously felt like an empty shell used up by someone I used to toxically worship. I felt excited again, refreshed, invested in myself. I felt like I was getting the hang of life again. Running and spending so much time in the mountains had not only helped me to feel fitter than I ever have, but it restored my confidence in myself, and my confidence in an ability to find joy. I did my first solo class three 14er, barely out of breath on the way up, flowing with speed and agility on the way down. Did a 17 mile training day up in Steamboat, un-phased by the mileage, bewildered by how enjoyable it was. I started my own business, pursuing my freelance photography and setting up an LLC. It was all such a high I was riding, and internally I was planting the seeds I hoped would begin rooting themselves deep and pull the ground back together. From somewhere below the noise, feelings for my training partner began to bubble up, though I glossed over it. Everything else internally began to settle, and I tended carefully to the garden, waiting for summer to arrive.

It was June 19th, the weather in the alpine was perfect, summer had begun to present itself. Brisk morning air beckoned the radiance of the sun as dew on the trees began to evaporate, leaving the air thick with the smell of leaves . I found myself again pushing to keep up with my training partner as we made our way through the dense brush towards the Ellingwood Ridge-line that would lead us to La Plata’s 14,360’ summit. It was hard, my lungs sucked in as much oxygen for my burning legs as they could muster at 11,000 ft and we plugged on, exiting tree-cover into an expansive boulder field. The ridge-line now in view, we made our way up towards the main event of the day, scaling uneasily piled car sized pieces of granite. It was 9AM and we had finally reached the ridge. We undulated along its delicate and rocky spines, flowing through class 4/5 sections of up and down and around. With a calm and determined mindset I began a class 5 down climb section, high feet, bad positioning, right hand out - shit. My right hand hold broke off and I plummeted as my training partner watched helpless from above. 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi, 4 Mississippi, 5 Mississippi. - “Oh god, I’m so sorry I fucked up, Joe”.

Just like that, summer had ended before it even begun.

5 hrs waiting for helicopter rescue, 4 days in the hospital, 3 broken bones in my right leg, 2 surgical procedures, and an overwhelming sense of gratitude for being alive. Oh how the tables had turned.

Q3 - Jul-Sept.

Summer was in full swing, and I was missing my favorite season of the year. I felt useless as I watched all my friends continue to take complete advantage of the warm months in the mountains, yearning to be out there with them. Joe kept close tabs on me, and I felt sick as he returned to scrambling sketchy peaks across CO and WY - ticking off Maroon Bells, The Grand, and many others. Inundated with a heavy load of feelings that seemed to have been jarred awake by falling 40ft, I had no choice but to sit with them. As the distraction of constant motion and summer ecstasy became unavailable, I opened the flood gates and accepted the emotional tidal wave that ensued. I reflected on the past 6 months, the pain, the emptiness, the fear, the excitement, the curiosity, and the flicker of a deeper affection. I stopped glossing over the push and pull I was feeling deep down and started to listen, started to pay attention. I trudged through the shit that had piled up over the past six months traveling between states of acute awareness and a self-protective dissociation. I cried about all the things that hurt, mourned the pieces of me that had been lost and refound only to be lost again. Tears upon tears drizzled like rain upon the seeds in my internal garden. I accepted the things that I had been through, accepted the way I felt about it, accepted the state my body was in, accepted the state my mind was in. I shone a light on all of it, and the seeds sprouted up out of the dark soil. For once, it all felt different. It was all okay, nothing felt like anything I needed to escape from. In a time when I again felt like I had lost so much of my identity, I felt prepared to cope and explore what would come next. I even began exploring what having feelings for someone again could be like.

August rolled around and I took on three new jobs in order to move out of my parent’s house. I transitioned up to Boulder, moved in with a good friend and was immediately introduced and welcomed in to Joe’s community. Though still healing underneath an exoskeleton of plastic, metal, and the dreaded velcro, I felt re-integrated with the outdoors. August flew by.

By September I was released from my immobilizer and was determined to take a trip to Glacier NP - a place I had developed a deep spiritual connection with the summer before - to celebrate. I took a leap and invited Joe to come with me, to which he surprisingly obliged with ease. As we took off, headed towards ten days of minimal cell service and the big wilderness, I felt slightly fearful about what 10 days alone with Joe would look like. “Was it too soon? Was I ready for what two weeks together could mean? Did I even know what I wanted?” I moved on with an acceptance of unknowing. We wound our way up the divide through Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone before finally arriving in Glacier. Over the 9 day excursion, we fell into a rhythm, things felt natural. We explored alpine lakes, woke up for some of the most beautiful sunrises of my life, and I was loving every moment of being able to move through the mountains again. We were forced to take things slow, as I had only been fully out of the immobilizer for a week and was still incredibly fragile. “I’m in no rush, just happy to be here”, he kept telling me. It stuck with me as I tenderly put one foot in front of the other. That slow and steadiness seemed to bleed into the rest of my experience of “us” as well.

Over the rest of September, I continued to recover. Three appointments a week had me recovering physically with the PT and mentally with a somatic therapist. It was all hard work, I was clearing and restrengthening my systems for a completely new phase of life that approached. As I came in and out of dissociation and worked through processing the aftermath of my accident, PTSD began knocking on my door. But I kept my head down through the transition and growth, kept plugging through. My relationship with Joe continued to develop and I found an overwhelming sense of safety and groundedness in him. He was supportive, calm, and ever patient - I grappled with the foreign-ness of what stability in an intimate relationship could be like. It was such a drastically different experience to the chaotic codependence of my last relationship, and I reminded myself time and time again that I was allowed to rest easy in that.

Q4 - October-December

The work on “self” continued through October. The garden was in full bloom and life moved at a clip. It was still warm and beautiful in Boulder and I was back to taking full advantage of the dwindling daylight. I bought a bike, was soloing flatirons again, and even running here and there. Three jobs kept me busy and October flew by in a blur. As I continued to navigate life after my accident, flashbacks and intermittent panic attacks continued to grip me, though I felt safe to process when Joe was around and it didn’t phase me too much. By the end of October, I finally felt ready to lean into trusting in Joe’s safe and consistent nature, and I softened into his patient embrace. I watched that seed enter the sunlight and finally begin to bloom, no longer shaded by and overwhelming fear of relationships past.

November marked the end of working three jobs and I was excited to be hired into a full-time marketing position with the Trust for Public Lands. I was beyond ready to feel settled and stable after such a rollercoaster of a year. Life continued to move quickly, but I felt stable for the first time in so long. November and December continued to pass at a consistent pace, with minimal bumps in the road. Things started to trend upwards with stability and consistency and I came into a deeper acceptance and understanding of who I was. I found a sense of home with my new found Boulder community (thanks to Joe) and continued to explore how my relationship with Joe could grow. “I’m in no rush” became my mantra and I strived to find patience, acceptance, and integrity in all the things I did. I became the ocean cradling the inevitable waves, and moved into a state of letting go.

As I look back on 2021, I recognize and honor how much I have learned. Escaping death on two occasions has left me grateful, understanding, and curious as to what life has in store for me. It truly stands out to me how much I have learned to show up for myself, how grateful I am for the people in my life, and how truly passionate I am about community and honoring the brutal honesty of our human experience. I’m excited to take on 2022, exploring the container that love and relationship can create, a deeper connection to passion for life, and a rediscovered and ever-changing sense of self. I’m striving to let go, sit in the small moments in between, and absorb the information the universe presents me. So here’s to turning page, “I’m in no rush”.