I am going home. I never thought I would say it much less be happy about it. I am happy. I am even excited. I left Massachusetts thinking I would never come back. People were always saying, “Worst case scenario, you come back.” To which I replied, “Worst case scenario the motor home blows up.” I knew I wasn’t coming back. I left believing I needed to find a place where I belonged, a place I fit in and a place where I was surrounded by my kind of people. I left thinking I would find myself. In this new found place of belonging I would be more confident, more carefree, more open and more honest. It would be the kind of place I had been imagining. First, I would travel around until I stumbled upon it like accidentally bumping into your soulmate, the way it happens in the movies. In my travels I would conquer my fears, relinquish my struggle with change and squash my reliance on consistency. I would strengthen my marriage because, who could fight in the presence of such natural wonders? Without the weight of everyday responsibilities and stressors, what marriage wouldn’t thrive? I was convinced that the journey would bring us so close that when we settled in this unfamiliar, match made in heaven home, we would be new and improved versions of our former selves. That was the goal. That was the plan. It wasn’t too high of an expectation, was it?
I left on an adventure with my wife in a 31ft motorhome pointed west. I spent an obscene amount of money on hiking clothes and gear that I never once would have considered buying or wearing. The first hike in my new clothes made me feel like a foreigner in a new country. Actually, it was like walking around in a super woman costume yet everyone knew it wasn’t Halloween and I wasn’t a superhero. I thought for sure it was obvious that I was a first time Merrill boot trotting, North Face pants wearing, Camelback carrying kind of girl. I felt ridiculous and giddy.
My fear of heights made me hesitant and nervous, which was in full effect when I approached signs reading, NOT RECOMMENDED FOR THOSE WITH A FEAR OF HIEGHTS. I was the person they were referring too. That was me! My immediate reaction was to stop and say to myself, ‘see I shouldn’t do this!’ There was literally a sign telling me so. I thought for sure that would be my out. Nevertheless my legs kept pushing forward.
My first taste of exposure left me shaky and slightly light headed. Each hike after that got steeper, scarier and more challenging. Each time, I couldn’t believe what I was about to do. Each time, I was sure it was a terrible idea. Each time, I thought, ‘this hike I am not prepared for.’ Each time, I asked, just how steep is steep? How strenuous is strenuous? How difficult is difficult? Each time, I did it anyway. I stayed close to inside walls, held tight to support chains, looked straight ahead of me, and never looked down or up. I talked to myself constantly. I reminded myself that I was in control of my body (despite the fact that my hands were shaking and my legs were trembling). I was not going to fall unless I let go, walked off, or did something really, really stupid.
I felt comfort in my wife’s fearlessness and in the people around me doing the same thing with confidence. I didn’t let myself say ‘no,’ or think about it too long before I started moving forward. I just did it. I went for it. I even found myself encouraging other hikers who looked terrified. If I could do it, anyone could. I laughed when someone commented on how calm I seemed. I was scared shitless but I transfered my anxiety into determination. When I made it to the top, the reward for the treturous and tremor producing climb was absolute elation. It was the most powerful, most deserved and most fulfilling deep breath my lungs have ever experienced. And the view wasn’t bad either.
The beautiful scenery of the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park and even the peaks of the Canadian Rockies, could not change the fact that I was unhappy, and struggling from a damaged childhood, to which my marriage was reaping the consequences. That’s the tricky thing about problems, they are still there even with a change of scenery. You can drive two thousand miles and the only thing that changes is where you are on the map. You bring all your shit with you. And if you are in my situation you also happen to be cramming it into a 200 square foot box on wheels. A shitty attitude, hyper sensitivity, and lack of communication and understanding can fill a small space till it is bursting at the seems. It creates a thickness in the air even the mountain air can’t clear. I didn’t necessarily think a road trip would cure the issues in my marriage. I thought they would dwindle down a bit and mellow out because we were mellowed out. Not so much. What we really needed was more along the lines of intense couples therapy, somewhere in the realm of ten thousand dollars, by a bestselling world renowned author and psychologist. Seriously, we took a detour to Colorado and it seriously cost a shitload. We spent a grueling several days with a guy I both hated and admired for his no bullshit cut throat approach to figuring out what the hell is wrong with you. And he makes it very clear that there is something very wrong with YOU. And YOU are the problem. And your marriage WILL fail if YOU don’t fess up to just how fucked up you really are.
The benefits of those visits took a little while to present themselves. But, ultimately what was made very clear was that there was nothing wrong with our marriage, there was something wrong with each of us. Overtime I realized that I was becoming more considerate, selfless and caring. These are attributes I would have argued I already demonstrated when in reality I was selfish, always wanting, grabbing, taking, deflecting, pullling and pushing. I was in this incredibly well made disguise. A disguise unknown even to myself. It was time to take off the mask. I believe being in the motor home away from everyone we knew helped too. In the moment it felt like an impossible situation, but it forced us to confront our problems head on in present time. We had no out. In such a small space there is no place to hide, no rugs to shove our problems under and no closet to stuff the skeletons into.
The ironic thing about leaving in search of something better is that you never find it, and that is because you are looking in the wrong spot. You think you are going to suddenly stumble upon this “thing,” like a tree root lifted up from the ground you don’t notice until you are almost head over heals. Everything you “find” from your self discovery adventure has been inside of you all along. You realize that the things you thought you were looking for are not things at all. They are revelations. These revelations reveal themselves as a better understanding of what it means to give things up, to start over, to be afraid and go for it anyway, and to not only get out of your comfort zone, but to shatter it until it is unrecognizable. It’s realizing that YOU are the reason your marriage is shit and YOU can change it. It’s finding out that you can not only get by with less, but also get a lot further, faster. It’s letting go of the should haves and supposed to’s. It’s discovering you are stronger, both physicallly and mentally, than you ever realized. It’s learning that you don’t need to react all the damn time. It’s accepting and being just as excited about your path leading you home as you were about it leading you away. All of these revelations were there all along, they were just tucked away deep inside a corner of my universe collecting dust, waiting to be cleaned off and let out into the world breathing in fresh mountain air and running wild.