I’m writing this on new years eve 2023. 

It’s been a little over a year since my trip and I realized I never wrote a finale to the whole thing. Maybe because it ended in such a weird way. 

After Dave I drove over through Montana, which was stunningly beautiful and I hope to visit again. Like tears involuntarily running down my face beautiful. I was headed straight east after this, over to Minneapolis, down through Chicago for a few days before heading back to Memphis. But I bailed and decided to just get home. So I cut diagonally across the states driving eighteen hours one day and landing at a roadside Hampton Inn in the darkest of South Dakota at about 2:00 am. And then back on the road to Memphis, making my way across the river at the exact moment a killing spree was happening across the city. Some guy driving around, murdering people, and broadcasting it on Facebook live. I was rerouted to my sister’s house because he had apparently recently been causing mayhem near my neighborhood. I was scared and exhausted. Welcome home. 

It was my birthday and I walked into work. I was happy to get back.

And now it’s March 9, 2024 and I still never finished it. I started and I couldn’t. Seasonal depression, overwhelming sadness, I don’t know what, but it crept back in and crushed me. I’m still having a hard time sitting down and writing this. 

When I was taking my sabbatical, Brene Brown was also taking one. Her podcast had been such a comfort during quarantine and through the months after and into my trip. She put out a podcast when she came back. 

I was eager to hear what she had to say. Maybe she could provide some wisdom about what it means to go away and come back. Please, tell me how I’m supposed to feel. Please. 

Say it was great. Say you are renewed and refreshed and have a newfound motivation! Tell me how amazing you feel, how it was so easy and wonderful, and you’re so happy to get back! Tell me you didn’t see parts of your world and your life that you never get to pay attention to. Tell me you felt bored and underwhelmed and that you can’t live without the daily grind. Tell me I’m taking it all too seriously. Tell me you feel normal. Tell me you feel ok. Tell me this is what it is supposed to be. Please. 

And she freaking didn’t. She said exactly how I felt. I wept through the episode. 

And now it’s the end of 2024 and I can’t really wrap my head around the fact that 2020 was five years ago. And why do I feel like I’m still living in it. Living through it.

And now it’s February 2025. And I finally feel like I’m slowly crawling out of the deep depression I found myself in for who knows how long.

Some great things happened in those five years. And some really, really terrible things. A complete falling apart. And a determination to put it back together. 

I thought I could go away, leave all my stuff halfway across the world, drop it into the canyons, leave it in the desert, let it dry up and blow away. But it really just all stayed with me. I read about Thomas Coleridge’s albatross in high school. And now I had one. Big, stupid, loud bird. I tried to get rid of it and it wrapped itself around my neck. Or maybe I tied it there. I’m not so sure anymore.

I basically thought I could get myself over this very quickly. I had no idea there were layers upon layers of discovery and healing. And that maybe I would be healing for a long time. I started to wonder if it would take a lifetime. 

Maybe that’s one of the processes of life I had never really witnessed before. My family has plenty of piled on baggage, but very little healing, from my vantage point at least. Baggage so heavy it drags you down into the depths of depression and dissociation. Until this life has very little beauty or feeling or meaning. Holding on for dear life to make it through. That’s what I was used to seeing. And anyone who can escape it is an exception to the rule. 

But damn, I didn’t know it felt like this, or could hurt so bad. That the dissociation was like living at the edge of a deep, dark void. I hated that. And missed everything else.

I felt so dysregulated when I came home, like so many things had changed for me, and we all just tried to go back to our lives as normal. Same as before. Same as it ever was. But it really wasn’t. What happened? Do you guys remember when this didn’t matter anymore? Do you guys remember when we connected across a pandemic and realized that WE matter? That it’s beautiful to watch the trees change with the seasons? That there are wonderful simple things we’re missing everyday? All those talks we had with each other? To connect and find common ground and understanding? Don’t you guys remember? Have I stepped into some alternate universe where all of that didn’t happen?

I felt completely crazy is what happened. The last time I was in this life my parents were still alive. All my friends were still here and doing ok for the most part. Now it felt like we had glued back the shattered pieces and some were far too broken to put back. Just some cracked, broken up thing with holes.

I thought I needed to leave. Move to a new city where I didn’t know anyone. Somewhere where the dating pool was wider and deeper, the architecture more inspiring. Maybe it was this place and this life and maybe I couldn’t be ok with it anymore. But that also sounded crazy—I really knew everything would follow me. And how do I leave my people? That felt like staring down a grief I was not ready to ever confront.

So I tried to find the joy and the beauty in that cracked, broken thing with holes. Wabi Sabi. Maybe it’s beautiful when the light shines through. 

Maybe that’s the real journey I’m still on. Maybe some others are on it too.

Some really good things happened the past few years too. I fell deeper into friendships that I didn’t think I would really be able to find again. I found family in people who I hope stay family forever. I have a little nephew now. And gained some of the best new neighbors when he and my sister moved down the street from me. I got licensed. I took some trips—smaller than the big ones I was writing about, but really, really awesome nonetheless. I saw Thom Yorke and Eddie Vedder and Cat Power and Kim Deal and Modest Mouse, and Dave again and again. And laughed so much with the people I love. That’s one of my favorite things to do. 

And I got better. I got way, way worser before I got better, but I’m doing a lot better. I don’t think I really knew how far I had wandered into a dark place. I got lost in the rooms and rooms and rooms of darkness. Endless, formless rooms. And it was a tough, slow climb out, and was not without therapy, medication, and a continued effort to unlearn and relearn, to rewire my brain for self-kindness, gentleness, softness, patience, etc. Learning to give myself some grace. And everyone else all of those things too. Accepting the things that were; accepting the things I have control over; accepting the things I don’t. Some days I’m better at it than others. We’re all just trying to figure this damn thing out. And I’ve learned nobody really, actually knows much of anything for certain. And I don’t trust anyone who says they have it figured out, though I still desperately seek guidance and advice from those I trust who are willing to give it. Trying to find comfort in the unknowing. And I think there’s maybe quite a bit of excitement in there too. 

I always trusted my body. My body was strong. I knew I could train it to run many miles, to sprint, to be on a soccer field for 90 minutes in a Memphis summer, to walk up, down, and through San Francisco and Chicago and Manhattan and Europe, to bike and hike and all the things I wanted and needed to do. But I never really trusted my brain as much. Things I was taught that beat down everything I knew in my heart; things I was told were right that weren’t; the unlearning and relearning and unlearning and relearning again. It was all so confusing. How could I trust it anymore? I still don’t sometimes. Sometimes I’m afraid to cry and sit in sadness or frustration for fear of being stuck there for an indeterminate amount of time. Maybe this is the time I can’t pull myself out. But I think maybe the ability to unlearn and relearn and continue to improve means my brain is strong like my body. Maybe it means I can continue to grow in kindness and patience and grace and love others in bigger ways than my brain was taught at some point along the way. Instead of those endless rooms of darkness, I’m trying to step outside into the sunshine filtered through the trees. Been trying. But now I can see the sun out the windows.

And now it’s April 2025.

I’m 34 now, which seemed ancient a few years ago. And if you were to ask me as a child what my life would look like in my thirties, I don’t know that this would be it. Well, I know this wouldn’t be it. But it’s pretty awesome. Maybe better and more different than I really could have imagined then.

I don’t have any huge life altering trips planned. Yet. But I think I’m going to try to pick this back up. I thought maybe ten or so people I was really close to would read this, but I’ve heard from so many kind people who loved reading this. It really was fun writing it too. Therapeutic in a weird way. I was fortunate to be able to connect. 

My wings are wide. See y’all out there.