This post is edited for errors, but not for anything else. I’m writing straight through this night, no stops.
This past Wednesday I gave a condensed version of everything I post here to a room of about 30 people to promote a small tour I am doing at summer’s end. I’m garnering looks with the extremes of my experiences on a bike to draw interest to the rural communities I’ll be visiting and staying in and telling their stories like I do mine. I wrote my script exactly how I write these posts- a little messy, but very honest. At the end, one man said “have you considered being a motivational speaker? Because you had this whole room glued to you.” One woman came up to me in the parking lot before I left to tell me how alone I was not, and she gave me a tearful hug. Twice. One represented a tangible reward for my reflectivity; the other gave me a spiritual one.
The critics in mine own mind are sourced from the people who moved through their lives with harshness. Endless criticism for what I wasn’t doing right, and relative silence for what I was. They shouted “I can’t help you, do it yourself.” Over time I realized that not only was that spray unfair and venomous to a teenager who was blockaded from normal development, but was also just not a characteristic of a family system that could stand on anything even distantly resembling love. None of them could exemplify anything that I wanted, so I never listened, but the scribe was still behind his pen. As I’ve said in past writing, I learned gentleness from its absence, but the sharp ridicule of generational abuses persists while I try to separate its fiery breath from my own. I heard so much automatic vocal feedback while I delivered my presentation that I intentionally paused after the heaviest lines to see if those moments singed them to any degree that they had me, because those past voices still gaslight me even though their owners are no longer in my orbit. They did. And so my speech was not just the retelling of a story- it was an active soldier in my internal defense. I learned that my experiences are unfortunately common, but still abnormal. And that paradox is what I’m currently chewing on while I go even deeper into my inner world because expressing its contents outwardly is not only what I feel purpose in doing, but is an act of combat when so many people haven’t yet felt capable of fronting theirs. Though, they will apparently come inside my fight with me without even flinching.
And so, I draw my sword again.
The power steering pump in my van sprung a heavy leak a little over two weeks ago. I kept the fluid topped off and was assured it would get me by in the meantime while I worked on the complicated logistics of getting a vehicle you live out of worked on with little time, little money, and few fail safes. I’ve had access to a vacant house to allow me some reprieve from all of the other complications of vanlife, but have been doing an excessive amount of driving between it and a new job. I’ve been moving so fast despite a breakup and residual move-out, and a PTSD attack during a huge race that resulted in bailing out, that the next part invites those voices to call back and say, “these are the consequences of your poor choices. This is what you deserve.”
Yesterday, I took the van to a garage to address the leak and form a plan. Four minutes after I pulled in, the return line on my power steering pump broke at a connection by just the touch of a finger. It had at some point, before I ever owned the vehicle, been sealed with JB Weld instead of being repaired properly. It held for six years at least, and I never knew. So here I am, now grounded in front of a bay, with no replacement pumps available locally until the middle of next week. I’m 20 minutes from work, and an hour from the house.
This saint of a mechanic, Jeremy, engineers a temporary hose connection with industrial-strength glue and a dream. He sends me on my way with a cautious optimism that it would get me through until a new pump arrived, and sent me on my way.
20-minutes later, my steering bricks up as I’m turning into the next town. I muscle it to the gas station down the road and again to my job just down the street (thanks for that at least, universe), but that location unfortunately leaves me no access to a shower at the very minimum. So I call for a ride back to the house, despite the cobra in my throat hissing that I am an inconvenience, a disaster, and that I need to get my act together. For the second time in a few weeks I go almost deadpan as my friend Aaro picks up, but the siege, and that cobra, descend on the base of the castle that has already been cracking and tumbling since time immemorial.
The ground keeps moving. The snake moves beneath black dunes and I am immobile with my blade across my chest. I bring you to ground zero as it plays out because I can’t afford one more bad step after all of these recent hits. I haven’t made a plan. I don’t know how I’m even getting to work, 40-minutes away, on Tuesday, let alone the days after that. All of my silver has been spent on the sword, and I’m so profoundly tired of holding it.
And the cobra is well fed today.
~
This is another interrupter. Trying to accomplish more than the basics when I keep bottoming out creates this dichotomy- an intense and automatic drive juxtaposed with the smell of smoke of another impending fight. If I’m going to have to keep doing that (I will), then I’m also going to continue weaponizing my awareness before I ever even reach the end. And I won’t reach the end, until I can no longer speak.
Part two of this post, ‘The Edge,’ is on the way. But I have to let its contents happen first, I fear.
I will the machine. 