The company I keep
It's not enough to experience the world solo
Today’s accompanying tune: “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” by Green Day
Though we are just rounding the corner towards the fourth quarter of 2024, I feel I can claim victory on my year of why not, the year of saying yes even when I want to say no. For nearly nine months, I have taken the trip, gone on the hike, met the friend, driven the miles, run the races, hiked to the lakes, taken the leaps of faith, sent the email, made the phone call, gone out on the limb, booked the ticket. As I’ve written previously, I wanted to take advantage of this season of life, the one with few obligations at work or at home, to be able to do things I couldn’t ever otherwise manage to do. See people I rarely get to see. Train for big athletic goals with sessions that would have had to occur in the middle of the night to accommodate my old job. Take risks and watch their benefits roll in. All of this I did, am still doing.
Saying yes to so many things has rewired my brain in a way I never could have imagined. My anxiety has ebbed to levels I can never remember it respecting, effortlessly encouraging the organic growth of the laid back attitude I had claimed to have had for years, though then it was simply an aspiration. It has gifted me presence, the ability to simply be in a range of situations, emotions, geographies. While sitting lakeside at 12,000 feet. While stuck indefinitely in San Francisco International Airport during a worldwide computer outage. While meeting some of the most important people in my life. All of it, a gift.
And yet, last weekend, that all came to a grinding halt. I bailed on a trip I was enamored with, a mountain that I adore, an adventure I had dreamed of in waking and asleep. I simply couldn’t stand the thought of making the hours-long drive, alone, up my favorite highway yet again. Of spending hours in total and complete silence, of not using my voice for hours, maybe days. Of the relentlessness of my thoughts, the inability to share any of them with another human. Of the summaries I’d share once I returned — the trip was lovely, it was difficult, I had a wonderful time — mere blips in comparison to my lived experience, the gulf of misunderstanding so wide as to refuse to be forded by anyone else. Because as enchanting as my year has been, it has also been starkly isolating and increasingly lonely.
The illusion was shattered, the fever broken, the tide turned. I am not unfamiliar to myself — I am very comfortable with my own company, and generally think pretty highly of my alone time. My thoughts are not hiding among the pit of ravenous lions as they once were — they instead guide me along paths whose endings I may never find, paths filled with light, with shadows, with vistas, with dense brush. Being alone with my thoughts was something I craved, a generosity I rarely afforded myself in previous years. I could make sense of things, I figured, once I had put enough miles between that version of myself and this version, the one here today. The one who feels most seen by her four-legged roommates, who spends endless hours giving herself pep talks, motivational soliloquies, little bribes masquerading as treats. She is the one with the introvert tendencies, the isolationist, the cerebral thinker more likely to put pen to paper than vibration to voice box. She’s the one who observes, who notices, who makes note of, but rarely, if ever, speaks up.
I’d attributed my lack of motivation, waning energy, and general discontent to my travel schedule. I hadn’t been home for more than two weeks at a time since December last year — surely, that was the culprit. I’d crossed time zones in the air and driven hundreds of miles, maintaining a grueling training cycle all the while. I was spent, depleted, gassed, pooped. I had overreached, my eyes bigger than my calendar, with my hopes circling us from above. Surely, it was another case of burnout, I figured. Another case of too much, too soon, too often. My ability to push myself revealing itself to be just as much a hindrance as a benefit.
But then, my partner offered to go on a hike with me. It was a training hike in preparation for what I hadn’t yet realized was my ill-fated dream trip into the mountains. A long day — nearly 20 miles with more than 5,000 feet of climbing. I originally planned — if you can really call it that — to wing it, to drive to the trailhead the night before, get a few hours’ rest in the car, and set out to spend the next several hours with my thoughts and hopefully few mountain lions. It wouldn’t be fun, it wasn’t supposed to be fun. It was simply another box to tick, another weekend spent in pursuit of the next one. Once my partner offered to go, however, we glammed things up a bit. We booked real overnight accommodations. Sent the dogs to doggy camp. Packed and prepared and strategized. It wasn’t until we were sitting on the deck of the room we’d rented near the trailhead, absolutely demolishing bowls of macaroni and cheese, that I realized this was what I had been missing, the energy I had lost. The excitement that comes with living life alongside others, even if only for moments in time.
Simply put, I was tired of being alone all the time. My reserves were running low, nearly empty. I could only push myself with the little fumes I had left, though even those were losing steam. The rest of the year stretched on, a hazy shimmer on the horizon. It was full of big objectives, ones I was objectively excited for but couldn’t bring myself to want to do alone. I was tired of being alone, going it alone, pushing it alone. I needed a new soundtrack, a new playlist, something other than my own tired thoughts that had gotten me this far. I needed an infusion, a jolt, a reawakening.
With that, I still reason I can do just about anything. I can recover in time for a race in October. I can salvage the remaining weeks of backpacking season and hopefully squeeze out a few more nights in the backcountry. I can get on another plane. I can make time for everyone, including myself. I can remain present, remain marveled at this season of life, remain tethered to a world I was only floating away from. I was just waiting for someone to throw me the buoy, so desperate was I to grab on.
So again, I begin yet another search for balance, though I am getting the feeling it will be as winding a search as to be my companion for the rest of my years. Maintaining my own world, my inner monologue, that fiery incessant drive requires a healthy dose of time spent in others’ worlds, alongside people I adore and trust and can’t wait to know even better than I do at this very moment. Without them, there’s not much to it, really. No Type 2 encounters to recount, no friendship lore that develops. No inside jokes, no growth, no difficulties overcome. No way of making the realities of being myself available to those around me. No way to know that the only thing that will revive me after 15 miles is one of two things: a Precision Nutrition Big Daddy pouch (naming mine, unofficially) or a handful of Nerds gummy clusters. No way to know that the best distraction on the trail is to ask a cascading series of questions that get more absurd the longer they go on, bonus points if you include a Taylor Swift reference. No way to know, just by a look, whether I’m struggling and how to right the ship.
In all honesty, I thought, earlier this year, that I was combating my loneliness, my isolation, by hopping on planes and spending weekends away. That my loneliness was a physical place instead one firmly rooted inside my own head. I can’t be lonely, surely, because I was seeing friends and family more often than ever. I was doing more than ever. And, of course, I was sending my mental state so far off balance that, once upright, I felt tilted. And so, with the remaining few months up in the air, I hope to regain a bit of what I’ve lost, revitalize my waning energy and enthusiasm, rediscover why I love the things that I do. Alongside those I love.
Here’s to not always doing it alone.
- Megan