You okay?

Keeping good company

Wanna take a walk together?

You’re walking with thirteen-year-old me, if you’re coming, and a friend of mine— also thirteen, also redheaded. We’re all walking along a verdant stretch of the Appalachian Trail in Middle Virginia. The green of the encroaching forest is so vivid it almost vibrates, though it might be the soupy humidity causing the air to wobble and shimmer.

High summer in Virginia is like being baked in a steam oven. It’s a great environment for bread, less good for people, but we have nothing to compare it to at this point. This is just what summer is for us— getting dropped off at a trailhead with a group of other dirty kids our age, leveraging our massive packs onto our backs, and then walking. Miles and hours and days of walking.

This particular stretch of trail doesn’t offer much in the way of fresh water, so we’re both carrying at least a gallon, maybe two. If it’s one gallon, that’s eight pounds of weight on top of our portion of the group’s food, our personal gear, and, if it’s our turn, a tarp large enough to keep the rain off all of us at night. If it’s two? You can do the math.

We are proud of our ability to bust hump, as we used to say, staggering under the weight of our packs every time we put them on, but secretly relishing the effort. What it requires of us, and what it says about us, that we can do this difficult thing.

Badass is what it says.

This particular stretch of trail may be lacking in water, but it makes up for it in rocks. The narrow stretch of unforested ground we’re winding along is littered with stones ranging in size from softball to soccer ball, all crammed up against each other. It’s nearly impossible to take a step without turning an ankle, or at the very least, stumbling, rushing precariously forward until we steady ourselves again.

Every time one of us stumbles, the other one mumbles, “You okay?” The stumbler responds automatically, “I’m fine.” This goes on for so long as we snake through the moist forest, the query eventually shortens to simply, “Okay?” The response becomes just, “Fine.”

A few more hours, and we stop even asking. Not because we’re too tired to care anymore. We just know what the other one is thinking. “Fine!” we declare into the silence as we find our footing again.

An actual Virginia trail. See?

This memory of burden, effort, and companionship came crashing back in this week, and I’ve been trying to ferret out why. What about it fixes my attention? What connects that moment to this?

Might it be the emotional rollercoaster? (Actual sign on the AT in Virginia)

Ten minutes after I saw the news that President Trump blinked on Tuesday night, choosing not to make good on his threat to annihilate an entire civilization, I was on a video call with a dear friend. I’d been crying pretty steadily at that point, overwhelmed with both relief and fury. She’d just finished her work day and hadn’t heard. When I told her, she bowed her head, holding it like a too-heavy thing. Her forehead filled the screen.

We grunted and groaned, just like that long-ago friend and I did when dropping our packs at the end of that endless day. No need to ask the question.

“Fine!” we declared wearily. Except this time, the actual words were, “Thank god!” and “Fuck!”

By the time I found myself stumbling along the Appalachian Trail at thirteen, I’d been worrying about the potential of nuclear war for a few years already. Marching past the Fall-out Shelter signs in my elementary school, singing and dancing in a production of a children’s musical about nuclear disarmament, the threat seemed ever-present.

All day on Monday and Tuesday of this week, I felt decades of accumulated worry weighing me down like water, gallons and gallons of it. I’m not thirteen, badass, and spry anymore, though. It hurt, that weight.

But the relief, laying it down, was the same as all those years ago. And so was my gratitude to be doing it in the company of one of my fierce women. I wouldn’t have survived the weight of all the intervening years between those years and these without the constant company of fierce women.

Maybe that’s why that long-ago, stumbling hike has been so front of mind the last few days. I needed to remember that I’ve always managed to do the hardest things by keeping company with fierce women.

Now, though, we’re all walking each other through these times. So, in the absence of physical presence to assure me you know I’m listening, regardless of gender, I have to ask the question explicitly:

You okay?

Seriously, are you alright, my friends? Are you eating real food, sleeping as well as you are able, and discharging stress from your body? Do you know how to discharge stress from your body?

Movement works— walking, running, dancing, stretching, jumping about— as my fierce friend reminded me on Tuesday night. In a pinch, a little bout of hand shaking will get you from one moment to the next. Singing works, too. Turn up the music really loud if you need accompaniment. Deep breathing helps (in for four, hold for four, out for eight, as many times as you need to). Orgasms work remarkably well, in my experience (and don’t require company).

Crying is sometimes the best, and only appropriate method. Real crocodile tears, if you can manage it.

I queried my folks about their favorite movies for having a good cry, because sometimes we need help to get started, we’re so pent up in order to survive. I suggested movies about underdogs triumphing as a theme, since those movies always make me cry. Their accumulated list, in case you need it: Mighty Ducks, Cool Runnings, McFarland, USA, Miracle, Bad News Bears, Breaking Away, Rudy, Remember the Titans, The Cutting Edge, Slapshot, Money Ball, Brittany Runs a Marathon, Hoosiers, Dream Horse, We Are Marshall, Invictus, Seabiscuit, And Me Before You, and A League of Their Own. And just for straight-up crying: Steel Magnolias, Terms of Endearment, Running on Empty, Lady Jane, and Biko.

I wrote to one of my fierce women after our Abuser-in-Chief inflicted his latest emotional rollercoaster upon the world, I don’t know how we’re supposed to survive three more years of this.

But what other choices do we have? Give up? Tune out? Hide our heads and hope we’re not the next on their list?

That does seem to be what they all want, to break us all, however that may express itself. And in response, I have to heave a tremulous, very tired, but resolute NO.

With my fierce women at my back, I say no. With me, and all of the rest of us, at your back, I hope you say no.

Take care of yourselves, my friends. Take care of your bodies. Take care of your spirits. Take care of your loved ones, and let them take care of you.

This trail will not break us as long as we keep each other good company.

Much love to you,

Asha