Verbal Excursions

My partner of five years and I called it quits in the middle of cross country RV road trip. We had left our home and our families behind, sold everything we owned, and launched this expedition together – and then nine months into it, one random summer day in Northern Idaho, he told me it was over. Due to financial restrictions and shitty circumstance, we agreed to travel together for several weeks before finally going our separate ways. I’ve taken to calling this The Exodus.

It was a long trip. And because I was not the one who initiated the break up, it was also completely fucking brutal. It wasn’t horrible – there were definitely times when it was good – we were happy and had fun and I would even forget that this was our break-up. And then the moment when that reality resurfaced was like having a tooth pulled – only instead of going to the dentist, let’s pretend that it’s your best friend removing this tooth, with zero anesthesia. Using an ice pick and a hammer. While they tell you that really, this is the best thing for both of you.

So, it was that pain that drove me into the woods. We had camped the night before, and today was the day we would be leaving. We were on the final stretch – just a few days left to go. And he made me a peanut butter sandwich, and the ratio of peanut butter to jelly was weird, and I was just about to ask him if he would make it differently for me next time, when I realized that it didn’t matter, because it was the only peanut butter sandwich he would ever make for me. There would never be another peanut butter and jelly sandwich shared between us, ever. And it was silly and it was lame and I couldn’t even tell him why my eyes were suddenly teary – because this was exactly the sort of thing he would have no patience for. So I stood up and walked into the woods. And I kept walking until I found the biggest tree I have ever seen in my life – and next to this tree was the stump of a smaller tree. And I sat down in the sun, just outside the shadow of this enormous tree, and I cried.

I cried from a place so deep I didn’t even know it existed. I cried so long, and so hard, that the crying stopped coming from inside of me, and instead stood up out of me and became it’s own thing. I cried so intensely that when the crying finally stuttered to a halt, my guts had been wrung out. And in the place where that crying had come from, there was all this space. All this empty, quiet space. And I rubbed my swollen eyes, and sniffled a few times, and realized that where I sat, the silence was profound. Every tiny leaf rustling, every bug buzzing, was precisely audible in the midst of this tremendous stillness. And I stopped sniffling, and I let the composure of that place seep in through my pores – and it was so serene. I stayed there for a long time, letting that tranquility settle into the hollow left behind by those tears – breathing it thick and deep. Inhaling it with the smell of old wood and deep needles and the soft smell of peaceful decay… recognizing that this is just the smell of compost. It is the old, being made new.