Tonight I walked the same neighborhood I've walked approximately 5,000 times in the past five years. My neighborhood, full of the mismatched bungalows and hundred-year-old trees covered in ivy and soaring into the sky. Walking is my escape when I can't bear to be in my house anymore. Things get intense, the stress builds, I put on my shoes, and I walk out that front door and just keep walking.
When I'm by myself, I walk out of loneliness, or to think the thoughts that need open spaces to formulate. When I'm embroiled in a toxic relationship, I walk out of loneliness, desperation, and despair. I'm suffocated, and I have to just get out.
When I got to the end of my street tonight, I quite literally thought about walking and not stopping until I reached the Pacific Ocean. Deciding this was, perhaps, just a tad foolhardy, I contemplated up and leaving - leaving my dogs, books, piano, bed, clothes; packing whatever I could fit in my car and just going. I'd lose everything I owned, but I'd gain freedom from the man in my house, the boyfriend who stole into my life when I was at my most vulnerable last year, and who I can't get rid of even though he causes me incessant, soul-searing unhappiness. Because I'm simply too weak.
I walked down the familiar paths. But unlike the other 5,000 nights, tonight I heard something that caught my ear. Well, technically something caught my eye first: I saw a guy standing under a streetlamp, and he was tall and vaguely good-looking, and I'm still so goddamn vulnerable I was immediately interested. I saw he was talking to a group of people, and I passed by.
But halfway down the street, I thought about going up to this little group of humans and seeing if I could join them. Even if just for a moment. I was so lonely, the yearning to interact with any person at all was intoxicating. But the thought filled me with terror. I'm a social creature - when I'm dolled up, have drunk myself into believing I'm beautiful, and have backup by way of friends. Tonight I was in baggy shorts and a tee, wearing dirty pink sneakers, my hair pulled back to reveal a truly magnificent zit. I don't walk up to strangers in groups, ever - especially not when I look like hell.
So I hovered in a little group of trees, where I could observe unseen. I hovered, and I listened, and that's when the woman's voice caught my ear. "I'm just in pain. So much pain, and my only options bring more pain." She couldn't have said anything more fitting to my life right now. I wanted to plop myself on the steps beside her, take a drag of her cigarette, and commiserate.
I stood there for several minutes, trying to get up the gumption to walk over there and ask what this group was. A year ago, I never would have. But tonight, I found myself walking toward them without even meaning to. I introduced myself and asked what the group was, and exchanged smiles with the tall, vaguely good-looking guy under the streetlamp.
Up close, he was shorter than me and hardly good-looking, but his eyes lit up with kindness as he explained this was a 12-step recovery program for alcoholics, and they'd love for me to come to a meeting and see what the group is about.
As I walked away, I whispered gleefully, "I did it!" This was courage, to me - the ability to walk up to a group of humans, uninvited, when I was smack in the middle of ugliness and pain. It's strange the things that become courageous to us when we've lost everything, and are rebuilding our lives out of the rubble.
