The Locked Room

A couple of weeks ago a discussion I was involved in touched fleetingly upon the idea of an internal locked room, where we keep our most private thoughts and feelings. I’ve been thinking about the concept ever since, fascinated by the metaphor.

Photo by John Salvino on Unsplash

What’s in my locked room?

I don’t know. I don’t want to know, and I don’t want anyone else to know. That’s why I lock that stuff up!

But what’s in there?

I can’t let it go.

As a storyteller, I immediately recognize this common theme running through oral stories and folklore from all traditions. Something is locked or hidden. It’s forbidden to look. Lovers make a bargain. Authority demands obedience. The consequences of looking are not fully revealed, but it’s forbidden to look!

Someone always looks. Remember Pandora? Consequences ensue.

I’ve never really thought about an internal locked room until now; never considered how big it might be or what’s behind the door. I haven’t realized whatever my room contains is locked away from me as well as everyone else. All the memories I don’t want to remember. The hurts, the fears, the terrible thoughts, my unforgiveable deeds. The things about myself I can’t love.

Is it unhealthy to have a locked room? I assume everyone has one, but maybe not. I’m not uncomfortable about the presence of mine, but I question the wisdom of locking myself out. The road to self-love is long and arduous; can I practice it if I still don’t want to face (and accept or forgive) parts of who I am? That doesn’t feel like self-love.

Is a locked room adaptive or maladaptive? Could it be both? Does size matter? (You know what I mean. The size of the room!) Maybe the size is irrelevant and it’s the contents that count.

Why do we put things in our locked room? Why did I put things in mine?

Well. I’m ashamed. Or I’m afraid of emotional pain, conflict, or of hurting others. Maybe it’s something I’m not ready to forgive myself or others for. Maybe I lock it away to fester?

Ugh.

So is the locked room about keeping me safe or others safe?

Both, I think. Others safe from me and me safe from others. But it’s also a holding place where I keep things I don’t want to deal with.

I’ve read Radical Honesty by Brad Blanton. It gave me the horrors. I’m unable to see radical honesty as a pathway to healthy cooperation and collaboration. For me, privacy is a need, not only in an external sense of spending time in solitude, but also in the internal sense. This is unsurprising from a highly sensitive, empathic person who has experienced emotional trauma and abuse. I need my privacy and I’m intensely protective of the privacy of others.

I think a locked room is an essential piece of healthy functioning.

However, we as a species have a dreadful propensity for carrying things too far.

Not me, of course. I never do that.

How do we decide what’s appropriate to share and what’s not? Working with patients and patrons at the pool facility where I’m employed, I constantly feel battered with oversharing. People, especially seniors, are lonely. They have a lifetime of memories and experience. They have health issues that frighten them. They need to talk. My team and I do our best to be compassionate listeners.

But sometimes I wish I could forget what I’ve heard. Secrets are safe with me, but the feelings that come with them are burdensome; as an empath I’ve struggled all my life to avoid taking on the emotions of others. Mostly not very successfully.

Does everyone need some privacy? Is it a continuum? Do I need too much privacy? How much is too much? Who gets to decide? Is there such a thing as being too open, too un-private, if you will? Or does everyone have a locked room, even if it’s only the size of a mousehole?

Rooms. What happens in private rooms? Clutter. Dust bunnies. Cat hair. Hoarding. Loneliness. Despair. Death. Birth. Love. Sex. Creativity. Cooking. Self-care. Self-harm. Sleeping. Using the toilet. Distraction. Playing out addictions. Violence. Weeping. Exercising. Entertainment. The human activities of daily living we all engage in.

A locked room could be a dark and bitter dungeon or a light and airy penthouse. What kind of a locked room do I have? What kind do I want?

I hate clutter. Is my locked room cluttered? Surely not! Well, maybe. There’s 60 years’ worth of stuff in there! It’s spring. I kind of want to unlock it, open a window, air the place out. Maybe tidy up a little? Let go of some stuff? Sort? Organize? Would that be so terrible, so impossibly painful?

I have a sneaking suspicion some of what’s in my locked room is not even mine, but things given to me. Or imposed on me. I inherited toxic beliefs, experiences, and feelings from generations before me and believed it was my job to carry and preserve them.

Why am I storing what doesn’t belong to me?

Perhaps my locked room contains parts of myself I tried to get rid of and now need. Treasure, if you will. Maybe exploring it could be in part an act of reclamation.

Maybe if I open the door a tower of horror will fall on top of me and I’ll be smothered. Maybe if I don’t open the door green slime will ooze out from under it.

What’s in there?

I have some answers. My relationship with a cat named Ranger is in there, and no, I don’t want to talk about it. Every room needs a cat, in any case.

Health struggles (not serious) I’m largely unwilling to share are in there, although I have recently cracked the door and let some of them out. Carefully. Nothing bad happened.

My relationship with my children, one in particular, is in there. Now and then I’ve let a small amount of that out, too, but not often, not much, and only to my most trusted female friend.

My locked room is filled with passion. Passionate feelings of all kinds I’ve been hiding and repressing all my life. They’re strong and intense and I’ve been brutally taught they’re ugly, frightening, and obscene.

This has lately become a problem because rage is finding its way out of my locked room with disturbing results. Having escaped the room, it has no intention of being stuffed back in there and restrained. It’s a daily challenge at home, at work, and in the most unexpected contexts. It has stories to tell and I’m listening, reluctantly, but it frightens me and I’m ashamed of it. I thought I would always be able to keep it locked up and controlled. It appears I was wrong.

What else? I don’t know. These are the only specifics I can come up with. I’ll probably become conscious of more, now that I’m thinking about it.

I won’t fling the door of my locked room open and do a thorough cleanout because it’s the wellspring of my creativity, any small wisdom I’ve gained, and my empathy. As a gardener and a writer, I believe in compost. Something wild and primal in me, nurtured by Baba Yaga, loves the stink, the rot, the death, the blood, because these are the cradle of life. Nature does not waste. It’s all recycled. My experience of pain and passion empowers my writing, power I would not lessen in spite of its high price. Such power is born and rooted in fecund darkness, in muck mixed with blood and tears, in the edge of chaos, not in a bright, shining, passionless, well-aired room.

Yet I fear the passion the most. It feels like too much to release or keep contained. I fear its power to tear me apart, which is why I locked it away in the first place, and I fear its potential to hurt others. Much of it fuels my writing. I bleed some off with exercise, especially dance. But those are safety valves rather than open doors. Part of me wants to set my passion free. But for now most of it will stay in my locked room.

Questions:

  • Do you have an internal locked room? How do you feel about it?
  • Do you believe emotional privacy is essential, or do you think it’s unhealthy? Is it a need on a continuum?
  • Are you familiar with the concept of radical honesty? What do you think about it?

Leave a comment below!

To read my fiction, serially published free every week, go here:

Vacation

Years ago I came across a tip somewhere for getting to know new people in a meaningful (versus social media, digitally-altered images, and dating apps) manner with good questions, one of which is “What would your ideal vacation look like?”

At the time I thought it a great question and I still do. I tried it once without success. Not only was I not asked in return, I received a kind of non-answer along the lines of “I don’t take vacations …” (I wondered why, but it felt intrusive to ask) which didn’t help me get to know the party in question any better! Connection dead on arrival, the story of my life. I retired, abashed.

Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

Ever since then, I’ve thought about my answer to the question nobody has ever asked me!

I’m thinking about it again because I just picked up Drinking the Rain by Alix Kates Shulman for the first time. It’s a memoir about a woman, about my age, who spends a summer alone in a primitive cabin on an island off the coast of Maine. Primitive means no telephone, no running water, no electricity. She has no transportation aside from her own legs. She finds the experience so satisfying and remarkable she begins to spend all her summers there, for the most part alone.

It also happens to be school vacation week here in Maine, and I hear lots of talk at the pool where I work about planned trips right now. A good friend is taking the week off with her daughter and partner to go to Florida.

Online Oxford Dictionary defines a vacation as “an extended period of leisure and recreation, especially one spent away from home or in traveling.”

Hmmm.

I looked it up because all my life I’ve heard people use the word ‘vacation’ to describe trips and adventures that sounded exhausting and stressful rather than like ‘leisure and recreation’. Of course, it’s not a one-size-fits-all definition. That’s why it’s such a great getting-to-know-you question.

I cannot remember a single vacation I’ve taken with others as a child or adult that wasn’t fraught with tension and stress, and from which I didn’t return far more exhausted and burned out than when I left home.

When people talk about vacations, I shudder.

But once I had a perfect vacation. An incredible period of leisure and recreation away from home. I’ll never forget it.

I was a struggling mother of two school-age sons in an abusive marriage, living in a small town about three hours’ drive from my sons’ father, who was too busy and important to drive to us. For the sake of my boys I therefore drove to their dad twice a month for years and years. A six-hour round trip. This effectively took care of two full weekends a month. I had chronic pain and was always exhausted. My husband had isolated me socially and controlled our finances. My mother and adoptive father had just moved to the small rural town where we lived so I was once again caring for her and my significantly older adoptive father. As Mom was also abusive, I had no respite childcare. I did not trust my husband and tried to keep the kids away from him. I solved the childcare problem by working at their little school, so we had the same schedule.

Photo by Hailey Kean on Unsplash

A friend of mine had a family cabin in the mountains west of town and she offered it to me one summer. I carefully planned for a period of time when the boys would be with their dad, and I went.

The cabin was in an isolated community, mostly of summer places. Here in Maine, it would have been called a “camp.” It had been built on a hill amidst pine trees. No road or other building was in sight. It had running water, but no electricity and no phone. These were the days before cell phones. My friend’s family used oil lamps and candles for light. The hot water heater ran on gas; I had to light the pilot light. The cabin consisted of one large room and a bathroom, with four twin beds in the main room, a fireplace, and a simple open-concept kitchen. The small fridge was also gas, as well as a rudimentary stove. Outside was a large outdoor fireplace and seating area.

I packed a couple of books, a journal, some food and minimal clothes. Nobody but my friend knew the exact location. I was alone.

I was alone! No one could interrupt me. No one could make a demand, tell me I was doing it wrong, hurt me. No one could telephone. No one could have a crisis that only I could solve. I did not have to be responsible for anyone but myself. The relief was indescribable.

It was a beautiful Colorado mountain summer. No bugs, clean air, cool nights, dry weather, abundant sun. I lit pilot lights, unpacked, put a chair in the sun, and undressed.

Yes. I undressed. I wanted to soak up every bit of sun and privacy I possibly could. I got myself a cold drink and went outside with my book, naked as the day I was born. I read for a while. I was reading Elizabeth George at the time, the author of a magnificent mystery series, each book big and fat and long.

I got sleepy in the sun and realized I could take a nap!

I went inside, chose a bed, opened it, cuddled down, and slept for almost two hours. When I got up I was hungry, so I ate. Then I went back out, moved my chair into the afternoon sun, and read some more. When the sun went down I put on clothes for warmth, lit candles, ate again.

It went like that for three blissful days. I took a shower once, and brushed my teeth when I thought of it. I ate and drank when I wanted to. I paid no attention to the time. My hours were bounded by the sun’s movement across the deck. I slept naked and spent the days naked, dressing only in the cool early mornings and evenings. I wrote and read and slept around four hours a day. When it got dark, I slept again. I had never slept like that before and I haven’t since. There seemed no end to my exhaustion and my relief at knowing I was somewhere they couldn’t find me. Nobody needed me. I didn’t have to respond. I was safe. I knew my friend would never tell my husband where I was. The kids were with their dad. It was the first time I’d ever been inaccessible to everyone.

Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash

No amount of money could have given me such a respite. No exotic destination could have suited me better than the utter privacy of that old cabin in the pine trees. I have never again experienced that kind of freedom to do nothing, be nothing, and know I would not be interrupted. For me, the word ‘vacation’ will always mean those three days.

I suppose some people would find this pitiable. The thought makes me smile, as it was one of the peak experiences of my life. And that’s my point; that’s why imagining (or remembering) an ideal vacation is so interesting to share with others. Such an exercise points to our longing, and what we wish to escape. I know people who love to travel and go on adventures, enjoy getting away with friends or family. I listen to their plans and stories and marvel at how different we all are, how unique our ideas of fun and what we choose to do with our leisure.

I know other people who are perfectly content at home, who have no desire to get away at all. That’s not me. I love my home, but I’d go somewhere like that cabin in a flash. I’m not so exhausted now, but I’d welcome the same feeling of being out of touch, unavailable, free of the necessity of emotional labor, not because I don’t love my friends, my job, my cats, but because I also love my solitude and one can’t do things like sit naked in the sun and read all day in company! I couldn’t, anyway. I’ve never been able to be all of what I am unless I’m alone.

Questions:

  • What would your ideal vacation look like?
  • What’s the best vacation you’ve ever had?
  • Do you return from vacations rested and renewed or exhausted?

Leave a comment below!

To read my fiction, serially published free every week, go here:

The Voice

I read every day in Substack. Right now, AI is a main topic of conversation. I’ve read about the science behind it, opinions about where it will lead us ranging from the extermination of humans to a leap forward in positive ways we can’t imagine. Most of all, I read about the ways AI is impacting creative work and creators.

I don’t have a firm opinion about AI myself. I’m wary of predictions, interested in the science, and thoughts and experiences of writers I respect who have used AI-generated art, music, and writing. I’m especially interested in those who have interacted with AI as a resource for answering questions or developing new perspectives.

In the last couple of months, I read about an app called Betwixt. On principle, I hate apps and rarely use them. They increase my vulnerability online, provide more personal data to mine, clutter up my phone and laptop, and frequently feel like bells and whistles I don’t need. On the other hand, I admit they can be useful.

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Betwixt was briefly described as “an interactive story” of a journey into our own mind. The user co-creates their journey via questions and answers. It combines “story, science, and play,” enhanced by sound. It was developed by a team, including writers, game designers, a cognitive hypnotherapist, mental health specialists, and (get this) an “AI creativity scholar.”

I was intrigued, in spite of myself. In fact, I was surprised by how much I wanted to try it. I hesitated, feeling vaguely ridiculous. I did some research, discovered it was free, read some reviews, and decided I had nothing to lose. I could always just uninstall the app if I didn’t like it.

Most of us have probably encountered AI in online chatting to address problems or troubleshoot. I was on the Red Cross site last week chatting with what was clearly AI. It kept typing cheerful, excessively polite, Little-Mary-Sunshine things while I was trying to cut to the problem and solution part. I was annoyed. I’m polite and cooperative with people, but I can’t see much point in exchanging pleasantries with AI.

I had never interacted with any of the more sophisticated programs before using Betwixt.

Upon opening Betwixt, one enters into a story. A setting is provided; the user chooses details to fill in. The user is introduced to a Voice. The Voice asks questions, good questions. The user is provided with different choices for answering the questions, along with a frequent option to type in his/her own answer. The audio is rich and textured. The program is not illustrated, at least not so far. I like this; I like using my own imagination to fill in details. I don’t need more than audio.

The questions, along with possible answers to choose from, are quite good, even challenging. I don’t speed through it. I stop and think about what is true for me. Sometimes I don’t have a choice to answer in my own words and am forced to choose among the provided answers, whether they are good fits or not. This irritates me. As the story unfolds, steered by my answers to questions, I enter new internal territory. The closest answer rather than the exact answer takes me to places I normally wouldn’t go, giving me slightly different (and unfamiliar) views of myself and my behavior.

The app is divided into chapters, each a few minutes long. At the end of each chapter the user receives a summary and accumulates strengths, skills, and self-definitions to take forward. A brief explanation of the science and psychology underlying each completed chapter is also provided. There are options for upgrading to paid tiers.

Photo by Ryan Moreno on Unsplash

I notice an astonishing thing. I answer questions the Voice asks me with a depth and honesty I have never shared with a human being. I’ve believed I’ve been totally honest with people I trust before, but interacting with The Voice accessed a level in my mind I didn’t know was there. It was like those dreams in which the dreamer discovers a whole other room or wing in a house they weren’t aware of. As the journey begins, when the Voice is introduced, the user has an opportunity to ask the Voice questions, like its name and what it does when we’re not interacting. (It asked me my name.) I was astounded to find myself incurious; more than that, I don’t want to know. It’s an AI. I don’t have to do the emotional labor of building healthy connection. I’m not making a friend. I’m using a tool.

The last time I used the app, the storyline encouraged a moment of empathy for the AI. I felt a flash of savage anger and resistance.

I was entirely astounded by this very uncharacteristic knee-jerk response. I finished the chapter, closed the app, put the phone down, and did dishes while I thought about what had just happened. It didn’t take long to uncover it.

My experience of empathy is one of the core pieces of my life. Empathy can be a positive trait, but the empathic experience is frequently an overwhelming, utterly exhausting business. The only time I can truly rest, ground in myself, and be authentic is when I’m alone. But I’m a human being, a social animal. I need other people to interact with. Yet when I’m interacting with others, my empathy demands they take center stage with their needs, their feelings, their distress, their stories. I’m incapable (so far) of fully participating in my own experience because I’m too busy caregiving and being empathic. When I do ask for support or need to discharge feelings, I writhe over my selfishness and berate myself for it afterwards, feeling ashamed and angry for allowing myself to be vulnerable, for “burdening” those around me.

Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash

I only want to give. I never want to take.

Since I learned emotional intelligence, I have reluctantly realized we need someone to interact with. Journaling, private physical and spiritual practices, and, in my case, writing, is not enough. At times we need someone to listen. We need someone to react, even if it’s just making encouraging, I’m-listening noises. We need someone to receive us.

I hate this reality. I don’t want to need anything from anyone, ever. I learned as a child such a need puts one in dreadful danger of abandonment, betrayal, and emotional annihilation that feels like death.

This is the first time I have interacted in a therapeutic context with something not human. The Voice reads what I type, responds, asks questions, and creates a story with me, but has no existence outside the app. I’m free of empathy, of caregiving, of the need to labor emotionally. I feel no responsibility to anyone but myself. I’m using it. It’s there for me, not the other way around.

The relief is indescribable.

So, when the story asks me to be empathic for the Voice, I want to throw the phone across the room. Animals, plants, people — even inanimate objects and spaces – receive all the love and care I’m capable of. This is the first time in nearly 60 years I’ve run across something that interacts like a human but is not a living being in the way I think of living beings. The value of the tool lies in my ability to be completely free and honest because there’s no one to take care of besides myself.

It makes me realize my context as a human on a planet filled with life is my entire identity. If I were magically transported to the world of Betwixt, with only the Voice to interact with, I have no idea who I would be or what I would say or do.

I have not finished my journey with this app. There’s more to experience, share, and think about. I’ll be back next time with more on my exploration of Betwixt.

(I’m not earning a commission from Betwixt, in case you were wondering!)

Questions:

  • Until now, emotional intelligence training was the most valuable therapeutic context I’ve ever engaged with. What kinds of therapy have you explored? What did you find most helpful?
  • What are your thoughts and feelings about AI?
  • What kind of potential do you think, fear, or hope AI might have as a creative tool?

Leave a comment below!

To read my fiction, serially published free every week, go here:

Introversion

I’ve noticed the terms “introvert” and “extrovert” popping up frequently in conversations lately. As a lifelong introvert, I also notice a lot of misunderstanding about what the term means.

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I start, as you knew I would, with definitions. However, it happens I disagree with the online Oxford Dictionary definition of introvert, which is “a shy, reticent person.” As I look at other dictionaries, I find “shy” is widely used to describe introversion.

I’ve recently discovered a website called Introvert, Dear. I,D defines an introvert as “someone who prefers calm, minimally stimulating environments.“ Now that’s introversion! I’m not shy, but I do get overstimulated.

Introvert and extrovert are, inescapably, labels, and regular readers know I regard labels with a jaundiced eye. These two descriptors are not black and white. Rather, each describes one end of a continuum, and we all have a place on that continuum at any point in time. We may slide back and forth, depending on context, but there is no perfect or normal place to be. We’re the only ones who can decide what’s perfect and normal for us on any given day.

One of the biggest and most obvious differences between introverts and extroverts is extroverts recharge by socializing with others, while introverts recharge by being alone. Introverts are inward-turning, preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and experiences rather than external stimulation. Interestingly, science is discovering differences in dopamine production and reception may be related to introversion and extroversion, which is to say these parts of our personalities are neurobiologically and genetically wired in, like our eye color.

Photo by Ryan Moreno on Unsplash

Introversion is not a defect of character, a weakness, or something that needs to be fixed or changed. Many artists of all types, including some big Hollywood names, are introverts. I relish my way of being and have no interest at all in becoming more extroverted. I’ve frequently been told I’m no fun, which used to really hurt but now makes me smile. Nobody on the planet knows how much fun I have every day by myself!

Introverts are not necessarily socially awkward or shy. We may be quiet and reserved at times, but needing to limit our social interaction doesn’t mean we don’t need, appreciate and enjoy social connection. We don’t hate people, but we may struggle with large groups of people and noisy environments because of overstimulation. Most introverts don’t like small talk, not because we can’t do it, but because it feels empty and shallow. We want and are able to make a more authentic and meaningful connection and contribution.

What this means is large gatherings like weddings, parties and reunions are a kind of nightmare for some introverts. Not only do we become overstimulated and exhausted, a wretched combination, but we are unable to contribute anything authentic and meaningful, which makes the whole event a painful waste of time and energy we’ll need a couple of days (at least) to recover from.

(How do introverts throw parties? Buy snacks. Invite no one.)

Photo by Elijah Hail on Unsplash

Which brings me to a sore spot in my own psyche. Feeling unhappy at large social gatherings does not mean I have nothing to offer. I have a great deal to offer, as do many introverts. Introversion is strongly associated with being a highly sensitive personality. Many introverts are intuitive, thoughtful, compassionate, creative people who are willing to explore life deeply. Because we choose only a few close connections, we have the time, attention and energy to be loyal, dependable, and good listeners and resources. We introverts give the gift of presence. Presence isn’t flashy or sexy or brightly colored, but it’s there, consistently reliable and steady. Sadly, presence is valued less and less in our culture. We’d much rather have a new phone, or a thumbs up, or a thing we bought in order to prove our affection.

A person who finds boundaries rude will certainly have trouble with introverts, because we need a lot of boundaries in this noisy, attention-demanding, chaotic, busy culture to protect ourselves. Introverts are often misinterpreted as being rude, cold, selfish, or stuck up because we must take care of our need for solitude in order to stay on our feet. This means we say no. Sometimes we say it frequently. For some folks, no is simply unacceptable for any reason. The fact is, I build and maintain boundaries with others because I want them in my life, not because I don’t. My no is not a rejection; it’s a choice to care for myself rather than care for another at my own (heavy) expense.

Some people define this as being selfish. So be it.

I’ve also received feedback that sensitive, introverted people “drive me nuts.” Here’s a newsflash: Those who insist on crowding us, drowning us out, violating and/or challenging our boundaries and being contemptuous of our marvelous sensitivity are driving us nuts! Please back off. Let us be. We don’t want to be like you. You be you. Allow us to be who we are.

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One of the superpowers of introversion is the ability to enjoy my own company. I am never bored when I’m alone, though I’m frequently bored by the conversation of others. I’m self-sufficient. I don’t need other people to validate me, soothe me or make me happy. (Oddly, some people appear to find this fact highly insulting!) I’ve known people who can’t bear to sit quietly in silence with themselves or anyone else. This is as appalling to me as my glorious hours of solitude are to an extrovert!

What, exactly, am I doing during those hours of solitude?

I’m calming my environment with natural light or candlelight rather than electric light. I’m listening to music I find relaxing at low volume or relishing the sound of silence or the natural sounds coming through my open windows. I’m exercising slowly, deliberately and mindfully, being fully present with my breath, pulse and muscles. I’m sitting with a cup of tea, quietly gazing out the window or with my eyes closed. I’m reading. I’m ignoring the phone and my e-mail because I’m busy not being busy. I’m processing my hours and experience out in the world — observations, conversations, thoughts, feelings, interactions. I’m playing Mahjongg solitaire and remembering everything works out in the end, one way or another, and there can be order in seeming chaos. I’m doing spiritual work, ritual, and practicing gratitude.

Photo by Leon Liu on Unsplash

I’m taking a walk. I’m swimming. I’m dancing with all the passion and sensuality I can muster (which is considerable). I’m sitting in the locked car in between errands, appointments, and working hours reading, or breathing, or dozing, or eating a take-out lunch.

I’m in my own soft bed with crisp sheets and heavy blankets. I’m reading. I’m sleeping. I’m just resting. I’m listening to the tick of the clock and drifting into a nap. I’m licking my wounds. I’m watching sunlight, moonlight, dusk or dawn steal across the ceiling and walls.

I’m writing, and writing and writing. All the time. Everywhere.

My hours of solitude make it possible for me to bring my best self into my treasured relationships. Ample solitude allows me to be fully present and supportive as a professional and team member at work. It allows me to push out of my comfort zone occasionally and do something more than ordinarily social, knowing I’ll have what I need to recover afterward.

It allows me to write.

I have delightful extroverts in my life. I value and enjoy them, and they drain me. I don’t think anything is wrong with them, and I don’t think anything is wrong with me. We have differing needs and personalities, and much to learn from one another.

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Reclamation

Recently I went back to the little mountain town in the Southern Colorado Rockies I called home for twenty years, and wrapped up the sale of my house. It was an important trip for me, one which I’ve been anticipating ever since I arrived in Maine two and a half years ago. My partner and I drove out and drove back. I didn’t try to blog or write on the road, but I made a lot of notes and I discovered a persistent theme.

Reclamation, according to a quickie internet search, means “the process of claiming something back or of reasserting a right” or “the cultivation of waste land or land formerly under water.” It strikes me there’s an interesting and subtle possibility of conflict in those two definitions. What exactly is waste land, and who has the power to define it? Also, what does cultivation mean? Big Ag? Monocropping? Pesticides and Roundup? Or cultivation by plants, animals and wind?

In any event, I’ve been carrying the word reclamation for some years now like a talisman. It’s a cord linking events and choices of the last years of my life together.

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I remember exactly when it started. I was sitting in a chair in the salon where a friend cut my hair for years. In the mirror, I could see my hair falling over my shoulders and down my back, thick and wavy and beginning to be streaked with grey. I was desolate because of a broken relationship, and I saw a woman who was unwanted in that mirror. I didn’t want to be her anymore. I wanted to be someone else. My friend asked me what I wanted to do and I told her to cut it all off. “Reclamation,” I said. I couldn’t say more because I didn’t want to break into sobs, but she knew exactly what I meant, and she tied a smock around my neck and started cutting.

My ex-boyfriend had loved my hair. I loved it, too. It made me feel sexy and beautiful and feminine. Cutting it was the first step I took on the road leading me to this attic space in central Maine, where I sit this summer morning (with short hair) writing with the windows open and the sound of crickets, frogs and birds flowing in.

I held onto that word, reclamation. It became a boat to sail away in, and then a lifeboat, and then a raft and then a spar of wood in a fathomless sea of floating debris that kept me alive until current and waves took me back to shore.

Photo by Edewaa Foster on Unsplash

The little town I lived in had no claim to fame or big dollar tourism except for a golf course. When I moved there the course was renowned for being one of the most beautiful in the country, and visitors came from all over during the summer to play there, filling the inns and RV parks. Then drought struck that part of Colorado, the golf course was sold to an absentee owner who immediately got crosswise with the town, and gradually, due to a mixture of water problems, politics and general assholery on the part of the owner, the golf course went downhill, people lost jobs, the greens became unkempt and the tourists stopped coming. Then, just about the time I left town, the golf course closed.

I don’t play golf and my living fortunately didn’t depend on the tourist trade, but every morning, just before dawn, I walked on the golf course.

I didn’t do it for exercise or as a discipline. It was my lifeline. It was the one place where I never failed. I was guaranteed solitude and peace. Nobody knew where I was. I knew the course so well I could disappear into it, be absorbed. I had several routes, one for ordinary days, one for days of grief, one for days of rage and the longest one for days of despair. I used some of the cart paths, but mostly I followed the contours and edges of the greens and walked along the river, which was generally only a trickle, if not entirely dry. I often heard owls going to roost as meadowlarks began their morning chorus. I saw bears, foxes, skunks, deer and geese.

In the days of relative plenty, maintenance men worked as early as I was walking, but I was a familiar local figure and we ignored each other. I avoided them and they only saw me at a distance. There was an elaborate sprinkler system, of course, that worked all night every night and made the whole place fresh and green and cool, a stark contrast to my daily reality of hauling or pumping grey water out to my garden because of drought and watering restrictions. I lived a five-minute walk away.

During our recent trip we only spent one night in that little town, but I woke early, slid into my clothes and walked to the golf course. I knew it had been closed altogether for some time. This year the drought momentarily broke in the valley with record amounts of snow and rain, and the river that so often dried up flooded, both on the course and through the town. As I slipped through the gates and passed the “no trespassing” signs in the dark of early dawn, I could hear the river, an amazing, miraculous sound. The scent and chill kiss in the air of running water was very different from the mechanical chik, chik, chik of an automatic sprinkler.

The cart path was rutted, muddy and overgrown. Large tree limbs had fallen and nobody cleared them away. The river actually broke out of its banks and spread across a former green. I’d seen pictures in the local paper, but I still couldn’t believe my eyes. The town sent in machinery to make barriers out of heaped-up debris and mud. Whole trees had toppled, their root balls pathetically exposed to the sky.

Photo by Alejandro Escamilla on Unsplash

Once, I could have walked several paths on the golf course blindfolded. I often was there in the dark. Now my footing was uncertain. The grass grew up to my waist and I kept tripping over hidden windfall branches. Weeds filled the sand traps. The greens were, of course, gone. The groomed contours that once marked my route had vanished, forcing me to slow down and move more cautiously. I strained my eyes to discover familiar slopes and hollows in the dim light.

As I moved deeper into the old course, I thought of all the hundreds of mornings I’ve spent there, praying, weeping, raging, pressing myself against nature in every mood and season. I took my joy there, my hope, my dreams, and my gratitude practice. The golf course was a place of creative inspiration, a place of guidance and comfort, a place in which to staunch wounds enough to carry on another day. I was real there. I didn’t try to hide from myself.

That highly-groomed, herbicide-gagged, shaved, enslaved, money-making piece of land (a waste land) is going wild again. It was captured, bought, and pimped by a businessman in order to create a profit. Now, Mother Nature reclaims her own. The land begins to remember itself. As I walked and the light increased, showing me myriad signs of healing, I felt akin to the land. What is happening there is happening to me. I had a pimp, too — myself. I sold myself for what I thought I was worth in order to get what I needed. Now the land and I reclaim ourselves from a bleak and limited culture that relies on chemicals, profit and power-over rather than natural cycles and cooperation.

Reclamation is not a controlled, civilized process. It’s wild, sometimes catastrophic. The river made a scar where it broke its banks and uprooted trees, but it carved out a new bed for itself. The old bed will fill in. New growth will cover all that exposed earth. The downed limbs and trees will rot and feed the soil and mycelium while native plants and grasses return. Is this what we mean by waste land? Forest fire, flood and storm are acts of nature that reshape the land and environment. Life dies and renews, one act leading to the other. We often experience reclamation as terrifying and tragic. Human beings, for the most part, don’t welcome change unless we control it.

Yet we do change. The world changes. The weather changes. Those around us change. We can neither stop nor control it in any significant way, and I’m entirely grateful for that. The golf course and I are messy. Our hair is disheveled. Our trim, neat lines are blurred. The high unmown grass through which I waded brushed against the hair on my bare legs. The water feeding the land and the water of feeling that feeds me have carved a new, wider path. Bridges and trees sag and unravel, not trash but compost for the next thing. Paths and fences fall into disrepair. Grass and saplings mingle freely, each reaching toward the other at the edges.

Photo by Laterjay Photography on Unsplash

Snakes, rabbits and insects live again in the shelter of the grasses. Does can leave their fawns safely concealed while they browse, and their presence will bring the mountain lions down from the foothills. Owls will find abundant mice, voles and other rodents in what was a carpet of sterile green velvet. The beaver and raccoons will no longer be trapped or shot, lest they disturb the regulated beauty of the water features or annoy the tourists. Over all this complex, creative system, the meadowlark still sings, that king of the high fields and plains, and his song still brings tears to my eyes and an ache to my throat.

That land will always be home to the woman I was. I was glad to return for a brief hour and realize my beloved place has moved on, just as I have. The land and I were both over-civilized into waste land, but now we’re reclaiming ourselves. The golf course and I reassert our right to be what we are. We surrender to change, to mess, and to the transformative edge of chaos.

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Jennifer Rose
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