I fell asleep outside last night. I am someone who falls asleep outside now.
Not for very long though. I was looking at the stars, sitting in a reclining chair at the bottom of one of the small dips in my yard. The sun had barely set but it’s dark out here, they pop up quickly. It’s like your own personal planetarium.
Sometimes when I see something so beautiful that I can’t even believe it’s real, I have this twinge of sadness. I usually ignore it and hope that one day it goes away.
When I woke up outside, I had that same twinge but it brought with it the memory of the last time I could see so many stars, the last time I fell asleep under them.
We were in Joshua Tree.
The first time I saw the desert was on the back of a motorcycle, riding from Prescott to California. We spent time with my Mamaw in Santa Monica. We saw Tyler Childers in Inglewood. We spent three days in Joshua Tree at the end.
When we were in Santa Monica, I thought back to the last time I was there. I wrote about it, even. It was when I was looking at the ocean and thought about how nice it would be to walk in and let the waves take me. I was, obviously, so fucking miserable at that time in my life.
When we rode by, when we went to that same beach, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to see it all again from these eyes. It was so healing that it was borderline overwhelming.
We went to the national park. I had seen the desert landscape from the back of the bike but seeing it up close was something else. It was just so fucking funny. I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at anything in the desert up close but I would absolutely recommend it. I couldn’t stop pointing at things, dying laughing and saying, “What is that? What is this? Look at that guy!”
I hadn’t laughed, really laughed, in months. But I couldn’t stop. In between my gales of laughter, he told me the names of the plants and animals. He showed me how to climb up a rock face and he scaled up a tower of them. I was too nervous to try after I slipped at the bottom.
Later that night, we laughed even more. I laughed so hard that I couldn’t get any words out. Everything was just so fucking funny.
That night was the first time I had ever really seen the stars. Laying on our backs, he pointed them all out to me, he told me their names and we counted the ones that shot by. He showed me how to identify satellites and planes by their lights. He showed me how a few stars can become a whole constellation.
It was the first moment, the first place, that I felt like everything could be okay again.
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with nature. I had old science textbooks I would spend hours looking at, realistic stickers of bugs all over my desk. I lived in the city so I had a small backyard but I was always out there poking around and trying to identify the different bugs and animals. I collected worms and threw a fit when I had to wear a dress that couldn’t get covered in dirt. I was usually by myself but I was always on an adventure.
The best times were with my Dad. He knew so much about the woods and he showed me it all. He knew how to bait the hook, where to cast and he knew how to follow the creek bed. If I was an adventurer, he was the tour guide. I was just happy to be traipsing around at my dad’s side in the underbrush. I liked to be taught things just as much as I loved learning them.
When I was in Joshua Tree, he knew everything about the desert. He knew his way around, it was all familiar to him. As he showed me all of it, I was just happy to be traipsing around at his side. I liked to be taught things just as much as I loved learning them.
You can see the parallel I’m making here. I didn’t see it until I started typing it out, to be quite honest.
I always loved to learn and adventure by myself. But it was my Dad who really knew how too. He was the one who paved the way, the one who knew where to go and how to do it. He was the brave one, I just tried to be.
One night, we were riding bikes. He was doing tricks and I followed him trying to do the same. It was fun until my tire hit the curb and I fell face first into the pavement, scraping off quite a bit of the left side of my face in the process. I cried until I went back to my mom’s house. Trying to follow in my Dad’s footsteps, trying to embody his fearlessness, ended in my own pain.
I feel like I can feel that scrape on my face.
When I was looking up at the stars last night, I remembered being too nervous to follow my partner up the rocks in Joshua Tree. I thought about how I got bolder once we got home, following in his footsteps, climbing trees and sitting on our roof.
I forgot how pure I felt back then, how I felt like the best version of myself. Being with him, living in our house in the country and going on all of our adventures brought me back to that sense of childlike wonder. It brought me back to how it felt to be stomping around in creeks with my Dad, nothing to fear, as long as he led the way. It felt like coming home.
It felt like everything could be okay again.
Until I fell off my bike. Until he tried to go out the same way my Dad did. Until all those same wounds got ripped right back open.
I spent a summer remembering how it felt to be walking in the sun, nothing to fear, with my Dad by my side.
Somehow, I had forgotten how the story ended.
It took a few years after my Dad’s suicide for me to really grasp the fact that he had died. I didn’t really understand the true pain it left me with until I almost experienced it again with my partner. I understood it even more when I found out I was pregnant a week later. Carrying my own child, I couldn’t escape the gravity of it.
The summer didn’t last long. It was always brief back then too.
The winter my Dad died, I didn’t try to be brave. I didn’t think I could do it by myself. I was too afraid to do it without him showing me how. I let my face heal and then I packed up all of my adventures into a box and I put it away in a spot where I could act like it, and my Dad, had never existed.
This spring, I wanted us to move out west. I begged him. We were dying in Indiana, it was sucking the life out of us. I thought it was our only chance, the only way we could get ourselves out of the deep dark hole we had found ourselves in. I thought if we just moved, everything could be okay again.
I am embarrassed to say that I begged him to come with me even after everything blew up.
But when it did, I had to make a choice. I knew after everything that happened, I couldn’t stay in Indiana. I couldn’t pack it all up in a box and pretend it never existed.
So I didn’t.
I went to the first place I could remember feeling like everything would be okay, the first place I could see the stars. I went where he showed me.
I went out west.
This summer, I built the life I had begged for.
I was my own tour guide and my own adventurer. I kept climbing rocks after I slipped on them. I learned the names of all the plants and animals. I caught the scorpions in my house. I found my own place to sit and watch the stars. I cried when I scraped my knees, I cleaned my own wounds and I watched them as they healed.
I can tell you quite a bit about the desert. I can tell you when the prickly pears produce fruit, when the saguaros bloom. I can tell you which holes have tarantulas in them and which ones have kangaroo rats. I can tell you about how calcite comes up to the surface after it rains and why. I can tell you which feathers in my collection came from what bird, which shed came from what snake.
I am walking in my own footsteps, paving my own way. I have become who that little girl, happy at her Dad’s side, always wanted to be. But this time, I’m the brave one, not just trying to be. It’s an inspiring story, of course, it’s my story and it is all true.
Sometimes it just feels like something is missing.
When I am traipsing around, there’s no one happy to be by my side. When I learn something new, there’s no one here to share it with. There’s no one here to laugh with when I say, “What is that? Look at that guy!”
When I see something so beautiful that I can’t even believe it’s real, there’s no one here to look over and know they’re seeing it too.
I built the life I begged for. I built the life I chose.
Being brave just doesn’t always feel the way you thought it would.
