Out of the Woods

Chapter Thirteen

Thirteen

After I met Yvonne back at camp, she asked me to fetch my journal and follow her. Neither of us spoke until we reached the bottom of a hill, at least a solid five-minute walk away from the campsite and in the opposite direction of the field.

“So…” I say, admiring the sunlight as it filters through the canopy of trees above. I search my mind for a safe topic to start us off with, having already had my fill of uncomfortable quiet today. “Libby is great.” I aggressively swat a bug away and nearly lose my balance but regain it before falling.

Sarah 1—Nature 0

Unless you count the many, many bug bites on my butt. Then it’s more like, Sarah 1—Nature 8. That’s on me for having such a juicy ass, as Win would lovingly point out.

“She’s quite fond of you as well,” Yvonne says, not turning from the path ahead. Not that we’re really on much of a path at the moment. I’m fairly certain we started walking on untouched ground around the two-minute mark, once I started having to pull thorny bramble stems off my pants and sidestep to avoid what must be decades-old spiderweb colonies. I’m not a fan of bugs—but I don’t plan on being the Godzilla to their metropolis any time soon. “Libby rarely likes people so if I were you, I’d let it go to your head,” Yvonne adds, admiring a flower in her grasp before leaving it be.

The compliment immediately lifts my spirits. I was being polite and, for the most part, trying to start a conversation when I said Libby was great. But it wasn’t a lie. I do like Libby. I just didn’t expect her to have any sort of thoughts or feelings toward me. Especially positive ones, that is. We’ve hardly interacted. Still, it’s nice to hear. I’ll make a point to find her later. Maybe she’s into books. I try to recall what I was into at her age…Percy Jackson, probably. Ten would have been after my hardcore Anne of Green Gables phase, most likely. Had I ventured to Narnia yetor—

“Don’t tell her I said that,” Yvonne says, turning over her shoulder only briefly enough to roll her eyes. “She would hate it if I paid anyone a free compliment on her behalf.”

I chuckle, smiling to myself. “She’s at a difficult age,” I say, surprisingly defensive.

“Well, yes, and she’s had a difficult year,” Yvonne adds. “But then again, we all have.” She turns to duck under a branch. “And yet you don’t see me in a tizzy near constantly.”

I nod as if I have any understanding as to what a tizzy is. A bad mood, I’d wager to guess. “I was very sorry to hear about your daughter’s passing,” I reply somberly. The moment the words have left my mouth, I realize that I was perhaps not meant to know the reason for her “difficult year” and cringe.

“Ah, well.” Yvonne says it like it’s a complete sentence. To me, it is. I hear the emptiness that follows. The quiet, bitter resolve that only those who’ve known great loss can recognize.

“Thank you,” she says softly.

I choose not to press the subject. I’ve heard from Win, in her most recent experiences of therapy, that you’re apparently not meant to treat a counselor like your friend. So, I don’t pry, though every part of me instinctually wants to let her know that she could talk about it, if she’d like to.

“It is gorgeous today, isn’t it? That is one thing I certainly do prefer about Ontario over my hometown back in England: the weather.”

“Even the snow?”

She stops, considering. “I suppose not all of the weather.”

I huff out a laugh as we approach a moss-covered, rocky ledge that overlooks a valley. A stream below carves its path through undisturbed nature, and the treetops blow gently in the breeze like a rolling tide in stunning, varying shades of green. It is breathtaking.

As I consider whether it’s safe to go onto the jagged platform carved from stone, Yvonne jumps down onto it and sits on its mossy surface. By the time I hesitantly step out next to her and lower myself to sit, she’s already pulled her thermos out of her small crossbody bag. She takes a swig, sucking a breath through her teeth as the hot liquid hits the back of her throat.

“Tea’s still hot,” she says, sucking in air. I shuffle over to hide from the glare of the sun, careful as to avoid getting too close to the edge. “You know…Helen has made me this exact blend of herbal tea every morning for the past nineteen years without fail.”

“That’s very sweet,” I say, looking at the green thermos in her hands. The vessel reminds me of Helen, oddly enough. Sturdy, army-green, like it’s built strong and reliable. It looks out of place in Yvonne’s long, almost ethereal hands.

“It’s horrendous,” she says, turning to me with a stone-cold expression. “Like ground up dirt with a pinch of cinnamon.”

My surprised laugh falls out of me. “Seriously?”

She holds the tea out to me in offering, her grin mischievous. I take it from her, and sniff—noting that hint of cinnamon she mentioned but not much else. I take a small sip and gag as it dribbles out of my mouth and onto my chin as if my body is refusing to accept it.

“Oh my god!” I say, though with my tongue sticking out it sounds more like aumagad. I reach for my own bottle and drink water until my mouth feels properly cleansed and wipe myself clean, tea stains now blotching my white long sleeve shirt. “That is awful, ” I say with a breathy laugh.

Yvonne smiles knowingly, holding eye contact with me, then takes a long, gulping sip from her thermos.

“Stop!” I say, giggling. “You cannot drink that! You have to tell her.”

“I won’t,” she says adamantly. For some reason those two words seem to hold a lot of weight, making my response come slower.

“Why?” I ask softly.

“She means well,” she says, looking off into the distance toward the different species of trees scattered throughout our line of vision.

I do the same, bringing my knees to my chest as I take in the melody of birdsong around us. There’s a slight echo, the sounds of nature reverberating off the side of the cliff we’re sitting on. I can hear the hint of the stream below, and the subtle creaking of tree branches nearby. For an indiscernible amount of time, I get lost in it all.

“It really is beautiful up here,” I whisper, taking my first deep breath since last night.

“It’s certainly peaceful,” Yvonne agrees, setting her thermos down between us. “Not afraid of heights, then?”

I shake my head. “When I was a kid,” I say, resting my chin on top of my knee, “I loved climbing things. My mother said I almost gave her a heart attack every time we left the house. She’d blink and suddenly I’d be up a tree, or on top of the playground, a gentle breeze away from breaking an arm or a leg or worse…”

“I can imagine! Your poor mother.”

“But I loved being up high. I couldn’t get enough of it. My favorite part of the year was the carnival that came into town during the last week of summer vacation. I’d save everything I could during the year and spend it all on tickets to ride the Ferris wheel for hours. Whenever my carriage reached the top, I could look over our neighborhood and it was like…” My words fall off, as I close my eyes and feel the breeze on my skin, just as I had back then. “Everything suddenly felt small, you know? And I felt bigger. Older. Not so afraid.”

“And what about now? Up here…Do you feel bigger? Older? Not so afraid?” She repeats, lightly teasing.

I shake my head, forcing a soft laugh. “I feel…heavy.”

“This high up?” Yvonne tsks. “Well, it must be dire, then.” We exchange timid smiles.

I’m grateful for her levity, otherwise this would be entirely too awkward. “I think when a new perspective helps, it’s for external problems. Looking down and realizing nothing is that significant in the grand scheme of things. But this—these feelings—they’re…more internal. I’m not really sure what to do.”

Yvonne nods thoughtfully. “Well, I’d like to hear more about these feelings if you’re up for it. What is bothering you?”

“My identity, I guess?” I ask in case I’m wrong, which, maybe I am. “What to do, who I am, where I’m going. Your average existential crisis, I suppose.” I chuckle halfheartedly, but Yvonne doesn’t grin—not this time. I take it as my cue to really dig deep. “I feel like I’m in some sort of vise half the time…being pushed on by the past and future.”

“Elaborate on that,” Yvonne says, shifting to face me. “A vise is an awfully powerful image.”

“I guess it’s a bit dramatic,” I say, looking away from her.

“No, no, none of that. We should use powerful imagery for powerful feelings.”

I take a deep breath. “I have a hard time being present,” I admit. “I’m usually either dwelling on the past or worrying about the future.”

“And how would you say that affects your daily life?”

“Well, I have a hard time concentrating. I think—” I pause, blinking rapidly as I lean back onto my palms spread out behind my back, turning up to face the sky. “It can sometimes be difficult for me to feel grateful for what I have because I’m thinking about what I’ve lost or what I could lose. I feel directionless, because I don’t really know my own feelings or wants or desires. I just sort of live in some…middle. Not really pleasing myself or performing what is expected of me.”

“What do you feel is expected of you? Are these self-imposed expectations or do you feel that they’re external?”

“Definitely self-imposed. I think sometimes my issue is that other people expect so little of me.” Caleb, for one.

“And what expectations do you feel that you need to meet?”

I feel my eyebrows push together, as I close my eyes and search inwardly for an answer. I come up disappointingly empty. “I don’t know, really. Whatever they are, I think I’m failing.”

“Often, we measure ourselves against what we had envisioned as our future. What did you want your life to look like when you were younger?”

“I wanted to be an author,” I answer truthfully, feeling a sense of embarrassment as I imagine that sixteen-year-old girl with such hunger seeing me now, aimless. “I dreamed of writing in muggy cafés, fingertips sore from typing, and ink smudged on the side of my hand.”

“You know, most young girls dream of marrying Prince Charming or having a pet pony…”

“Oh, so younger then?” I ask, grinning. Yvonne nods. “Well, I remember wanting to marry Lance Bass…Mostly because my best friend called dibs on JC.”

“Oh, well, best not to tell little you about Lance’s proclivities then.”

“Twelve-year-old me was devastated…” I breathe out a laugh. “But no, little me didn’t really want much else,” I say, then sigh. “She was content. I suppose she imagined that she’d build a simple life for herself, stick by her best friend, and get by, like Mom had. The older version of me demands quite a lot, however.”

“Oh, she does, does she?” Yvonne pouts her bottom lip, nodding. “What does she want?”

“Mostly for me to get my shit together.”

“So younger you has simple dreams and older you has demands. Where do you slot in? The Sarah I get the pleasure of speaking with right now…What does she want?”

“Like I said, it feels like I’m between them. These two versions of myself closing in on either side and I’m stuck in the middle, not satisfying either of them…I…I just don’t know.”

“Interesting…”

“Will the men in the white coats be here soon to whisk me away?” I joke, scrunching my face up as I turn to face her.

Yvonne laughs and it’s surprisingly loud, unlike her naturally level voice. “They’d have to take both of us, then.”

I pause, my eyes flicking to her. “Really?”

“Yes,” she laughs, shaking her head as if it’s obvious—the insinuation of which sets me at ease. “I remember feeling it far more at your age, but I still have my moments. My god, I was a mess in my early thirties.”

“I can’t imagine that.”

“Oh, I absolutely was. I was traveling without a penny to my name, crashing on couches or staying in hostels. I had a slew of terrible breakups that almost destroyed me. I was convinced that I was going to be an artist but didn’t bother to pick up a brush. I never stayed still, never got a full night’s rest, never felt quite right in my body.”

“That first part sounds exciting though.”

“It was. It was also lonely,” Yvonne says, her voice low. She studies me, and I watch as her chest and shoulders rise on a slow, long breath while her eyes scan my features. “It’s not a surprise to me that you feel all this pressure. You had to grow up fast, Sarah. You were thrust into adulthood very young and tried your best to play catch-up. You had a lot on your plate and more responsibility than many of your peers. It’s natural that you still expect yourself to excel—you were used to being ahead of the curve. But you don’t have to be ahead. You don’t have to be extraordinary. You don’t have to do anything. There’s no shame in living a carefree existence.”

“I want to do something though,” I say, the threat of tears suddenly stinging my eyes and catching me by surprise. “I want to have something to look back on when I’m old. I want to make my life worthwhile. I want to be great. ”

“Great for whom? By whose standards?”

I instinctively go to answer but stop myself. My mom, I almost say. Because what was the point of all of Mom’s sacrifices if the only piece of her left in this world fails to leave a mark? She helped people, sure, but those memories will die with them. She never left her hometown. Hell, she didn’t even own a passport. If I wanted kids, maybe I could cross my fingers and hope that they’d go on to do great things—but I don’t.

“You have time,” Yvonne says—so simple I almost believe her. “You’re young,” she adds, in a tone that has a slight tinge of affectionate jealousy to it as she shoves my knee playfully. “Van Gogh didn’t attend art school until he’d failed at being a missionary at age twenty-seven. Harrison Ford was still a carpenter at thirty. Julia Child released her first cookbook at thirty-nine. Vera Wang didn’t design a single dress until she was forty.”

“But I’m none of those people,” I protest, my voice quiet.

“They weren’t those people, until they were. And, if I’d wager to guess, they probably still felt lost at times, even after all of their accomplishments. Humans are typically just stumbling through this life, making mistakes and trying again. Anyone who says anything different is trying to sell something.”

My ears perk up. “Caleb said that to me yesterday, actually—the selling something part.”

“I may be recycling some of the same ramblings I shared with him. He and I had quite a lot of time to chat yesterday on our hike.”

I scoff as if to say, So you see what I mean then. “Cay is so together. He’s like the most stable, steady, consistent person alive.”

“Well, he’s had to be.”

Those five words hit like five swift punches to my gut. “True,” I squeak, blowing out a short breath.

“That seems to be in his nature as well,” Yvonne says, dusting the dirt off her hands when she changes sitting positions, “to be a helper.”

“It is,” I reply. For me, for Win, for anyone he cares about— Caleb will show up to help however he can. The night of the fundraiser plays in my mind, the six words that followed my frustration… I was just trying to help. He was, I know that. Caleb was following our pattern. He hadn’t known differently, and I’d not asked him to treat me any differently either. “I worry that I’ve relied on him too much. He was so young when my mom got sick, and it would have wrecked me at the time but sometimes I wish he’d have called things off between us instead of having to grow up so fast.”

“But you were both young and in love. You didn’t know any better than to rely on him and he didn’t know any better than to stand by you,” Yvonne replies. “Do you believe he regrets it? That he’d change it, if he could?”

I shake my head no.

“A lot of people will say relationships are fifty-fifty, but I think that’s a load of rubbish. We all have seasons and periods where we require more from our partner. The trick to a long, lasting relationship in my professional experience is not getting stuck at a set percentage.”

I nod enthusiastically, though my expression remains somber. “I think that’s…I think that’s exactly how I feel. Like we’re stuck in these roles. The helper and the helped. The giver and the taker. The hero and the damsel in distress. I want to feel reliable. I want to give as much as I take.”

“And it’s the goodness in your heart that makes you want to break free of that. And the fact that you feel capable to take more on shows that you’re healing, Sarah.” She punctuates with my name as if she really wants me to hear her.

“It doesn’t feel like I’m healing…I kind of feel like I’m breaking open more than ever.”

“Often it’s darkest before dawn, my dear. You’re doing the work and that is hard. You’re here, aren’t you? Trying?”

I smile shyly, feeling some heaviness lift off me, like dropping my pack after yesterday’s hike. “I guess so.”

“When our perceptions begin to shift it is usually because we’re ready for something new.”

“But Caleb doesn’t want anything new,” I protest. “And I don’t know how to change when the person I love most wants things to stay the same.”

Yvonne nods thoughtfully. “Do you think Caleb is truly afraid of change or is he possibly afraid of what will happen if you don’t need him anymore? He’s found security in these roles, just as you once had.”

“Right…” I blink rapidly, absorbing her insight.

“Caleb briefly shared yesterday that you two aren’t planning on having children. Has that been a point of contention between you?”

“No,” I answer. “Before Caleb and I got engaged he’d asked me if I saw myself as a parent and was relieved that I felt the same as he did. It’s just not something I’d ever really wanted for myself. We’ve revisited the conversation a few times but have never contemplated it for long. I love hanging out with my niece, and I like being around kids, but I also enjoy going home to have a full night’s sleep in a tidy house with a white couch and breakable shit everywhere.”

Yvonne laughs dryly. “I can’t even imagine what a toddler would do to a white settee.”

“Truthfully, sometimes, in my most insecure moments, I’ve thought about having kids just to have something to fill my time or give me purpose.”

“I think far more people than we’d prefer to have done just that. I actually think it is quite impressive you’ve held true to your convictions in that regard.”

“Yes,” I say with mock pridefulness to my tone. “My IUD and convictions remain firmly in place.”

Yvonne laughs softly. “Glad to hear it.” She bends down and removes her shoes and socks, pressing her feet into the mossy earth below. After she seems to take some grounding deep breaths, she turns toward me. The corner of her lip twitches upward as she takes in what must be my skeptical expression. “I’d like us to try something together.” She stands up and offers me a hand to do the same.

I take her hand and lift off the ground, hesitant with my smile until she confirms whether I can keep my shoes on.

“Trust me?” she asks, voice teasing but assured.

I think I surprise us both when I take a deep breath of my own and say “Yes.”