Chapter 26 How to Eat, Pray, Love Your Way Through Minnesota
26
How to Eat, Pray, Love Your Way Through Minnesota
“What do you want to talk about today?”
It’s how my therapist, Denise, starts every session, though we rarely stay with the benign topic I present for long. This Thursday lunchtime session, just two weeks after my friend-tervention, is no exception. In the last two weeks, we’ve met five times, discussing brCA, Sam, and everything leading up to my full Into the Wild at the Mall of America. The two of us have dissected my relationship with my mom, now that I’m headed home for Christmas in a few days.
We’ve also discussed Adam, but the hurt feels too close up to look at it with any clarity. If therapy is a pair of binoculars, my breakup with Adam is a tree trunk two inches in front of my nose.
But today, I don’t want to talk about him, so I broach a more palatable subject. “I’m supposed to go on vacation next month, hiking through the Patagonian Andes.”
“Supposed to…,” she repeats with a smile from her Scalamandré zebra-print chair. Denise’s office aesthetic is Mental Health Whimsy, as if Wes Anderson and Esther Perel collaborated on a collection for Anthropologie. “What makes you say ‘supposed to’?”
“It’s supposed to be an incredible experience. Anyone would want to go on an adventure like this.” My lips curve up in one of those unconvincing smiles that Adam can spot a mile away.
“Do you want to go on an adventure like that?”
“I should want to. I know I shouldn’t do things just because I should want to, but I’m worried that if I pass up on this trip, I’ll always regret it.”
Denise is ramping up to something, but her poker face offers no clues. “Why is that?”
To stall for time, I take a sip of water. “I get that this trip isn’t me, but I still want to like stuff like this more. I don’t want to feel guilty for squandering an opportunity just because I won’t enjoy the trip itself.”
The word guilty rings in my brain like a bell, and I know we’ll be pivoting to my many other issues now.
Denise hears it too, but her face remains placid. “And what are you feeling guilty for in this instance?” she asks.
My eyes find the pilling fabric on my sweater sleeve. “Same as always, I guess. For being me. For being a homebody when I should want excitement and spontaneity.”
“And there’s a greater value to excitement and spontaneity than contentment?”
“Isn’t there?” I ask.
Her brow furrows curiously. “I generally don’t rank feelings.”
“There are no empowering memoirs about women finding contentment after tragedy.”
“I would argue most are about that.”
The brown leather armchair groans as I shift my weight. “No. It’s like, something awful happens and—rather than sitting in the debilitating sadness and fear—you fly around the world or hike the Pacific Crest Trail or sail around the Caribbean. Through the journey, you become self-actualized and a person worthy of happiness and success.”
“And contentment?”
“No. It’s…” I trail off.
“What happens to the sadness and fear? Do they dissolve into the ocean?” She smiles kindly. “Before your mastectomy, we talked a lot about sadness and fear. You were fearful of the surgery. You were scared they would find cancerous tissue. You were sad about the loss of your breasts. Where did those feelings go?”
“They didn’t find cancer, and the surgery went well, so the whole thing was moot. My mom was still getting regular scans, and suddenly, I never had to think about it. I shouldn’t have wasted time worrying about myself.”
“So you felt guilty you no longer had to have that fear anymore?”
I shrug. “Maybe. And I was still sad too, about losing my breasts, but I was so lucky. Being sad felt ungrateful.”
“And you didn’t want to ‘sit in the debilitating sadness,’ as you put it?”
“No. I didn’t want to feel that. I wanted to do something. It felt…easier.” I squirm, picking at my sweater. “But this trip isn’t about guilt. Maybe I haven’t clicked with the outdoors because of how solitary it is. Being surrounded by a group of avid adventurers could make all the difference.”
“Could you test that out?” she says, challenging me, because Denise is the kind of therapist who gives homework. “Go on a hike with friends who love the outdoors and see if that feels joyful to you? It might be worth a shot, before flying to South America.”
—
“But it wasn’t opening the relationship that broke us. It was the lies,” Russell laments, twigs snapping underfoot on this uncharacteristically warm December day, two days before I’m set to fly home for Christmas. Out on the trail that Russell chose for our Patagonia trial run, we’ve hardly escaped the parking lot and he’s already baring his soul to Chelsea.
“Nonmonogamy requires the deepest levels of trust,” Chelsea assures him. “But, Russell, a boundary you don’t reinforce isn’t a boundary at all.” Russell blinks like this conversation has unlocked a new level of personal growth.
The dawn light spills over the Mississippi River like flickering embers, and we climb the steep bluffs in search of the breathtaking views I was promised when I drove two hours south before daybreak. The devil on my shoulder argues we had the perfect view when we parked the car and everything we’ve seen since then has been more of the same, except now my right knee hurts, my cheeks are lightly windburned, and I can’t feel my pinky toe. Still, I am determined to see the positive.
“Oh! A goldfinch.” Chelsea points enthusiastically at a bird that looks like every other bird we’ve seen today. Since part of Denise’s requirement for this trial run was eager participants, I immediately ruled out Mara, but Chelsea and Russell have proven to be happy hiking partners.
“This is where I filmed my audition tape for Survivor . And Naked and Afraid . And Dating Naked . No, wait, Dating Naked I filmed over…there.” Russell pivots to point out a nondescript cluster of rocks. “Speaking of hot dates, how are you and my guy Adam doing? I added him to the Patagonia group chain, but he immediately left the chat. New record for him.”
The pot of coffee I chugged this morning sloshes in my stomach. “I wouldn’t know. We haven’t really talked for a couple weeks.”
“No! You guys? It would’ve been epic.”
“Russell, tell me about your current dietary restrictions,” Chelsea buffers, because we’ve never met a bulky, chiseled man who could resist fetishizing what he was depriving his body of to stay so bulky and chiseled. Between the small talk and bird spotting, she’s been running interference at every turn.
After exhaustively detailing his specific brand of keto—a rotation of boiled chicken, coconut oil, and starvation that would violate the Geneva Conventions—Russell disappears behind a curtain of trees.
“Can you believe this exists here?” Chelsea leans against amber-colored rock. “This was left behind by glacial melt from the last ice age. It’s been here for thousands of years and will be here for thousands more. This scenery is literally stepping back in time and into the future. It’s incredible.” Chelsea’s excitement echoes off the surrounding bluffs. Jealousy that she’s able to so easily enjoy herself out here twinges in my belly.
I uncap the water bottle clipped to my pack and offer it to her before taking a swig for myself. “Why don’t you want me to do this?” I ask, feeling the cold water travel down my throat. “You seem to love it out here.”
“I do. You don’t, and it’s not fun to watch you torture yourself. The worst part is, if you weren’t determined to make adventure your personality, I think you’d like it in small doses—a way to drift out of your comfort zone. Instead, you’re so angry that you’re uncomfortable. This could be a nice day with one of your best friends and the hottest man I’ve ever seen—like, he’s currently holding a branch, defecating, behind us, and I still haven’t ruled him out as a sexual option—and you’re not even enjoying it. You’re glued to everything you don’t like and criticizing yourself for noticing those things. Stop trying to have a life-altering epiphany in the woods and just have a pretty okay time with me.” She nudges me with her shoulder.
I smile, imagining what it could be like to feel things without judging my every thought. Then her earlier comment catches up to me. “Wait, he’s pooping?”
Russell jogs up from behind us, adjusting his outer layer. He accepts Chelsea’s proffered hand sanitizer with a wink before we’re back on the trail. We walk for an hour or so up steep paths of snow-covered rocks. Our ice cleats crunch with every step. The farther we walk, the more patches of limestone peek out from blankets of snow like a mouth packed with too many teeth. As we begin to descend, a droplet plops onto my nose. It’s slow at first, but soon the skies open up, and icy December rain is biting my cheeks.
“Should we wait it out?” I ask. The above-freezing temps felt like a godsend this morning, but I’d kill for snow right now.
Russell shakes his head. “We’re not far from the car. We should keep moving.” We keep walking, but the slippery, sloped terrain slows our pace. My foot slips in a flooded crevice and water seeps into my socks.
Coffee rebels in my intestines. “Can we take a shortcut straight down?” I ask with more urgency than I intend.
“No way, Mullally,” Russell shouts over the rain. “Not safe.”
“Can we pick up the pace then?”
Chelsea blinks off the water collecting on her lashes. “Al, we’re moving as fast as we can.”
“I have to…” I shift unsteadily. “Use the restroom.”
We stop, rain beating down on our shoulders. Russell tips his head in the direction of a naked, emaciated tree.
My jaw falls open. “You can’t be serious.”
“I did it,” he argues.
“And it was weird!”
“There won’t be toilets on our trip, and it’s going to rain. Like all the time.”
I point my head toward the ground, my soaked knit hat weighing heavy on my head. I wipe my brow, but the rain keeps falling to replace it. Dampness seeps through my water-resistant layers, rattling my frigid bones. “Why do people think this is fun? Am I crazy or are they?”
Chelsea leans in to pat my shoulder, but her foot slips out from under her. I lunge for her jacket, and she grabs at my arms, hood, belt bag, anything she can to steady herself, but we topple into the icy mud. My hip crashes against stone and my cheek scrapes against a frozen branch that might as well be an ice pick.
In the flurry of arms, my bag rips open, spilling its contents over the rain-soaked terrain. Emotion catches in my throat when I spot a small white disc. It’s my casino chip—the mate of the Mystic Lake chip from Sam’s bookcase.
An unexpected snort spits rainwater out of my nose, because that great memory couldn’t be more different from where I am right now. For one thing, we were dry. Stale cigarette smoke filling our noses, we overindulged at the buffet, shared drinks at the bar with a bickering octogenarian couple, and snuck into the amphitheater for Boy George and Culture Club’s sound check.
That day was nothing new and special to Sam. It was so…simple. I didn’t have to hide the nausea creeping up my throat at the top of a mountain bike trail or feign confidence rappelling down a rock wall. I was me the whole day—boring me—with someone I cared about. That’s what made it perfect.
Grief and joy grip my insides, because Sam didn’t keep that chip because it was an Instagrammable thrill that fit his “nomad aesthetic.” He kept it because it was real. He kept it to remember a great day with a good friend. He was a collector of great days, and I could be too, if I could admit that my happiest days haven’t been any of the adrenaline-fueled ones.
A happy day was that perfect first warm day in May when Mara, Chelsea, and I wandered the tiny beaches around Lake Harriet. Mara and I flipped a pedal boat, and we all ended up at Chelsea’s, watching romantic comedies late into the night.
It was starting the day doing something awful like packing up a bookcase or going to a dreaded doctor’s appointment and ending it in Adam’s arms. A perfect day was spending it with Adam as myself and absolutely no threat of nausea-inducing thrill.
Why am I forcing these grand adventures like I googled “how to Eat, Pray, Love your way through Minnesota” when my best days are filled with contentment?
Well, shit, Denise.
The familiar rock in my chest doesn’t pulse at the prospect of bailing on Patagonia. It’s not even a rock anymore—when did that happen? It’s more like a tangled ball of Christmas lights. You groan when you find it buried at the bottom of a box, because you know it can be untangled. You can’t justify paying $19.99 for a new strand when you know it’s possible to sort this strand out if you only try.
I have to start looking at what really makes me feel lighter, and if I’m honest, I’ve known for a while that forcing myself to be someone else isn’t it.
Icy ground squishes under my gloved hand, and I wipe my hair from my eyes, dragging the mess across my face. “I’d rather die than poop outside,” I burst out, because I can’t stand pretending a second longer.
“What?” Russell asks, his voice louder than before. The rain is slowing down to a merciful sprinkle. His eyes monitor me like I’m a rabid animal.
“And I hate parking lots. I won’t spend every day being paid to consider where people park so I can poop in the mountains on vacation.” My pulse is skyrocketing with adrenaline. I keep wanting to make myself fit this mold of a person I think looks right from the outside: the survivor. But I can only be me. “I can’t keep forcing it. It won’t make me better or worthy. It’ll just make me full of shit.”
“And you don’t want to shit outside,” Chelsea repeats. A smile dances across her mud-splattered face, her blond braid now a wet, dingy rope.
I grin up to the sky, leaning back against the frozen wall of sandstone. “Exactly.”
We make it down the rest of the hill, and even though mud squelches in my boot, my bruised hip throbs, and I’m pretty sure my lip is bleeding, I manage to enjoy the downward climb. Without my self-imposed pressure to make this hike the key to my enlightenment, the surrounding bluffs become what they always were: a beautiful, cold place to spend a day with one of my best friends. And Russell.
We find our cars in front of the mostly empty strip mall where we left them, and my heart smiles at the fact that I won’t be planning traffic flow in retail parking lots any time soon. With the drop in temperature, the rain’s caked onto our cars in a thin sheet of ice. Russell scrapes at our windshields while Chelsea and I relieve ourselves at the only open business: a zombie-themed escape room.
“The guy at reception didn’t even bat an eye,” Chelsea chuckles.
I pull a stick from my hair. “He must think we’re part of the cast.” We look a bit undead.
Back outside, I thank Russell for his part in my emotional epiphany. He presses me into a firm hug. “It won’t be the same without you, babe,” he says, I think sincerely.
We wave to him, and high on my own power, I shoot off a text.
11:11 AM
Alison:
I’m not going to Patagonia. Or taking that job. You were right about everything.
It’s not enough, but the things I need to say can’t be communicated over text. It’s an olive branch. Dancing dots appear. Disappear and then reappear. My heart is a pattery mess as I wait eagerly for his response. We can fix everything—I know we can—if he just responds.
11:14 AM
Adam:
No.
11:14 AM
Adam:
I wasn’t.
I wait for more, but more doesn’t come. My heart flickers like a candle burning out.
···
I step into my apartment hallway picking at the dirt caked on my jacket and find a familiar face sitting on my doormat.
“Rachel?”
“Sorry to show up like this. I have a sixteen-hour layover, and I wanted to talk in person. I was worried you wouldn’t answer if I called. Not that I’d blame you.”
“How do you know where I live?”
“I got your address from Adam.”
My body clenches. “You talked to Adam?”
“Not really,” she answers. “He wasn’t very chatty over text.”
My heart sinks as I shove my key in the lock. “I wouldn’t take it personally. Do you want to come in?”
She nods and follows me. Her eyes examine my limited seating options before she settles into a bistro chair in my kitchenette. I shrug off my stiff jacket and sit opposite her.
She eyes the dried blood on my cheek. “Are you okay?” I’m not sure if the question is asking after my current physical appearance or my general well-being, but it doesn’t matter because she keeps talking. “I shouldn’t have asked you to lie. I didn’t consider what that would be like for you.” Her jaw shakes and eyes swim with each word. “This has been the worst time in my life—in my parents’ lives too—but before Thanksgiving, I felt so…alone in it all.”
I clutch her hand across the table to steady her. “Would you like coffee? This feels like a conversation that requires coffee.”
Her face pinches in confusion until I reach my other hand out to my counter and pop a K-Cup in the Keurig without missing a beat. The joys of tiny living.
Her laugh is a warm breeze. “Yes, actually. I’ve been up since yesterday. Coffee sounds really good.”
I hand Rachel the full mug and replace it under the coffeemaker with another while she tells me about growing up with Sam. How they were each other’s closest confidants. How their parents were always anxious about their children’s insatiable wanderlust. She tells the kind of stories you’d share at the funeral of someone very old, where guests are capable of celebrating a loved one’s long, full life, rather than dwelling on the unfairness of a shortened existence in a numb stupor. It’s as lovely for me as it is cathartic for her.
“They loved us, but they didn’t get us. I knew I was never going to please them, so I figured why not drop out of college and become a flight attendant—travel the world as much as I could. Sam couldn’t disappoint them like that. He didn’t move out with me, even though we talked about it all the time. He lived in their condo and tried to be both people, but he just felt so guilty that he didn’t crave the settled life they wanted for him. That’s why I wanted you to go along with it, so he’d get to be both people. I didn’t realize it would feel like I was the only one mourning the real Sam. They were so fixated on the guy he wanted them to see and not the amazing person he actually was.”
“That must’ve been really lonely. I’m sorry I bolted as soon as it all came out.”
“No, that part was actually really great. Everyone left, and we were finally able to have a real conversation. It was…nice—healing, even. We’ve been seeing a family counselor over Zoom and working through it all together. I’m not sure we would’ve gotten there without all of this nonsense.”
A sad laugh tumbles from my throat. “I’m glad my mess accomplished something.”
“They know I asked you to do it. They don’t blame you.”
I press my forehead into my hand and feel my energy drain into the floor. “I’m not sure it was all so selfless. Sam dumped me because he realized I wasn’t the person I wanted him to think I was. Through all of this, a part of me got to pretend a little longer. Now I’m just me again. And that might not be so bad, but ‘me’ is…sad, I think.”
She lifts her mug, a small smile teasing the edges of her lips. “Welcome to the Sad and Lonely Club. Thrilled to have you.”
I take a restorative sip and—against all odds—feel a little happy to be just me. “Thrilled to be here.”