Rose
I'm two days into the Trans-Catalina hike, and everything hurts.
Not in a dramatic, I've made a terrible mistake kind of way.
More in a you sit at a desk for a living and thought buying expensive boots counted as training kind of way.
My calves are threatening mutiny. My shoulders are convinced this backpack weighs eighty pounds, even though I packed it myself and know for a fact it doesn't. Even my ponytail hurts, which feels excessive.
But it's worth it.
The trail climbs another ridge, and Avalon disappears behind me again.
Even after a few months on the island, it still surprises me how quickly the town falls away.
One minute there are coffee shops and golf carts, and then suddenly it's hills, ocean and some bird screaming at me from somewhere up the canyon.
I've been living on Catalina since I left Los Angeles. Every morning, I drag myself onto the balcony for yoga with an instructor who insists the goal isn't flexibility, it's presence. I still think she's making that up. She calls it centering. I call it torture with a view, but I keep showing up.
I've stayed off social media completely. My phone spends most of its life in a drawer. Once a week, I turn it on long enough to text Michael that I'm okay, tell him I love him, and read whatever he sends back before calling Jade for the monthly updates and switching it off again.
I started regretting the way I left almost as soon as I started feeling things again, which took a few weeks. I know I hurt him. I hurt everyone. I was cold and distant and surgical about my exit, and the people who loved me got treated no differently than the board.
But I was in survival mode. I was barely functioning, and the woman who walked out of that apartment wasn't capable of doing it gently.
I understand that now.
I'm working on forgiving her for it.
Recovery has been deeply inconvenient. I keep waiting for Dr. Campbell to hand me a checklist. Sleep eight hours. Cry twice. Drink more water. Congratulations, your emotional firmware has been updated.
Instead, it's mostly repetition. Walk. Talk. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.
The first few weeks were painfully boring. Coffee on the same bench. The same walk around the block. The same market stop. My brain needed routine, but I also needed to relearn that a day didn't have to be packed full to count as a day.
Now look at me.
Dying on a hike.
Oh, how far we’ve come.
Both Dr. Campbell and Dr. Knowles come out to the island once a week for my sessions. They're very well compensated for the trouble, and the arrangement keeps a healthy stretch of ocean between me and my old life. He promised he'd stand with me in the flood. Turns out that included a ferry.
There are no board meetings out here. No press releases about anyone's cock. No brother needing a fire put out, no contracts waiting for my redlines, no one standing in my doorway with a problem they've already decided belongs to me.
Just me.
It's been a long time since just me didn't make me reach for my phone.
I pull my water bottle from my pack and take a long drink before checking the trail map. Three more miles to camp, which is manageable assuming my legs don't resign before I get there.
A tiny fox darts across the trail and disappears into the brush.
"Smart," I mutter. "Run while you still can."
The silence out here isn't what I expected. I thought I'd feel lonely. Instead, I mostly feel quiet.
Back home, every minute of my life belonged to somebody else. A client, my team, the board, Michael, whoever had the latest emergency. There was always something that needed fixing.
Out here, the biggest decision I've made all day is whether to stop for lunch now or wait until the next overlook, and I like that more than I expected to.
Somewhere along the way, I started measuring my worth by how needed I was. If nobody needed anything from me, I didn't know what to do with myself.
That's been a fun little discovery.
I adjust my backpack and start walking again before my legs decide to stiffen up.
Three more miles.
I can do three more miles.