2020: Out of the Woods

Christmas passed like a dream this year, with peace and the most refreshing silence, surrounded by the most beautiful hills and the kindest people. From the short front porch in a rocking chair with a singing wind chime, I surveyed the little town on Christmas morning and deeply wished I didn't have to go home.

I also climbed to the top of Enchanted Rock, a huge lump of pink granite heaving toward the sky (the largest one in the US). I don't recommend walking up it in Dr. Martens and ankle socks, but the view from the summit was worth the blister worry and breathlessness. I didn't know this while I was climbing it, but it technically qualifies as a mountain!

I haven't written in a while. I don't live in the woods anymore. Circumstances dictated that my mom and I move back into the apartments I shared with her and my sister in 2016. I have no idea where my sister is. One night, I was walking to my complex's gym after work, and it was like I passed whatever essence of myself I left behind the last time I lived there. As if time stretched thin and I brushed past myself, a sad 19-year-old looking up at the overcast moon, wishing the friend I was crushing on liked me back.

This music is relevant again, too. It was Terrell's Christmas present to me, and thus invaluable. The song "To Build a Home" was my creative writing backdrop in the time right before I moved into the apartments in 2016. Fitting that it should keep me sane during my commutes into the city these days. For instance, a nasty woman in a white Audi almost hit me and then 
s t o p p e d  in front of me mid lane change, so I leaned on my horn and waited her out. I suddenly had all the time in the world to get over. 

No one out-pettys the Hut™. (It's me, I'm the Hut™.) 



Another song that has come back around for me from 2016 is Taylor Swift's "Out of the Woods." I only started liking her recently, during the whole licencing war with her label (to own her own music and all that jazz) before she won Artist of the Decade.

I don't know what it is, but the incessant yearning question, "Are we out of the woods yet? Are we in the clear yet?" and the speeding heart drums just get to me every time. 

I feel like I've been running just ahead of the next family disaster and asking that blasted question for years. And the moment I get to catch my breath, I have to ask it again. 

Moving to the Creek (out of the woods), to a place I can really call my own (because it has my name and my money on it), and making the most of any time I get with My Guy™ and his folks, feels like that moment when she says, "Good." Like I can finally stand still in the clearing, the dark yawning clearing that won't stop growing in my direction, and just breathe. The monsters don't always turn out to be just trees, but we keep going. 

Got up early on Sunday to go to church for the first time this year (heheh) and discovered it's not really a viable option for me on a consistent basis unless they get out before noon so I can recuperate. As I downed an obscene amount of caffeine, already worn out before a long day of work (which included standing for ten hours, hi), I came to the conclusion that traditional services tax me in too many ways. I don't sleep at regular enough times to justify taxing my body before work for tradition; I just don't. A quieter, more fulfilling alternative to the "do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together" command must needs present itself; I have no solutions for the moment.



That's all I have in the way of updates. Adulting is still hard, the little things are making a big difference, and nothing is the end of the world (unless I haven't had enough sleep)!

My view from the summit; John Ebdon is ebbing in and out of the clefts of those rocks over there.