Labor Day Escape.

I’ve been thinking a lot about death lately. Not the act of dying, or the inevitable realization of death, but rather the slow grinding away of your soul that makes you wish for something to end it. And really, that’s all death is: an ending. So, I want my current life to die. Croak. Kick the bucket. Be dead meat. DIE.

Because I want this chapter to end. This painful post-college graduation that is so stereotypically depressing…mundane, mediocre, bottom-feeding job that pays nothing and drives you to drink and want to trash your life just because you loathe what you’ve done with it.

My hair is falling out. Thinning by the handful. Every morning, I wash my hair and have 20-30 strands staring back at me, tangled in my fingers and my towel and I can feel them in the fibers when I dry my skin and I feel like I’m killing myself. That the stress I willingly inflict is assuredly killing my soul, and how could my body not react to that?

My conclusion to all of this madness is: escape.

Two of my best friends, Milla and Matt, my M&M, and I went to Humbolt this last weekend. It was Labor Day, my last three-day weekend of the year, and Milla is moving to Colorado soon and Matt is soon going to join us working stiffs and it felt like the last glorious chance to adventure for awhile. I’ve never been that far north on the coast; when I drive to Oregon, I go through central California, so driving up the 101 past San Francisco was a new experience. We arrive in Arcata, the small town our friend Kelly lives in, and we’re immediately laughing and catching up and talking about all of the fun things going on that weekend. His band, Silent Giants, was playing a show at a local brewery…there was a blues fest by the bay, street carnivals, farmers market, art walk, et cetera. Too much cool stuff for such a small place.

I felt my blood pressure dropping. I felt the urge to sit under a tree and writewritewrite, anything and everything. I felt like the physical manifestation of a Walt Whitman poem, leaving the hustle bustle of the city life that I value so highly for the rural town that I need so desperately.

I’m going to move. I need to be a wild rural American for awhile. I need to feel like Whitman.

The next day, Saturday, we go to a Creperie and have the most delicious shit I’ve ever eaten (rosemary garlic mashed potato with artichoke heart crepes…be still my heart). We walked around for hours, enjoying the small city center and going to amazing little stores that had the actual owners behind the counters. We bought books and beads and banana fiber yarn and smiled small smiles at the hand-written receipts and calculator-figured sales tax, always rounded a few cents down to be an even number. Brandon had come down from Crescent City to spend time with us, and it felt like we 5 were just another happy bunch in a city seemingly full of laughing parents of so many (SO MANY!) children, dogs, hula hoopers, dreadlocked hippies, musicians, street artists. Chalk drawings are everywhere. Weeds spurt from every sidewalk crack because the soil is so fertile, no one can keep it at bay. No one seems to want to, and the absolute absence of that frantic, stressed, high strung feeling is leaving me loose and flowing, like a lava lamp.

I can’t stop hugging them. I feel like my hand is constantly reaching out to wrap around Matt’s arm and pull him close so I can bury my face into his shoulder or hugging MIlla to me and pressing my lips to her hair. I grip on to Brando and Kelly when I walk barefoot in the freezing sand at the shore the following day, sliding down the dunes and laughing so fully I feel like I’ll lose my voice from it.

We climb rocks and wander to the mouth of caves and drive through redwoods and look at an elk herd, all because it’s there and free for our eyes and souls to take. The redwoods are commonplace for most of the people in my car except for me, and the idea is starting to be planted that I belong in a place that makes me marvel at God’s greatness everyday. I need to go. To get lost. Get gone.

We lay in our beds Saturday night, Brando and Matt in one and MIlla and I in the other, and laughter starts erupting and rolling around the room in waves and I can’t imagine being with anyone else at this place at this time. It’s a living breathing heaven. A vibrant soul burst of joy. Everything that makes this world beautiful and worth working for.

I’ve realized that death is staring me in the face every day. It’s the crazy trucker, the guy who casually talks about my impending rape, the tweakers who threaten to kill me in my office…the meek way I have to dismiss them makes me feel like death and I are in a staring contest and I’m averting my eyes because I’m not really living. I’ve never averted my eyes from a challenge in my life. Something needs to change, or I’d be the one changing, and I fear that if I stayed with my job and the stress it burdens me with I would be irreparably broken.

I like that Crescent City is still equidistant from San Francisco as my current location, so I can still make weekend trips to see my loves and enjoy the city and revel in the fun of it. And I would be only 5 hours from Jacque, so I could be closer to see her in good times and bad. So thrilling. So hopeful.

For one of the first times since I’ve graduated, I feel excited and eager again.
Let the adventures begin.