I can’t hike alone without feeling panicky.

It didn’t use to be this way. The woods were my sanctuary. Walking alone for miles rejuvenated my tired soul. At a time when I was dealing with the aftermath of leaving an abusive marriage and the irony of watching similar personalities wield their presidential power, I felt like nature was a refuge away from society’s problems.

Until it wasn’t. But that’s a story for a different post with a trigger warning. Suffice to say I don’t feel comfortable hiking alone anymore.

Maybe it won’t be this way forever.

But right now this is how it is. And this is messy. And the more I fight it or pretend it doesn’t exist the deeper I sink into the mess and the more difficult it feels to get out.

I associate mess with negativity, chaos, and disorder. Why? Why do we see “mess” as a dirty word? Something to be cleaned up swiftly, as if it were never there and took no effort at all. Something shameful, that no one should see.

Thinking about this reminds me of a time when I stopped by a family member’s home and they apologized for the mess… which consisted of three dishes in the kitchen sink of an otherwise immaculately clean house. Thinking about the general state of my own house, I was a bit baffled. It wasn’t until years later, when I discovered the amazing Brene Brown and the power of vulnerability, that I realized this family member was striving for perfection because they were afraid of being vulnerable.

There’s so much pressure to “keep it together” and “do it all” and make sure you take a photo for Instagram that conveys you’re doing it all and keeping it all together. Lean in, but make sure you smile while you’re doing it. Might as well suck in your gut too. See, look at all this feminism! Women can do anything!

What if the mess and vulnerability are necessary? And accepting and embracing them, even more so? What if we need the mess to create something beautiful?

What if we need to create and deconstruct and tinker with our lives? Then shred it all up and start over, leaving the scraps on the floor and glue in our hair while we’re wrapped up in the moment. What benefit is there in hiding it? In following the pattern of so many women before? Deny, excuse, do the dishes, hide the mess.

The mess is where we find the magic. It’s the ancient gods creating life from muddy clay. It’s a new element oozing from the alchemist’s cauldron.

Yeah, yeah. I fucking hear myself.

I promise I’m not going into “you just need to align your chakras and buy my $4200 sketchy (and possibly appropriative) ceremonial drug retreat” territory. I would never. We’ve all been through enough already. I also understand that I speak from the privilege of having a close circle of support to help me sort through my mess.

I’m not trying to say that you should put Rose-colored glasses on.  Or that a positive attitude and the right supplements will cure diseases and resolve trauma. The very real, stressful, and sometimes plain awful, circumstances you go through are very much real, stressful, and plain awful.

Toxic positivity is gross and we don’t do that in this house.

It’s ok to look at a mess full of total bullshit and say, “Yep. This is total bullshit”. And maybe dissolve into a pile of tears and blankets for a little while.

Mess sucks sometimes… ok, most of the time. Where I think the magic comes in is when you can take a step back from your mess, take a deep breath, and remember that it’s temporary. It comes when you can make a stupid joke about a shitty situation, and actually laugh about it for the first time. The magic is in all the moments you found a way to make something more enjoyable, or remembered to look at a situation from someone else’s perspective before weighing in. It’s all the times you treated yourself as gently as you would treat a loved one.

(Because you, my love, are a loved one too.)

So, I can’t hike alone without feeling panicky. But I can be gentle with myself and hike alone for short distances on more populated trails, and cry a little as I go. And take deep breaths by the river’s edge as I watch the bass and the minnows swim in and out of the muddy middle. I can rest my hand on an oak tree as I balance on its fallen comrade, and marvel at the shape of a tiny wildflower. And then curse the man that stirred up this mess as I turn around swiftly, keeping an eye out behind me.

Maybe I’ll always feel afraid to hike alone. But I am taking steps to care for myself, grow through the mess, and smile when I can.

And today the woods smiled at me in return.