Off. The. Ride.

Describing life in the past decade is beyond hard for me to do, but increasingly, it has felt like this one odd and depleting night from college.  I was an athlete back then and thus, part of the glorious tradition of moving back to school weeks before the rest of campus.  One night, after two practices in the August heat of the Midwest, some of my teammates decided they wanted to have some "fun."  They called around and got a group of male athletes together to take a bunch of us soccer players to a local county fair.  Back then, I still pretended to be an extrovert- always up for an outing and all that, so of course I was invited, and of course I went.  Truth was, though, I was exhausted.  I'd driven from California to Illinois, then moved my universe into a dorm room without the help and fanfare of all the "normal" move-in days.  Then started the unending round of being with people, lots and lots of people.  Practices, physical therapy, watching video and discussing strategies, then back to more practice, more physical therapy, only to do it all again at 5am the next day. 

This was my frame of mind as we drove.  Tired.  Bone tired.  And then, we got to the fair. 

You're supposed to be loud at a fair, and middle-of-nowhere Illinois farm-town was no exception.  At a fair, you're supposed to have fun, spend money, be carefree, and all that nonsense.  This is what my compatriots did.  They gleefully bought tickets to go on rides, tickets that cost money I didn't have.  Eventually, someone pressed three pink tickets into my hand, making me embarrassed and ashamed, but not wanting to let on.  We went on the giant slide, the unhygienic burlap scratching and hurting the backs of my knees which had been hopelessly sunburnt.  But I didn't want to be dead weight, disappointing the group, so I pressed on.  At each intersection, the House of Horrors, the Magic Dragon, tickets appeared in my hand because someone felt sorry for me, or thought I'd finally have fun on this one. 

It all seemed too much-- too many noises, too many lights, too much false enthusiasm, too much money.

Just when I thought it couldn't get worse, we came to the most terrifying ride.  The giant circle looked older than I was, and the operator looked like he hadn't seen the inside of a permanent structure since the Reagan Era.  Everyone else was going, and someone had already paid for me.  My heart sank.  I just wanted to go home, yet I knew I couldn't get there without going through this cursed ride.  The ride started in it's unrelenting circular motion, where centripetal force enacts on your body in such a way that there is no up or down, no east or west, only a desire to go home...

That moment of confusion, that whole night filled with anger at myself and false bravado, that moment has been my world.

So... I got off the ride.

I still can't tell right from left.  I'm still all over the place from the dizzying spin and my senses are still overwhelmed from all the residual unwanted stimuli, but I'm on my hands and knees in the grass and OFF.  THE.  RIDE.

There is a turn of phrase in the food service industry for when you are beyond your capacity to service your customers to your standard.  They say you're in the weeds.  I've been in the weeds, at my own version of the county fair.  This is the story about my journey out of the fair, out of the weeds.  Right now, every single system is completely overloaded and I have no idea if "home" or "peace" or "holy" (because to me, they're all the same) is left or right or right and three-quarters or maybe not quite.  But I know the closer I stay to the grass, to the earth, the less I'll wobble and stumble.  I know home isn't where I've been, so I fill my lungs with the scent of green and I follow it, crawling away from the chaos and noise, towards the fields, the trees... towards home... towards my own heart.  

"Going to the woods is going home"
                               -John Muir