"And the football season is the only reason you stay alive in your primetime beehive."It's 2016. Somehow a new year snuck up on me while I was doing my best to ignore my debt and illness. You know, those two parasites that I inherited on the AT that just refuse to leave me alone.
Yes, I'm still in debt, but I should be able to remove that particular parasite in the next month or so. And yes, I'm still sick. Sick with what? I still don't know. Could be anything, really. I could have a lingering giardia infection or a chronic illness like Crohn's or UC, but I couldn't really tell you. That's why I've been jumping through all the necessary hoops to get state funded health insurance. Unfortunately, and as you all are aware, anything involving "the state" takes time and patience and then even more patience. So I guess I'm waiting. Waiting to see a doctor, and waiting to get this shit figured out.
Why? So I can live my fucking life. And what does living my life entail besides not feeling like shit anymore? Well, I'll tell you. Living my life entails me hiking the PCT this year. In fact, that's my biggest motivator for finally feeling better. Not the worry and anxiety that eating causes me. Not the constant fear that I won't be able to work because my stomach pain is just too crippling. I mean, those are definitely considerations. Strong considerations. But that's just how bad I want it, how bad I want to hike the PCT this year.
I am more worried that being sick will stop me from hiking than the fact that it is literally ruining my life.
Again, why? Because I can't do the "real world", this world of distractions. I can't fully assimilate into this life of working shitty jobs that don't pay anything worth a damn and slowly kill you and your will to live, paying rent to live in an apartment where all of your appliances are broken or on their way there, giving money to some assholes to keep said apartment partially warm so that I don't fucking freeze to death through the winter, and pretending like all of this makes sense to me while I do my best to forget how much I hate it. It doesn't. It never has, maybe now more than ever.
But it's not all bleak.
When I sleep, I dream of being on the trail. Of walking. Through the desert at night, the sky clear and crowded with stars guiding me through the silence and the sand, the mountains moving under my feet as I pick my way precariously along the passes in the Sierras, dense fog covered slopes on either side of a ridge as I move along the top of the world.
Inevitably, I wake up, confused and disoriented. And I remember that I'm here, in a city, with a job, and rent, and bills, and last but not least, a part of my body actively betraying me every moment of every day.
But all is not lost. I always remember that in the end. All is never lost.
Because none of this is permanent. And in four months, I will be on the trail. I will be hiking (you know, that thing that humans do that is inherent to our biology and survival) and I will pause, and then I will sigh. A sigh that will release all of the shit that seven months of stress caused by the "real world" can stuff inside the small, fragile frame I call my body.
And then I will continue. And I will smile.
But until then, I will live this shitty life that most people call normal, biding my time, planning my escape. And I will hope.
I will hope, and I will dream.
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