I did it anxious. I did it alone.

And it took a twenty-year hiking origin story to realize why that mattered.

Hello, my besties and favorite looky-loos,

I want to tell you about performing last month, but do you mind if I tell you an origin story first?

I began hiking when I was around 30ish because I was a miserable wreck and couldn’t figure out how to save myself. The particulars of the mental illnesses I struggled with had me living in my head and afraid of the world. The lessons of my chaotic youth and dysfunctional relationship with my mother only reinforced these struggles.

I wanted out, and it seemed like the only way out was to take my own life. But every time I tried to put that theory into action, a strong visualization would stop me: the image and mental projection of what finding my dead body would do to my husband. Oh, I could convincingly tell myself and you all day long why his life—why everybody’s life—would be better without me in it, but I could not pretend that finding your wife’s body in a blood-soaked tub would be anything but a hideous, life-long wound forever changing the very makeup of your being.

And Aaron is a very sweet, very nice guy! Have you met him? You’d love him. (Digression: The man has never been in a fight! Never! I want so bad for him to make it all the way to the end with that claim intact.)

So if I wasn’t going to end it all, what was I gonna do? And that’s when I had my first inkling of how to save myself. I came up with a bright idea: they say doing the same thing over and over again is the definition of insanity*, so what if I did the opposite of what my life had taught me?

My family was a bunch of ruminating, underachieving, cerebral people who hated sports, detested society, refused help, thought they were simultaneously better than and more damaged than everyone else, and held suicide as a viable option (My mom dangled her hypothetical suicide over me my entire time with her). Even the fact that I wanted to be a writer (or did my mom want me to be a writer, eh? Eh?) seemed to be an assumption about myself designed to keep me trapped within the legacy of my family’s schisms. They lived in their heads, not the world. And it was getting them nowhere. And I was following suit, like a dumbass. So I knew what I had to do.

I had to stop living in my head and start living in my body. But how the fuck does someone do that?

A few hours later, after a dive down the rabbit hole of a still-novel internet (Insta-what?!), I had a solution. Hiking. I would become a hiker. And not just any hiker, a long-distance hiker. Had I ever gone hiking? Uh, no, not really. But this crazy thing called the internet had taught me all about it, that it was a real thing! People were out there doing stuff like walking from Mexico to Canada! What the hell?! Yes! Thousands of miles? Months at a time?? Yes, yes!! This seemed like the perfect way to live in my body! It checked all the boxes, and I was downright enamored with the whole thing, especially testing my theory out—that I had been repeating what was taught to me, and that was what was holding me back.

For probably the first time in my life, I had a thing I wanted. I had a goal. I had a dream. All I had to do was believe that, somehow or other, I would figure out how to do it. That I was allowed to be the exact opposite of what I thought I was, that, in spite of all the evidence built up to that point, I could change.

My very scientific experiment hung on the hypothesis that it would be the belief part that freed me from them.

Hell, it would free me from me.

Cut to now, twenty (gasp!) years later.

Still with me, besties? I know, it’s long. Trust me, I cut out a lot. Like, aren’t there only like two or three asides in there, for instance? Is that a record? Anyone keeping track?

So, what does this have to do with my performance at The Story Shuffle a few weeks back?

I dunno. I’m not the sharpest pencil in the pocket protector, people. Some of it is because there would be no standing on stage if there hadn’t been that young woman who, in a crazy, spur-of-the-moment flight of fancy, chose to take a chance on herself— “chance” being not the thru-hiking part (which, yes, a lot of you know I’ve failed epically at) but the believing part, which I can see now was so brave and audacious and brilliant of her, so fucking smart, so intuitive, so honest and earnest—even if none of it panned out the way she wanted it to.

Anyway, the show went well. The audience received me well. I was even listed as a headliner. The story I told (which relates to everything I’ve been saying, but don’t worry, I won’t go into it) is shaping up nicely; I’m learning more and more about delivery and how to listen to the audience. And I left the show feeling good . . . but off, like something had changed, and I couldn’t figure out what.

Well.

Except I performed alone.

Meaning, Aaron wasn’t in the audience. My buddy Keith wasn’t in the audience. I was on my own onstage for the first time with no built-in support. And you’d think since I talk so much about, well, all this shit I talk about, it’d be so obvious to me, but no, Aaron was the one to point out:

“Hey, dude, you did it anxious, and you did it alone. Congrats.”

And that’s when it hit.

I’d crossed some invisible threshold I didn’t know I was approaching. I’d claimed something without exactly realizing I was reaching for it.

Maybe that’s why that old, twenty-year-old origin story about hiking popped up again, not because I became a great hiker (lol) or will become a great storyteller (lolol), but because of the whole believing I could be different from what I’d been taught to be.

The belief is still here, after all. Flapping its tiny-ass wings, all tenacious and momentous and ordinary. Telling me that night, after the show, that I wasn’t just visiting this whole live storytelling world anymore.

It had, for better or worse, become mine.

Thanks for making it this far with me! It means more than you know. You’re a real friend and a stellar looky-loo!

xoxo,

Amy

HEADLINER??!!

*It’s also the definition for practice, which, I guess is fine unless you’re like me and you can’t help but add “be careful what you practice, because . . .”

If this felt familiar in any way, you’re very welcome here. You can reply and tell me about your own tiny, momentous shifts if you like. I’m always listening.