UNPACKING

I’m the type of person that comes home from a trip and immediately unpacks. Dirty clothes are sorted and laundry is started. Toiletries are put back in the medicine cabinet. Bags are placed back into storage. Any souvenirs that were purchased, find a home. Then I sit down and process photos and I might write a blog entry about my travels. I do all of these things as soon as I am home because I know that if I don’t, my life will fall into chaos and the planet will stop spinning. Basically, I just need everything to be in its proper place so that I can sleep better at night. I have always been this way. I unpack physically and emotionally in a timely and efficient manner.

With an exception.

I feel like I have not unpacked my emotions from Camp Wildling, June or October. We do camp mail bags and I’ve only glanced at the contents of either of them. In fact, I put June’s bag into my cedar chest. Out of sight out of mind. People have asked me about camp. What’s it like? How was it? All questions to which I have replied “Great. I had a great time.” and just left it at that. There is like a complete mental block when ever I go to describe my camp experience in any real detail. At first I thought it was just because I let too much time pass before giving it any thought and attention. I got back from June camp and we immediately headed off to Arizona, which brought its own emotional weirdness. We got back from October camp and then immediately left for a weekend trip to a lake house with Robin and Summer. It’s almost as if I intentionally stay busy so that I don’t have to time for processing. Then I convince myself that I really don’t have anything to ‘unpack’.

I slept through all of the profound experience opportunities.

I had a massage scheduled for the first day of October camp, just before all the campers arrived. Nadah, our camp massage therapist, is this beautiful wise older woman. In fact, I have a picture of her sitting at the fire pit. She is wrapped in a blanket and holding a walking staff. She looks like the woman you would expect to find after a long epic journey to search for answers to age old questions like the meaning of life. Her massage therapy also involved some energy work and at one point, she had her fist in my back under my left shoulder while holding her other hand over my heart and she just stayed there. It felt like minutes passed and then out of nowhere a bubble of a sob worked its way out of my throat and the next thing I knew, I was ugly crying on the table. This went on for longer than I care to think of, with Nadah the whole time murmuring encouraging words.

To tell you the honest truth, I was kind of mad about the whole thing. This was not the experience I want from a massage. Except it was the experience I needed and that idea makes me even more angry because I’m stubborn and obstinate. I am compartmentalized and I knew that letting go of whatever that was in the back of my heart was going to leave an empty space. Then what? I can’t have empty spaces. Everything has a place; see the whole unpacking ritual at the beginning of this entry. I’m not good with empty spaces, but creating this space right at the beginning of camp was actually a really good thing to do because I filled that space with laughter. There was one moment when Amani and I were sitting next to each other around the campfire and someone was telling a ghost story. I don’t know what was said, but something set the two of us off into a fit of giggles so severe that I truly expected my mother to appear between us to angry whisper “Do I need to separate you two?!?” I pulled my blanket over my head and tears streamed down my face because I was laughing so hard. I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard and so much since Chris was alive.

I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard and so much since Chris was alive.

That sentence was worth repeating because it will be ten years in February since Chris’s passing. On one hand, ten years feels like a blink. On the other hand, ten years is a fucking long time to go without that kind of laughter. I’m not saying that my life has been void of laughter all this time. I just went from daily bouts of it to scattered moments of laughter. That’s a little hard to admit. I don’t laugh like I used to and that’s a shame. Now that I’ve unpacked that bit of emotional baggage, I’ve got to find a place for the contents of that knowledge. I don’t want to fill my empty spaces with trash. I want to fill those spaces up with ridiculous giggles and the kind of laughter that leaves you gasping for air. I’m working on some goals. Goals for, hopefully, a healthier me and part of that healthier me includes daily bouts of laughter.