A story of the mountain, limerence, love and shame

Part 4 out of 4

Part 4: What to do with the comma? 

After the rescue, poor man’s Lara Croft vibes

I try to compose a message.  Maybe my pride¹ is finally conquered. My fear of losing it was so big that it had to take a life-and-death moment and the whole mountain, 2,500 meters above the sea level to put it aside. A short love note trying to contain all in a 100 words or less, since I need to leave a little bit of emotional room for a few more people like my sister, the lovely guy I’ve been seeing, my ex-husband – whose Latvian jokes keep coming – and a lot of room for my son. I am convinced now that I am racing against time as I sit on the slowly disintegrating roots, the sun blasting my hatless head, and the rescue helicopter nowhere to be seen. Angie has given them directions but she admits the directions might be confused and her occasional cheerful announcements don’t reassure. “I think we are on the west side of the trail!” or “I’m pretty sure I know where we are!” Her voice is all the brightness and hummingbird energy of Angie but the tiny warble is undeniable. 

I start typing. I’m sitting on this mountain and I think I might die. It’s too much to explain but dot dot dot, erase. Funny thing happened on the way to the mountain dot dot dot, erase.  I know we haven’t spoken in a while but I just wanted to tell you dot dot dot, erase. I love you dot dot dot, erase. The time is ticking and the sky is clear and blue with not a helicopter in sight, still. 

I should be writing a note to my son first, not some guy who rocked my world for a few gloomy months of winter. 

I’m sitting here stuck in some bedtime story and if that isn’t deflecting and avoiding — every addict’s close companions —I don’t know what is. And the truth is, the sad romance story? It was banal. There have been other Gabriels. Other times of  trying to decode texts, gestures, silences. This is one of my addictions, the game of limerence, little crushes and following red flag trails so that I will have a reason to drink again. I drank the night I strutted into Gabriel’s house in my PVC dress, on my knife heels. After the photo shoot, I had found the nearest alley where I ducked next to a garage, my hand moulding around a familiar oblong shape. I no longer had to be good, I tried it and it didn’t work out. Maybe I was the best version of myself with Gabriel but I was not myself or,  more accurately, I couldn’t be the person he and I both loved, alone. (The sensation of the hard ribbed red cap against my thumb and forefinger, and then the first kiss of the familiar, hard round mouth. The liquid fire tongue scorching the inside of my mouth. It was like coming home again.)

There are many rules of the game of addiction. An addict always plays those games with herself. She is the only one who knows the rules. Except that there are no rules. 

On the mountain with no temptation in sight, I’ve still managed to find it, dwelling on an old love story to help me ignore reality. To shield me from the most painful of all realizations: that I might never see my son again and that I don’t know how to tell him.

I am at 30 percent battery on my phone. I cannot avoid any more of what I’m avoiding. This is an entirely different message I have to write – but I’ve become a writer without words. How do I tell my son: “The mountain is my death, but you are the meaning of my life, the only thing I’ve never doubted?”  I don’t know. I don’t know what to say to a 10-year-old without alarming him but also how to let him know that this might be the last time he ever hears from me. These are the only moments when the time stops on the mountain as I think of everything that is Hugo;  a million, billion seconds filled with his sweetness, and laughter and curious, brilliant mind, and sun-dappled shallow kiddie pools, and impromptu kitchen dancing parties, and soccer, Tintin and Thomas the Tank Engine, and the fastest race cars you don’t even know exist: the Chiron Super Sport that broke 300 miles per hour on the track. I think of Hugo’s beauty, his love and his pain too – the pain of his sadness over me, my pain over my inability to stop causing the pain – and his forgiveness, the enormity of it, the only absolution I am too weak to accept.  I think of a poster I bought him after the separation – that we’ve moved from place to place – with a sentence “Love Your Extraordinary Self” and how he said that to calm himself down he sometimes stops whatever he’s doing and tries to find different words in “extraordinary²,” which – the word and his game – is the definition of what he is to me. I think of his honey skin, his sleep breath, and his mornings – he once told me he always wakes up happy – and the overall miracle of his existence, the flesh and bone of a being that wasn’t but that came to me after a whole lifetime of waiting and that made it all make sense. I think of moments that define the complicated love I’ve created for us, the high stakes of it. Like the time we almost missed the train in Gdansk, how a look passed between us – there wasn’t a second to explain – and how he ran up the stairs on his little legs, his face determined, his body toddling with the weight of his backpack but pushing forward, and we torpedoed into the train a moment before it closed its doors. We sat down breathing heavily and giggling and when we finally calmed down, he looked at me with those big brown eyes and his face crumpled and he told me he had peed his pants while running up the stairs. I told him he was like a real soldier and he closed his eyes smiling proudly to himself, his head on my lap as the train rocked him to deep sleep. 

How should I tell that brave boy that I have finally managed to do what I’ve been subconsciously trying to do since even before his arrival on Earth except this time it’s not my fault? 

I know already that there’s no power in this universe that can take back the transgressions that I’ve committed against him because of my addiction. No books with dedications telling him that I’m sorry then, and no heartfelt apology now can make up for me taking my son’s mother away and replacing her with a walking corpse then, or possibly a real one now. He doesn’t need an apology; he has forgiven me – and will do so again and again – and truly, what that he wants and needs is a mother who lives outside of pretty words and sentences, and final messages and definite declarations and all of that bullshit. What my extraordinary and brave boy needs is love in action, instead of shame and remorse³, as useful as they might be when we have the luxury of time and space for reparations. 

In the end I don’t send him a message because there are no words big enough to substitute mother’s acts of love⁴. 

I don’t send him a message because I am simply too ashamed to. 

And it won’t matter soon anyway. Soon, I won’t know that I failed at the only thing that truly mattered to me. I scroll through my messages⁵ to try to remember what it was like back there. Not on the mountain.

 I look to the mountain in front of me and it doesn’t look back at me, the mountain doesn’t offer any solace except for the one that tells me it just is. And that is enough reassurance about the inevitability of what might happen here. And, as before, it is deeply calming. I look down at the shaft and my brain lurches forward and back. I close my eyes. 

Suddenly – just as it wasn’t there a second ago and now it very much is – an unmistakable slick shape far on the horizon. It advances fast and loud,  a massive, futuristic black dragonfly. There’s a trident stamped into its mouth that makes me think of my son again and his love of fast cars, and I make a mental note to tell him that I’ve been rescued by a “sky maserati.” The noise is the most gorgeous techno track I’ve ever heard, ratatatting through the hot buzzing silence of a late August afternoon. And like I’m an MDMA-newbie at a techno show, and the DJ is about to drop a particularly sick, familiar beat, I untie my favourite, bright-green Adidas jacket from around my waist and start waving it in the air. The massive black dragonfly slices through the air to have a look at me. She is close enough that I can make out faces inside the cockpit and a camera training its lens on me.  The powerful wind from her spinning wings makes the treetops sway and there’s little dust clouds forming down the shaft . Angie is shouting things and I’m shouting things back. 

Then, suddenly, the dragonfly turns around and flies away. My heart drops. Angie shouts that they’re figuring out a plan on how to lift us out of our predicament and I hope she’s right, I hope they didn’t just have a look at us and decided that our situation was too extreme or perhaps, the opposite, too ridiculous to waste their resources on. 

I don’t know how much time passes. Not a lot. I’m sweaty, hot, and excited. Aroused. Nervous. Please come back.  Please come back. I look to the mountain. The mountain doesn’t care. 

The dragonfly comes back. There is a fat rope dangling about 20 feet from its bottom, with two people attached to the end of it, as if they helped the dragonfly break free from being tied up somewhere and she bucked and sped away dragging them with her. She moves fast, decisively. It is deafeningly loud now as she hovers above me in her machine-gun roar. The proximity of the helicopter causes some of the rocks below and above to loosen some and there’s a small, then larger, shower of sand and small debris falling on my back. My long hair is whipping in the air, smacking me in the face. The roots underneath me strain and shake as I twist my body to make myself more accessible. Everything happens action-movie-speed fast: the helicopter lowers and within seconds, the rescuers are right next to me,  maneuvering me already into a little contraption stuck between them that reminds me of those swing seats for toddlers. The men are gentle but strong, and no-nonsense. I smell diesel and dust, and musky-spice cologne. The DJ has dropped the beat, the green Adidas jacket twirls in the air, falls down the shaft. Everything is dream-like and yet acutely sharp, like I’m watching and living this out on a 3-D screen, I notice the interlocking muscle in my thighs, the crinkly, bright blue eyes of one of the men, dirt behind my fingernails, the unnatural green of my jacket spilled over the rocks like a toxic stain. I lift my legs, one, the other, like one, two, three, down. We are coordinated and precise as if this is a dance we’ve choreographed together except like any good leads, it’s the two of them who actually know all the steps, I just follow.  The dragonfly roars above, my heart roars in my ears. I don’t know if it’s the mountain’s calm or my own but the adrenaline that courses through my body is like a balm; it acts like oil for my mechanical body parts. One of the men reaches underneath me to ensure I’m securely strapped in. He apologizes briefly for this intimate contact but I’m into this threesome more than I ever was into any other one I’ve been in.  I want to be a perfect rescuee; I don’t want them to have to put a hood over my head to stop me from thrashing about or screaming, which doesn’t occur to me at all. They’re communicating between each other in short, relaxed sentences, something pulls, something bounces and suddenly we are up in the air. 

We fly above the mountains and forests, me and my two danger lovers, and I open my eyes and take it all in. I have died after all because how is it possible that I get to experience all this beauty? You know those dreams where you are a bird and see the world for the first time as it’s actually meant to be seen, the enormity of it and the smallness too, the freedom you feel in your wings as you pass rivers full of fish, and peaks that have only ever looked down upon you?  I am grateful for not having a hood over my head and I wish I had an extra set of  eyes to absorb it all but what I see and experience goes straight to my soul and fills it with love, and what I understood about life and death looking at the mountain in front of me shatters and I realize that the peak is just the beginning; I’ve only glimpsed a microscopic revelation of some great secret, something most of us never get to see.  Not unless, of course, we get stuck on a mountain and get to fly away from it. I am not afraid at all; I soften so much I turn into a child on a swing, my feet dangling in the air, the two men’s strong arms around me. They will never let go. I feel the safest I’ve ever felt and I’m so overwhelmed by it all that for the first time that day, I cry. 

I don’t know how long the ride lasts, not long, and soon enough we’re lowered gently into a tall grass near a breathtaking blue pond with tall trees around it, the first flat swath of land. There’s a van parked nearby and a picnic bench and the normality of this is so absurd that now I burst out laughing – from relief too, I’m sure, my adrenaline on its own helicopter ride rushing through my body. I walk up to the bench on wobbly legs as the helicopter flies away to pick up Angie. I dig out a sticky, squashed peach from my backpack and to stifle the uncontrollable giggles, I bite into its sunny, juicy freshness, every taste bud exploding – it’s like I’m having a human being’s first experience of eating a peach, all over again. I’ve been reset and recalibrated, I am a woman who has died and came back to life. My mouth lined with sweetness, I lean back and breathe. 

Hallo! Hallo! Hello? Are you doing some sort of ziplining? What is this? A peppy,  demanding voice snaps me out of my Saint Teresa moment⁶. 

I turn around and there they are – an elderly Brenda and her elderly Bob in Tilley hats, khaki shorts and Gore Tex vests, Nordic sticks in fists, fat wooly socks and hiking boots and they are blinking at me expectantly and up at the sky where the dragonflies ratatats away. 

Suddenly, I feel exhausted and the whole day falls over me like a heavy curtain, its beauty sucked into their mouth holes that release a series of unsolicited updates about the weather and the distance and wanting to go ziplining too and what’s the name of the place where you can book this adventure?

I shrug to all of that, reach into my backpack and pull out a cigarette and light it, deciding that I will never ever be able to explain.

Minutes later, I film Angie descending from the sky and gracefully fold into the tall grass before she’s helped out of the contraption. She walks-runs towards me shaking her golden head. The helicopter lands nearby. We shout and laugh and hug, sticky, sweaty, peachy. Soon we are back up in the sky,  getting a lift of our lives with a cheerful crew of SAR men who reassure us that we did the right thing by calling for help. Everyone seems excited, Angie and I take pictures of each other, I shoot a little video to show my son later. I’m chatty and making jokes, something about wanting to go hiking tomorrow; I’ve pulled an invisible hood back over my head, the same one I wear to get through most social interactions and to keep from screaming.  The world is small and strange, so insignificant outside the window; none of this has anything to do with me. 

PART 1

Thank you for reading. There are more parts to this story — which I will publish — but I’m curious as to what you thought of it, and how it was presented (in parts). This chunk, by the way, is the chunk that didn’t make into the final draft of Unshaming so just imagine what sort of stories made it!

1.  Pride, unlike (toxic or dispositional) shame, is linked to positive outcomes such as increased self-confidence, motivation, and resilience. For example, one study found that people who experienced pride after completing a difficult task were more likely to persist in the face of future challenges than those who did not experience pride. Another study found that experiencing authentic pride (i.e. pride based on one's own achievements rather than on external validation) was associated with greater resilience in the face of stress. It’s important to note that pride, similarly to shame, is better when administered in small doses. Another aspect of our personality, humility is also an important source of resilience, particularly when combined with other positive traits such as self-confidence and optimism. 

Research has also shown that  cultivating humility can help us develop a more accurate and realistic view of ourselves and our abilities, which in turn can help us cope with challenges and setbacks. Announcing to Angie that we are in trouble is an example of healthy humility – which is easy for me since I don’t live here and I get to leave – while her insistence on “bushwacking” is perhaps the sort of toxic pride that could lead to a serious injury. I have no doubt that Angie has done the bushwacking thing before and has mastered it, but I don’t believe it was ever under the similar circumstances we’re in right now. But maybe it’s not pride, maybe it’s shame of having to get down from the mountain to face a town of neighbours, some of whom are already commenting on her Facebook plea for help with things like “way to get a free helicopter ride.”

2. You can make 3,628 different words out of “extraordinary.”

3. While related to shame, remorse is focused more on the specific behaviour that caused harm. One study that investigated the relationship between shame and remorse found that while both shame and guilt were associated with negative affect and self-blame, only shame was related to feelings of worthlessness. Remorse, on the other hand, was associated with a desire to make amends for one's actions. Another study examined the relationship between shame, apology, and forgiveness after a transgression. Participants were asked to imagine themselves in a hypothetical scenario where they had hurt someone's feelings. Results showed that people  who experienced more shame were more likely to apologize, but only if they believed that their apology would be effective in repairing the relationship. Additionally, participants who received an effective apology were more likely to forgive the transgressor. 

4. I never send a goodbye message to my son, but the one I come up with for everyone affected by my addiction – him, Gabriel, my sister, the lovely man I’ve been casually seeing, my ex-husband, too – is “I’m sorry, I love you.” I did not coin this term, Gabriel did. It’s a brutal and perfect message because in each instance, I would have to leave it till the absolute last second to decide what to do with the comma.

5.  The only thing I do is erase a series of fun and filthy sexting between me and the lovely man I’ve been casually seeing. We’ve hooked up before my trip and played out some of the early days of hot romance by texting late at night, scenarios and sometimes GIFs to illustrate what we’d like to do to each other’s bodies when I get back from Fernie. I flip through dozens of photos of women on their knees and trash them. This will become a funny anecdote later, how I deleted dirty pictures in panic in case I fell down to my death and was found with my phone later. I’ve never been particularly worried or ashamed of my sexuality and preferences but on the mountain, I’m preparing for a clean death, an end that could be attached to any unfortunate hiker. I will tell this anecdote many times, talking about how embarrassed it would’ve been to be found with a particularly vigorous threesome stuck and playing on a loop on my shattered phone screen, so hilarious, me deleting those things on the mountain. A smokescreen story, what I don’t have to talk about then is the shame and torment I’ve felt over the message I didn’t send. To my son.

6.  The Saint Teresa sculpture depicts the ecstasy of Saint Teresa of Avila, a prominent Spanish mystic and writer, who had a vision of an angel piercing her heart with a golden spear. The sculpture is considered one of the greatest works of Baroque art and is admired for its dramatic realism and emotional intensity. It is also believed to be the first depiction of a female orgasm.