You were wrong, doctor.

Please consider helping me fight my battle against Neuroborreliosis. I am five months into one year of intensive and incredibly expensive treatment. Absolutely nothing is covered by insurance and the expenses have become impossible. As a thank you, I will write you a written thank you card in the mail, and ship you a freshly picked, handmade sea-glass necklace if you request one. Please click the yellow donate button on the top right column. And thank you. 

left side bells palsy and eyelid droop, both markers of Chronic Lyme

--(To hear more of my story, listen to my new episode on the Dirtbag Diaries Podcast) --

When the doctor at the urgent clinic in New Hampshire told me that nobody down South would be able to help me, she was more than just bizarre and callously dismissive. She was completely wrong.

A few days after returning to Asheville after thanksgiving, I found myself under the care of a Lyme Literate PA who works under Dr. Jemsek- 'Dr. J' as he's known in the Lyme community.

Perhaps the world's greatest expert on the treatment of chronic Lyme, Jemsek's story is the focus of the documentary "Under Our Skin."  He began treating critically ill chronic lyme patients with intravenous, high dose, long term antibiotics, and these patients who had been offered no hope from decade's worth of doctor, dismissals, misdiagnoses and drugs....were starting to recover. Many of them completely.

The insurance agencies, however, were not keen on expensive, long term antibiotics being doled out to every chronic lyme patient out there. For treating these patients in a manner that was considered outside of normal protocol (although there is no medically accepted or effective protocol for Chronic Lyme) Jemsek lost his medical license for one year.

The patients who had finally found the answer, the doctor, and potentially the cure, had to go without help or treatment for a year as their health continued to deteriorate.

Jemsek is now back in practice, running the Jemsek Specialty Clinic in Washington DC. He continues to treat the most severe cases of Chronic Lyme in the world.

There are only a small handful of medical practitioners that work below this renowned physician, and one of them lives in Asheville, NC and was able to see me three days after I had a positive ELISA test, and then a Western Blot that showed multiple markers of Borrelia Burgdorferi.

I wish to tell that urgent care doctor how wrong she was.

Somebody 'down here' is helping me.

I wish to tell her that next time she comes across a woman sitting on the butcher-paper lined exam table, a woman covered head to toe in livid red spots who can barely use her legs and is begging for help, she might consider saying something other than, "you need deep psychological counseling."

I wish to explain to her that the symptom I was presenting with, an overwhelming experience of being sucked down to the ground as if by centrifuge, one that made walking impossible and lying down a nauseating, stomach-dropping experience is not 'anxiety' at all but a symptom known as mal de debarquement. MDD is a hallmark symptom of late stage, Neuroborreliosis.

Most of all, I wish to tell her exactly what it was that her ignorance cost my husband and I, because it is brutal, and impossibly sad, and we will never fully recover from it.

----please share my this story. The culture of ignorance over the growing pandemic of Lyme Disease is leading to despair, suicide, bankruptcy and suffering for patients and their families---

Chill

Please consider helping me fight my battle against Neuroborreliosis. I am five months into one year of intensive and incredibly expensive treatment. Absolutely nothing is covered by insurance and the expenses have become impossible. As a thank you, I will write you a written thank you card in the mail, and ship you a freshly picked, handmade sea-glass necklace if you request one. Please click the yellow donate button on the top right column. And thank you. 

Hello everyone! I'm checking in from White River Junction Vermont where it is currently 4 degrees outside and bluebird skies. So I know it's been a while, but the truth is I've been lucky enough to have a lot of writing work outside this blog. In fact! Some of that work requires that I keep quiet on here and not tell all my stories, so they can be brand new when they show up in the book or the articles.

What's to become of The Wilder Coast? This is nearly eight years worth of writing, most of it so so bad but remember what Ira Glass says: you have to get all the shitty stuff out before you can write something worthwhile. Anyhow, I'm not ready for this space to fade into internet oblivion like that girl who sang the song about Friday.

So many of you started off as readers and then became friends. I love all the comment and discourse, emails and letters and visits- hell, who wouldn't? And I miss you. So I'd like to try something new. I want to write on this blog as if I'm speaking directly to you. That means, it will be casual, imperfect (which is of course in stark contrast with all my other work, which is perfect, totally perfect) and maybe a bit more stream of consciousness.  Although- god, that term makes me cringe. So axe that last one one.

What I'm trying to say is this. I spend all day grinding out words for other projects, banging my head against a wall, and swallowing fistfuls of supplements and pharmaceuticals (not the fun kind) so when I get on this blog I want to just chill. You know? You know.

Let's begin. Hi! How have you been?

Interlude : The Glowery

Please consider helping me fight my battle against Neuroborreliosis. I am five months into one year of intensive and incredibly expensive treatment. Absolutely nothing is covered by insurance and the expenses have become impossible. As a thank you, I will write you a written thank you card in the mail, and ship you a freshly picked, handmade sea-glass necklace if you request one. Please click the yellow donate button on the top right column. And thank you. 

@theglowery

Not long after being diagnosed with Lyme disease, I became very trigger shy when it came to searching the internet. Personal accounts of people living with the disease are pretty spooky, filled with broken marriages, bankruptcy (insurance does not cover treatment for Chronic Lyme) and some pretty extreme suffering. The amount of information is overwhelming but any consensus, from diagnostics to treatment, is vague and hotly contested. The medical community is fiercely divided between those who acknowledge Chronic Lyme and those who do not. Those who acknowledge it are further split on whether or not it can ever be cured.

I needed to find a website or a book that documented all of the different ways that people can live with and recover from Lyme, without scaring the pants off me. I needed it to be glossy, poppy, and sort of fun. Light reading. Easily ingested. I needed this to accompany, not replace, the books (Stephen Buhner's Healing Lyme and Why Can't I Get Better by Richard Horowitz, MD) the forums (Healing Well has an excellent forum on Lyme that I highly recommend) and the websites (International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, 10,000 others.) Needless to say I didn't find it, so I decided to create it.

I chose Instagram as my platform, because it's as glossy and emotionally lightweight as it comes. Ingesting information one bright square at a time is the electronic equivalent of being spoonfed. The original intent of this account, the glowery  (@theglowery) was to document my own experience with Lyme disease, but not long after creating it, I came to a startling revelation: I'm not the only one who is sick. Woah. And Lyme is not the only misunderstood and disabling disease out there.

In all the research I've been doing about nutrition and alternative forms of medicine, I keep running across these chronic diseases that share a set of symptoms, probable mechanisms and possible treatments as lyme: chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia and lupus, to name some of the hard-hitters. In fact, people suffering with Lyme Disease, which has been called "The Great Imitator," are often misdiagnosed with one (or many) of these conditions.

There is a growing community on social media of people living with invisible illnesses (spoonies), connecting with one another, swapping information and hope and horror stories, documenting the doctors appointments, recipes (the autoimmune paleo protocol is all the rage right now) IVs, acupuncture, oils, exercise plans, mystery rashes, crystal therapy, insurance battles, injections, ultrasounds, juices, herbs...

And a good deal of it could be very useful to anyone who wants to (gain a deeper understanding of chronic illness, develop empathy over sympathy, help a loved one, be a good friend, all that but also) live healthier, feel better, have more energy, and look great. Paradoxically, people living with invisible illness often look very healthy, they have nice thick hair (a result of drinking collagen powder and bone broth) and luminous skin (juicing, essential oils, detox rituals) and are in excellent shape (following a whole foods diet, yoga). In many ways, getting sick forces you to become healthy.

What I mean to say is, what The Glowery is no longer just about me, or about lyme disease. It's also about living healthier, feeling better, having more energy, and looking great. Often, served up with a twist of Lyme.

In the past few days I've received a few questions on the Instagram feed about juicing, recipes and oils. I'm going to post responses here, since typing anything lengthy on IG will make you crazy.

@theglowery

Juicing 101 and Celery Juice 

I invent my own juicing recipes based on whatever specific vegetable or nutrient I want to be consuming in large doses that week. You don't need a recipe for juice: there, I've come clean. Just buy a juicer, cram it full of vegetables, add a little bit of fruit for sweetness, then drink up. But if you're new to juicing, this might be helpful to you.

Celery juice keeps coming up in my research lately, so for the past few weeks I've been drinking a lot of it. Celery is soothing and alkalizing, and it's a nutritional powerhouse, filled with the coveted B vitamins (B1, B2, B6) folic acid, potassium and phosphorus. It's mild, refreshing, and cheap, so it's perfect for creating a high volume of juice, to which you can add smaller quantities of other veggies and herbs.

If you are experiencing mysterious stomach pain or any sort of gastrointestinal issues (if you're treating Lyme with high-dosage antibiotics you may fall into this category) I recommend starting your day with a big glass of straight celery juice. Nothing added. Unless you hate celery, you get used to the taste very quickly. It's very calming, and the trace salts and micronutrients work with the hydrochloric acid in your stomach and aid in digestion all day long. If you're not up for straight celery juice, fair enough. Try one of these recipes:

The Detoxer
1 Bunch of organic celery
1 handful of parsley
1/2 an apple

Hawain Surf 
1 bunch of organic celery
1 whole bunch of romaine lettuce
1 slice of fresh pineapple

The Refresher 
3 Stalks organic celery
1cucumber
1/2 bulb fennel
1/2 an apple

Super Green
3 stalks organic celery
1 cup spinach
1 cup kale
fresh mint leaves
1/2 an apple

Tips:
-Put the ingredients that will be harder to juice, such as parsley, mint, and spinach into the juicer first.

-Make sure and juice the leaves as well, they contain a high dose of vitamin A

-Juice is quickly digested and the nutrients hit your bloodstream very quickly....as does the sugar. It's easy to ingest a lot of sugar without realizing it, so be as sparing as you can with the fruit. Begin with what's listed here and then reduce as you get used to the 'green' taste.

-I use this centrifuge juicer. It's worked great for years, but when I eventually buy a new one, I'll invest in a Masticating Juicer (sounds dirty.) It's much more expensive, but it's more efficient at juicing leafy greens, and the nutritional integrity of your juice lasts longer, so you can make one batch and keep it in the fridge.

-If you use a centrifuge juicer, drink the juice immediately.

@theglowery

Circadian Interruption

Please consider helping me fight my battle against Neuroborreliosis. I am five months into one year of intensive and incredibly expensive treatment. Absolutely nothing is covered by insurance and the expenses have become impossible. As a thank you, I will write you a written thank you card in the mail, and ship you a freshly picked, handmade sea-glass necklace if you request one. Please click the yellow donate button on the top right column. And thank you. 

Part 1: Nobody Down There Will Help You

Part 2:

It's September. I cannot sleep. This sleeplessness looks different from week to week, but every night shares the same common denominator: the apprehension and eventual dread as the day draws to a close and the normal bedtime routines begin, the mute frustration of lying wide awake next to my husband, trying not to move or make a sound, hoping to at least protect his sleep if I cannot have any of my own.

Before long I move out of our bedroom and into the guest room. The walls are a creamy yellow, there's a ceiling fan above the bed that spins languidly through the still warm autumn air. After a few nights it's no longer the guest room, it's my room. Interstitial Cystitis forces me to get up 16-20 times per night, catching splinters of sleep in between.  It would be impossible for anyone to share a bed with me and get any sleep. I make halfhearted jokes to Dave that we're already sleeping in separate bedrooms after two months of marriage. He gives a halfhearted laugh in return.

After a few weeks, the IC pain melts away, transformed into a new set of symptoms. Lyme symptoms are migratory, they come and go and blossom at random into something seemingly unrelated, which is part of what makes the disease so difficult to understand. I'm prescribed the highest legal dosage of Ambien, and that combined with the lack of urgency to get up and pee every three minutes means I can sleep for five or six hours straight. I swallow my pill and watch the world of my bedroom start to loosen around the edges and then bubble away. I even start sleeping next to Dave again, although not for long.

Late September I wake up around 2am soaking in sweat. It runs down my face and chest and pools in the slight curve of my lower back. I kick back the blankets, damp and clinging, and feel a cool draft of air wash over me. The next morning I peel back the fitted sheet to let the mattress top dry out. This becomes a nightly occurrence.  If I flip around, head by the window instead of at the headboard, I can find a piece of my bed that isn't soaked in sweat. This is how I wake up each morning, reversed.

Night sweats are a side effect of Babesia, a co-infection present in nearly all Lyme patients. Babesia is a parasite, a protozoan similar to Malaria that requires its own regiment of treatment outside of antibiotics. It's one of twelve currently recognized co-infections that can accompany Lyme. Patients who are unaware of their confections and do not treat them appropriately do not recover.

By Halloween, the sleeping pills bring no more than three hours of sleep. I'm awake again at 2:30 am. If I take another sleeping pill, I get two more hours. The frustration is getting to be unbearable. I make a rule for myself: if it's after 4:30 am, I'm allowed to roll out of bed and begin my day. Whenever I turn over and see that it's 'morning', in my world, I feel immense relief.

Like the majority of people infected with Borrelia Burgdorferi (Lyme disease), one of my most aggravating symptoms, ubiquitous yet also hard to pinpoint, is hyperacuity. When I'm finally diagnosed in December, I'm nearly gleeful to learn that there's a mechanism to blame behind my growing intolerance of sounds, my sensitivity to light, the way I startle and flash with anger when someone in the cafe drops a cup too forcefully into the dish bin.

And so, like other patients, I begin to view those early morning hours, dark and calm, as the most tolerable and desirable of the day. Feet on the cold floor, I dress and drive across town to Starbucks, often waiting for a few minutes in the driveway as the wipers scrape the first frost from the windshield. Asheville is a notoriously laid back city, most coffee shops aren't even open till 7:30am, but Starbucks, thank goodness, opens at 5am.

I take my coffee back home, climb back into bed with the light on, and enjoy a few relaxing and productive hours of work. Most day I drift back to sleep in the afternoon, waking up an hour or so before David returns from work. I take a shower, hurry to change my clothes and busy myself in the kitchen so that when he walks in the door he'll see me like this, functioning, purposeful.

Another puzzle: regardless of whether or not I've slept all afternoon, I always come to life between 8 and 10pm, on the dot.  I am not just awake but energized, in an absolutely outstanding mood, sliding through the hallway in my socks, rolling around on our bed in a fit of laughter. David's bemused, then annoyed, then asleep.

Still feeling very cheerful, I go to the kitchen, open the computer and try to work, although lately I've been distracted by reading those useless little articles that pop up on Facebook, about how lemon juice will cure cancer, and people who suffer from insomnia are statistically more likely to be to highly creative geniuses, (sources unknown, studies not cited, none of it true.) But alone in the kitchen with the whole dreadful night stretching before me, those little articles and their accompanying photostock images of lavender plants and women in bathrobes, they feel so easy and hopeful. Maybe I'm just a highly creative genius. I knew it.

Except for what's happening to me feels different than an everyday bout with insomnia, a condition that's run through everyone in my immediate family multiple times over. This is, as one Lyme literate psychiatrist, Dr. Robert C. Bransfield, describes as, "a complete circadian interruption," caused by the damage done by spirochete to the neurons in the brainstem, which control your sleep-wake cycle. "When you lose some of those neurons.....this can create a vicious cycle of neurodegeneration."

A vicious cycle because when you cannot sleep, you cannot heal.

A disturbance in sleep patterns is often the first presentation of chronic Lyme disease. In one study, 100% of Lyme patience suffered from sleep disorders.

So I continue to sleep in strange, sporadic bursts, my daily routines shifting and resettling, breaking away from those of my husband and the people around me and beginning to float away like a piece of ice in a stream. I continue to lose sleep, and I get worse.

******

Thank you for following my story of fighting chronic neurological Lyme Disease. Follow me on Instagram: @thewildercoast and @from_lyme_to_emerald. Feel free to share this story to help promote the understanding and acceptance of chronic lyme disease. 

Nobody Down There Will Help You

Follow along on Instagram @thewildercoast

On December 8th, 2015, I walked out of a brand new practitioner's office holding 13 prescriptions. Among them were anti-psychotics, anti-seizures, anti-convulsants, neurotrophic meds, sleep meds, anti-depressants and mood stabilizers.

This might seem odd, considering that the half dozen doctors I'd visited in the previous two months had insisted, in what felt like a single orchestrated act of dismissal, that I was, in fact, "a very healthy girl".

So I kept switching general practitioners, making the assistant fill out the paperwork she wasn't happy to be filling out, transferring my files to someone new, someone who might listen to me as I sat on the examination table, trying to steady my voice as I read through the growing list of symptoms that I keep recorded on my phone. 

At these appointments, in an effort to appear like someone who should be paid attention to, I always dressed as if I might be attending a job interview afterwards. I learned to keep my words even, free of emotion, as if I were a lawyer presenting the case on behalf of myself. I would try to get through my list of symptoms as quickly as possible, but there was never enough time. I'd choose my top five, the ones I found most disturbing, the most difficult to ignore.

But it kept not working. One by one the doctors appeared in front of me, white coated and dully impressed with themselves. They'd glance at their clipboards and assure me there was nothing much to worry about. One of them handed me a thick white binder filled with the names of local therapists. Another fixed me with a sympathetic look and said, "I'm so sorry you're depressed."

I never said I was depressed. 

On one particularly confusing afternoon, a younger MD I'd been seeing on and off since I moved to Asheville, seemed to be absorbing what I said. She listened, leaning forward with her hands clasped around her knee, nodding at the appropriate times. But the time I'd gotten through my allotted time, she smiled and sighed, with a dramatic shrug. Then she asked brightly, "So are you planning on having a baby any time soon?"       

By the time thanksgiving came around, I was, if not depressed, then at least completely baffled by the fact that nobody would help me. It was the first thought to hit me every morning when I woke up and felt the symptoms descend. On some mornings, my mind would awaken up but I'd find myself unable to move or even open my eyes- a type of nocturnal seizure. I'd lie there for a minute or two, conscious but paralyzed, rolling the question around in my head.

Nobody will help me.

Why will nobody help me.  

It was over thanksgiving that I dragged myself and my husband to a privately run urgent clinic, having been hit with an intense and mysterious symptom known as mal de dembarquement. If I was unable to catch the attention of any doctor, then maybe husband could. 

We were spending the holiday in south central Vermont, where I spent over half my life. At the clinic, I asked for a blood draw to test for lyme. I figured I could take advantage of being in New England, where Lyme is endemic and the doctors, I believed at the time, were savvy ("lyme literate."). The two times I had requested a lyme test in Asheville, I was immediately shut down. ("We don't have lyme in North Carolina.") On both occasions I backed down, thrown off by the way the doctors' faces instantly stiffened with annoyance. 

This time, I demanded the test. I refused to leave until they agreed, until I watched somebody leave the room holding a vial of blood. And the doctor fought me. At first, she gave me the familiar chorus: "Look at you, you're healthy." 

"I'm not healthy. I can barely walk right now."

"You say you can barely walk. Come back to me when you can't walk. Then we'll discuss what could be wrong." (This is not an exaggeration, although it's such outrageously bad medicine that if my husband had not been there to witness it, I probably would not believe my own memory.)

"I'm covered in this rash. It feels like I've been burned. I never get a rash."

She waved her hand- "That'll go away. You need to see a therapist."

"I already see a therapist."

"Listen, I could give you a lyme test, but the tests are largely inaccurate. They give false negatives the majority of the time."

"Maybe mine will be positive." 

"It won't be positive. But what if it is? What if you discovered you had Lyme disease, why would you even want to know? Listen to me. You live in the South. Nobody down there will help you."

This is when David spoke up from his chair in the corner, completely even-keeled. "If she has lyme, she wants to know because it's her right to know."

The doctor turned to face him, incredulous. "And you approve of this?" 

We both just stared at her, barely comprehending the audacity of a doctor to ask approval from a patient's husband like this. She threw her hands up. She was over us. "Fine." The door clicked shut behind her.

She was correct about the lyme test: they are complicated, and notoriously inaccurate. Many people who suffer terribly from lyme disease are presented with false negatives. (The CDC criteria misses between 1/3 and 2/3 of all true positives, especially in later stages.) In many cases, lyme is so covertly hidden within the body that the blood shows up as clear, the blood lies, although mine didn't. 

Stories, October

Thank you this week to Katherine in Texas and Katie in Maryland

On Monday I go to see my doctor. Just my general practitioner, not a specialist. The nurse weighs me, remarks on my weight loss. "Good for you!" She says, brightly.

I don't respond. I'm curious why she mentioned it at all, it's only a few pounds. I don't tell her that I only weigh less because I have less muscle than I've ever had before.

I do tell her, once we're both settled in the tiny white examination room, that's it's been frustrating to feel continuously awful when I live such a healthy lifestyle. "It's been tough on me and tough on my marriage- I've only been married four months." She nods her head and waits. "I'm trying- I see a chiropractor, and an acupuncturist, and I mean, I don't even drink alcohol anymore! That's how healthy I am!"

"Oh- then have a beer!" The nurse says, waving her wrist as if to say, well that's an easy fix! "Nothing wrong with that, I drink a beer every day!"

"Oh, it's not by choice," I explain. "I'm allergic to alcohol. Alcohol and chocolate. And fruit."

The nurse widens her eyes and lets her jaw drop, an exaggerated pose of horror. Then she leans in and whispers, conspiratorially, "I would kill myself."

This is, of course, the moment where I should gently inform her that perhaps, with future patients, she might choose her words a bit more delicately, remind her that many people who chronic illnesses do indeed kill themselves, or at least live with the idea as a permanent, morbid fixture in their thoughts. Not me, I'm not that sick. But many.

But I don't. I don't say anything, just study her for a moment and move on. "Well, I've gotten used to the diet. But not being able to exercise when it flairs up, that's what's really tough on me."

"It's a good thing you don't have to exercise," she says, turning back towards the computer.

"What?" I'm missing something. "What do you mean?"

"Well honey, look at you. You're in good shape. For people in good shape, like you? They don't have to exercise. It's not so important."

I lean back, exhale slowly. "I think I should see the doctor now," I say, and close my eyes.

David, my husband of four months, comes home from work one day after I had a particularly sedentary weekend. He's hiding something behind his back. I'm in my room, rearranging a drawer, avoiding work. "This week is treat week," he announces. "I'm going to bring you a treat every day." Then, with a flourish, he presents me with a delicate white and purple potted orchid. I look at the flower, look up at him, at his perfectly familiar face.

For a moment he looks shy. He traces a finger around the ghostly thin white petals. "You're supposed to feed it an ice cube of water once a week."

I keep the orchid on my bedside table, next to the two succulents we bought to replace the first succulent, which lived outside and melted. We figured two would be happier than one.

In the week that follows, David brings me something new every day. A tiny carton of salted carmel ice cream, a carmel apple. He makes french toast waffles and brings them to me in bed so I can eat them, turn my head, and fall back to sleep.

One day, he drives me out to Hickory Nut Gap Farm so we can visit the pumpkin patch, some inane, little-kid outing I've been wanting to do all season.  There was nobody around in the field, so we stopped in at the farm store. It smelled like woodsmoke and roasting meat and cold mornings inside the store, exactly like my house in Vermont. I felt a wave of homesickness wash over me, and then another wave of guilt for feeling homesick. "We'd like to go to the pumpkin patch," Dave announces to the young girl standing behind the counter.

"You don't want to do that," she says. "It costs six bucks per person, and it's not really a pumpkin patch. It's just pumpkins in a field."

So we go outside, and pick a pumpkin from a pile that's been laid out by the shed. A woman approaches and asks if I would take a picture of her with her husband and their toddler, who has red hair and marble blue eyes. David pats my shoulder. After they leave, I take a picture of him and the dog, smiling in a sea of bright orange. I love them so much.

Every morning I go to the forest at Richmond Hill and I walk for three miles, sometimes five, on an intricate network of narrow, looping trails. The trees are either shockingly yellow, not gold but bright yellow, or completely bare. I listen to audiobooks or podcasts as I walk, or talk on the phone to my best friend, the girl in Seattle whose life took a serious unexpected turn in the last few months. Together, we try and grapple with her new reality which is, for the moment, a stark one. We haven't figured it out once, but we keep talking. Once every day.

There's a bakery down the street from my house that I've taken to writing in every afternoon. It's busy, and cheerful, almost chaotically loud at times when the great groups of friends that gather around the tables (magically, in the middle of the day, how is is possible to have so many friends in the middle of a week day?) raise their voices to be heard above the hiss of the milk steamer. 

It's especially nice to work there when it rains. It's been raining a lot lately, the sky dark and lit with diffused light, the puzzling type of light that doesn't seem to make the world any brighter. The clouds feels very close when it's like that, more like a ceiling than a sky.

I particularly likes that this bakery has stacks of a magazine that currently features an article of mine. I love that I'm simultaneously inside the magazine and watching other people leaf through its pages as I'm waiting to order.

I've been writing a lot, nothing poetic or personal or profound (not that it would be, when I see writers try their damnedest to say something elaborately profound I immediately set the book back on the shelf, most of the time) but articles for work, easy but time consuming.

Well, they're not exactly easy, I shouldn't say that. But they're not impossible either, the way some things feel, which is a good start.

join us on Instagram @melinadream

And now for the winner of Mystery Prize Monday. Thank you all for your patience over the last few weeks! I am sorry it's taken me this long.

 Marie said...

I'm in a happy place, feeling as if finally, my ship is coming in. But, scared at the same time, because one never knows this for sure, but one day at a time. Hoping this is it for me.

October 20, 2015 at 10:46 AM

 

Congratulations Marie! We are so happy that your ship is coming in, what a great feeling. Now you can expect a ship, and mystery prize in your mail box. Just email thewildercoast@gmail.com, and we'll get you all squared away.

As always, everyone- thank you. See ya. Soon.

A chemical love, but a love all the same // mystery prize monday

follow us on instagram @thewildercoast

Well this will be fast and informal. I have two deadlines fast approaching, and I'm catching up on thank you cards, mystery prizes and sea glass necklaces to those of you who donated. I did not want to post again until I've dropped the last of those in the mail. However! I realized that with the most recent post, I may have leaving you hanging just a bit.

It's been two months since I've had any alcohol, and I miss it less than I thought I would, although the release of Highland Brewery's Cold Mountain Ale might be a tough evening to get through. It's been three weeks since my last tomato.  It's been four weeks since I've had any fruit except pears. It's been four weeks since I've had anything to drink besides pear juice.

Except Coffee. Every day I drink a Trader Joe's sample cup of coffee and as a result, I've fallen in love with Trader Joe's. Their ridiculous gourds, their collection of orchids. All those cheerful team members. It's an artificial, chemical-based love, but it's love all the same.

I tried to stop drinking coffee completely and I my brain stopped. It was during those days of rain we got a few weeks back, when the hurricane veered south but we caught the fringe. I sat at the computer and wept because I couldn't write without my brain, and alright, I could live without writing, I've never claimed otherwise, but who would tell the good people of Western North Carolina where to find their 10 spookiest halloween adventures?

It was Kelli who saved me, mother of the coffee-drinking Chihuahua, of all people. She scraped me off the couch, she buckled me safely into her Subaru and drove me to the grocery store. She administered a sample cup of coffee (she is a nurse, after all) we bought Mums, and suddenly I felt cheerful again. "My god," I said, the caffeine lighting me up like a Christmas Tree. (God help me should I ever become addicted to something stronger.) "It's like I'm seeing this grocery store for the first time. It's so colorful. Look! A baby holding a carrot!"

Kelli said, "Yes, dear." As if she were my husband of fourty five years. "Yes dear."

Since then I have returned to Trader Joe's every day for my daily swallow, and before you judge me too much, please understand that I always make a purchase. Some days it is a 19 cent banana. Or a white and orange striped 'lil tiger' mini pumpkin.

It's completely disconcerting but until someone comes up with a better plan, I'm sticking with it.

I fired my IC specialist. She was not special. She was not good for me. That felt good.

I saw an acupuncturist the same day I fired my specialist. She spent two hours just listening to me. She nodded at the end and she said, "This all makes sense."

Then I flew home to Vermont.

Sometimes when you're stuck in a cycle of chronic pain, you have to change the scene. Something has to change and you've tried everything else. I'm 30 years old and I went home to my parents house. I took walks with my mom around our land. It was a late foliage this year in Vermont, almost as if it were waiting for me. I arrived at the peak and all week watched bright gold leaves glitter down from the trees onto the dirt road. It was like walking through a music box.

I wrote my articles during the day and in the evenings I watched Veep with my mom and dad. Then I would fall asleep.

Some of my good friends from Seattle just happened to be visiting Vermont to see the leaves, and we hiked to the top of Deers Leap in Killington. I didn't feel any pain on that hike. I was very cautious, moving slowly, as if I were glazed head to toe in a very thin egg shell. I moved like that for five days. On the flight home I sat in my seat still as a statue, like those people who were frozen in ash after Pompeii erupted. I was a fly suspended in amber, the amber being the complete disbelief that I felt such relief after 3 months of agony.

I've been back in Asheville for a week and the pain has not returned. I'm not cautious any more, not because I don't think it will come back, but because I know it will, eventually. So for now, I find myself filled with a raging, howling sort of energy. The other morning, Dave watched quietly as I ran sprints through our tiny kitchen, touching one wall and then the other before I disappeared into the shower. A few minutes later he watched me devour a stack of his famous Egg Dipped Frozen Pumpkin Waffles (they're amazing) and he said, "Someone's feeling good today."

It's like this. You've been maybe a little bit bedridden, and then one day you're up out of bed, and you're very very very behind! And you must work very hard to catch up. And that's where I am.

Where are you?

That is our mystery prize monday question. Where are you? And I don't mean your physical location. I am not going to say anything else. I know you guys will run with that question in whatever way you need to.

If this is your first Mystery Prize Monday, here's how it works. Leave a comment, and then help yourself to all the other comments that everyone else leaves. We have a good community right here. I'll choose the winner by randomly selecting from within the comments. The winner gets a hand written photo card, and a mystery prize package delivered right to their mailbox.

As always, I can't wait to hear what you have to say. I can't wait to know where you are. I've really grown to love you. 

Life on Mars

I'm going to tell you something: for the first time in seven years I have no idea how to do this. I've wandered into alien territory, the isolated, wizened, unrecognizable, sun-deviled, starless landscape of chronic pain. It's like Mars here. I'd rather be on Earth.

BUMMER. It's all I got right now! Those two words- Chronic and Pain, are two of the most dismal words imaginable, and who gets psyched up about going over for a potluck at The Dismals? Nobody!

When my good friends go through bad times- and I mean bad times, periods of life when the nobility of the soul is put through the spin cycle- I always give them the same sing-song advice: take notes. I give them other advice too, although I'm learning (in tiny increments) that the best thing to do, always, is to hold off on the advice and just listen- attentively and without interruption- until advice is explicitly sought. (When trying to achieve this, I try to picture myself as nothing but an enormous human ear on the end of the phone line, or settled into the cafe chair or perched on a bar stool. I find the visual helpful.)

Take notes I say! One day soon, although you can't see it and can barely dream of it, such is the nature of the beast, you'll be out of this. You'll feel better, and your experience miring through this damp, black tunnel will be of great service to you and to those around you.  Once you've been through the tunnel, and you are familiar with its peculiar and convoluted layout, then you'll be able to run back in and grab others when they need to be rescued.

I took my own advice. "Be your own hero!" Dave told me once, as a joke, when I was very upset that my sandwich from Earthfare had been made without mayo, despite my specific request. "You march in there," he said, holding me by the shoulders, "and you GET that MAYO!"

So I was my own hero, and I took some notes. Here Is What It Feels Like To Be Diagnosed With a Disease or Chronic Pain. I scrawled it across the page, like a sixth grader diligently responding to a writing prompt in Language Arts class.

And let me tell you, ain't nobody want to be reading that. Not me, not you, not anyone.

NOT TAKING FIELD NOTES ON THIS MISSION, I said to myself the next morning as I buried the papers in the recycling bin. But a few hours later, after a walk and one of those Trader Joe's free coffee samples, which I'm allowing myself daily to get my brain up and running again, I felt like I ought to give it another go, this time here on the blog. Write Everything being my (currently very shaky) philosophy. Besides, writing on the blog forces me to be more articulate and purposeful in how I express myself, and so I dug up the papers and tried to drain some of the copious amounts of self-pity out of the words.

Didn't work. So I started over and wrote something super! poppy! Everybody get on the bus we're going for a ride and I brought individual fruit cups for us all!

Needless to say, that was terrible.

I cannot sugar coat my experience thus far in the agonizing world of chronic pain. Even if I could, that would be a huge disservice to the millions of other people here on Mars, the ones that I can't see, but they're with me all the same. Nor have I learned how to artfully express my time here without melodrama or what feels like dismal and purposeless complaint. Seven years into this blog and for the first time, I honestly don't know in which direction to move.

I need a map. I will find myself a map.

I will say though, the 99 tips that you left in the previous post on how to cheer up and take care of yourself when all else fails, reading those felt like somebody had illuminated a string of christmas lights inside the tunnel.  It was as if all of you set up an aid station on this planet, with Gatorade and a stack of nice books to look at. Thank you, it's been enjoyable.

People with chronic pain often are forced to live minute by minute. That's what I've had to do these last few weeks, but by jumping from comment to comment and using them as direct medical directives, your tips have helped me fashion together bright and elaborate sequences of good minutes- even good hours and good afternoons have flown by (By the way, as a group, we really love podcast and drinking hot liquids.)

So, for my thank you, here is this week's Mystery Prize Winner:

 Jamie said...

I am over halfway done my accelerated nursing program and have experienced a wide range of emotions since its start - hopelessness, anxiety, stress, stress, stress, excitement, wonder, etc. One thing that is stressed throughout our education is self care and taking time for ourselves. I have found that beyond exercise, sleep and healthy eating, I try and watch a funny TV show when I'm feeling especially low. Some of my favorites are the Mindy Project, and especially Friends! Anything that makes me laugh out loud by myself usually does the trick!

September 29, 2015 at 5:03 PM

Jamie, taking your advice led to one sublime hour of Friends, season 3, episodes 6, 7 & 8. Thank you for that! Congratulations on being halfway through the ABSN program, which I hear is itself a bit of a dark tunnel at times. Please email thewildercoast@gmail.com and we'll get you all sorted. 

Thank you for commenting, everyone. I love you and I sure needed you this week. See you back here soon.

  

one small thing // mystery prize monday

Today's Mystery Prize Monday is the first in a series we are writing this autumn called One Small Thing. The idea is to generate and accumulate a list of the pragmatic but inspired steps we can take towards a healthier, happier and more hopeful life.

I'm so curious as to how you will the answer these questions over the next few weeks. I believe the things we've come up with to take care of ourselves and to take care of the world should be shared. The more we notice and give credit to them, the more inclined we'll be to keep doing them.

I've been been having a hard time lately and I've forgotten my routines. Or maybe not so much as forgot, as I can't find the energy to do them, not even the smallest of things. I have become the master of excuses, as many of us do when we're struggling.

As an example, I've stopped going to coffee shops to work. I'm so much better off when I get out of the house and write in the company of other living beings, but I can't drink coffee anymore because I have IC.

Coffee fills me with pain and takes away my sleep, my ability to exercise, my ability to move at all. But I love coffee; I love the flavor and the smell and watching cream swirl into the cup, I love the sound of espresso beans grinding to dust and milk frothing and for thirteen years I've loved the hit of caffeine, the pleasant buzz that unmoors me from the harbor of morning and into the wild, uncharted day. 

Without it -and I know I sound like an addict- but without it, the day feels neither wild nor unchartered. It feels like one long sluggish late afternoon hour, 3pm maybe, that stretches from morning until bedtime. And I tell myself I should just work from home for one more day, because being around all that coffee, I'll end up just drinking it and poisoning myself and anyway, I'm not feeling so well, and it would take so much energy.

You see the excuses, as if I've completely lost trust in myself.

I started writing this blog seven years ago. 

Listen, it's not that I'm feeling so down because I can't drink a cup of coffee. I'm feeling so down because of things that are hard-hitting and vague at the same time, I'm not even entirely sure what they are. But without my three main lines of defense -coffee in the morning, a good beer in the evening, vigorous exercise in between- I'm not able to fight them off the way I once did.  

But I could still go to the damn cafe, couldn't I (although not my old favorite because that exploded with a sex scandal last week and now it's for sale, and it's no longer my favorite.) All I can drink now is mint tea but it's not nothing, it's still a reason to work outside of the house and walk four blocks in the light rain, and be grateful to breathe in fresh air, and listen to whatever music they're playing, and have a little dialog with the girl next to me when she asks to reach over and plug in her computer, and write without the distraction of the dishes or the dogs. Then I could walk home in the evening and be happy to be there, maybe kiss my husband at the door and then make dinner while listening to the radio.

Maybe tomorrow. Definitely, tomorrow. 

I started writing this blog seven years ago and I promised myself that I would write everything. So I am.

 For Mystery Prize Morning, tell us one small thing that you do to lift your spirits. Something tried and true that has always worked for you. Tell us now, because winter is on its way and other people might be interested to know. Tell me, so I might borrow it for the next few weeks or so. Tell yourself, so that you don't ever forget that it works. 

If this is your first Mystery Prize Monday, here's how it works. Leave a comment, and then help yourself to all the other comments that everyone else leaves. We have a good community right here. I'll choose the winner by randomly selecting from within the comments. The winner gets a hand written photo card, and a mystery prize package delivered right to their mailbox.

As always, I can't wait to hear what you have to say. I've really grown to love you.

To keep up with Mystery Prize Mondays, follow me on instagram @thewildercoast

my life in reyes

A few of us went up the parkway to camp out and watch a meteor shower.  One of my friends brought her Chihuahua which turned out to be a mistake. I'm actually fond of the dog because one time he drank a cup of coffee and took it like a champ. But that night under the meteors he barked and barked and just wouldn't stop barking.

I'm being technical when I say that we were under the meteors. Yes, they were up there in space shooting around between all the dead starlight, but we didn't actually see any of them. That's because around 11pm a cloud swept onto the mountain where we were sleeping, so we didn't see at thing. Well, we saw a beautiful sunset. Okay. We didn't see what we had come to see, how about that.

The owner of the Chihuahua is my best friend here in Asheville, and I have a great time with her always, but I don't think she really likes camping as much as she at one point claimed to. We were all seated around the campfire (more accurately, the ring of stones where the camp fire would be, there was a burn ban in effect) sharing some laughs and a bottle of whiskey (full disclosure, I didn't have any of the whiskey because I have an immediate and tremendously painful reaction to alcohol, also citrus, tomatoes, caffeine, and all fruit other than pears and blueberries, but someone had a bottle of Jack Daniels and was passing it around) and all of a sudden my friend starts to sneeze.

And sneeze! She couldn't stop! Something up on that knob was really irking her. Unfortunately, my dog Hometeam was also present at the time, and Hometeam throws a fit when anyone sneezes. She's done this her entire life. She gets hysterical, barking and writhing and jumping up into the air. It's annoying, but by this point I've gotten used to it. In fact, if I'm around a dog and someone sneezes, and that dog doesn't go nuts, I wonder what's wrong with the dog, like maybe she's lost her hearing.

So every sneeze was accompanied by a great frenzy of barking, and then the Chihuahua, who was already on edge, just lost her mind. Eventually my friend gathered him up and they both retreated to the tent. That's when the cloud came and sat on us. So the rest of us went to our tents, maybe read a little bit of a book, and fell asleep. Someone did bother to set their alarm for 3am when the meteor shower was presumably at its peak, but later reported that there was still nothing to see.

At dawn, my friend was hovering above my tent, begging me to leave. "I can't take it any more!" She said. I'm fairly certain that she sneezed all night long, and then, when the cloud turned to rain sometime in the middle of the night, there had been some degree of precipitation within her tent. The rainfly had malfunctioned. We packed up and hiked down the mountain, drove the hour back into town, we both ate a bagel, went home and fell back asleep.

Lately, everyone is using the Reyes filter on Instagram, you know the one that washes out all the colors and gives life a sort of muted, elegant minimalistic quality? Like this:

I keep trying it, I mean I like the idea of it, the idea that your entire house mind body soul car family pets attitude outlook future bedspread bookshelf  have been tidied up to within an inch of their lives and all that remains is air and a single succulent that sparks joy, and life is nothing but a clean white sink with a meticulously placed tube of face lotion with one of those incomprehensible names, you know- Pure as Driven Snow Body Polish in Jewelweed by Dry Goods & Provisions n' Things.

I'm not kidding around here, I WANT that; I'd enjoy the hell out of that existence. But I just, I don't know, I just can't keep up.

then the radio died

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Well it's been a trying week at our house. David had one of those super painful sore throats that wakes you up in the middle of the night, and now I've come down with it, too. On top of that, I had a severe flair up of interstitial cystitis, the chronic condition of the urinary tract that I suffer from. Really exciting stuff, I tell you.

Normally, I can manage the IC because I generally work from home. I don't really have a choice, because it flairs up randomly, for long periods of time, and it can be completely debilitating. But this past week I was filling in as the language arts teacher at a fantastic outdoor middle school around here, and it was tough. I love the school, I love teaching, and I'm always grateful to have part-time work to supplement writing, but it was tough.

Then my computer exploded in the middle of the night when I was listening to an audio book. One of the worst parts about IC is that you can't get any sleep, but audio books help pass the time and counter the loneliness and stress of the whole situation. But then my computer exploded around 3am and I just at there, looking at it and thinking, "Well, what now?"

The astoundingly good news is that the geniuses managed to salvage the hard drive and save my photos, but the bad news is the computer is a piece of toast. It even smelled like toast, sort of, when it exploded. If you've ever considered donating to the wilder coast, well, let me just state that we're experiencing some serious mechanical failure on this end. I gathered some sea glass from Golden Gardens on my last visit from Seattle, so for the next few weeks I'm bringing back the sea glass necklaces as a thank you.  (As well as the handwritten card. #makemoremail, yes!)

However! We're chugging along here, it's not all doom and gloom. I heard about a friend of mine who recently found twenty dollars lying in a field which reminds me that any moment, your luck could change on a dime. Yesterday I ate pancakes for dinner, which felt decadent- just decadent! And another small miracle- I found a splinter in my finger this week, and David offered to pull it out with a needle and I wouldn't let him and instead went to sleep, and in the morning it was gone. Magically, gone.

Something else I enjoyed this week were all your comments on the mystery prize monday post. If your ever up at night and your radio dies, I recommend reading these comments. They'll make you feel a little more normal, and calm, and sort of soothed but also sort of in control. I love it. I'd like to create a post out of them and I think that I will this week.

And finally, I have to delay this week's Mystery Prize Monday. I've teamed up with dig and it's going to be a good one, but we're just too sick over here right now to make it happen. It will be up next Monday. I'm sorry about that, but when it comes to mystery prizes, I like to abide by this lesson.

And now, this week's winner!

Kristen, I know the feeling. You've had so many incredibly adventures in the past few years that I've enjoyed following, particularly the Grand Canyon, you've earned a little rest and a big pile of books. You'll have no scarcity of opportunity for adventure in the coming years. I just wish I had met you earlier in Seattle so that we could have shared some. Please email thewildercoast@gmail.com and we'll get you all sorted out.

Thank you for reading. I hope you had a lovely Sunday and I'll see you later on this week.

keep dressing like that / mystery prize monday

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I've been meaning to take a picture of a particularly beautiful row of flowers that are planted along the road where I live. They're Zinnias, I think. They are really well tended to and every time I walk past them I feel a little cheery.

However I know that if I do take a picture of the flowers, I'll never actually look at the picture again. The colors would be nice and bright, but there would be nothing particularly interesting about it. I'd never put it up on Instagram or anything, so what's the point. Every day I walk past the row of flowers on my way to Odds cafe to drink a cup of coffee and enjoy the social atmosphere as I do my work, and every day I think about taking a picture, but I never do.

Then, two days ago, as I was walking past the Zinnias on my way to Odds, a very large butterfly landed on one of the blooms and began to crawl around on its skinny antennae legs. "Bingo!" I thought. "What a delightful picture that would make, and I bet I could get very close to that butterfly, close enough to capture all the amazing details on its wings!" I took my phone from out of my bag, and waited for a moment for a minivan to pass by before I could cross the street.

But when the minivan approached, it slowed down. Then it stopped right in front of me! In the driver's seat I could see a man pumping away at an old fashioned crank to lower his non-automated window. From the looks of it, this was a little bit of a struggle for him. When the window was down, he leaned his head out, pointed his big fleshy face at me, eyes hidden by a pair of iridescent wrap-around sunglasses and said, "Girl, you keep dressing like that, you ain't never going to get laid."

Then the minivan lurched forward and tore off down the road, leaving the flowers swaying on their stalks and the butterfly, as startled as I had been by the encounter, flapping away.

Now I'm going to tell you what I was wearing, not out of defense, but simply because the absolute ordinariness of my attire bears mentioning. I had on a very simple floral sundress from Patagonia that I purchased four years ago, which I think says a lot about the sturdiness of Patagonia clothing. Sturdy may not be a quality that is revered in the fashion world, but it's certainly something that I value. I was wearing Chacos, also quite sturdy, maybe a little clunky as far as footwear but again, I haven't had to replace the sandals in three years.

Flung carelessly around my shoulders (and sort of wrapped around my neck, like a security blanket, or a scarf) was a lightweight, long-sleeve T that I'd brought along just in case it got drafty inside the cafe. I always pack a layer, even in summer. In fact, summer is the most important time to do so, as certain business owners brutally refrigerate the climate inside their establishments to temperatures so arctic and artificial they could easily kill off all the babies and the elderly on the premises. Why so many people insist on this practice, I may never understand.

All in all, I had assumed (without actually giving it any thought) that dressed in this outfit, when taken in combination with my hair style (average, but not unpleasant) my current fitness status (not my best, but pretty good) I had achieved an overall appearance so appropriate to the season, time of day and location, and in all essence so neutral that I was, essentially, invisible.

People use the word invisible like it's a bad thing (unless they're talking about superpowers, and then everybody wants to be invisible, at least for short periods of time.) But I don't mind it.

A few years ago, if I wanted to turn heads as I strolled across campus or through my watery Norwegian neighborhood in Seattle, I could. I had at my disposal a small but, looking back on it, pricey, arsenal of Aveda smoothing creams and lip glosses and strappy things, as well as that authentic, impossible to replicate buoyancy and petal-softness of youth. Fashion sense did not come in my toolbox at birth, nor did even the most rudimentary makeup skills, but I could get by, and I saw a healthy dose of ego-boosting, life affirming attention from the world, as did every girl I knew. Nothing outrageous, but I enjoyed it. I look back on that time with great fondness.

I no longer spend money on clothes or unguents or anything of that nature. Not because I don't want to, but because I don't have the money for it. Window shopping or perusing through catalogs just makes me crave things I can't have, so I stopped going into stores altogether, and gradually the idea of buying new things faded from my mind. Mostly. 

It's a mellower season of life. For the most part I inhabit a nice, sensible cloud of comfort and self-assurance, the kind that comes with having everything I need for the time being. I have a loving husband, a middle aged corgi, and a reliable pack of friends. When I find myself with a little extra money, I go see Dr. Reilly for a chiropractic adjustment, and I feel great. Strangers on the street have stopped noticing me, and I've stopped noticing that they're not noticing me. I'm 30, good enough on most fronts, and life is a-ok.

So besides the outright bummer of being sexually harassed on my own street, I actually found the whole episode vaguely entertaining. I don't like the concept of such a guy being out there, trolling around the neighborhood and being a dickweed to women, and of course we could get into the multiple layers of failure inherent to a system that could churn out such a character: I certainly don't find that amusing. I would have been much more outraged to hear that this guy had said something like that to one of my friends. But for me, I guess I just didn't care.

I don't meant to give this creep any credit, or to be overly sincere about the whole thing, but it did make me consider this aspect of life at the moment. I put the the least possible effort into how I look right now. That could change when I make a little more money, maybe not, but for now: I'm cool with it.

For Mystery Prize Monday, my question is: what are you just kind of cool with right now?

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If this is your first mystery prize Monday, here's the deal. Leave a comment, then read over and enjoy what everyone else has to say. I'll choose a winner by randomly selecting from within the comments. The winner a hand written card and an autumn-themed mystery prize delivered to their mailbox, just a little something nice to perk up your week.

(Next week- just to get you all drummed up, Nici Holt-Cline of Dig This Chick and I have come up with an ultra special MPM post and prompt, with a Geo Hoodie as a prize! But hey, that's next week.)

photobook : honeymoon

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We swam in the Atlantic, soaked in the arctic air of the White Mountains and clambered over the ocean-hammered cliffs of Acadia. Mosquitos drove us mad on an island outside of Bath, Maine. We dove into swimming holes, climbed rocks, tasted blueberry beer, dozed through every sunrise, dodged the lobster crates on Portland harbor, slept outside and spent next to nothing. 

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Our Wedding : The Party

All these gorgeous photos by Honey by Hive Photography

At my friend Kendra's wedding, I managed to secure eight pieces of cake. Before you get too bent out of shape about this, please keep in mind how small your average slice of wedding cake is. For every wedding I've been to, I've spent roughly thirty minutes eyeing the dessert table, mentally dividing it into how many guests I estimated to be in attendance, always arriving at the same, stricken conclusion: there wasn't nearly enough to go around.

Always the same feeling of distress, quietly slipping away from my table to strategically position myself as close as possible to the door where the waiters emerge, plates in hand. Always the same panicked routine, and never, ever have I been denied a piece of cake. At Kendra's wedding, I had eight.

I was so horribly sick the next day. I told my parents, who had flown out to Seattle for the occasion, that I was hungover. It just seemed more dignified than the truth. 

All this to say, I put a lot of thought into my own wedding cake. Definitely more than the average bear. I dreamt and fawned and wept over magazines in the same manner that some people obsess over the idea of their dress, or perhaps even, the person they marry in the first place. 

We settled on one small three tiered vanilla cake and an assortment of other round cakes from King Arthur Flour, which, if you're not up on your flour purveyors, is based out of Norwhich, Vermont. They use a european style recipe for their wedding cakes, and it's only available in wedding cake form- meaning you can't just go into their studio and buy half a cake to eat on your lunch break, you have to be committing to spend the rest of your life with another human.  

Which is so, so special, and also terrible. Their wedding cakes are lighter than air, a soft and delicate sponge, and the buttercream frosting is whipped and subtle, not too sweet. I can't stop thinking about them, but I'm not certain I'll ever have the opportunity to ever have another bite. Such uncertainty is difficult to live with.

Because it was cheaper to buy a number of small cakes than to get one big one, and also because I wanted them all, we settled on: vanilla, chocolate with mocha buttercream, lemon raspberry, tiramisu, fresh berries and cream chiffon cake (one regular, one gluten free, which I forgot to label so.....I'm sorry about that.)

Our friend Angie from Pie Mamas in Montpelier Vermont baked us three rhubarb cream crumble pies, a heavenly combination of tart berry and rich custard. SO I HEARD. 

My mom worried at one point that we'd selected too much cake, 'an outrageous amount' I believe were her words, but man, those things were gone. I had one bite, the one Dave fed me for the camera, which I didn't really taste anyway because there was so much going on. Then I went and danced for a little bit, and when I came back- gonzo.

("Whaaaa? But I had a piece of each one!!" exclaimed a handful of friends upon hearing this. To you I say: strong work, and good positioning.) 

A word about the toppers: these incredible Sculpey mice were handcrafted by my little cousin, Noel. He gave David Mouse a kayak paddle and Melina Mouse a camera. Things to note: the red hair, the veil, the way the paws are crooked just so as to make the mice appear a teeny bit nervous. Should there be a fire at our house one day, I'm grabbing the mice first.  

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If that isn't enough detail about the cakes, please message me privately and I will be happy to tell you more. 

Here is the rest of the reception. 

Toasts by our fathers, brothers, cousins, friends and Kerry, my english teacher from high school and mentor for the last fifteen years who reminded David that I have "plenty of friends North of the wall." Very important and thank you for the Game of Thrones reference, Kerry. (I was banned from walking down the aisle to A Song of Fire and Ice fairly quickly in the wedding planning process.)

Dad was kind enough to include Lisa in his speech, my best friend who could not make it at the last minute. He spoke about how happy he was, and that he was not 'giving me away' because I wasn't his possession. The next day he came up to me and said, "Kid, I really think your friends liked my speech."

They really did, dad. So did I. 

Austin, the lewd gesture is unintentional.

We nixed a lot of the traditions, like introductions and a first dance, but I did toss my bouquet. Colleen, the florist, ripped it out of the air caught it. I like to call this series, "You couldn't let the nine year old catch the flowers, could you."

As the sky deepened and the lights inside the tents glowed warmer, our aunts and uncles (so very sharply dressed) gathered around the fire pit outside and children ran races across the field in tiny gowns and little rented tuxedos. But I never left the dance floor, save for a few visits to the photo booth. I never steeled away for a breath, to stand in the cool night air and watch it all from a distance. It simply did not feel ethical to leave the dance floor when our DJ was cranking out every hit ever produced.

Our DJ, the best in the business, was a young man in a blue suit and iridescent shades who broke a handful of hearts when he went home alone, at the end of the night.

(There was an older gentlemen who approached me about halfway through the reception and asked, earnestly, "Your officiant, tell me about his hair." "Isn't is something?" I replied. "It's been that long since I've known him!" The gentleman nodded his head, still puzzled. "Yes," he said. "But....what does it mean?")

 

At 10pm, herded out of the tent by the noise ordinances of our tiny town, we ran through mist and a tunnel of spontaneous sparklers back inside the inn, at which point our photographers put down their cameras and joined us. The DJ set up in the main room and the party continued for another remarkable four hours, everyone flushed with wine and darting through the halls.

Our best friends slept in our suite that night, which is what we wanted- to be in their company until the last possible moment, spread as they are throughout the country. I remember my throat hurting so much as I tried to fall asleep and then sitting bolt upright at 5am when it dawned on me: we forget to label the damn gluten free cake. 

The very next day, we went to the rope swing. 

And that was that. Now we're married, and if everything goes according to plan, we will never have another wedding. I'm glad we made this one count.

Thank you to everyone who travelled from so far.

And thanks to you, for tolerating such an outrageous amount about our wedding.
If you were in attendance, visit honeybyhive to purchase photos, and FREE downloads from the photobooth.
Album: Melina & Dave
Password: Clarke

our wedding ceremony

I'd like to start by explaining my absence; I said I'd be right back and now here it is, nearly a month later. As you know, because I've told you, I've been writing full time since I finished school back in the spring, but in order to buy groceries I sometimes I have to do a few other things.

This past month I've been doing those other things, mostly in Virginia, and it was a blur of hotel breakfast buffets and congestion on unfamiliar highways that didn't seem to make much sense, with a lot of exits surprising me on the left. The left! With no warning! I also have a few articles coming out- including one in Blue Ridge Outdoors that you can actually go and pick up in your own hands, I'll tell you more about that later.

One thing I know for certain, after having a little time to think it over, is that I will never regret posting too many pictures of our wedding on this blog. It's a little much, sure, but a lot of good things are a little much. I feel I deserve this after years of dutifully recording every date and relationship that ended, which was all of them until now, including the ones that ended poorly/with humiliation, which was a solid percentage. (Including that time when I met my old boyfriend for dinner in order to get by my bicycle back, tossed back three martinis, burst into tears, and then my bank card was rejected and he had to pay for it all. Which he did without complaint, because he was always a really nice guy.)   

So, in the spirit of well earned indulgence, here is an album of our ceremony and portraits. Once again, thanks to Cassie and Austin at Honey by Hive for being so talented, and understanding that I can never look directly at the camera, on account of my round face.

Something else- do you remember how I walked down the aisle to a song that was written and produced by my sister? They finally released it, and you can listen to it right here and have a multi-sensory wedding experience, if you'd like.

Anna, who is playing the guitar in this video and who looks just like me, would like me to add that when we used this song, it was purely instrumental. As she puts it, "These are not wedding lyrics."

A week or two before the wedding, I went over to New Hampshire for my 'bridal hair trial'. I had very long hair, and once it was all curled and teased in the back,  I looked a little bit like Jessa Duggar, but without her ironically sensual beauty. Seeing this, I panicked and asked for the stylist to cut about a foot of it off.  

As for the final style, I didn't love it, but I also didn't think about it during the wedding because I was enjoying myself so much. Besides, after so many receiving line hugs, it was a moot point. Any style would have been flattened by such a hands-on display of enthusiasm. I also didn't wear any makeup, not really by choice but because, as my friend Kelli puts it, "you're the only one I know who doesn't look better with makeup on." She swears she said it as a compliment.

I bring these things up only because I spent a lot of time in the months leading up to the wedding thinking about how I was going to look, and there was no real need for that. I looked like myself. 

 

My mom thought the whole "first look" thing was tacky, and maybe it was, but everything about weddings are tacky, I think that's why people like them so much, and also why some people will avoid them at all cost. 

We were married at the Quechee Inn at Marshland Farm, which is just a few miles down the road from where I grew up. The rain held out for us until the final hour of the reception, at which point it was the refreshing cool-off that everyone needed. It continued to rain for another three weeks after that.

One of my favorite moments was watching my dad try and figure out what to do with his right arm in the final seconds before we walked. He kept bending it and then straightening it out and then wrapping it behind is back, trying to find the best and most natural looking position, and it was then that I realized how nervous he was, and I loved him in that instant more than I ever have, even though I've always loved him an enormous amount.  

We chose our friend Charles King to be our officiant, because he has a magnetic attraction about him and he has amazing hair. At one point a few years back, he was missing and feared drowned in Tajikistan, causing a bit of an uproar, and if you've been reading here for a little while you may remember. It turns out, as we were all fussing around and losing sleep over his whereabouts, he was plodding 70 miles across a desert with only half a Nalgene of river water for company, in order to secure a rescue for his dying friend, who ended up living. 

I want to say they were briefly imprisoned after that, but anyway, it all worked out in the end. For which I'm so glad*, because he did a top-notch job writing and performing our ceremony. No one could have done better. I'm framing a photo of this to hang in our living room so that those pant legs will never go forgotten.  

As for our vows, they were simple. We've since lost the papers they were written on, because we do not hold on to things. Not for any moral or philosophical reason except that I tend to misplace everything, while David forgets that we ever had it to begin with. 

Nobody cried; it didn't feel like a crying moment. It was very lighthearted and easy. Plus, raw displays of emotion always make me slink out of the room. I very much dislike them. Which is why, if and at which time that I have a baby, family members and particularly tender-hearted friends will be asked to sign a no-cry waiver at the door. Should the contract be broken, they will be escorted from the premises and asked to try again at a later date. 

 

  We wore our river shoes from Astral Design. Every time we looked down at our feet we were reminded of kayaking, and now every time we go kayaking, we are reminded of our wedding.

It will never be lost on me -at least within the boundaries of my comprehension- how lucky I am to have had, among so many other things, this family, these friends, and the fact that they all came together for one beautiful June day in Vermont.

David Ambrose Clarke is the warmest, kindest, and most handsome person that I've ever met, and of all the people in his life that love him, I love him the most, and I think he can say the same about me. (Besides for our parents, but that's a different sort of thing entirely, as I trust you understand.)

Believe it or not there are still more to come, one final post from the reception, which according to my memory was nothing but dancing and wondering what happened to all the cake. And while you may think, "boy, that is a LOT of pictures," I still don't think that it's nearly enough.

 * for many reasons

the barn raising

All photos, unless otherwise noted, are by Honey by Hive Studio.

As for the wedding itself, we decided to hand it over to our very talented and capable friends. We aimed to hire as many of them as we could to be our vendors, gave them total creative license, and detached ourselves from the details. I don't have an eye for design anyway, it's just not one of the tricks that came in my tool box when I was born. How it would all come together, in terms of aesthetics, is not something we worried ourselves over. We wanted our people to feel happy, involved, and proud with their work, to understand that they are integral to our wedding and to our lives.

As it turned out, it all came together. It was simple, elegant and relaxed, with thoughtful consideration poured into every detail. On the precious occasions I had during the reception to stand back and observe the scene- kids dashing through hazy green fields, bright dresses swinging like flowers opening on the dance floor, aunts and uncles around the fire pit, jars brimming with flowers on white tabletops, the tent glowing like a ship lit up in the evening- I felt the way pioneer families must have felt after the whole town raised them a new barn overnight. Such awe, such pure gratitude, the kind that leaves you with the sensation that your heart might flap right out of your chest, soar above your head and you'll never see it again.

Our friends, our parents, our family- they raised us a barn.

***

We hired Colleen as our florist. For those of you who have been reading the blog for a while now, you may remember Colleen as the black-clad roommate in the shittiest apartment in Seattle (which has now been leveled and replaced by a pair of slick townhouses), the one who used to give me pep-talks decrying my affinity for wallowing in self pity while I lay face down on my bed. When I left for work, she'd go into my room and tidy up for me. "The first step to being back on your feet is an organized room!" she'd chirp, like somebody's no-nonsense mom.

But I've known Col long before those days. She was my first friend in Vermont. As second graders, we used to explore the river that runs through Woodstock as our moms did aerobics in the Little Stone Theater. She used to carry around a little Tupperwear of grapes.

The arrangements she created were soft, cream and pale yellow roses with bold strokes of blue and tiny sprays of white daises. They were gorgeous. They looked like a watercolor rendition of Vermont in June. Colleen's company is called Whiskey Daisy Floral. Her specialty is flowers for men who've really screwed up and are trying to win back their girlfriends. Her bouquets come with a shot of whiskey.

***

David as the groom could not decide what to wear, and we went back and forth in our house for months, me growing decidedly edgy about the topic, until Ann Tilley swept in and saved the day. Ann is this fabulous and very talented textile designer by profession, one of his closest friends from childhood. For christmas she knit him this big piece of art that says TOGETHER WE CAN MAKE IT. And so she rescued us and offered to sew his groom's vest as a wedding present. 

Lee Timmons Photography

Back in May, she took him to Charlotte for the day so they could wander around one of those great big fabric stores. David had his heart set on one pattern and Ann wanted another, so in the end she made his vest reversible. He wore her iridescent blue diamonds during the ceremony and then flipped it around to his swirly floral for the reception. Dave called his pattern his Party Time look.

David was over the moon about his vest. He's saved it, pressed neatly into the back of his closet, so that one day our son, if we have a son, could wear it at his wedding. I suppose our daughter could wear it, too, if we have a daughter. (She can't wear my dress though; I went swimming in it. )

Ann also painted our chalkboard signs and was very nice about it, even though we'd forgotten about them and didn't ask her till the day before. I'd also forgotten to buy a veil, although it's more accurate to say that I could simply never muster the strength to shell out $80 on a piece of gauze, so my cousin Alison sat down with a hot glue gun and made one for me with $5 of material from JoAnns fabric. She even added little beads to the comb. If I ever travel to Africa it will be the most elegant malarial prophylactic anyone has ever seen.

***

For a long time before the wedding, I had no idea what song I would walk down the aisle to. Sea chanties, The Decembrists, Yo-Yo Ma with Bela Fleck, Patti Griffin, Riverdance (yes, and proud), Alison Krauss, the Beatles- there were too many to choose from.

So I kept waiting for a song to choose me, and I finally settled upon "Here, there, and Everywhere" by Paul McCartney after it came on the radio during a particularly winsome evening in North Carolina. David and some of our friends were playing a card game on the back porch as I did the dishes, summer air breezing in, and everything felt very certain and nostalgic and easy.

But then, just a few days before the wedding, I heard the most gorgeous piece of music that I've ever heard sailing out of the living room in my parents' house. My sister, who is a musician, was working on mastering one of her songs that she was producing for another singer.  The melody was hypnotic, haunting, all cello and piano with crescendos that peaked and fell like waves.

 "This is it," I told her, running into the room. "This is the song- whatever this is!"

"The song for you to walk to, or for your wedding party to walk to?" She asked.

"All of us. Tell the DJ to loop it if he has to."

Anna also sang during the ceremony, wearing a lace dress that looked to die for, a song about ships from her album The Wasted Ocean. "I'm singing this one for my sister, who is obsessed with sea chanties," she said, "and for Dave, who kayaks."

I ended up with two bridesmaids, Anna and Alison. I had three- Lisa, of course, Lisa was my bridesmaid, and she flew fifty hours from Vanuatu where she's serving in the peace corps just to be there. But at the last moment there was an emergency, something really rotten. She got as far was Washington, DC. She was so close.

Our flower girl, Charli, was the star of the show. She seems to have been constructed out of peach skin and silk, and would consistently come up with the most serious and earnest little pieces of advice:

"Excuse me, but I was just making sure that you've taken the time to grab a bite to eat this morning."

"Make sure that when David comes in from the camp fire tonight to go to bed, that he does not disturb you. You need your rest."

Charli belongs to our friends Sarah and Charles, who performed our ceremony. She was like a little piece of moonlight.

***

For the readings, we asked the two women who we consider to be the wisest amongst us: Molly Milroy and Elissa Koop.  Molly and David have been friends since they were two and stuck with each other even through college, living side by side in the dorms and then as roommates until David bought his own house. Now she has this little job where she herds great swarms of surgeons, doctors and nurses through places like Ethiopia and El Salvador with Operation Smile.

And Elissa, she used to push me off of the sidewalk into the street when we were in middle school, although she hates when I bring that up now. She is the most brilliant writer I've ever met.

***

And finally for now, our indefatigable photographers, Cassie and Austin of Honey By Hive Studio. They have been two of my dearest friends since middle school, through Woodstock and the Academy at Adventure Quest. They are so extremely proficient and competent, I remember Cassie directing the elaborate series of shoots involving the extended families, all while the holding two glasses of champagne in one hand that she later delivered to Dave and I, and never spilled a drop. And she had just delivered her second baby a few weeks back.

I read something in Ann Lammot's book Operating Instructions that said if you truly knew what a person had gone through in their life just to make it to the place they are today, you would fall to your knees at their feet. Whenever I read that, I think of Cassie and Austin.

***

That's enough for today.

I'll be back later to write about our ceremony, the reception, the officiant, the six cakes. There are so many gorgeous photos to share. But I wanted to begin with the behind the scenes, our friends who built us that heavenly day, what surely was the most beautiful wedding in the recorded history of White River Junction, Vermont, perhaps even on earth.

The fun zone

Photo by Lee Timmons Photography

I grew up wandering more or less alone around the forests and fields that surround our home in Vermont. During the summers I had a friend, my cousin Christopher who is now a professional ultimate fighter. We collected water guns and Berenstein Bear books and those things kept us content, if not wildly entertained, but he went back to Boston at the end of August every year. My sister was around, too, but one day even she left to go to college, which was really terrible of her.

These days, the other three houses on the land are inhabited year-round by my aunts and uncles, but when I was younger they were still just summer homes, empty except for on the holidays. I did have friends over, and we always had a good time (sledding parties, no parents around, Aretha Franklin on the turntable, we were of the industrially squeaky clean variety of teenagers) but my house is so far away from town, from anybody else at all, that these gatherings were pretty rare.

For the most part it was just me, reading Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County in the tree house, drawing maps of the trails and old logging roads that I'd stumble across, and fantasizing about having neighbors- maybe a nice family with kids my age, or with a baby I could play with. Or anybody. I remember so well those wide open summers of exploring, those frozen winters where the fields were dead and it felt like each gray, dull day would stretch on forever.

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So it felt completely surreal when our friends began to arrive a few days before the wedding, all the way from Asheville, Seattle, Durham, Oregon, Boston, and all the much older cousins who used to spend Christmases on the farm but have long since scattered. To see them pitching tents in Sugar House Hill and drifting around in the pond chatting with one another was a bizarre and ecstatic thing.

How many times have I walked through those fields, at times unbearably grateful for the solitude, other times so lonely that I made a sport of earnestly searching for signs of other people (I once found a pair of car keys half buried in the ground, and twice scared the pants off early-season through hikers on the Appalachian trail, which crosses through our woods.) For thirty years, no one really came around to this place except for a tight group of us, and now all at once, everybody is here.

Photo by Lee Timmons Photography

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That's why people have weddings, you know. It's not to get married, you could do that for a lot less money at the court house. It's to bring everyone together so that you can stand back and watch your old high school science teacher having a long talk with your recluse cousin, while your mom's best friend since she was four dances to"Get Low" with the captain of your college ultimate team. It happens once in your life, it's weird and glorious and sometimes concerning, and just as you're wrapping your mind around it, the thing is over and everybody packs up and leaves.

Photo by Lee Timmons Photography

For one whole week we had friends staying with us on our farm, the busiest and most exhausting week of my life. By the end of it, I was too tired to speak. David and I felt so happy about everything, about each other and about getting to be around all of these people, we felt so overcome with our own good fortune and the task of keeping everyone fed that sometimes at night, when we were finally in our own bed, we'd both cry ourselves to sleep. 

That's right.

Photo by Lee Timmons Photography

Of course, I say all of this as if we didn't have any help. Really it was my family that kept everyone fed, Anna and Brooks up in the morning making pancakes, dad drifting from room to room with a box of wine, mom and doing everything else.

David and I were mostly pulled away doing the last agonizing tasks, the ones we saved till the last moment because they're so awful. Seating charts, alphabetizing, the license, the toasts, the lists, the last minute cancellations. We even waited till the day before to write the ceremony, sitting on a picnic table outside Jake's Quechee Market with Charles, our officiant whose brilliant blond mullet falls all the way down his back. It took us an hour.

We had a very simple event. We dropped every single detail and custom and tradition that we possible could and still call it a wedding. And yet, the last few days we were locked in my room for hours pulling it together, making sure no one's name was spelled incorrectly and that some of the cakes were gluten free and the photographer's schedule was the same as the DJ's schedule and the florist knew that our bridesmaid's husband was sick, she couldn't make it and didn't need the bouquet. Outside people splashed around, screamed and drank beer and played badminton.

Photo by Lee Timmons Photography

Photo by Lee Timmons Photography

Dave had set up the badminton net next to the pond and the fire pit a few days prior, an area we referred to as "the fun zone" that became the center of the party. On the night before the wedding, we came home late from the rehearsal dinner to find everybody gathered around the fire with music playing from an old pair of speakers someone had rigged up. A dozen more friends had arrived while we were at dinner. Our flower girl Charli was paddling around in the pond, blue in the lips, teeth chattering, refusing to come in. She'd dash onto the beach to light a handful of sparklers, then run back into the water to watch their light reflecting off the still water.

My friend Ryan was there with his fiance, they'd flown in from Seattle for a 36 hour visit, and I walked them to the upper field so they could see the land, starlit and quiet. I could see the Fun Zone from up there, black figures around the camp fire, those terrifying hot-air lanterns wobbling into the sky and drifting out of range. And there was Charli, nine years old and swimming alone the way I used to, a tiny fizzing speck of orange light gliding around the dark pond.    

Wimp. Writing Links.

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If you don't hear from me for a while, it's because I burnt up and died. Whenever it gets above 85 degrees I declare a personal state of emergency. I know 85 is not actually all that hot, what can I say, I'm sensitive. I'm a wimp. We all have areas in our lives where we wimp out, and mine are heat, shopping for pants (won't do it) and, as per our previous discussion, noise. (And elevators!) (And planning social gatherings!) Hey, what are yours? You can tell me in private if you'd like.

I've spent the majority of time since I've been home from our honeymoon sitting in my underwear next to the fan, working away. Getting up to refill my glass of ice, sitting down again. Some of my friends are absolute maniacs, just really off of the deep end, and they'll call me every now and again to ask if I'd like to go running, which is just absurd.  Of course not. Call again in October. 

Anyway, here are a few of the things I've been working on. I thought some of you might enjoy looking through a few of them, especially if you're local to the Blue Ridge Mountains, or even if you're not. If you really like any of them, share them! That helps me a lot. Otherwise, I'll be back very soon with the wedding photos. Stay cool! No running! 

Kenny Lex

The five most photogenic landscapes in the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

Some eye candy. Obscenely beautiful mountains, ridges and waterfalls.  

Nick Page

Ten family friendly adventures around Asheville.

Free or really cheap ways to get outside with your kids. Orchards, splash parks, butterfly houses, and more. I'm paying attention to this one myself.

Steven Reinhold

Six of the best summer hikes in Western Carolina.

I chose these hikes because they're not going to cause you to whither and die of heat. All of these hikes are shaded, alongside a river, or up high where the temps are cooler. 

woodleywonderworks

Four strange and unusual adventures in North Carolina. 

If you want to do something eerie, check out these ghost towns and abandoned places and odd attractions. But buyer beware- I visited the haunted tunnel and now lights go on and off in my house spontaneously and I am not joking, lying or exaggerating. 

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Five waterfall swimming holes outside Asheville.

Swimmable waterfalls. SWIMMABLE WATERFALLS.

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Perfect Asheville Pairings: Adventure + Beer

I don't mean to boast, but I know a little something about drinking beers after an adventure. As a matter of fact, as I get older, I'm paying more attention to the beer than I am the adventure; this is easy to do when the bar down the street has chocolate peanut butter cup porter on tap, plus 59 other beers. (And I'm not joking, lying or exaggerating.)

Opulance

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I cannot believe how happy I am to be home, how completely mesmerized I am by my surroundings. Every day I run through town on a pitiful two mile loop that makes me feel inordinately accomplished and strong. I somehow manage to run slower than I walk, but still, it's something. It's a routine. Afterwards, I swim underneath the bridge on main street, then change clothes and go to Mont Vert Cafe to drink iced coffee and try to work out wedding details, but I never know where to start. I mostly just read my book. My friend Sam from high school owns the place, and the brief but warm conversations we have as I place my order is what constitutes my social interaction for the day. It's perfect. 

The weather is completely weird- chilly and wet, like early fall. It's my favorite weather. Sometimes, when I'm passing through those small-town streets that are so familiar I barely notice them, a feeling of joy and expansion washes through me with such force that I feel almost deranged. As if I've taken a great deal of opiates. 

I remember feeling that way when I was a kid, especially around the holidays, or in the summer when whole weeks would breeze by with nothing but swimming in the river and watching rented movies in the evenings. But as an adult, the experience of pure happiness is rare. There's always something, some glitch, some burden, some knowledge of a future obligation that weighs you down. To catch a little bit of that joy again makes me feel as if I'm time traveling. 

When we arrived back in Vermont after driving all night, Dave immediately hopped in the car with four kayakers from North Carolina who were waiting for us at my parent's house, and together they drove another 30 hours to Labrador, Canada. Dave later told me they survived by listening to Harry Potter on tape. 

The rivers they are on have never been run before. The boys found them on Google Earth. Every couple of days I get a SPOT device signal sent to my phone: Still alive! Love U!

I drive all around my home state: to Burlington, Waterbury, Stowe, Ascutney. I visit with Kerry, my English teacher from Adventure Quest, and have a sleepover in her basement with the one other girl who attended that high school with me. Alex lives in Kenya now, she's the head of some farming non-profit and her life sounds wild. "Do you feel safe there?" I implore, sitting across from her at a tiny bakery in Waterbury.

"Oh, sure," she says. Then she pauses, "Well, no. Actually, no. I mean, it does feel like at any moment, anything could happen."

I drive to Bethel to see my friend Joanna, and we walk into the completely empty, completely silent main street to buy ice cream with her little daughter. The town feels like a movie set. I climb to the bottom of the Quechee Gorge, go off the rope swing, ride my bike, I try and keep up with the torrent of emails coming through from the caterer, the DJ, bakery, florist. It takes me an entire day to order name cards, different colors corresponding with different entrees, everything spelled out correctly. As soon as they're ordered, four people cancel. Three others RSVP yes, out of the blue.

I'm terribly disorganized. I write notes on the back of receipts or magazines and they pile up around my bed and in my car. I'm trying not to eat too much, trying to shrink a little bit, do a daily weight regiment in a last-gasp attempt to tone my arms. At night I study them in the mirror from different angles. I look exactly the same as I always do. 

find me on instagram @melinadream

One evening, I leave my house to go swimming under the bridge in Quechee, and while I'm out a hurricane blows in. The air is suddenly full of hail and leaves. When I try and drive home, there are trees down everywhere across the road. The farmhouse at the bottom of our driveway has been crushed, the trees smoking and split down the middle by lightning. The farmer is standing out in his yard, hunched shoulders, old flannel, scratching his head. He gives me a ride back home through the forest on his four wheeler. 

The next day, the vice that's been twisting and tightening in my chest the whole time gets so painful, so restrictive, that I give up and go to the hospital. They hook me up with wires, do an EKG, take chest X-rays, monitor my lungs. The doctor is very serious and won't give in to my nervous attempts at humor. He's chewing gum. But he can't say what's going on with me. 

When I get home, I hear from one of my best friends back in Asheville that he's had a similar day. He's been in the hospital with the same symptoms, was put through a battery of the same tests, and went home without any answers. He says the whole thing actually scares him. I tell him it scares me too. 

"But it's obvious to me what's going on with you," I say. "You just broke up with your girlfriend. You're stressed. It's just anxiety."

"Well, it's obvious to me what's going on with you," he replies. "You're about to get married. You're stressed. It's just anxiety."

I put down the phone. I say, "Shit." David's been gone for nearly three weeks. I wanted him to go, but I now realize how completely overwhelmed I feel. In addition to the wedding, we're also hosting most of our friends at my parents house, some for a whole week. It's been raining continuously for the last few days, and cold, and it hits me that we don't have nearly enough blankets. I walk over to the linen closet and count the spare quilts. Then I write David and ask him to come home early. He writes back a few hours later: "Of course."

When he drives up the road just a few days later, all the tightness in my chest evaporates for good.

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misophonic

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Part 2.

It took us 19 hours to drive from our home in Asheville to North Pomfret, Vermont, a few hours longer than usual despite only having stopped twice, for diesel and to let the dog trot circles around the parking lot, casting us glances of annoyance for having been woken up. We left in the evening after David finished work, and like idiots we drove through the entire night, something that for the past few years I've considered myself too old for.

In those dark and woozy hours between 1 and 5 in the morning, while David slept open mouthed in the passenger seat, his shoulder jammed up against the window, I may have been driving a tiny bit below the speed limit. Despite the maniacal amount of hours we were spending in an overpacked car whose seats didn't lean back, I was in no hurry.

Our neighbor across the street had recently acquired a set of enormous speakers that he rigged up in his back yard, directly facing our front door. All day he blasted country music radio, even when he wasn't out in the yard himself, and it was grinding me into a sort of depression. During those early summer days in May, when the air was warm and buoyant, I kept the doors and windows sealed shut to keep the sound out. I dragged fans into every room of our small, one level house, and set them on high, so that our home sounded like an airplane right before takeoff, and stale air whipped through the hallway. But it was better than the insidious stream of ads for Home Depot and Lowes, talk DJs and Kenny Chesney coming from across the street.

I couldn't work outside on our screened porch, the one that David and I lived in all spring, eating dinner and playing Monoploy Deal and often just sitting on our goodwill armchairs in companionable silence, because the incessant noise invoked in me a rage that some might say was slightly out of proportion to the stimulus. I'd take my computer into my bedroom and try to write but I'd be too furious, and when a particularly exuberant song reached me even in there, in my own bed, over the din of the fans, I'd put my hands over my ears and start to sob.

This wasn't like in college, where some friends and I had unwittingly wound up renting a place next to the unofficial UW Rugby House. They threw parties each and every Friday and Saturday night during the school year, parties that inevitably burst out of the shitty little rental house and spilled into the street, often becoming a brawl of swinging fists and girls scream crying into their flip phones. The police would eventually show up around 3am and break it up, tipped off by a certain neighbor who spent those nights sitting and watching from her upstairs window, ringing the police's 'nonemergency line' until someone showed up.

At least that situation had been temporary. Every day brought us closer to the end of the lease, when we could flee the neighborhood and find somewhere quieter, farther away from campus. Someplace where we wouldn't have to fear the weekends and their guaranteed sleeplessness. But David and I own our house in West Asheville, its purchase was a momentous occasion of pride and joy and we couldn't possibly afford to live anywhere else. And our neighbors, at least three generations of them currently live there, are never going to leave. Nor, would it seem, are they turning down the music.

"We're stuck here." I cried to David one evening. "We're going to have to hear that music forever- we'll never be able to go outside!" David was patient with me, comforting if slightly confused, but as I ranted on and became more agitated, burying my tear streaked face into the pillow, he did say, very evenly, "You know, it's a little hard to hear how unhappy you are in this house we've worked so hard on."

Sound can drive me insane. I've been this way my entire life, and even have very early memories of feeling intense anger triggered by some completely innocuous sound. In fact, my very first memory is of sitting on my dad's lap, pushing my two hands into his chest to try to make him stop breathing. I didn't like the sound of it. I was a baby, not talking yet, but I understood when my dad looked over at my mom and said, "I think...she doesn't want me to breathe?"

I didn't want him to breathe, and I don't want anyone around me to breathe, or chew, or clear their throat. It's a condition called misophonia that, understandably, nobody is all that sympathetic about. People have to chew, after all. It's described as a 'neural glitch' and it can transform me into a terrible, mean, and hideously unreasonable person. I guiltily explained my condition to David one day in Nicaragua, after a particularly, how do I put this, noisy dinner. "It's my problem," I said, looking at the ground. "But you, and everyone I love the most- you all have to experience the side effects."

He hadn't seem very concerned, mostly bemused, but not long after we had to develop a certain code in order to deal with it. If a noise triggered me- my hard tiny glint of insanity- instead of throwing my hands over my ears or slamming something down onto the table or telling him sharply to stop it! I would instead say, "Help!" He liked this because it implied the onus was on me- I didn't need anyone else to change, I needed help. And I did.

This made things a little better, although I learned after the fact that he delayed proposing to me for one week because I'd yelped out, "Help!" just as he was pulling the ring from his pocket, on the summit of Bear Wallow mountain. (He had been chewing on a handful of raisins.) This, he said, kind of ruined the mood.

And now I was driving away from it, the radio in the yard, the neighbors that made me uneasy, the constant homesickness that made me feel so horridly ungrateful, unadaptable- I was home. I luxuriated in the air conditioned car, and stayed in the right lane as 18-wheelers trundled past in the left, causing us to swerve slightly in their wake. I listened to an audio book thought about everything that I had to look forward to: the wedding, seeing my parents, seeing my friends, three weeks of being home in Vermont, all the quiet days and still, cool evenings that I could wander through all by myself.

David was continuing up north to Labrador on a whitewater kayaking trip, and while other people balked at the idea- "right before the wedding? for three weeks?" I thought it sounded something akin to opulence. I wanted to be home and I wanted to be alone. For the past few weeks I'd been experiencing an inexplicable tightness in my chest, a searing pain that made breathing a maneuver that required concentration. The doctor, disinterested, wrote me a prescription for Ativan which had proved useless. But I knew that as soon as I reached my house in Vermont, familiar, beloved, safe and so very quiet- I knew that I'd get better. And I was almost there.

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