Once upon a time, there was a teenager who fell in love with a skinny guy who had black fingernails, a trench coat, and a mysterious gaze.
She was intrepid (she thought) and a romantic (who isn't?) and she had read the YA romances--Twilight and Bitten (sometimes classified as YA) and so many others that call for messed up people getting together and keeping each other sane through crazy plot action. Even the music that she grew up with--”You Drive me Crazy,” and “Vermillion,” and “Imaginary,” and boatloads of '90s band songs—told her that creepy stalker types are mysterious and fascinating.

These stories and songs envisioned lonely girls made better by morbid guys with weird haircuts. They preached that real love is the kind you can't explain—the kind that makes no sense, but you feel a pull, and you want it even though everyone you know tells you to leave it in the dirt and move on.

She flirted with her romantic anti-hero for a decade. Off and on they went, like spring and winter in New England. Sometimes they were deep, and she knew, she just knew that they would be together forever (he would take her last name, and she could wear a purple wedding dress), and at other times being around him made her feel dusty and creaky, like gnarled trees in Jericho.

She fled her homeland to escape him, and everyone else. She sought her own way, and her own people. She wanted to know that she could be loved by strangers. She met many idiot guys before finding the Bio-Engineer. They met at a blues dance, and started talking, and when he moved closer to her town, she invited him out. He got her drunk, but behaved himself, and they went on walks after that. They strolled along a pond with stone painted frogs the size of miniature horses, and sat down on a swinging bench to talk some more.

It was here that he told her that she could be an engineer if she wanted, and for some reason this made her feel good. It was the kind of good that she used to feel with Black Fingernails, when he looked at her like he liked her. It made her think that she could love Bio-Engineer. She did. He was smart. He could fix cars and motorcycles and stuff in his house; he could write long, humorous letters; he brought her out to eat, and was sweet, and there were boxes of books on his bedroom floor. They could sit in the same room for hours, each doing their own thing, and it didn't bother her. It didn't bother her.

It was obvious why she loved him. And it was easy to explain to others.

But there was still that creeping need for something more. So when she moved away from Bio-Engineer (unhappily, but necessarily for family) she returned to Black Fingernails, who was a little different from how he used to be, but not much. He still didn't read, or write, or ask questions. He still acted like he knew everything, and like he was better than everyone else. But she tried, because he was exactly what she'd pictured in a husband: someone with whom she could be near at night, and stay away from during the day, while she was writing. A solely-romantic relationship.

But he kept talking. He preached hate and Trump-isms, and everything he said was a mere belch of what someone in his family had clearly repeated to him again and again. He refused to work more than 20 hours a week, and she didn't like how he spent his money. Every practical sign told her that this was a lost cause, and she would eventually be brought down if she stuck with him.

So she let go. And now she waits for the next one, if he comes, although she still likes Bio-Engineer and wishes they could live closer. In the meantime she sees her sisters and her brother and her parents; she spends time with friends that she grew up with, but hasn't hung around in years. She hikes alone, as in meditation

​She is rediscovering her East Coast self, and her single self, one story at a time. 

I went out into the mist, dim as a British mystery, into forest whose ferns and moss were a brighter green because of the darkness of the day. The swamp, which seems to cross all of the Georgetown trails in the state forest, was still and clear as glass, reflecting the sky. Sun-bleached trees stood like sentries in the wet, saturating themselves with water.

I hike to drench myself in things outside of me; to push my body to extremes so that I can stop thinking and just feel. This must be what my mother means whenever she tells me to be present. On some of my favorite trails, the ground is cushioned with dead pine needles, like down in the softest blanket. Our east coast climate is wet and wild, and yesterday was no different.

This water is life itself—a nurturing, dangerous mother, sending hydration and plant life, and also ticks and floods.

All I could hear over the sound of my breathing and footsteps was birdsong. Their singing echoes throughout as in a high-domed theater, reaching every corner. 

I was on this trail to make up for the 40 hours I spend at my desk job, and the 10 hours I spend driving to and from work every week. I was here to hike until I hurt—to cross still waters over a medley of carefully placed sticks, and to walk as quickly as possible over and down the sides of hills, and to hear birdsong, and if I did this long enough, I thought that thinking would stop; wanting something other than what I have would stop. Longing and loneliness would cease to matter.

A guy in my nonfiction graduate class a few years ago—Mickey—wrote an essay about he and a friend in the mountains, hiking and getting lost and scared, and trying to find their way out. It was a poetic story, and one I think back to often. Because he focused so intently on the body, on how their bodies ached, and the anxiety in their minds, that everything else fell away, like concerns about tomorrow's classes or frustrations with dumb things once said. What I took away from the piece was this: Sometimes, only pushing your body to extremes can get you out of your head.

Writing does the opposite. It pulls me into my mind, where I never suffer from writer's block, but always from writer's overload, where there are too many ideas to sift through. Sometimes I stress out over trying to decide whether to write a blog post or a story or just a journal entry. It's completely ridiculous, I know—but I want to do all these things so much that it really is a hard decision to make. Like a kid trying to decide between Chuck E. Cheese or the go-carts in Salisbury, where they used to have the most amazing course I've ever seen.

My work schedule has warped life itself. Sitting has become a punishment, making it so that whenever I am not at work, I don't want to sit. This is dangerous for a writer, because writing sort of generally involves sitting. If I need to get up and walk around every five minutes, then not a lot of writing is getting done. My employer is receiving the best hours of my day, and I am getting none.

On weekends, the first order of business is to make up for lost movement: Exercise, hike, jog, climb. Exhaust the body, while allowing ideas to sift. Then, sit down and let the subconscious flow. Work on organizing that flow the following day—directing energy toward a specific goal. What do you do to get focused (as a writer, or for other things)?