hiking-the-pct

I hoped my solitude would help me reclaim my innocence, remember who I__ been, to find who I wanted to be. To become her. To love her, Deborah, Debby, Doll Girl, Wild Child, me, despite the irreversible truth that I__ been raped. I was learning again that I could trust myself and, also, I was seeing, other people. I was brave enough now to go out alone towards what I wanted, to trust that I was strong enough for it, to know that help would come when I needed it. It always came.

Second____ take much better care of myself.There were simple things I could do. I could start with my poor feet. These little two feet carried me each day for miles and miles, steady and flexed, tired and aching from constant daily pounding, bruised scratched and sometimes rubbed red-raw, my weight pressing and pressing them. I decided now that each night in my tent I__ massage them. I would knead them with lotion because they always ached, and at the end of thirty-mile days they burned__nd it would be luxurious__omething I could have done the entire way because I had been carrying sun lotion but had never taken the ten sacred minutes to do for myself.

I don__ remember having one conversation with my dad in the three days I was home, but looking back at my journal, I see I wrote about him. I scrawled about how I heard him telling my mom that I needed to go back. I was unhappy; he thought the hiking was better for me.I wonder why he told these things to my mother, nothing to me.I wonder if overhearing his approval encouraged me to finally fly back to the trail. Maybe. Maybe my father__ faith in my walk__n me__ade me feel strong enough to leave. His actual words, as I wrote them in my notebook, were, __he__ an adult now, she can do what she wants. It doesn__ mean she__ not selfish._ He almost understood.

When I felt strongly I would say it strongly.

It felt amazing to make visible my boundaries.The rumors dissipated, then changed. Eventually I turned down enough men that I became the girl who turned down men.

I wanted him to declare in shock how overlooked and underestimated I had been ever since I was a child. How lucky he felt to be the one to have discovered me, to have me. I wanted him to look at me like maybe I was magic.

She taught me only how to need to be taken care of. I was here because I needed to learn to take responsibility for making my own decisions _ to earn my own trust.

It finally had to.I understood that it wouldn__ be easy, it would be very hard; I__ need to resist the habit I had developed long ago _ with conviction. I__ have to be impolite, an inconvenience, and sometimes awkward. But if I could commit, all that discomfort would add up to zap predatory threats like a Taser gun. I__ stun them. They__ bow to me. I__ let my no echo against the mountains.

I had feared this end, wondered where I would go from it, from the moment I first stepped on this footpath in the desert. But I found I was not afraid of reaching it now. I was happy. I hadn't found every answer for where I was going, but I now had all I needed to take these next steps. I knew I would do what I needed to become a writer now.

For all my life, I had been passive when faced with dangers. I was stunned as I swam to find that I had, for the first time in my history, asserted myself and been truly heard__espected. It felt monumental, I was buzzing with adrenaline. It was as if I__ become someone else entirely.I had escaped a kidnapper. It finally felt real. My body unclenched tension in the balmy pool.I was proud of the strength I__ found. I was the one who asserted he take me back; I caused him to listen. I was no longer a passive Doll Girl, trapped. This was me learning I could trust my voice____ used it, and it finally worked! I was triumphant. This escape showed me: I had grown, and grown vividly.