It’s Sunday.
I don’t like writing blogs on Sundays; it aggravates the deadline demons—and I’ve got enough aggravated entities to deal with, not the least of which is Little Miss Muse stomping around in her stilettos in the corner of my disaster-fied writing office that’s been neglected for months now. She’s digging for her supplies.
And not the creative tools meant to fuel our fiction—the lavender glitter and grape bubblegum. She’s reaching for the big guns.
Little Miss lines up the bedazzled Zippo with the fuse of a bottle rocket aimed at my head, her wings quivering…
She’s been patient with this season, but she’s had all that an author’s muse can take, and she can’t take no more. She wants me to get with the program.
I want me to get with the program.
This blog goes live tomorrow. It won’t have time to percolate in the laptop. After it’s available online, I’ll find twelve typos, five ways to make twelve sentences better, and a logic fallacy so big you could drive a bus through it.
But we must work with what we’ve got.
What we’ve got:
1. One busted shoulder
2. Probate
3. Painting an empty house flooded with memories
4. A stomach that feels hunger but refuses food
5. Inspections
6. Little Miss Muse with a bottle rocket
7. The abyss of the calendar that is 2025
8. Triple-degree heat index
9. A nervous system that believes these to be caveman times—“Oh, look! A saber tooth!”
10. Angry cats descended from said saber tooth
11. Grief from the passing of three immediate family members
12. A pile of untouched writing projects
13. The occasional glimmer of hope that things will lighten up
14. Nevermind. That glimmer was a floater. Or an impending stroke…
*Sigh*
Couch Lady’s been warning me to disconnect. Decompress. “This is a lot.”
She must tell me it’s a lot because I don’t know. It’s been a lot for so long this feels normal. Feels like I should be able to pass this challenge with medals and ceremonial ivy wreaths strung around my neck.
She shakes her head. “It’s a lot.”
Okay, Doc.
So, I’ve tried to do the mental-healthy things.
A quick trip to Gatlinburg a couple of weeks ago was one well-intentioned attempt to escape the duties for a few days.
Joined my Introvert Friend on her bucket list adventure to go ziplining.
I thoroughly enjoyed the company and the nature and the artsy community. And the fudge, OMG the fudge made with butter and love—not gas station fudge (sorry Buccee’s).
But the ziplining? That was not my idea. That was a promise made to Introvert Friend.
Off we go to Anakeesta on a ski lift, where my legs dangle and I can’t see my feet but I know they’re not on solid ground anymore. And the ski lift was going to be the easy part.
Queue the dissociative symptoms. There’s too much airspace underneath me and expanding by the minute.
We topple out of the lift into the heat and the crowd. See sparkles (not glimmers of hope…).
Pineapple ice cream treat to squelch the dissociative symptoms.
Explore a little. Nice views. Distract with the vibe of the place. Sweat a little.
Lunch.
Sweat a little more.
Then off to the staging area, where a stranger with who-knows-what-qualifications straps us into harnesses with questionable mileage and gives us vague directions as we stand on the wooden platform and wait our turn to fly down the mountain to the next tower. For kicks and giggles, they plop skimpy helmets onto our heads like cherries on top of sundaes and declare us fit for flight.
While we wait on the platform, I sort of hear Introvert Friend say, “Beth, you with me?” or something to that effect.
Yes and no. I was there—sort of. I focus on my shoes, which are attached to legs unwilling to swing at the hips. Lots of fuzzies. Lots of sparkles. Pretty ones…
“We aren’t going to be last, Bethany.”
Yeah. Yeah. Little kids went. Didn’t even scream as they flew down the line. How bad can it be?
My nervous system answered that question in spades with all the bads that it could be.
The sky offers a light mist, which brings me around a bit. I trace the zipline down into the trees until it disappears. I can’t see the next landing zone. Turns out that section is 1,100 feet.
More vague directions from the guide that make no sense to me, and we’re told to go. And without pineapple ice cream to ward off the fuzzy glitter.
So off we go.
Introvert Friend yells, “Weeee!” Or something like that.
I yell Introvert Friend’s name rather harshly.
Mist turns to sprinkles and brings me round a little more and… I realize this was not a free fall and that the harness has me. I actually enjoy the flight for about 50 feet before the second tower comes into view. I fail to follow those “oh that’s what they meant” instructions and body-slam into the guide.
Sprinkles turn into lightning and tower-rattling thunder. The guides call off the rest of the tour. But we must rappel down to reach a spot where ATVs could take us back to the starting point.
My legs freeze again. On the first tower, you could see the zipline above and where you’d end up—in the trees somewhere, but there was a “somewhere.”
With the second tower, there was no endpoint. Just the wooden platform’s edge and a blind jump.
Just… air.
And no pineapple ice cream. Or fudge made with love and butter.
The step off is painful (because I don’t follow the vague directions rattled off over the claps of thunder. I have too much slack in my line. My feet don’t want to discover what’s “down there,” and they take me off sideways. The 0.982-second free-fall takes my harness to a place where a harness should never go before the auto-rappelling mechanism kicks in and I body-slam into another guide.
Those blind jumps happened twelve days ago.
Yesterday I sat in the middle of the floor of a bedroom in my mom’s house as Introvert Friend painted. I’m not allowed to use a paint roller, per Clinic Doc and Back Guy. So I eat Goldfish Crackers and try not to dissociate into a cloud of memories.
What’s next? After painting and probate and this it’s-a-lot season?
I’m standing on the edge of a wooden platform a hundred miles high with legs that won’t swing. It’s just air down there and I don’t know if my harness will hold. My skimpy mental health may as well be a cherry on top of a sundae for all the good it’ll do me.
It’s a blind jump…
I think Introvert Friend sensed I was fading.
“So Gatlinburg has a new zipline. One that goes from start to finish with no stops in the middle.”
That brings me ‘round.
“So it won’t be cancelled for lightning once we’re buckled?”
“Nope.”
I’m in.
So long as there’s pineapple ice cream before and fudge filled with love and butter after.
