Death Valley

This is the problem with human relationships: you come to a person with one feeling and they’re having another.

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

If I’m honest, I came to escape a feeling—an attempt that’s already going poorly, because unfortunately I’ve brought myself with me, and I see, as the last pink light creeps out to infinity, that I am still the kind of person who makes another person’s coma all about me.

It is easier to have an intimate relationship with the unconscious than the conscious, the dead than the living.

People are such a commitment. I would "reach out" more often if everyone promised not to check in again later.

It’s always the people you don’t want to be there for you who are there for you.

I came to the desert because I wanted to be alone. Now that I’m alone, it’s not what I want.

You're going to die one day. Then what do I do? In a way, it's like you're already gone. I have to prepare." "If that's the case, why love anyone? Everyone is going to die at some point." "Exactly! It's like two ghosts trying to cuddle each other. Dust cuddling dust.

We have seen twenty-seven doctors in nine years. People believe doctors know everything. I used to believe this. It's a very lonely feeling when the doctors can't do anything. You're calling out for help in viscid darkness, and all you get back is an echo.

My father the grown-up, my father the child. We are falling into the sunset. Falling into the night sky. Maybe the night sky is kind. Forgiving. We have both been forgiven a thousand times. Being human, always new things to forgive. Forgive me, father. You are already forgiven. Forgive me, daughter. There’s nothing to forgive.

No perfect words. No words at all. How strange that there is nothing I can say to make him love me more. Nothing I can say to make him love me less.

If I saw no humour in my unraveling, I'd have been dead long ago.

It’s me who needs the mustache.

Whenever I try to emotionally connect with my mother, she acts like I’m crazy to think she has feelings to express. It makes me self-conscious of my own sensitivity, like anything resembling a feeling is dramatic, frivolous, unnecessary.

Sometimes when a person who loves me expresses care, I feel oppressed.

I'm perfectly content to eat by myself in public, so long as the restaurant is crowded. There's solitude in a crowd.

How can I want my husband when he’s always right there? To want what you have. It’s like a puzzle. But people seem to do it all the time.

I want to be stupid and brave. I think I have the stupid part down.

(what is intimacy if not the ebb of excitement?).

Love the unbecoming!” says the rose. “Love the becoming something else. Don’t fear the unbecoming. Turn, turn, turn, and all that.

Some path. Some path in some desert in some life. And this is the part of the life where I am lost in the desert. But the world is round and covered in oceans. So why am I here? I’m here because I put myself here. Or because I was put here? Because I am supposed to be here? Because New Age jargon. Because my father. Because illness. Because my husband. Because avoidance.

I must now think like a lost person. I have to view the world through a lost person’s eyes. I have to make preparations.

The cactus laughs in silence. Unlike the rocks, I have no voice for it.

I know I miss a lot of life by being on my phone all the time (that’s the point). But out here in nature, I feel bad about not paying attention. I decide that for the rest of the hike, I will not use the Internet or text with anyone. I’m only allowed to use my phone as a notepad to record what I see around me. I am going to notice things.

I am going to crumble,” she says. “But then I’ll become something else. I’m going to become a part of everything: rocks and reptiles and pinyon pines and spiders and seeds and creosote bushes and fire and rabbits and cactus flowers and bighorn sheep and even rain. There’s beauty and youth for me yet.

Not alone. But all the while between us a great divide. How did you do it? How did you stay kind?

Please help me to see him as You do.

Stop placing so much value on the known, I tell myself. Fake like this is the hero’s journey. It’s good to get lost. Good for the soul. But how lost is the good amount of lost? If I die here, is that still good for the soul?

My body is the real problem here. If I could be bodiless - or at least, senseless - I’d be better off.

I am going to die out here. I might. I could. Die. All this time I should have been practising for dying. What was I doing instead? Reading reviews for sweatpants.