Wildness felt like it had a home, a place, was welcome in my PR life.
Ocean, dance parties, nature, beach camping, bonfires, walking all over the place, picking mangos off the ground, sweating, swimming, eating outside every night.
Every part of daily life was wilder or more connected to that wildness.
Plus experiencing and overcoming challenges — that’s wild. It called out a strength in me. No electricity, no running water for weeks. Getting water from a spring, washing dishes in the rain.
Everything more visceral, immediate.
Diving deep, feeling the ocean move around me, trailing my hand through sand and seaweed, gripping a broken piece of coral.
Salt in the air, on my body, drying in my hair.
I feel stifled here. Like I had room to grow large and now I have to be small again.
I forget about it for days at a time.
Then something sparks and I’m at the stoplight about to turn, I’m carrying groceries, I’m picking up a kid at school and I realize my feet haven’t walked on dirt in hours, days. Maybe weeks.
Some animal part of me shudders. Is shuttered.
Sit down, stare at computer, make dinner. Wake up to streetlights. Run on pristine sidewalks.
Even going for a hike is a tame, clean, well-manicured experience.
I don’t want to endanger the life we have, the stability I have worked so fucking hard to build, the progress I am still fighting for. Everything felt like chaos for so long. Safety was the only thing that mattered.
But I need to, like, howl at the moon, lay in a field, get dirty and smoky and sweaty. Dance in the mud. Set something on fire. Scream until my throat is raw.
Get out, get somewhere out there, out far enough that there’s no fluorescent glow, no flat paved surfaces, nothing but grass and rock, dirt and sky, wind and trees and water.