Deidream #58: We Outside

An author’s note

This has been a long time in the making. I’ve been meeting my ancestral home with new eyes, meeting my garden, getting certifications, and forming a new dream born from this Substack space…..1

Baby’s first expedition as a scientist. <3

Enjoy.

Something mad I said to my friends recently.

And did.

A nature hobby that keeps me grounded.

Look at this COOL NEW PLANT I MET!!!

Meet the Flame of the Woods aka Ixora coccinea aka Jungle geranium. It’s native to India but is all over the place where we’re studying.

Words of wisdom from those who came before.

- Sharon Matola, founder of the Belize Zoo

A song I’ve had on repeat lately

“I work all night, I do my thing
Just killin’ time, need a friend
Is this my life? Beginning or end?
Can I start again? Can we start again?

There’s a new moon on the rise
Turn the tide, turn the tide
I’ve been walking a thin line
Between the Earth and the sky

Why do my realities take over all my dreams?
Why does all the purest love get filtered through machines?
Gimme something good that’s even better than it seems
Why does all the purest love get filtered through machines?”

I’ve mentioned this song before, but we’re running it back with the video this time.

Why I’m here. What I’m mulling over. + Whatever nerdy shit I’m into lately.

I am writing this from a stuffy room in the forests of Central America.

A wild sentence, if I do say so myself.

We are very outside this summer.

I’ve had a lifelong dream of traveling the world that has been elusive…it’s sometimes all I can do to return to my ancestral home, much less explore places I’ve never been before.

But.

By some crazy, divine blessing, here I am. In my dream grad school program, studying abroad for the first time in thirteen years. Studying Biology the way I’ve always wanted to.

Blood, Sweat, Tears.

I’ve been howling into the night and into the ether until my dreams came to me.

In April 2024, I wrote a note to myself, folded it, and left instructions to open it in 2026.

I’d cried myself sick the afternoon I wrote it, deeply disappointed to have had to cancel another trip to work. It was the afternoon of the eclipse, and I had been hoping to at least make it to another state to observe it and capture photos. Instead, I was watching a livestream, hunched over my desk, and applying to more jobs. I’d booked my trip to view the eclipse when life was better. Now that life was worse, I’d canceled it to get the money back.

Instead of being in a new place, taking photos the way I wanted, I was on a deadline.

Chained to my desk.

Again.

When the first tear fell, I dragged my body across my apartment and sat in front of my altar. BIG, HUGE tears rolling down my face. A few of my dear ones knew what I was grieving and why I felt lost; it’s their perspectives and kindness that had been carrying me up until this point. But the deep disappointment of this particular afternoon seemed to perfectly encapsulate my despair and rage at my circumstances. I remember crying so deeply and repeating, “I just want to go outside. Why can’t I go outside?? I miss it! I want to look at the eclipse too! Why can’t I go play outside!!”

Maybe not physically, but part of me would wither away forever.

The little girl who woke up at 6 am to watch the nature shows before the cartoons and waited patiently for her ZooBooks to arrive every week needed a reason to live. The teenager who would shut herself up in her room to watch hours of Shark Week and Mythbusters or go study for fun because that’s where she found meaning and peace needed somewhere to process her rage. The young woman in the throes of chronic illness, post-traumatic stress, and an existential crisis needed somewhere to lay it all down.

After undergrad shattered my heart and body, I never thought I’d get to study the “hard” sciences again. Choosing Biology as my first major was already a way for me to run from my desire to be a performer, so where could I run to next? I pivoted to honing my transferable skills and studied Psychology with a specialization in children and adolescents to save my own life. I told myself I was content to live a life where I loved nature through a screen, between the noise and heat and pain of what must be done to survive every day.

But here I was, miserable because I’d finally run so far away from the things I loved that no amount of…

…cultural white noise spoon-fed to me through screens could quell my desperate need to just….go to where there was peace and quiet, so I could talk to the planet and hear it talk back.

EVERYTHING WAS OVERSTIMULATING AS HELL, AND IT WAS PISSING ME OFF SO BAD, I NEEDED TO RUN AWAY AND TALK TO MOTHER GAIA OR ELSE.

Like fymmm I went with my fourth choice for a life path, and it STILL turned out to be ass? I let time and circumstance push me into misery. I had a telescope and a camera gathering dust. I had dreams deferred in every corner of my bedroom and my heart.

So I took out a pen and paper and cried myself through a manifestation that I’d have reasons to travel and study and that my dreams would tell me where to go. Then I chose 2026 as the year I’d need to read this note, and I stuffed it into my altar box. I found it on New Year’s Day 2026, in the limbo between applying to grad school and waiting to see if I’d be accepted. I’d completely forgotten what I had written, but took it as a sign that I’d been accepted into my program.

And well…..Here I am.

Outside.

Onward.

A nature hobby that keeps me grounded + A cool picture I took or a photo that moved me.

Speaking of snorkelinggggggg….enjoy these photos of the smallest place I’ve ever been on planet Earth so far. Our snorkeling site is only 3 acres across. It’s so damn peaceful. I’m fighting for my life not to ask them to leave me here for a month by myself so I can get my head on straight.

HOW GORGEOUS. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get my hands on an underwater camera this semester, so you all can’t see what I saw with my eyeballs, but know that this space is so beautiful, I wept.

Just a final thought.

I hope you find the Thing that makes you feel how I feel in this moment. I’ve crafted the kind of life where I’ll never have to choose between the Arts and the Sciences. I’ll never be a princess in a tower again.