summer of freedom.

This was supposed to be my “Summer of Freedom.” That’s what I called it.

Marcelline asked one morning in June, why I don’t put notes in her lunch box every day for camp/daycare like I did for school.

“Cuz it’s Summer of Freedom, baby! I’ll put notes in your lunch when school starts again.”

We’d been back in Jackson for two years, but this was my first real Summer of Freedom. My first summer I’d landed in a dream-turned-nightmare job that wrecked my mental health. The second I’d spent four to six nights a week working events, while trying desperately to quit drinking. This summer, I finally worked part time from home. This Summer of Freedom, I could say yes to coffee, trail runs, writing classes, lunch with friends. It finally felt like I’d built the life I’d moved back to Jackson for.

The freedom of my new job is almost palpable. I’ve been able to crank out work from home or Poppy and then go for a trail-run in an effort to train for the 28K Rut I’ve signed up for. A friend asks if I want to get lunch or coffee or go for a walk—hells yes Summer of Freedom!

But with a great Summer of Freedom comes a great Summer of responsibility. I made conscious efforts to rebuild my mental health, my confidence, my relationship with my body, my trail running ability, my presence with my family, my love for my friends, my deep practice of writing/art/music (curation), and my life as a sober person. Admittedly, I was trying to become too many versions of myself at once.

I was able to run, to lunch, to swim, to dance, to go see authors and bands I loved. I was able to teach a personal essay writing course at the Senior Center in the middle of the days. I ran around town on those days, loving my community and gaining a huge love and appreciation of the Senior Center.

Summer of Freedom is what got me onto Table Mountain that Friday morning with Evan. We wanted to run/hike up and down the super touristy trail early in the morning to get down in time for an early afternoon meeting I had.

On the way up, Evan said…

Ev: You know Han Solo lent his helicopter once for a rescue up here.

Me: Who has to get rescued off of Table Mountain?

(a question so full and heavy with upcoming karma, it was about to burst.)

It was a beautiful day. Evan and I summited and laughed and talked.

We decided to go down the North face of Table Mountain, which was way more technical and steeper at first. The goal was to get down to a more meandering valley trail to actually run.

Going down the steep scree fields was miserable for me. At one point, I said, “This sucks.” So when we came on a big snow field, I was tempted to try and glissade down it, but knew I probably shouldn’t.

“Is it okay if I do, though?” Evan asked.

“Of course!”

Watching Evan glissade down it sparked something in me. He didn’t even particularly look like he had fun doing it.

But I hate hate hate not doing the fun thing. It’s like I didn’t know that so many options in life existed when I was a child/teenager. And once I realized you could live in the mountains and fall in love over and over and work in radio and simply submit funny essays for publishing and jump off rocks in the water and swim naked in almost every river… it was game-over.

“I wanna do it!” I yelled to Evan at the top of the snow field.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea!”

“I want to do the fun thing!” I insisted.

I had just had a talk with a friend about risk calculation. About wishing you would’ve done the thing that you didn’t do. About how Marcie doesn’t have my adventure for life the way I wish she did. About how she’s more risk-adverse like Evan and it drives me crazy.

Evan and I yelled back and forth to each other. I folded and unfolded Evan’s hiking poles, trying to figure out if I’d use them as poles to hike around the snow field or if I’d break them down and try to use them as a break to self-arrest if I needed whilst glissading.

I decided to glissade.

Evan watched as I immediately fell to my butt and could not get myself to arrest at all. Evan yelled, “Slow down, Ray! Slow down!” over and over as I went the 200 feet down the snowfield and straight into a boulder field, tumbling my body like a ragdoll over the rocks.

I was unconscious for a moment, but woke up to see blood all over the rock my head was on. I sat up and my vision went completely bright and I couldn’t see for a few seconds. I only realized later how easily I could have interpreted that this was me going towards the light of death or Heaven or whatever that light represents. Because I did truly think that I was dying. That this was it. I cried out, “I can’t see anything!” but then a few seconds later, “Oh, wait. I can see now.”

It only took Evan a few minutes to get to me, but time was doing weird things. I couldn’t say much, but I did say, “This is really bad.” over and over. When Evan got to me, he just kept saying, “Oh my god, Ray. Oh my god, babe.” in between evaluations of my health. I asked, “Can you call 911?”

Evan didn’t have service. He helped me walk for what felt like a mile, but must’ve been 20 feet, to a place I could lean over as comfortably as possible. He cleaned my wounds and assessed my pain and then told me he had to go get service to call 911, Search & Rescue.

Evan found a couple who were camping in the area, who stayed with his phone to coordinate with SAR, while Evan came back to me. 20 minutes later, the medics got to me. It took them another 20 minutes to assess me and give me Fentanyl and Ketamine and put me in a bag to short-haul underneath the helicopter.

A few minutes before we took off, I told Evan, Zach (helicopter medic), and Cody (helicopter medic), that I felt like I was in a cartoon. I also tried to tell Zach and Cody that they were like the twins from Big Daddy, but they weren’t really into listening to my pitch for a podcast called “The Fleet Life of Zach and Cody.” The drugs had me go from not being able to breathe and barely talking to talking a LOT and eventually asking Zach and Cody, “Am I a good patient? Am I your favorite patient?”

Evan said, “There she is. Okay, she might be okay.”

We flew over the Tetons to Lupine Meadows, which was honestly pretty magical. Ketamine is a helluva drug. There was a transfer to another helicopter (I got to ride inside this time), which took me to Idaho Falls. This helicopter ride was horrible. I was uncomfortable on a stretcher and it kind of all hit me what was happening. I cried into this sweet female medic’s hand that held my head. She wiped my tears and rubbed my hair. I didn’t even get her name.

I stayed five days and four nights at EIRMC in Idaho Falls. There I found out I broke my tailbone (my butt has the gnarliest bruise I’ve ever seen), my scapula (aka my left shoulder blade… into like seven pieces), six ribs (though they originally told me five), and six transverse processes (little nubbies on the side of your vertebrae… they also originally told us there were only five broken).

My left lung also partially collapsed. I had three skin-graft-needing spots: both my hips and my left shoulder. I needed surgery! This was my first surgery that wasn’t dental. I also had seven staples in my head (no head-shaving required… god, I would look horrible bald. my headshape’s not right and there are some weird moley spot on there).

The pain went from a 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 7, 6, 5, 6… to a 4… the number we figured out would be good enough to send me home. The kindness and logistics my friends and family deployed to set our home up for me was beyond. Over the next few days, not only were we set up with a meal train and showered with so many flowers, our loved ones equipped us with:

• A reclining chair with a remote in the living room for me to sleep on.

• A medical-grade high toilet seat.

• An AC unit, because Jackson is going through a rough heatwave.

• Butt pillows galore.

And…

• A shower chair, rented from my beloved Senior Center.

My mobility is so limited. Even if I could stand in the shower (which I cannot for minutes at a time), my skin-grafty wounds have to be covered in saran wrap and I have to be delicately washed and cared for, while keeping an eye on all injuries.

Evan gives me sponge baths now as I sit in my shower chair, like the most defeated dog. During my first (of only two) shower(s), I hunched over as Evan washed my back and I said, “Summer of Freedom, my ass.”

My mom is here, helping. I’m so happy she’s here. And yet, it’s still so demeaning to be like this. I can’t use my left arm at all and so many things hurt. I can’t get out of bed by myself. I couldn’t go to the bathroom by myself. (I can now… thanks, super tall toilet seat!) I can’t dress myself. I can’t shower myself. I’m more co-dependent than I’ve been since I was a toddler. I need more help and care than our six-year-old does. She can shower all by herself!

I started to mourn my Summer of Freedom in earnest, but then I realized that this might still be a Summer of a different kind of Freedom.

In early July, I saw a photo of a high school friend on social media. This was the friend who I would go to workout classes with during our off-periods. This was the friend I would lay on a blanket with in the park and she would tell me about her sexual encounters, while I listened in shock and awe. Her confidence was fascinating to me. She seemed to inhabit her body in a way I never knew how to inhabit mine and yet we were both trying the same diets and workouts.

In this recent photo, my high school’s friends ribs were showing so definitively and so prominently out of her chest. She looked incredibly skinny. And I hate I hate I hate I hate I hate I hate that this looked like it felt like freedom to me. It felt like she had done what we’ve been trying to do since high school in the early aughts—gettin’ real skinny.

No matter what I do in Jackson, it’s never hardcore enough. There’s a lot of talk of the “can’t-hangs” around town. I’ve spent my entire time of being associated with Jackson (19 years), trying so hard not to be a can’t-hang. Running a marathon is not impressive here. Running a sub-three hour marathon? That’ll do it. Skiing the Pass counts as being worthy, but only if you’re fast enough on the boot pack or the skin up. Running the Rut counts as being badass, but only if you do the 28k or the 50k. It’s exhausting—both mentally and physically—to try and keep up, but I always am trying.

Last night, I asked Evan to help me try on a dress I’m supposed to wear to a wedding in two-and-a-half weeks. This small group of friends decided we’d all wear green to our friend’s wedding. You would not believe the amount of green dresses we’ve all seen via the group text. I bought this dress back in December, because I’ve been wanting it for so long. Evan struggled to zip it up. We got there, but it wasn’t pretty. I didn’t fit. I immediately burst into tears. It wasn’t just that the dress didn’t fit. It was grief on top of grief. I know my body is swollen. It’s retaining fluid. I’m immobile. I’m on medications that can affect all kinds of rough body behavior. My metabolism and hormones are responding to injury. And yet, I wept.

I’m entering a new kind of forced freedom era.

I am not going to get fingers-in—my-clavicle skinny this Summer. (I should NOT get that skinny and I know I shouldn’t want to, but I do.) Instead, I’m forced to be in this body and help it heal and love it regardless. And that is some freedom I haven’t felt in a while.

I will not run the 28k Rut in September. Instead, I will lean into my Can’t-Hang status. Let’s be real: I’m from Texas. I fell trying to glissade. And friends and readers of yore know this wasn’t even my first life-flight! I think I’m gonna call it. I can’t keep up. I love trail running, but I don’t need to do these stupid long mountain races to feel something. I could easily spend a whole day inside, watching TV, reading, writing, and listening to music. And I would LOVE it. (Evan and I have talked at-length about how we’re so glad this isn’t the other way around, because he is so much better at taking care of people and I am much better at staying inside without getting twitchy.) It feels a lot freer inside when I’m not wondering what everyone else I know is doing in the mountains and considering whether they considered inviting me or not. I’m a can’t-hang, y’all. I’m free!

While I do need to find a new green dress (option A, option B, or option C? or option D you’ve found for me? vote in the comments, please), I don’t need to wear that dress in two-and-a-half weeks. This morning, I recounted last night to my BFF and she said, “Well, we will just have to find another occasion for you to wear it.” It felt so free. And so hopeful.

And throughout this all, I am so grateful for the freedom I still feel from alcohol. Last Summer (and about 20 summers prior), when anything hard happened, I immediately wanted to drink. Yes, I also wanted to drink when anything awesome happened, when there was anything to celebrate, when we were eating Mexican food, when we were eating Italian food, when I hung out with friends, when I had a work event, etc. etc. But my biggest booze cravings were caused by stress or hardship. But guess what? I just had a super hard fucking thing happen to me and I don’t have the slightest desire to drink. I’m free from alcohol’s grip, which is wild.

I can’t say that I’m happy my Summer of Freedom has made this turn. I consciously made a bad decision that left me unconscious, and I have to fight not to be embarrassed by that.

Embarrassment has a funny way of becoming shame if you leave it alone too long.

I need this forced freedom. I need to feel okay about myself. I need to look embarrassment in the eye and tell it it’s not allowed to grow. I need to listen to my body and love it regardless of how it looks or feels. I need to own so much of myself and be proud of that.

I make Marcelline say kind things to our plants because I believe it helps them grow.

Maybe that’s ridiculous. I don’t care.

I have to talk to my body in a kind way right now. If I don’t, it won’t grow. It won’t heal. I have to free myself from this long-standing body dysmorphia, born of late 90s heroine-chic media. I have to stop trying to keep-up with the Jacksonses, who are running themselves ragged in the mountains in ways I never will. I have to delight in my can’t-hangdom. I have to rest. I have to read. I have to sleep. I have to heal. And at some point, I have to find a new green dress. But somehow, this is still my Summer of Freedom.

I am beyond grateful for the friends, the family, the Search and Rescue, the doctors, the nurses, the strangers, and the internet friends who have gotten me through these past 11 days. It has been… so hard, to say the least. THANK YOU. Many people are wanting to know how they can help and honestly? You could become a Paid Subscriber to The Messayist Substack, if you aren’t already. Much to my agent’s chagrin, I put out a personal essay every week and rarely ever put up a paywall. I love connecting and sharing with readers in this way and it feels impossible to want to charge for that. But it’s a nominal fee ($8 a month… that’s a Seattle latte) and it would truly help my writing career and my heart. Just putting that out there.

Regardless of how you’re here, thank you for being here. I’m so grateful I’m here, too.

xxo,
Rachel.