As previously published on October 15, 2020 on LAUNCH without fear.
Camping is one of the best things in the world. And honestly, camping in October – yes, in a tent – may be the best of them all.
It’s easy to say something like that after surviving my second October camping trip, as I sit warm and comfy in my apartment now. If instead I was still out there, in the woods, in the crisp, fall morning air, maybe I’d say differently.
But I don’t think so.
It’s that crisp, fall morning air that gets me. Puts me ever so slightly outside of my comfort zone. Wakes me up, and tells me that it is time to get moving. Start doing. Try to build that morning fire (and subsequently have to wait for your friend to wake up to save it). Breathe. See. Slow down.
It’s being able to wear a hoodie on a hike. It’s drinking beer in the evening and hot cider or wine once night falls, and the air chills again. It’s the subtle signs that nature is settling in for the winter, that the changing of the seasons is felt first by the animals and the trees, not us. Nights are quieter.
Every part of me right now wishes I could be out there again, sitting by the fire, slowing down.
It’s one of the best remedies that I have found for my mental health. It reminds me that even though every day I write and run and work and come home to an apartment, empty save my cat, and I feel like I am on this treadmill of do, do, do, do, life doesn’t have to feel like that. I can pause. I am allowed to rest. Truly, the rest of the world doesn’t care what I am doing.
Camping allows me to breathe. See. Slow down.
And in the stillness, remember who I am.
————————————–
It is January 2013. I decide to take a semester off of college to try and figure things out. To try and figure life out.
The narrative that I had been sold – that my generation has been sold – is proving to house some hidden loopholes. I had been told that I could graduate high school, immediately go to college – preferably one of the public state universities – to work on a bachelor’s degree, which would only take four years to complete, and start my career straight after graduation in an entry-level job in my field that paid a high enough salary to cover my rent and expenses and allow me to save money so that I could buy a house.
It felt like a failure on my part that I was now here: a year and a half and three majors into college and moving home to return to work at the grocery store that I had gotten my first job at when I had turned 16. Taking a semester off. Then choosing to go to the local Christian college at which I felt alienated. And I wasn’t even anywhere near out yet.
Fast forward a year, and I am still so confused. I am actually really enjoying working at the grocery store. I am a supervisor now. I have some really good friends at work. And I’ve forever locked down my answer to “Tell us something interesting about yourself” by representing the state of Indiana in the National Grocers’ Association Best Bagger Championship in February 2014. But the narrative still goes that I have to get a degree. The degree will solve my problems. The degree will answer those questions of how to earn a living wage, how to work a respected profession, how not to get stuck in grocery retail for the rest of my life.
But Bethel – the Christian college – doesn’t seem like such a great idea anymore. It is just so dang expensive, and I still have no idea what to get my degree in. And I also miss Purdue. Or at least the idea of it. I’m not ready to go back to West Lafayette, but I want a Purdue degree.
I’ve always been into sports, and I think that maybe I can get a degree in business and end up working in the front office for a sports team. The Chicago Blackhawks are in the midst of their greatest seasons as of late, and I’d love to work for them. So August 2014, I enroll at Purdue North Central (now known as Purdue Northwest) for business. I commute the 45 minutes one way twice a week and continue working at the grocery store.
Even after one semester at PNC, I still feel unfulfilled with the path I have chosen. And now there’s another development. There’s this girl at work. She’s pretty and funny and also probably insanely straight. And I haven’t felt the way I feel about her about anyone. Ever.
I am a good kid. But this has never gone away.
I have tried to wish it away.
I have tried to pray it away.
I have tried to ignore it away.
I have figured that one day, maybe, it would just be gone. Poof. Vanished. A distant memory.
But the way I feel about this girl only seems to reinforce that this hasn’t gone away. And if anything, attractions are only getting stronger and life is only getting lonelier.
As 2014 comes to a close, winter sets in and so does one of the darkest periods in my life.
My parents are conservative. And one of the conservative ideals they cherish is gun rights. Up to that point, I had pretty much fallen in line with my parents’ beliefs and political ideology, although to a lesser degree. I own a gun. It’s a semi-automatic pistol. It’s for self-defense. I know how to load it. I know how to shoot it. It’s locked up in a safe in the corner of my bedroom, and I know the combination.
I have writings from January and February 2015 that speak better to exactly where my mind was then than I could ever attempt to convey now.
From January 7th, 2015: I don’t want to wake up at the end of my life and realize that there were so many things that I forgot to do.
From February 7th, 2015: Lately, I’ve moved back to being one of my own stumbling blocks because I’m asking myself what I believe about certain things that I have always been taught were sins or abominations, and I’m wondering what would happen if I didn’t believe that same way. Would that make me any less of a Christian?
If God exists, and He looks at me and sees what I believe, and He thinks that I am less than a Christian because I believe in equality and a little bit of letting go, if He thinks that someone who hates gays and says not to drink but does it anyways is more of a Christian, then that’s not the god that I want to believe in.
And from that same writing, a poem:
An Insight into the Darkest Parts
There’s a running line in my head:
Worthless
Disgusting
Lazy
Stupid
Pig
And the list goes on until…
Failure.
Is there anyone who will speak for me?
Is there anyone who will tell me that I’m not those things?
I’ve gotten straight A’s since I was fourteen.
A report card any sane person would love to see.
But I don’t give a damn.
Verbal abuse is tricky, because we all do it now and again.
And if I admit that I abuse myself, and I am abused,
Would anything even happen?
Or would everyone keep living their lives like everything is fine,
Like I didn’t just admit that I’m dying inside.
I slip in and out of reality to numb the pain
Reading or writing or creating another world in my mind
Where I’m not who I am now,
Because who I am now is
Worthless
Disgusting
Lazy
Stupid
Pig
Failure.
This stuff is so heavy.
And honestly, for both you and for me, I want to step back into today, into October 2020, for a moment. The me that sits here right now is terrified by those words. I remember them well, and sometimes they still call to me. They still call my name. They still threaten to drown out every good thought I have ever had about myself.
And so, as I have detailed in blogs past, I have to care for my mental health. I have to try my best to do the little things, even when they feel monumental: eat right, exercise, sleep right, get outside. I have to go to therapy. I have to work hard to maintain a social circle. And now, since August 2020, I have to take my medication. And I have to monitor how I am doing on that.
Camping is a part of that mental health process.
Running is a part of that mental health process.
Writing is a part of that mental health process.
I’m not going to lie and say that 2020 has been an amazing year. Even without the pandemic, I’ve had my fair share of struggles this year. It has been a very difficult year.
But while we are in such a heavy moment of this story, I want to take a second to acknowledge that today, I am sitting here writing this post, and all I want to do is send a message over to the people who have been a part of my life this year, supporting me, making me laugh, pushing me outside of my comfort zone, giving me reason to hope and believe that life can be more than those words that I was drowning in back in 2015. These people have allowed me to be me. They’ve allowed me to talk about girls. They’ve asked me questions. And damn, it feels good to finally let some of this stuff free.
And I hope that you, too, have some of these people in your life. The ones that you can hang out with on a random weekday. The ones that will lift you up. The ones that will sit with you in sorrow.
The ones that, if you have a night like the one I had on February 15th, 2015, are only a phone call away.
Natalie Weiss 
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