Peaches and Pie

It never fails to amaze me how lucky I was to grow up with in the wild innocence that I fell in to in Valdez.  It never fails to amaze me how blessed I was to develop the friends I did, or have the adventures or even the gift of being turned loose in such a beautiful and limitless environment.

That being said, I also feel like sometimes it was a bit of a setback in that I compare everything else in my life to that level of richness, that spectrum of untouchability that does not transfer to the world of real people and grown ups and societal expectations outside the Valdez bubble.

For example: The innocence and depth of platonic friendships.

In the Valdez bubble, you are landlocked into a cove against mountains capped with jagged peaks and ancient glaciers and buffered by forest rich and green before being squished against frigid water.  There is only one road in or out. Once you are there, you sometimes cannot get back out. It is, for lack of a better word – isolated. Cut off from the fast-paced world of corporate mainstream, fashion, media and the word “should”.  What replaces that word in an environment such as this is the word “must”.  What must you do to survive.

When all the other levels of should are stripped away, when you are locked nine months of the year with the same 200 people in your high school in the darkest part of winter, 11 feet of snow and no light… things get weird. Life finds a way to bond and with the isolated state of the town separating it from the regularities of common culture – a new culture develops, just like any organism set apart in evolution, life will take on a new and interesting shape to adapt.

Such was my experience with friendships. With the exception of a handful of girls, most of my friends were guys.  It was not uncommon to go wandering through the woods and playing in dangerous places and charging up mountains with my guy friends.  Sleeping in piles of tangled bodies on the floor after a movie or swimming naked in glacier lakes. There is obviously the awareness even in that innocence that I am female and they are male, and nature has a way of affecting hormones and such – but ultimately, what I believed happened for me was the ability to bond deeply and powerfully with my guy friends thereby falling in love with them in a way I have not been able to repeat –or explain – or comprehend.

Quite simply, because now that I am on my own again, divorced from my long time husband from Valdez… I compare all my relationships with men to the relationships I had with the guys of my youth.  I compare my level of comfort with men to the level of comfort I had with guys I showered in waterfalls with then laid out on rocks in the sun to talk about the nature of the Universe and had no fear of my safety – emotional or otherwise. I never feared I would be judged harshly in any way because we all loved each other. I was not self-conscious of my body nor did I feel entirely weird being snuggled up next to the bodies of boys fledging into men.

I was completely open and without fear, and since then I have always compared my relationships with men to that standard – much to the detriment of my life now as a grown woman with the knowledge of sexuality and the crash course of socializing outside the isolated bubble of a world lacking labels.

I don’t have the correct labels here. For godsakes! I didn’t even have the right comprehension of the word “hike”.  Now I understand better why I am so distant with men.  They are not My Chadely, My Jeffy, My Keetster, or My Danno. Men here make me feel threatened and vulnerable because I cannot read them and because they are part of the social structure that requires a sexual element even to platonic relationships… I never know where I stand and cannot let myself just be. 

My Awesome, and Aaron, and Nate and others who for the life of my childhood in the wild, allowed me to be myself and I allowed them to be as well.  I don’t feel like I have that anymore.

Keetster is here to visit and when we hung out the first week I was blown away with a return to that level of comfort and felt so desperately homesick for that kind of freedom of energy, that life without boundaries that I soaked it up as much as I could.  It felt great to be near him and know that there was this gem in my past that once – a long time ago I was unfettered by social expectations. No sex, just comfort and intimacy of the platonic variety.

He commented over and over that he couldn’t process it without a label, a known word for what it should be called here in the states, or as adults. To which I responded, “It doesn’t need a label, but if you must call it something… call it, Peaches. It’s a jar of peaches in a mason bottle on the shelf. Call it peaches and let it have its title and then just enjoy it for what it is.”

We laughed but I could see even he struggled with it. This social strangeness of knowing we are adults with carnal knowledge and no inclination to act upon such knowledge. The desire to be just as comfortable and relaxed in ourselves and exclude the world view despite our having grown up and grown somewhat apart. The desire to have Peaches.

I guess what I’m getting at with this post is that after the “hiking” misnomer and the sudden return of a dear friend I thought I’d lost, I am re-evaluating some things and in that re-evaluation one of the deepest longings I have that remains unfulfilled is that level of connection, that companionship of the deepest level be it my Valdez boys or my girlfriends.  I dearly miss that level of comfort, absence of judgment and freedom of being.

Maybe this is what it means to be an adult? Maybe letting that go is what qualifies as growing up, leaving Never Land… I dunno.  But as of late there has been a lot of reminiscing in my mind of days spent by tourmaline waters, half jungle and under the crystal skies.  I have been fondly remembering the conversations had driving through blizzards listening to Depeche Mode and plotting the takeover of the Universe.  I have been thinking how sad it is that I no longer have that connection to the male energies in my life that give such peace and wondering if I will ever have that to call my own again, and if I do – will I ever be able to take it to the next social level and maintain that glory while adding the sexuality the passion of physical attraction. Can I have peaches and pie?

I truly do not know. I guess the first step is to open up to the possibility and allow myself to make friends with the guys around me.  Perhaps try to return to that state of absolute acceptance and freedom. That depth of trust that made it possible to sleep sound and deeply in a pile of boys, or let them take me in when I ached or hold them to my body when they were hurting. I need to regain that trust that made it easy to dream alongside someone and know, that if at all possible – we would do everything humanly possible to enable one another to full empowerment and rest well at night knowing we were safely treasured in the hearts of our companions.

I want that again.  I have to find a way to make it possible here in the states, that strange label-less way of loving. Because I am beginning to think, I wont be able to love again without it.