Phase 2 — story strathman

Part 1: Breathing and Diving and Climbing Mountains

On June 15th I left Rotorua.

Corra, Sebastien and I set off on our 5-day East Coast Adventure, during which we:

Got lost

Got unlost

Ran across lots of beaches

Became emotionally invested in the “Among the Stars and Bones” podcast

Fell asleep in our tent at 7PM and woke up fully rested at 3AM and then had to lay in the tent until the sun came up

Climbed up to the East Cape Lighthouse and then out to the edge of the cliff

Went to the longest pier in New Zealand

Made beautiful avocado toast

Had the best sleep ever on Danny’s couch

We returned to Rotorua and then spent our last full day together running around town and feeling a bit sad. It felt like there was this cloud around us, knowing that this is the end of this phase of our lives, this phase of our friendship. Saying goodbye to them was a different kind of difficult that I’d forgotten about.

Forty-five minutes later, I met Rachel at the bus station. Rachel is my friend from Sweden. She’s really from Montana, but we met in Trollhättan three years ago where we spent four months bumming too many cigarettes, drinking too much cheap vodka and kissing too many boys. And going to our classes too, sometimes.

We’ve matured since then. Whenever we get together we spend a solid few hours going over those months. We laugh ourselves silly and wonder at how anyone ever put up with us, because we were horrible. We are so grateful that we cringe at our past, because if we didn’t then we wouldn’t have changed.

We backpacked Greece, Albania, Montenegro and Bosnia together with our friend Luiza after the semester in Sweden was over. We came back to our hometowns as different people. We learned a lot about the world and, through a series of careless mistakes and close calls, evolved into smarter people. As we were discussing it, Rachel said: “I think we learned that the world is not a nice place but there are nice people. I want to be one of the nice people.” I agree.

There’s no better combo than a Virgo and an Aquarius, I always say. Or an ENFJ and an INFP. Whew. We’ve been talking in bad English accents to each other for the past three weeks and nobody thinks it’s funny except us. We’re a goddamn hoot.

Rachel and I went on a road trip from Rotorua all the way to Queenstown.

Here are some words about what happened in each place:

Rotorua

When I introduced Rachel to my NZ hometown I (obviously) took her to some hot springs and to Brew. We had a great last night in town eating pizza and sweet potato wedges, hanging out with some Rotorua friends and dancing to “The Git Up” and “Old Thing Back” with Danny and Iki.

Wellington

I was so excited to see Wellington for two reasons:

1- I had heard on good authority that it was a Very Cool city

2- My friend Dale lives there

Dale took us to an American-themed bar called Dakota on our first night there and Rachel and I were losing it the whole time. It rained on one day and we visited the Te Papa museum. We each got a pizza and a pitcher of beer for $15 one night. The Rachel, Dale and Story trio was flawless. We laughed so much. It was a very cool city.

Abel Tasman

We stayed at a holiday park called The Barn. It was a gem of a place. There was always a fire going in the kitchen. We hiked five hours through Abel Tasman National Park and we drove up the Golden Bay to Wharariki Beach. The man at the reception told us that that beach was a “special place.” It really was.

Kaikoura

We spontaneously decided to go on a whale watching excursion while in Kaikoura. Throughout the course of the trip, we learned that all we’re basically doing is chasing after these sperm whales to watch them surface and breathe for a while. Then, they flip their tails up and dive back down. That’s all they’re doing. Breathing and diving.

I found it hilarious in its simplicity. We marvel so much at these creatures that are literally just coming up for air and then going back under the water. We pay our money to witness it. We spend our time watching it. Humans are so funny. At least we appreciate beauty and nature. I had a great time.

That night, we went out for drinks with our two roommates from London. We ended up staying out for HOURS and the highlights were that Rachel, Chris and Alex got into a hilarious fight about which Lord of the Rings film was best, we all argued passionately about how to pronounce the word “scone” and also what the difference between a scone and a biscuit is, and Chris and I connected on a spiritual level because both of our mothers made us watch Star Trek: Voyager when we were growing up.

(Rachel, to me, as we’re sitting across from them: “What do you think their Myers-Briggs personality types are?”)

Also, in the midst of all of this, my friend Vanessa (whom I had not expected to see) walked into the bar and we got to catch up after three months of not seeing each other.

Sometimes when you really need a particular type of energy, the universe says: Surprise! Here’s a bunch of it.

Christchurch

We rode electric scooters through the park, we got tattoos from an attractive dinosaur-obsessed man, and we had one Really Anxious Day. There’s a melancholy vibe there that I felt sort of matched mine, in a way. Christchurch is a complicated place and everyone has an opinion about it. I really liked it.

Dunedin

On the way to our next stop, Rachel and I talked about the types of books we read as kids. We discovered that we tended toward stories that involved the premise of stepping through a gateway or using magic to enter some kind of different world out of this universe (think Chronicles of Narnia or Peter Pan or A Wrinkle in Time). We joked about how we still wish we could do that sometimes, just get sucked into a new realm and leave this world for a bit.

From the first moment we entered Dunedin things just seemed weird. Not wrong or bad, but everything just felt odd. Our hostel (long story) was not what we expected. The roads were jarringly steep, even after driving up and down mountains for the past two weeks (the world’s steepest street is in Dunedin). Even our journey to the Otago Peninsula was just strange; we got so lost that we ended up in a sheep field while trying to find a hiking trail. There was nobody around at all. We couldn’t really get a grasp on anything.

The city itself was, architecturally and aesthetically, so unlike any other NZ city we’d been too. Rachel said it felt like Kelso, I thought it felt like Findlay, (not including the hills), and the city is known as the Edinburgh of New Zealand. We had fun, but couldn’t make up our minds about how we felt about it.

At one point I just said: “We asked for a portal to another realm. I think we accidentally got it.”

Wanaka and Queenstown

In Wanaka we hiked Roys Peak. It’s a mountain. It took us four hours to get to the top and then another two and a half to get back down. (A lot longer than the people who kept passing us. After each person passed us we reassured each other that "we were in no rush.” Hahaha.) I thought my knees were going to fall apart. We both said “fuck” a lot. The view was incredible, though.

Climbing mountains is complicated for me. I always volunteer to do it, but then I hate myself for that choice about 30 minutes in until I reach the top. I always agree to do it again.

An obvious metaphor, but life is like climbing a mountain. That’s all I could think about the entire time. We put in effort for a good view.

We sat in a winery for three hours on our last day together and day drank and enjoyed the mountains in front of us (and felt grateful that we weren’t climbing them).

Thanks for visiting me, Rachel. We had a splendid time. See you in Bali or Hawaii or somewhere else.

Part 2: A Love/Hate Relationship with my Body

(Just a warning, this section discusses restrictive behaviors, calorie-counting, binge eating and over exercising. Also, there are two tasteful topless photos of me. HAHA.)

Three years ago I wrote this post on my old blog. It was written during the Summer of 2016, aka the “Best Summer of My Life,” when I was a happy hippie girl for three months during my most carefree year.

It’s a quick read, but if you don’t want to read it I’ll recap it. I wrote it after I had an epiphany moment under the late-afternoon sun. I was in my parents’ backyard. I was barefoot. I was wearing grey pajama shorts and a tie-dye shirt (I tie-dyed everything back then).

I remember standing there, feeling the grass underneath my feet and the breeze on my face. I looked around and thought: What if I loved my body?

For the first time, my brain did not reply with a million reasons not to.

I’m sure I had asked that question before, but in the midst of my eating disorder there were too many voices inside my head screaming about why I couldn’t love my body. In my old post I skirted over the worst bits of what I did and how I felt during that time. I didn’t mention that I would take laxatives to make up for binge-eating after days of restriction. I would run endless miles to burn even MORE calories. I would feel intense self-hatred if I broke down and ate a snack when I was hungry. Every last calorie was accounted for. I was filled with so much anger and resentment toward myself; I either wasn’t doing enough or I was failing completely.

Every time somebody would comment on my body to say that I looked “good” or “skinny” all it would do was reinforce the idea in my mind that I had been “bad” or “fat” before. Far from making me feel like I was doing enough, it made me feel like I just had to keep going.

In my old post, I mentioned that I got out of that place. I am one of the lucky ones in that respect; I was never dangerously ill and never needed medical treatment to start on the road to recovery. I just remember that I got to a point where enough was enough, and I slowly started to pull myself out of the hole I had fallen down. Or, I guess, it was Japan that pulled me out of it, because during that trip in 2015 I was forced to eat rice for a month and had no access to a treadmill that would tell me how many calories I was burning. That trip was important to me in a big way for that reason. I’m grateful for Japan. I’m also very lucky that my desire to travel outweighed my self-loathing. Love won over hate that time.

But I had a happy ending, right? Hippie Story in 2016 wrote about how it was all better, and I feel good and healthy and okay that I’m a size 10 now (or a 12, sometimes).

Aren’t we all beautiful flowers?

(Also, fuck, I was so earnest in 2016. I guess I still am, though.)

This is my body now. It’s different than it was three years ago. My brain is also different.

The Perfect Summer, when everything seemed so easy, was only a tiny bit of time. Over the last three years, I’ve had ups and downs. Times when I’ve felt my body dysmorphia come back and times when it went away again. I’m starting to see signs of myself aging, it’s odd. My body looks different, even from my late teens/early twenties. I’ve gained more weight in different places.

But I’ve gotta admit something. This year has been especially rough, and I don’t know why. I’m not writing as the Wise Girl with a Solution, or someone at the end of the tunnel with a story to tell. I’m sharing something negative that I’m going through right now: it kind of sucks.

I feel so disconnected to my body lately.

It’s not super attractive to admit, but I look in the mirror and I’m just confused; why did I love this same person unconditionally three years ago? And now why is it back to the “when I’m X I can do Y,” again?

Does my skin really need to clear up before I feel like I can go on a date?

I’m not waving a white flag of surrender, though. I’m fighting back against these familiar thoughts of Not Good Enough. I’m still skipping makeup when I don’t want to wear it. I’m letting people take photos of me and I’m sharing them. I’m still out here, doing things, even on days when I’m super aware of what I look like and I feel like I’m stumbling around, taking up too much space.

I did something I always wanted to do and took some topless photos on a deserted beach. (Thanks, Corra!!) I had so much fun that, for a moment, I forgot how I might look.

I think we go through phases of body love. We’re constantly changing; our minds, our personalities and our goals. It’s only natural that our physical characteristics change just as much. It’s okay, and I’m learning about that right now.

Nothing makes me sadder than seeing people I know criticize themselves. When they say they need to shrink or grow or change in order to be lovable or feel good or even because they used to look a certain way. I get so fired up. I want to shake them by the shoulders and say that there is nothing wrong with them! And then I pause, because I realize that I’m muttering the same things to my own reflection. I need to shake myself by the shoulders, too.

It’s a shame that self-love and body confidence (or even just body acceptance) isn’t a given for some. I’ve always had to work for it. Even that epiphany moment of 2016 was after I underwent a full year of intense deprogramming work to unlearn the idea that there is particular size I need to be and that my value isn’t dependent on how “beautiful” I am. I can have an epiphany moment of pure okay-ness and even pure love for myself and my body, and then I can lose it. I suppose all I can do is just keep chasing it, on the good days and the bad.

At the end of the whole thing, I do believe I’m OK. It just gets lost sometimes.

Part 3: Where My Foot Steps Down

A lot of backpacking is sitting in your dorm room alone at 7PM. The travel blogs don’t tell you about that.

You have to work hard to create your own life when you’re away from what you’ve always known. At home I could sit in my house and wait for Aubrey to come back, or my cat to get my attention. I had to go to work, clean my kitchen, respond to a friend’s request for a coffee date. But when you’re somewhere where nobody knows you and all of your friends back home are asleep or busy, sometimes it’s just…you.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my definition of home and what it means to me. I still refer to Findlay as “back home,” but every time I do it’s with a bit of hesitation – is it really home now? Did I relinquish the right to call it that when I left it behind without the intention to return?

If I’m really honest, I don’t miss it. I just miss pieces of it.

My apartment on Allen Ave

George House

Walking at the reservoir

Hugo

That alleyway where Aumama and I would meet for lunch and to talk shit

Bike rides in the middle of Country Nowhere around my parents’ house

East Sandusky Street

That One Spot in the Corner at Tokyo Steakhouse’s sushi bar

And of course the sweet people who made my life there enjoyable

That was my home, and it’s okay that it isn’t anymore. Sometimes I think that I need to have this figured out, that I need to have a “home” in my back pocket. Sometimes I don’t think that at all. The concept of home is just as volatile as anything else.

I’ve moved on and let a lot of things go in my life. I can drown myself in nostalgia and The Way Things Used To Be, if I want to. I used to have a tough time with endings and changes. Now I welcome them.

I’m a very earnest person. I can’t do anything less than 100 percent. I can’t feel at less than 100 percent. I’m all in or I’m all out. Three or four years ago I started saying “go big or go home” ironically, but now it’s kind of become my mantra for the way I live my life. I’m either sprinting or I am completely stopped. I’m learning to embrace this. I think it can be a good thing if I wield it correctly.

I’m truly enjoying myself so much in the present, but I like to know what’s coming next, what I have to look forward to. My life is so open-ended right now.

Aumama and I were talking the other day about being in our twenties. She said, “So much is expected of you during this time. You should have graduated, you should have a full-time career job, you should also get married and have a kid at some point. But what about breathin’?!”

I also saw this quote today: “Your worth is not dependent on having achieved traditionally age-appropriate milestones.” – Chani Nicholas

What we’re “supposed to be doing” is so fucking subjective.

These are constant themes in my life right now, and I know that l’m not alone in this. Sometimes I’d like to fast-forward through it all and know that it all worked out for me, and that I have a calm and happy life. But I know that the only way to get there when I should get there is just to keep living one day at a time.

And also, the unknown is a lot of fun once I let go of expectations.

From my journal:

29 June —

I go through these crazy highs and lows. Highs bc I know I’m following my heart/dreams/intuition & I feel like I’m getting closer to figuring out what I want to do with my life. I feel so certain that I am on the right path. And I believe that bc I’m doing what I feel is best for me I will receive what it is I need at the best time.

I guess that’s kind of my religion right now. Also, I’m aware that I use the word “feel” a lot, ok.

On July 15th, I am leaving New Zealand (for a bit).

I’m going to Tokyo, Japan to see a cool person I met a couple months ago, and also to slowly sink into somewhere very different for a while.

I haven’t been alone in a bit, which has been so nice. I lived and died for myself for 24 years, and it’s always been difficult for me to rely on people; to let them in, to lean on them, to be vulnerable with them. I thought I was better on my own, but not anymore. I like myself with others.

I will be on my own again soon. It’s time to take stock on who I am after the past five months of new experiences and people and sights and sounds. Time for Phase 2. I’ll move to a new town, find a new job, slide my way into a new community. This is the part that makes me nervous; the beginning, where it’s just me. I’m not too worried, though; even at times when I’m hanging by a thread, I seem to find a way to make it work.

In the words of Vanessa, after I told her my concerns about the next few weeks: “You’re gonna go to Japan, you’re gonna have fun, and then you’re gonna figure it out!”

I guess that’s it, huh?

From my journal:

4 July –

I got a new book today.

My tattoo is looking good.

I miss my brother.

I miss Emily + Clare + Susan.

I wish I could fly home in 2 hours just to say hi & then come back.

I wish I could stay in NZ for more years on my visa.

I wish everything wasn’t so up in the air all the time.

But maybe I don’t.

Yours Truly,

Story