Not Demure, Not Cutesy

This is the companion post to Episode 1 of the podcast. If you haven't listened yet, head there first

The greatest shock in the process of this podcast thus far is how loudly we were screaming about the trauma endured in the years we spent in graduate school. A period I have jokingly, or I suppose now I see not so jokingly, said was the hardest period of my life. In the process of developing this podcast we went in completely void of reacquaintance with our documentation of memories. We jumped into the act of telling the story rather than revisiting and developing. I think it was intentional, at least I am glad we did it this way. 

Often I think people are blind to the ways we reveal some of our closest held feelings. I know I have been. And, in the recording, and more so, in the editing of this venture I have faced the reality that we were not demure, or cutesy, with our feelings about graduate school. We start this project with our meeting,  and while grad school is the setting and the background to our first interactions, I didn’t realize how much of our pain would bleed into the origins of our friendship. 

We start with two professors we both adore. We begin in a place of whimsy, with youthful innocence, and the lightness of something bright and new. And so quickly I let the perfectionism, people pleasing, and emotional caretaking of abusive people become central to the frame. 

What is beautiful in this is that despite my immediate jump to the pain and ownership of my trauma response, Em meets me there. We agreed to a podcast about our hike. We both remember it fondly, desire the simplicity, and relive it in our retellings of the same stories we’ll share with you all. I never would have thrown the word trauma into the word cloud for this project. I would have never expected to jump to my trauma response in episode one. 

I think, in editing these episodes I have learned so much more about myself. I hear myself pausing, frantically searching for words that make things make sense, but the reality is some things never make sense. 

I hear myself being so open and vulnerable in ways that I never would with the public broadly without the safety blanket of my best friend. I recognize that while I wouldn’t have recognized and likely not owned, the comfort of someone who truly sees you, scars, quirks, challenges, gifts, and all, and accepts you anyway, makes the microphone and audience disappear. In this process I see less about a story of a hike, of adventure, of mishaps, but instead a true story of love and friendship, forged deep in the granite mountains of the Sierra.

Another shock has been processing each layer of trauma we peeled back. Uncovering trauma, revealing, mourning, processing, I thought was the work. But, as we continued to peel I found things I didn’t realize I’d been carrying, heavy rocks that had become so normalized, their weight recalibrated in my bones to feel innate. 

Uncovering this trauma left me instead of looking at an onion, looking at a massive wall of stratigraphic rock, seeing the layers built on layers. Suddenly my trauma was no longer singular and separate from each piece, pulling one away to dispose of it did not leave me with a new layer to pull away, instead, digging I found one pain, and dug deeper to realize that pain was compacted on top the old. There was no separating the deepest seated pain from all that comes next. 

Uncovering trauma, uncovers trauma. In this process, speaking our truth to each other, alone in a room with nothing but our memories in various forms, I found parts of myself that I’d lost, things about myself that I had overcome, and the reality that moving forward doesn’t mean you don’t drag all the bullshit with you. 

So, as we begin telling this story of our greatest adventure (yet), the forging of our friendship, and the growth we are able to articulate, I, too, found the complexities of my pain, a giant knot of experiences that have pulled the softest parts of me away from the forefront of my consciousness, reminding me instead to stay strong, be tough, be less, do more. 

And yet, the greatest comfort is that despite that knot of discomfort, of pain, and the overdue processing I’m so desperately in need of, I know that my dear friend will be by my side through it all. In the same way we sat each night in the tent talking about the day, the way we sat in the room in a rental in Santa Fe recalling the great big adventure, and the truly countless hours of windshield time, Em will be there when I need to unload, when I need reassurance, or a reminder that I am not broken. 

That’s the whole fucking point, the stories we tell, the things we survive, it only matters because you can relate to others. Being able to connect through story, be it reminiscing or connecting for the first time, telling your story to another person is a vulnerable and important part of saying, this is who I am. I am so grateful for a friend who has yet to decide that regardless of thousands upon thousands of hours of story, I’m still not too much for her.