N.K. Murray

I realize I posted my last alphabet series indicating that I was going to go out of order, but also not realizing that I might move directly towards ‘E’ after ‘F’.

My ‘E’ is both a universal one, and a wholly personal one.

Everest

I have been low-key obsessed with the Mountain since I was a kid and heard about the ’96 disaster, and read John Krakauer’s original outside piece, and then read Anatoli Boukreev’s book. Reading books about Everest and absorbing everything I could about it was an escape from being in Western New York. Although I never aspired to climb it, I have always said that one of my bucket list items is to just SEE it. To experience the presence of Sagarmatha.

I want to pause for a moment, and acknowledge that what I may say following this is blunt and honest, and that you may judge me. And if you do, I get it. I hope you’ll understand me a little better by the time I’m done.

It’s taken me longer than I’d like to admit that everyone has their own Everest. For some people, it’s literally climbing the miles-high mountain that borders Nepal, Tibet, and China. While it never was for me, I have a reputation for getting an idea in my head and going for it. Come hell or high water, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. It’s frankly how I’ve done some really stupid and amazing things like the Empire State Ride and my first Ride for Roswell (or this last one, that I may or may not have done any riding for beforehand). I used to judge people for not even trying to do the things that I would do. I’d be dismissive and nonchalant, like oh, it was no big deal for me to write a book or ride my bike across NYS or go get my third college degree. (I literally went for my second Master’s degree because a male boss told me I would never be taken seriously unless I had my MBA.)

But…it was. It was a huge deal, no matter the thing that I did, it was always more than I cared to admit it was after it was done. I’d laugh whatever it was off and tell the stories of my struggles like it was funny, rather than being honest that it was absolutely fucking brutal at the time I was doing whatever it was. Because, I did things and I still do things because I’m told I can’t/won’t/shouldn’t/don’t have time/don’t have the skill/don’t have the wherewithal to see it through. And I do the damn thing, no matter the cost.

I used to get this feeling of accomplishment. There is this sense that you’re special (not the right word, but it’ll come to me) when you do the things that people say you can’t/won’t/shouldn’t/don’t have time/don’t have the skill/don’t have the wherewithal to do. There’s a rush…a feeling of elitism that comes from people around you not being able or willing to do what you did. From not being smart enough or good enough or dedicated enough.

And it’s all bullshit.

I was playing Jeopardy on my Alexa while folding what felt like my 92nd load of laundry yesterday (my personal Impossible Task, for those unfamiliar with the term), and I was asked what a 10-letter word for the Latin derivative of feeding off of revenge or spite. And no joke, I blanked. I’m good at this kind of thing normally and I couldn’t come up with it.

And it was VINDICTIVE.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or smack myself. I think I did both honestly. I love words, and the English language and love knowing obscure and odd words that people don’t know, and I whiffed on vindictive.

Why do I tell you this? Well. . .in the last 8 months or so, I’ve picked myself apart, through my skin, to my muscles and tendons and blood vessels and and organs, down to nerves and bone. I have felt more like a pissed off Sciatic or an excruciating case of post-cycling Morton’s Neuroma than I have a human being as of late. Pick some sort of nerve pain – that’s how I feel lately, exposed and constantly triggered. There are a lot of things about myself that I love. And a lot of things about myself that I tolerate, because I recognize that’s just how I am. And then, there are a lot of things about myself that I realize aren’t what or where I think they need to be. I have realized that my perception of the things that happen outside of my own self, is discolored/miscolored, or perhaps downright blackened because of my displeasure with the things inside myself.

I’ve talked to this audience before about my many challenges with the things I do, but what I haven’t talked about before (and finally bringing this back around to my ‘E’), is that I used to think my Everest was the THING I signed up for. My first Ride for Roswell was my Everest. The Empire State Rides were my Everest. And that because I did it, people who didn’t were somehow diminished in my estimation. But, then I realized on my ESR’s that I was not only out of my depth, but completely and wholly out of my league. I realized there are people out there who are normal human beings like me, killing it when I was struggling. And that made me anxious and depressed, and honestly bitter, and it ruined my experience. I ruined my experience with something that should have been amazing and beautiful and cleansing and cathartic, because my demons decided I wasn’t good enough to be there.

Since starting this introspective journey 8 or so months ago to figure out what pieces of me I needed to shitcan, and then in the course of this trek, losing my job, and in some ways, having my selfhood damaged by life, made me realize my Everest is me.

My Everest is me.

My insurmountable, Sisyphean problem is me. My K2, my Lhotse, my Aconcagua, is me. I have built these cairns in my head as markers for the things that I’ve done – veritable monuments to my accomplishments, which have turned into inadvertent stone dams, blocking the good things that I may have taken from them. Or perhaps, they are blocking the lessons that I should have learned from them about myself. I’ve been coloring the pictures in my book of Nikki with only a few broken crayons – the bright, the vibrant, the brilliance is missing, because you can’t create any of that when you only use blacks and dark blues. You can’t create shadows without light – I think I forgot that, and only focused on the dark. I focused on the dam, rather than on the monument of what I accomplished.

The rides that I’ve done or not done since my last ESR were decided as of a result of my discolored/miscolored experiences. And what’s worst? I’ve lied about it. I’ve lied about my reasons why I am not riding, to myself, to my friends and family, all because my self-loathing and feelings of inadequacy have made my cairn a fucking soul-sucking, memory-tainting dam. I stopped doing something that I started for the very best reason, despite the spite, because I wasn’t good enough for me. My demons dance on the mountain, because of their comfort amongst the wreckage of what should have been beautiful memories and memorials for things they don’t see as accomplishment.

One of the tenets of climbing Everest that ANY one who knows anything about the Mountain and the process, is that getting up is only half of the trek. You have to also get back down. Ask any climber – it’s the getting back down, after you’ve exhausted your resources getting to the top, that’s infinitely more difficult.

So, how does one conquer themselves? How does one get back down the mountain they’ve created in their mind, without becoming so exhausted that they go back to where the air was thin because they’re so used to breathing up there. How does someone who has spent the last couple decades training her eyes, her mind, her motivation to focus on the spite, to shift that focus on something less driven by the voices saying she can’t/won’t/shouldn’t/doesn’t have time/doesn’t have the skill/doesn’t have the wherewithal to do? To find some sort of peace with the things that I can’t change, and focus on what I have within my span of control. And, not for nothing, not to lose the pieces of me that I personally find to be non-negotiable, but yet have been built on those dark places in between the stone dams I’ve created in my head. There is a definite dichotomy there that I haven’t been able to figure out how to bridge, without letting the dark invade too deeply into the newly lit rooms in my gothic mansion.

It’s hard to human, sometimes.

One of the things I’ve realized is that you have to work through the pain to come to the other side. This is true when you’re wound tighter than the cables holding up the Golden Gate Bridge like I am (and friends, if this is you, I have an incredible massage therapist you need to visit – Bernice is AMAZING!), and also true when you lose your parents. It’s true when you get punched in the face and don’t have a plan. It’s true when you lose yourself. Fighting through the pain is honestly something that I shouldn’t be good at, but am, because I set myself up to do the things that I was told I can’t/won’t/shouldn’t/don’t have time/don’t have the skill/don’t have the wherewithal to do. Consider it the price of admission to my mountain.

Thoreau said, “Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.” I’ve spent a lot of time at the top of my Everest, not able, not willing to find a way down. No one is coming to save me, and no one can tell me that I am doing it wrong.

And that, in and of itself, is a form of peace. And a starting point.

Link to the song of the day – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deo_Cq5Hbd8