Anticlimactic mountaintops

Without the disappointment

First things first. Today is my mom’s birthday. Happy birthday Mom! You are lovely, strong, soft, beautiful, generous, feisty, hilarious, fun, and a beacon of light and love for everyone who gets to experience the GIFT of YOU. I LOVE YOU FOREVER.

Many of the sweetest and most victorious moments I have experienced over the last few years have also been the most quiet and solitary ones.

This is coming from a formerly hyperactive adrenaline junkie who would beg for adventure buddies everywhere she went and never held back anything she was feeling. I still tend to wear my heart on my sleeve, but I’ve begun to taste the power of self control.

I guess my personality has swung back and forth between expressive and quiet throughout my life. When I was younger, I was fairly shy and quiet, keeping more to myself and observing others. By middle school and high school, all the hormones and emotions I experienced were not a force which I could hide or contain within myself. I could only process the waves of emotions by releasing them. Haha- there was a lot of release happening, in order to maintain anything close to stability, which I also often failed to achieve (love you, Mom and Dad).

By college, I experienced the first major balancing of energy within myself. I had a newfound confidence and excitement to step into my own and invent the next chapter of my life... within the frame of university life of course. No sorority though- not for me. As expected, I met incredible people during those formative college years. We all lifted each other up, fueled each other’s confidence, and expanded our sense of fun together. I remember calling my mom one day on one of my bike rides and crying tears of absolute joy. I will never forget that phone call. I was sitting on the edge of the trail at Pineridge Natural Area with my mountain bike leaning on a rock. The sun was going down, giving everything that swirled glow of deep blue and burnt orange. I was looking up at Horsetooth Rock, a prominent landmark in Fort Collins, Colorado, which does in fact resemble a horse’s tooth. Behind it rests Horsetooth Reservoir. On the other end of the phone call, it took my mom a moment to shift from concern to delight as she listened to me continue and express how truly happy I was in my new home. Freshman year in the dorms was behind me at this point. It was sophomore year, the first of three years living in a condo on Ross Dr. with three roommates who would turn out to be lifelong best friends.

I think of the metaphor of a baby bird flying for the first time. Little, clumsy, awkward bird finally moves past the bouncing, fluttering, huffing, and puffing. She spreads her wings and finally flies. “LOOK, MOM!” “LOOK, DAD!” It’s not smooth or perfect, or even long lived the first few times going airborne. Nonetheless, it’s exhilarating. It’s a rush. It’s an accomplishment. I’m sure I’m projecting my feelings onto this bird, but you get it.

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

Of course, all of that newfound freedom in college came with all the risky business you might imagine. Besides school, bestie roommates, and being in the outdoors, I also had my fair share of debauchery, including but not limited to: house parties, bars, dancing on the bar at Bondi Beach Bar and Grill, security guards telling me I couldn’t dance on the chairs too, dancing until 2am, peeing in the bushes, and making boxed stuffing with Kate at 3am because we were hungry and still hadn’t gone grocery shopping (please don’t ask why we had boxed stuffing- I think that was the first and last time I ate that). Let’s not forget taking my ‘95 Jeep Grand Cherokee off roading any chance I could get. Sometimes that just meant veering the jeep up a grass hill around town because I felt like it and wanted to get a rise out of my roommates. Someone in the friend group named my jeep The Tarantula (was it Dan?). I bought it from a couple in our neighborhood after a deer jumped out in front my ‘94 Ford Explorer and totaled it. I bought the jeep as-is: black, tinted windows, and black rims. It was pretty bad ass, named appropriately.

Gosh, I could spend way too much time reminiscing on the college days. In a nutshell, they were classically wild and free. The mountaintop experiences were out in the open, explosive, fun, emotionally charged, and always shared with others.

This week, I linked up with a group of friends who I haven’t seen since that era. It’s been around 12-14 years (woah), give or take, since I’ve seen each person in the group. The nine of them flew into Nashville this week for Kat’s 40th birthday. David was the one who texted me on January 1st letting me know about the group’s planned visit and to inquire about my availability to meet up. David has always been like my long lost brother (really, I think he was my brother, or at least my first cousin, in a previous life). I wasn’t able to meet up with him the last time he came through Nashville. This time, I was not going to miss it.

The best way it worked out was for Dominick and me to drive to their Airbnb on Thursday night, the first evening they all got into town. We got there and spent the first hour-and-change getting reconnected and catching up. A handful of us eventually migrated to the kitchen. Cherie took charge with dinner, just like I remember, giving anyone interested something to do to help with preparations. Chicken piccata was on the menu (praise God). Dominick minced some fresh garlic. David snapped the asparagus for the side and got the noodles going. Jeff assisted Cherie with the eggs, panko breadcrumbs, and flour to bread the chicken. I scurried around helping locate containers and utensils in the thousands of drawers and cupboards in this Airbnb’s gigantic (and gorgeous) kitchen. Then I mostly watched Cherie make the sauce, taking rigorous mental notes. She granted me the honor of stirring it. I cut a lemon in half, threw it in the lemon squeezer, and handed it off to her for one of the final touches. She eyeballed everything, and it was perfect. Add it to the ever evolving list of my cooking goals. David, Cherie, and I plated it for everyone in an assembly line- noodles, chicken, sauce with capers ladled over top, and the side of asparagus. We circled up and Jeff prayed aloud in a way that brought complete peace over a full room, especially blessing his wife Kat, the birthday girl.

I let my heart melt into a puddle over the course of the night. I was catapulted back to so many memories of life with them in Fort Collins. I have a tendency to say it feels like I was a different person then. As I continue on my journey, I realize I am always the same, underneath all the masks, facades, coping mechanisms, etc. It’s always a matter of coming back to my true essence. Being with this group made me realize they are souls who live from their true essence, and they bring that out of me too. If you asked me even a month ago if I would ever see them again, I would have said “probably not.” Fast forward to Thursday night, and there we all were, cracking up at another one of Jolly’s epic stories (Cherie’s husband). The room permeated with the same, pure, thick love and joy as I remember feeling with them in Colorado over a decade ago. I’d say the belly laughs we all give each other are the absolute highlight.

Dominick and I gushed as we drove home that night. We pulled up to our house around 12:30am, so I guess it was wee Friday morning by that point. We stood in the kitchen for a couple of minutes after greeting the two miniature tigers. I looked at him and said it was a night that made me feel like I have taken all the right turns in life. I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever felt that specific sensation before. A lot of you are aware that I have gone through an elaborate process of coming to peace with the war scene that was my active addiction in recent years. Starting my journey of recovery, I chose to believe people who would tell me that the darkest parts of my past could actually become the thing that helps others who are struggling. It was hard to imagine. At the time, I felt so much shame and regret. I wrote about my real desire to cut off my past with a big pair of scissors in my post A window in time. It’s literally the first sentence of the piece.

By the end of that post, I talk about the gratitude of never giving up and coming to deeply love “the Jeannie who got lost, lied, stole, manipulated, hurt people, lost her job, fell on her face. She got up. She kept moving forward, even if it was two steps forward and five steps back. She keeps me going today. She is helping me write today. She is helping me love today. It is only because I forgive and love her that I can forgive and love others.”

Being with this group of friends earlier this week was like a kiss on the forehead from the universe telling me: “See? You are still Jeannie. They still love you the same. You still love them the same. Every piece of your life still connects.”

Photo by Clint Adair on Unsplash

The main idea for this post blooms now, which also happens to be the start of the conclusion. My friends in recovery can attest to something I’ve often shared in AA meetings after a couple years into sobriety. I have talked about how my breakthroughs, ah-ha moments, and mountaintop experiences have become seemingly anticlimactic. It’s not that they are bad. It’s just that there is usually no big bang. They are not like the shout-joy-from-rooftops days of college, or even the early days of sobriety when I was posting a ton on social media.

I started to notice miracles happening in everyday moments. I can understand now that it’s because of the calmer harmony I began to experience. By doing the inner work, I allowed my heart to be in the driver’s seat again, which helped my mind become quiet enough to realize what was actually in front of me.

When I walked to the mailbox, and the perfect breeze caressed my neck, and I stopped and stood with my eyes closed in the middle of the sidewalk.

I could crawl into bed and enjoy the sensation of the covers on my skin because I wasn’t blacked out by bedtime.

I remembered somebody’s birthday ahead of time and put a card in the mail.

These examples sound so basic… anticlimactic even when we’re talking about miracles. But I’m telling you, they would stop me in my tracks and feel like a huge moment. I started to love when this would happen more, especially because I was by myself. It felt special that it was between me and the Divine. Invisible treasure. The more I value this treasure, the more careful I am with it. I don’t spend all day posting play-by-plays on my Instagram story anymore. If I’m going to share anything about these miracles, I take the time, like I am now, to turn it into something other people can not only digest, but also (hopefully) take with them too.

The purpose of this Substack of mine is not to dance and flash out here, shouting from the rooftops how great my life is. I do talk a lot about myself because the only true knowledge I have is my experience. My experience is the vehicle I have for anything I can pass on and share with you. When I share and pass the baton, then it becomes your experience, and that’s up to you.

Photo by Danilo Batista on Unsplash

The mountaintops we anticipate after valley seasons are not always loud, exciting, or outwardly glorious- like my epic dance moves on the bar in college… or- a more literal example- summiting 14,000 foot mountains (fourteeners) in the Rockies with my best friend Kate.

Those were beautiful times, but I no longer long for them to return. I’ve learned the mountaintops today can be quiet, inward, subtle, and even more fulfilling sometimes because I don’t seek external validation for them. Of course it’s valuable to share. That’s why I wrote this. The value is preserved in the process of sharing because I first took the time to experience it with myself and my Higher Power- God with and within me. It was not until I could be grateful to something greater than my human self that I could transcend. I acknowledge this might not be a belief that some of my readers share with me, and that is beautifully okay. We all only truly know our own experience.

Thank you for being here and holding space for my experience. I have shared about the quiet, sweet victories I’ve had in solitude, and I suppose that happens a lot as I write too. I am primarily by myself when I sit down to write. I have laughed and/or cried all by myself while writing every single Substack post so far. It’s awesome, but as always, there is a downside. It’s at this point, as I finish up the post and send it out into the ether, that I really wish I could hang out with you and listen to your experience too. If you’re in Nashville, let’s make it happen. If you’re not, I can, at the very least, promise to respond to your comment or email if you choose to send me one. You never know what kind of connection or inspiration can spark from a comment on some crazy-ass chick’s Substack post.

This week, I hope you all get the chance to feel the proverbial breeze on the back of your proverbial neck while walking to your proverbial mailbox.

with love, Jeannie