Duncannon, PA —> Port Clinton, PA
We hiked into Duncannon, PA and stayed at the infamous Doyle. This place is infamous for its stained walls, broken shower heads, bed bugs and exposed bed springs. I slept next to Sparky that night too. I felt safe with them.
Safety Shawn showed up the next day while we were having breakfast. Mountain Cat invited me to her aunt’s house for a pool day and Shawn wanted to come but I implied that he wasn’t invited. He made me feel guilty and didn’t want me to leave him but I went anyway. It was the best day. I felt so close to them all and that’s when Sparky and I became “a thing.” I tried to ignore the incessant texts from Shawn.
His guilt worked because I went back to town to stay a night with Safety Shawn. We got a room at the Doyle as in I got a room for us and we let another hiker named Beats stay in the room too. I was glad to have someone else around when I was with Shawn because I was scared constantly.
Shawn stole another hiker’s resupply box because they left it in the hallway of the hotel but I told him that was crossing a line. I waited for him to leave then I went and knocked on their door to return the box. The hiker it belonged to started crying because he said his dad sent him the box and it had a letter and some family photos in it. He couldn’t thank me enough for returning it and in my head this knowledge made Safety Shawn seem
more like a monster than he already was.
When I hiked on the next day, leaving Shawn behind, Beats - the other hiker - texted me to ask if I was okay. He said Shawn seemed attached. I thanked him and told him how he was clingy and Beats said he understood because he was hiking with a guy like that. The hiker had been following him trying to be his friend for hundreds of miles and didn’t pick up on Beats not liking him. This was it! The solution to my problems! Beats and I could hike together and I wouldn’t have to worry about Shawn anymore. I texted Beats to say we should hike together because he was the only one who understood my situation. He was glad to have a new companion and said yes. Moments later he texted me, “also you’re hot as fuck!” My heart shattered into a million pieces.
I ghosted him then every day he’d text me and ask where I went. When I didn’t reply after three days he called me “Shawn’s little cunt” and many other horrible things. I sent him a long message about slut shaming then blocked him. He wouldn’t learn anyway.
All I wanted to do is hike with my new friends. I wanted to hike with women. I wanted to hike with queers. I wanted to hike with people I could trust but the only people on trail who could hike my pace seemed to be straight, cis men.
On the first climb out of Duncannon with Sparky I got ten text messages from Safety Shawn. He said he “has feelings for me,” and he “loves me” and “I’ve never met a girl like you,” then in the next breath said, “you’re just like all the others,” and “you’re abandoning me like I knew you always would.”
I stopped reading them and as I went to turn my phone off I caught a glimpse of one word in his last text.
SUICIDAL.
I opened the text. “Being abandoned again is making me SUICIDAL. I’ve felt this way before but never like this. Goodbye forever I guess.”
I had never encountered someone threatening suicide, especially as a result of my actions. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to be with him and maybe it was an empty threat but what if it wasn’t? What if it was my fault? I was scared. Should I hike down the mountain and try to help him? Should I send him a hotline he can call or would that be the literal nail in the coffin. What the hell do I do with this information?
Ultimately I couldn’t do anything but walk and hope he wasn’t serious. I had no way of knowing. This was my first experience with truly abusive people. I didn’t know what was real or fake. A week later I blocked his number and decided that if he had actually been through everything he said he had in his life and made it 29 years without killing himself, it would be egotistical to think that I would be the reason he finally pulled the plug, which made me laugh.
Sparky and I hiked a 24 mile day. For the last mile there was tiny piece of gravel in my shoe but we were was so close to camp I kept walking. Big mistake. When I took my shoe off at the campsite I had a big blood blister on the ball of my foot about the size of a quarter. I tried to aspirate it with a needle but the skin was too thick and the needle point broke. I hoped it would go away overnight and went to sleep in Sparky’s tent.
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