Linda

Killington, VT

I found Beetle inside a church in Bennington and I couldn’t be more thrilled. Some very kind church people decided to be trail angels that day and bring us home with them so we could shower, eat, and sleep in a bed. They said they had never hosted thru-hikers before. We were honored to be their first (though I’m sure as soon as we got in the car and they smelled our fetid odor they immediately regretted it).

We stayed with them overnight and they drove us back to the trail in the morning. They were so sweet and taught us a lot about Vermont. The gave me their number and said if I ever needed anything to call.

We got out of the car in the town square and went to visit a different, historical church in town that Beetle wanted to see. We had time to kill because I was waiting for Sam’s mom, Linda to come pick me up.

Sam’s mom and I were very close. We were fast friends and connected over many things over the years I dated Sam so she wanted to visit and support me on trail. I felt crushing guilt for letting her come despite knowing I was going to break up with her son, but if I told her not to come I would have a lot of explaining to do to her and to Sam that I wasn’t emotionally capable of under the circumstances. I also wanted to see her, I was just ashamed.

Linda had come to feel like my second mom and when she arrived and hugged me, she felt like home. It took everything in me not to burst into tears because the safety and security she made me feel was a stark, triggering contrast when I had been in a constant adrenal response to danger for months at that point. I had been emotionally tangled, confused, and non-functional for so long, I didn’t know how to articulate my feelings to anyone, so I pushed the autopilot button and became my charming, superficial, clandestinely numb self. I was acting the character I used to be with her - someone I wasn’t anymore.

I answered questions about how many miles I hiked and what I ate and how I resupplied and treated my water. She brought me fresh fruit, chocolate, fancy cheeses, and wine. She was her soft, generous, nurturing self and I couldn’t let it in because if I did, the floodgates would open. I wanted desperately to be honest with someone but I couldn’t. I wasn’t even thinking these thoughts or making these calculations on a conscious level because nothing is conscious when you’re being abused. It’s a feeling but it’s all a murky, thick quagmire and you can’t name or define any of it until you break free. Usually, you sink so slowly into the viscous toxic sludge of abuse you don’t even notice. It’s like being a frog in a pot of water as the temperature slowly creeps up. Linda was my way out of the pot but I felt too warm and sleepy to jump out.

She drove me to Killington, VT where we sunbathed at a lake, had dinner, stayed in a fancy rustic hotel, soaked in the hot tub, and laughed together. It was the northeastern summer family weekend I never had as a kid. It was bucolic and temporarily, it felt like my fears melted into that lake we sat at but there was an ominous cloud that hovered over me everywhere I went. I was always uneasy for no apparent reason.