How to feel like yourself again

Notes from the trails in Patagonia

We were sitting on the beach, watching the waves roll in. A yellow dog ran across the sand, playing in the licks of seafoam, the owner trailing a few paces behind. Most of the shore was deserted by then, the lifeguards packing up for the day, a few last families gathering up sandy umbrellas and sunburnt children.

When do you feel most like yourself? My husband was staring at the water, glistening with the final rays of sun, when he asked me this. It felt like a complicated question, one I thought would be easy to answer by this point in my life. But age is no warrant for wisdom, and accumulating years doesn’t give you automatic access to the deeper parts of yourself—not without doing the necessary work and turning inward.

In Patagonia, I finally answered him, a bit surprised by my own response. It had been years since we were there, yet it was the first place, or rather, the first image of myself, that came to mind.

Christmas day, 2015. Waiting for a bus to take us back to town after an overnight hike.

I was 25, wearing baggy flannel and hiking boots everywhere we went. We spent two months hiking and camping, taking greyhound buses as far as our money would take us then walking everywhere else—to the base of mountains, to find and filter water, to pee in the woods. Our bodies carried us in circles and loops, to bus stops on dusty roads, to the edge of shallow seas, through desert border crossings and tiny towns threaded by tangles of vineyards.

I felt most like myself then, my limbs always moving, my mind quiet and at peace. Internal chatter hardly existed, and my usual overwhelming emotions subsided. High in the alpines, where my fingers scraped the sky, my heart found the rhythm it had been searching for all along.

When we returned to the states, I promised myself I’d always seek out mountains whenever I needed to remember who I was. What I really meant was that I would seek out that version of me, a version that felt so raw and true and unafraid of her feelings.

But then the years passed. We moved from big city to big city—first Denver, then London, then Los Angeles—and that feeling I had in Patagonia slowly disappeared, or at least became harder to find. I was no longer writing stories in my head while on the trails or with my feet propped up on a dusty dashboard. I was at a desk, always inside, constantly alone with my thoughts and the keyboard. It became hard to get away as often as I needed. It became hard to remember how to feel most like myself.

*

I’ve been thinking about how everything costs energy—every thought, every word, every breath. It all requires something of us. Burying the fire and light inside of us costs energy too. When we hide ourselves or put on masks to help us get through the day, we spend the energy that could otherwise be used for honoring our feelings or turning inward. I wonder how different our lives (and the world) would look if we sought out the moments and places that made us feel most like ourselves more often.

I’m not suggesting we all quit our jobs and move to the mountains (though wouldn’t that be nice). But perhaps intentionality, and slowing down to consider our choices and motions, is key. Life requires so much of us—chores, work, caretaking, finances—it can make it hard to breathe, let alone recognize ourselves. And so asking these questions matter. Questions like, Where do you find “you”? Where do you “re-meet” yourself? And where are you when you recognize the reflection in the window or mirror? Not the physical person, but the light behind your eyes, the feelings worn on your face.

*

I feel most like myself in the mountains, I told my husband again, the beach now emptied as we stood, shook our blanket of sand. A few stars poked the sky as we walked back to the car, and for a moment, I forgot we were in Los Angeles. Instead, we were climbing a narrow trail in Torres Del Paine, dawn descending around us, our headlamps and a sliver of moon showing us the way. Only our wheezing breath was audible, the crunch of trail beneath boots, the wind humming on the horizon.

I remembered it then, the feeling I’d been so desperate for, the reunion with myself. The mountain air was still stuck on my skin all those years later; it had never left. I carried it home. It had always been there, even if I’d forgotten how to feel it, how to see it. I only needed to remember. I only needed to look.

Fitz Roy, 2015.