Disclaimer: There are some topics in here that may not be suitable for younger audiences. Parental discretion is advised.

Disclaimer: But really, these topics need to be talked about and discussed. So I strongly encourage parental guidance. And please know, these are not easy topics for me to discuss, let alone open it to all on the interwebs.

2017 is over. The first year since I’ve hike my trail is complete. It has been a whole year since I started and a whole year since I have re-entered society. A lot of growth happened during the trail. But I would say an incredible amount more happened once I came back home.

Trail life was simple. Wake, eat, walk, eat, walk some more, eat some more, find a good spot to camp, set up, eat, sleep, rinse and repeat. The entire hiker culture is a different one. Everyone does the same thing day in, day out-so there is no need for pleasantries. “What did you do today?” “How are you doing?” “What’s new?” Those are all questions you know the answer to already because you experienced the same thing. Nothing is new. I’m still walking. Just like I did yesterday. I am sore. My feet hurt.

Anyone who just spent the past days, weeks, months doing what you are doing experience the same basic things. So, pleasantries are skipped, and conversations are instantly deeper. You can just walk up to someone, even if you have not introduced yourself before, sit down, split a snack with them and say “I had the best poop today” or “I can no longer feel three of my toes” and they will almost always respond with, “Me too”. There is nothing you cannot discuss on the trail. Your life story begins to pour from your mouth as you try to pass the miles. Bonds are deeper, more meaningful.

Trail Families. They are a real thing. Out on the trail, you do not make acquaintances or friends. You make family members. A bond you share your entire life. You have hiked as far as these people. You have felt the same pains, dealt with the same highs, faced the same lows. It is a bond that is hard to break once formed, and formed as quickly as this page loaded for you on the internets (unless you have poor wifi). Trail life is something completely unique, its own domain. A once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing.

Imagine going 5 months having almost no filter on your mouth. Feeling every emotion as it floods through your body: rage, depression, euphoria, exhaustion, hunger. You become a creature of instinct rather than habit. Are you hungry? Eat. Are you tired? Rest. Are you restless? Walk. You have no responsibilities, no obligations. The only goal is to make it one more day closer to the finish line and enjoy every moment. Truly live in the here and now for 5 months. 135 days to be exact.

Now imagine coming back into society. Coming back to the rat race that is Silicon Valley. Make that money, buy that new technology, shove it in everyones face on social media.  Sitting in traffic to get to work, working like crazy to make money, sitting in traffic to get home. Sit all day. Contained. Get a taste of the outdoors as you walk to and from your vehicle, eager to get to the next destination. Overwhelming is an understatement.

After living free for 135 days, I was eager to be home. Sleep in a bed. Eat a home cooked meal. Eat FRESH fruits and vegetables. Warm showers. Clean clothes EVERY DAY. And not having to walk. Mostly the not walking. I could bike, run, swim, do literally ANYTHING ELSE but walk. A new type of freedom. A freedom from walking.

I knew that once I got home I would miss the trail. I was prepared to experience depression. Scientifically speaking, I averaged about 20 miles per day. My body was producing serotonin at a higher rate than it normally did. Then in a matter of days I go from hiking 26 miles to maybe walking 5 miles a day. Serotonin production is reduced, therefore depression is experienced. I expected it. I slept for a month. Not exaggerating. The entire month of October 2016, when I was not going out with friends on the weekend, I was lying in bed sleeping on and off. My body needed it. It had been go go go for so long, it needed the rest. It needed to repair. To adjust.

But despite that, I was still pretty happy. Here and there I felt like I needed to be productive, then I would remind myself to enjoy the downtime before I had to face reality and go back to work. Work started in November. I got hired seasonally at REI. I was so excited, it was just the kind of job I decided I needed on the trail. A job revolving around the outdoor world I love. Even better, a job interacting with people. Connecting and bonding over something you both shared, and knew you shared without having to ask. It was like a snapshot of trail life for me. Sure, it was part-time and minimum wage. No health care, but that is what Medi-Cal is for. Free healthcare! Who needs dental? Just floss and brush and you can avoid the dentist.

Slowly the expectations of society began to seep into my life. Health Insurance. It is important and not cheap. Dental, not necessary, but very beneficial to have. Sure, minimum wage could get me to and from work, but now I had debt. I took a break from the real world for 6 months. Sure, I had saved up. But when my dad unexpectedly got laid-off from his job, I lost health coverage under my parents. Shelling out $3,000 of what I had saved up to cover medical expenses while I was not working. But I was so determined. I could not put a pause on this journey. It was now or never. Carpe Diem. Seize the day. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. Yada, yada. Isn’t that what credit cards are for? I can pay them off when I come back and get a job. Problem solved. (Spoiler alert-problem still not solved.)

Debt. I had been lucky enough to avoid it most of my life. My parents were able to pay for my college, including room and board for the 5 years I attended. Student debt is a foreign idea to me thanks to their careful saving and investing. Car loans? My parents also helped me out with that. I have lived a very privileged life, I recognize it and am grateful that I have been able to avoid debt. Until now. Slowly my debt grew once I came back. I had to buy new clothes, as I had lost a lot of weight and almost nothing fit (tough problem to have, I know). And to be perfectly honest, it was thrilling to go clothes shopping after wearing the same outfit day after day for 5 months straight.

So just to catch you all up, I am at this point working part-time, minimum wage, with credit card debt, on Medi-Cal, and back living at home with my parents. All of the sudden I felt as though I had regressed. Wasn’t the point of me hiking the trail to figure out what I was gonna do in life? Didn’t I escape to find myself and figure out a way to move out of my parents house and move on with my life? Now I have just guaranteed at least 2 more years with my parents. I don’t even work full-time. So half of my time I am sitting around the house with nothing to do, no one to see because they are all at work. Wandering aimlessly. Wasn’t I wandering aimlessly before I left? What have I done? Was this a mistake? Do I regret hiking the PCT?

Whoa. That’s a bold claim. OMG. DO I regret it??? How can I regret something like that? I changed fundamentally as a person on that trail. I don’t really regret it. But at the same time, I kind of do because now I am stuck where I was before, if not in a worse position now. What have I done? What have I done?? What did I do?

My first panic attack occurred about a week after I turned 26. I was alone housesitting for a friend when it hit me. I did not know how to control it. I called my sister sobbing, gasping for air, feeling everything spin out of control. I had experienced panic attacks in college. That was part of the reason I avoided getting a job with my Mathematics degree in the first place. I felt as though I was on the verge of a mental breakdown my senior year of college. So after I graduated, I just wanted to spend a couple of years enjoying my youth, my lack of responsibilities, hanging out with friends. But now that was catching up to me. Now I am 26. I have no money. I still live with my parents. Where had I gone wrong?

For the next couple of weeks, I recognized my anxiety increasing. I was nervous for no reason. Dreading whatever event I had coming up. I wanted to hid under the covers. I wanted to avoid reality. I wanted to go back to the trail. God, how I longed for the trail. But I also felt like I could not go back. Coming back to society, I recognized that I was no longer the girl who left for the trail just a couple months earlier. But after being back in society for a bit, I also was no longer the girl on the trail. I was not hiking, I was not going for runs. I was hardly exercising. Did that girl on the trail even exist? Was she still in me? Did she disappear along with my life savings? Where was she? Where did she go?

That was the worst feeling. Not even knowing myself. I was so confident when I came off the trail. Now I had no idea who I was. What I was doing. I literally did not know what it even meant to be alive. What was the point? I have buried myself so deeply, I can hardly breathe. All of my friends have jobs, insurance, cars, houses. I can barely afford the gas to get me to work. I am never going to get myself out of debt. What am I doing? Who am I? I am no one. Maybe on the trail I just deluded myself into thinking I was someone greater than I was. Maybe I am nothing. If I am nothing, then why am I here? Wouldn’t it just be easier if I were not here? What if I was not around anymore?

Well, that would certainly solve my debt issue. But jokes aside, that thought lingered in my head for weeks. Popping up along with my anxiety. Slowly seducing its way into my thoughts. Not being around anymore. It is so simple. I would no longer feel the walls pressing in. I believe in reincarnation, so I could start anew. A fresh start. I would do it all over. I would fix my mistakes. I would be happier. I would be more sure of myself. It was a solution.

Once I stumbled upon that thought, I immediately became afraid. Because the more I thought about it, the more appealing it sounded. The thought would serenade me to sleep. Would calm my racing thoughts amidst the anxiety. But only for a second. Then the panic would set in. This is becoming a real thought that I need to deal with. I need to tell someone I am thinking these thoughts. But who do I tell? And how do I tell them?

Health Insurance. It covers most mental health costs. Like medications, doctors, psychiatrists. People who can help you overcome this dark place in your life. Health Insurance. The one thing I did not have. Well, I had Medi-Cal, but in all honestly, I barely even knew how to sign up, let alone find a doctor. I mostly used it as my back up and just prayed I did not end up in the ER while I was covered under it. I did not know if Medi-Cal would cover the costs of psychiatrists or psychologists. And I certainly did not have the money to pay for it if it was not covered.

So how am I supposed to tell someone if I feel like I do not have the money to pay them for it? I certainly cannot tell my parents. They would feel obligated to pay for it and they have already paid for so much in my life. Plus, they are taking care of my 90 year-old grandfather, bothering them with this issue would just put more stress on them. So I kept it in. I held it inside and tried to avoid thinking about it.

You know what helps you avoid thinking about anything? Alcohol. So I would spend my nights out with friends getting drunk to avoid my problems. Which was great, because I missed an entire summer with them, so this was a way to catch up. Soon it was Thanksgiving holiday. I had family in town, and after the election results, tensions were a little high at the dinner table that year. So I would pour myself a glass of vodka, even if everyone was asleep and it was only me. After a few evenings like this, I quickly realized I was spiraling down the rabbit hole. I needed to tell someone everything I was feeling before it was too late.

A couple nights after Thanksgiving I had a particularly difficult discussion with my uncle. He was discussing with my father about kids living at home. Of course, my sensitivity about the topic sent me over the edge and I could not keep my mouth closed anymore. I quickly jumped in to defend myself and many others in a position similar to mine, or worse. I am not even sure if he knew how upset I truly was to hear it. We settled the disagreement and he went to bed. I sat on the couch and began to cry, quickly descending into a panic attack. My mom was the only one in the room and comforted me with a hug. As I snotted into her shoulder I told her I was having a difficult time adjusting. She replied that it was perfectly normal to have a hard time adjusting, but it would get easier with time. That was when I realized she did not understand what I meant. I told her, “No. I feel so alone, so lost. I don’t even want to go on. I need to see someone but I don’t know if I can afford it. I don’t want to ask you for the money because that only further rubs it in my face what a terrible position I am in now.” She just hugged me and calmed me down with a back rub and a promise that everything would get better.

Two days after that, she told me that her and my father would pay for me to see someone and not to worry about the money because my mental health was more important than that. My dad got some recommendations on psychologists and I set up my first appointment.

2017 has been a long, hard year. (That’s what she said.) I saw a psychologist for a couple of months before finding a psychiatrist, too. I have been on anti-depressants for a little under a year now. Not many people know this about me. Only my family and a few close friends really know what I went through last year. And it did not get easier over night. I still had panic attacks and anxiety for months. I created a playlist of soothing music that I play when I am depressed, overwhelmed, anxious. I am listening to it right now. I light candles to relax. I go hiking. This is the most important. I make it a point to reconnect with nature at least once a month. I have made friends who are just as in love with the outdoors as I am.

I thought 2016 would be my year of growth. And in a way, it was. I grew internally. I knew what I wanted and I knew what was most important to me. I knew I needed the outdoors in my life. I knew that I needed to connect with people. I knew more of myself than I had ever known while I was out on the trail. But coming back was a shock to my core. It made me question everything I had discovered out in the wilderness.

New Year’s last year, I wanted to work on myself in 2017. I wanted to become full-time at REI, I wanted to be invested in the company. I wanted to get back outdoors more. I wanted to hike another trail.

And in 2017 I did a lot. I didn’t hike 2,650 miles, but I got a job full-time at REI (health insurance acquired!), I got two pay raises, I ran two half marathons (I use the word “ran” loosely), completed an 11 mile run, hiked through the Needles District in Canyonlands National Park, signed up to hike the Grand Canyon in 2018, signed up for my first marathon in 2018, visited Oregon and Washington, learned to snowboard, almost got a dog. Looking back to where I was a year ago, I am a completely different person. I am not 100% still, I still have thoughts come in and out of my head, but they are few and far between and when they do break through, they are a quick burst before they disappear. I am starting to think of them as my motivation to keep pushing on. My reminder that I am not quite where I want to be and my motivation to get there quickly.

2017 was my year of external growth. In 2016 I learned who I was alone in the world and in 2017 I learned how that new person fits in with the life I left for a summer. Adjusting this new person to the demands and expectations of society without losing the core of that person. I may not be the same person I was the moment I stepped off the trail a year ago, but I am also definitely not the same girl who started the trail just a few months before that. I am older, wiser (HAR). I know what I want and I won’t let anyone stand in my way. I am determined. I do not want to be in the Bay, I want to experience the world. I want to spend as much time outside as I can. I want to live somewhere with snow, I want to watch a thunderstorm. There is so much I want to do. And I am slowly doing it all. I just have to believe in myself.

If you are experiencing depression, please let someone know. Truly know how you feel. If you are in distress and/or wish to seek prevention and crisis resources please visit: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org

You are loved. You matter. Your life is worth living.