What is Gnawing at Your Bones?

Discovering your specific brand of sentimentality

We left Fort Collins, Colorado on Saturday morning and had the lovely pleasure of sitting in I-70 ski traffic, got to watch a van catch fire on the side of the road, and I finally reached the crowning achievement of my social media career by being featured on I-70 Things’ Instagram account (one of the few reasons Instagram deserves to exist at all). I’m not saying it made the traffic worth it, but I had a flash of what it might feel like to be an *influencer* or *content creator* and it was briefly savory. Barely briefly. 

We made a pit stop in Fruita, Colorado for Hot Tomato pizza and a quick stop is truly all I intended, but as we came up the highway past the Fruita Co-Op grain elevator which features a mountain biker riding through a chain ring on one side, and a ginormous T-Rex head looking through a chain ring on the other (the OBVIOUS hallmark emblems of the greatest town on earth) I found myself a little teary. Not because giant T-Rex heads or bike chain rings are particularly moving (they are not) but because Fruita was the first spot we really landed after hitting the road full time in the camper and seeing this monument to the town made it apparent that we were not just passing through, but returning.

Truly the coolest town.

It’s been about four months since our first Fruita days, which is no time at all I know, and yet I feel like I’ve lived a million little lives and deaths since then. When we first made camp in Fruita, life was not so easy. Camper life felt very difficult and the space felt very tiny and I felt very lonely and very poor and very tired and very anxious. My sleep anxiety hit an all-time high which meant I was sleeping 3-4 hours a night, I simultaneously developed some kind of chronic rhinitis which meant I wasn’t breathing properly most of the day (it seems to be improving now), and my little soul felt so flimsy I thought I might just break apart, dissolving into the desert dust. 

Which perhaps makes it sound like my time in Fruita was horrendous but what I’m really saying is that I broke open and for maybe the first time in my life, I didn’t (or perhaps couldn’t) flee. I was the most uncomfortable I’d ever been and I stayed with it. It wasn’t perfect (I spent many an hour on Zillow contemplating if I could just, oh, I dunno, BUY A HOUSE?! to get out of this situation I’d put myself in) but as I clawed my way out of this dark night of the soul, I found a person filled with fortitude on the other side. And she was still a clunky, imperfect human, but she was strong and resilient and willing to stick with this life.

Same, sandwich board. Same.

My time in Fruita was actually gorgeous and I still can’t wholly believe I am the same person now that I was then. Which is why upon the return I grew a little teary and tender because when you break open that way, you almost can’t believe that it happened in a tangible space that a person could reasonably return to. It seems as though in those transformative moments that you must ascend (or perhaps descend) to some ethereal, liminal space where the discernable world fades away, possibly never to be seen again. And yet here I was, crunching through the same very real pickles on my pizza (yes, you heard me right) legitimately contemplating if we should take an extended break on our drive to pop over to the Fruita Community Center for a $4 shower “just for old times’ sake.” If I’d been traveling alone, I may have made the detour. That’s my particular brand of sentimentality. I like to stand in the same place and feel the weight of time pass over me. I think it comes back to my idea of bumping into old ghosts and not fully believing that time is linear. Call me woo-woo, but I had the urge to see if I could glimpse 4-month-ago Anja standing wide-eyed under that ultra-pressurized shower head who was so desperately trying to figure out why she decided it was better to be bathing over someone else’s wet hair clump rather than in her own private shower where the floors were heated and the hair clumps were only hers. 

It’s not that I wanted to tell her things get better, but rather that she gets better. 

You can’t tell me this isn’t the goodest lookin’ pizza you’ve ever seen.

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The same feelings emerged when we pulled into Moab, Utah a few hours later, easily locked down a campsite at the Goose Island campground, and I flopped onto the camper bed with pure delight. 

The future is still incredibly uncertain, but I feel much more certain of myself.

We’ve landed now in Cottonwood, Arizona at a little RV park on the edge of town complete with a swimming pool, hot tub, and private showers. It’s luxury compared to where we started. Both J and I are still learning how not to make life harder than it has to be and that no one is going to award us any points for intentionally suffering. Who knew?

We’re the youngest folks in the park by about 40 years and are also towing the smallest camper. We also seem to be the only people actually using the showers and other facilities which makes me feel scrappy and tough, which then makes me laugh at myself. I sat in the hot tub alone last night (it’s been three days and I haven’t seen a single other person in the hot tub — what is that about?) with my contraband beer watching the sunset over the Arizona hills while reading a novel. I felt unspeakably content. 

We’ll be here the longest we’ve been anywhere so far on this journey (come hang out with us, we’re here till mid-March!) and it’s funny how 10 weeks in one place now feels like a decadent extravagance, how this camper which initially felt like a dark hole of despair suddenly feels like so much kindness. 

In her book When Women Were Birds, Terry Tempest Williams says, “To write requires an ego, a belief that what you say matters. Writing also requires an aching curiosity leading you to discover, uncover, what is gnawing at your bones.”

That is what I am doing here in camper life. Writing. Uncovering. Discovering what is gnawing at my bones.