In the late afternoon sun, I sat on a flat, black granite boulder and gazed over the rolling plains of the South Park Basin, straining my ears for any sound. With the wind completely still and no birds in the ponderosas, all I heard was a slight ringing in my ears. Finally, after months of enduring the city life, I finally broke away to stay at a family friend’s cabin for a few days, where I could enjoy hours and hours of pure, unadulterated silence. 

One would think that after all of the bitching I’d done about the city life and commuting to downtown Denver for university, I’d been fully relaxed and filled with joy at Eddy’s cabin. In some ways, I certainly was. However, for some reason, there was a nagging feeling of dread in the back of my mind the whole time I was up there; the dreadful, almost nauseating feeling of worry about the future. 

So, as I sat on that black granite boulder, staring over the western landscape bathed in golden, evening light, that nagging dread floated to the surface. And with it, came the shouting thought, “You’ll never make it!”

Where on God’s green earth did that come from?!

Well, the answer is simple: earlier that day, while waiting outside with Toby for my grandparents to finish browsing a store in Cripple Creek, I found myself scrolling through Zillow, checking out the cabins and land lots surrounding Eddy’s cabin. 

In the early 1990s, Eddy’s wife bought the land their cabin sits on for $1000 an acre. Every year, the taxes cost less than $100. In 2001, it cost them about $40,000 to build the cabin,  connect it to the grid, and dig a well. 24 years later, Eddy’s two bedroom, one bathroom cabin thirty minutes from the nearest township (if you fly down the dirt roads and cow trails) is worth over $400,000, and Eddy pays almost $2,000 in taxes per year. Every property I scrolled through on my phone reflected that exact price. 

Meanwhile, I’m almost 24 years old with less than $200 to my name. I’m going to university, pursuing a degree with a median income of $60,000 for a Master’s degree, and $70,000 if I bust my ass for a PhD. If you take out taxes, my degree offers a net pay between $46,000 and $52,000 a year. I’d have to save all of my money for almost ten years to afford Eddy’s place at such prices. 

Simply put, the math ain’t mathin’! 

And that’s assuming I get a job, at all. Let alone get into graduate school and succeed.

Now that I’ve been home for a couple weeks and am resettled back into my routine, the nagging, dreadful feeling that nearly consumed me during Spring Break remains. It’s not as loud as it was since I was at the cabin, but it’s still in the back of my mind, just waiting for a quiet moment to return to the forefront. And it’s not just about my inability to afford just a few acres of empty rangeland sometime in the future. 

No, the feeling goes much, much deeper than that. 

Related to that feeling of, “I’ll never make it!”, is the feeling of being “stuck” where I am now. In a way, I feel like I’m in a place I’ve been before; a place I’ve been before that I never, ever wanted to return to again, that being going to a school downtown with no end in sight. 

Recall what I wrote about in my previous blog; between the years 2013-2016, I attended an all-girls school (GALS)  in the Santa Fe Arts District, just a mile or so away from downtown Denver. During those years, I was struggling quite a bit with both my mental and physical health, to put it lightly. I pulled through, of course, but I was very miserable during those years. I was deeply discouraged and afraid of my future. I felt wholly out-of-place and like I was doing something very wrong. I felt that something needed to change, but I had no idea what to change or how to change it!

Fast forward ten years: I’m attending a university less than a mile away from GALS, right in the heart of downtown. My physical health is much better, however my digestive system continues to give me trouble. My mental health is suffering, too, especially since I feel so trapped and am terrified of what lies ahead. I’ve yet to find my place in university, let alone the world. And I feel like something needs to change, but I have no idea what to change or how to change it. 

In other words, history seems to be repeating itself, and I really didn’t like how the story went before. 

However, not everything is the same today as it was back then. Sure, there are numerous similarities, but there are even more differences. For one, I’m not a sickly, moody teenage girl anymore. I’m a much healthier, much more stable and successful adult. I’m lightyears ahead of where I was a decade ago, especially since I’m doing and succeeding at things fourteen-year-old me thought I’d never be able to do, let alone things I never thought I’d ever want to do if given the chance. 

Yet, here I am, ten years later, doing exactly that!

Why then, do I feel the way that I do?

To be honest, I blame most of my feelings on my PTSD. Indeed, I had a very traumatizing childhood, as much as I try to downplay it. A hallmark of a traumatizing childhood is the desperate desire to never return- or even come close to- places where the trauma occurred. Basically, while GALS itself wasn’t a traumatizing experience (it was actually a really good school, all things considered), I was constantly sick and even ended up in the hospital for two-and-a-half weeks while I battled a severe MRSA infection. I also hated school in general for a myriad of reasons, including the fact that I simply couldn’t keep up with my peers no matter how hard I tried. 

That in itself solidified in my mind that I’d, “never make it!”

On top of that, my family life really, really sucked. Both my parents made terrible decisions when it came to picking partners, and I suffered a lot due to their shitty choices. Being a moody teenager’s hard enough for anyone. Throw in an extremely volatile, broken family and Cystic Fibrosis, and again, it’s easy to understand why I’ve wanted nothing more than to live alone in a cabin in the woods, far, far, far away from society. 

But, instead of spending my days rotting away in a cabin somewhere, I’m back to going to school in downtown Denver, less than a mile away from where I went to school a decade ago. And nearly every day, I’m bombarded by once-forgotten memories from my past that… let’s just say, they don’t make me feel very good.

However, I must endure these feelings; let them flow over me unabated so that one day, sooner than later, I can fully heal. Especially since they’re really just feelings, and things are so much different today than they were back then. 

In other words, I can’t use my past to predict my future. 

Logically, I understand that. I understand that I’m now a healthy adult, and not a sickly teenager. My university grades are exceptional. Opportunities are opening up left and right for me, with many, many more doors I’ve yet to even knock on. God only knows what lies beyond them. 

I may feel like I’ll never make it. I may feel like the odds are insurmountable and stacked way up against me. 

But, can I be sure that I’ll never make it, despite my best efforts? Should I just drop out of university and barricade myself in my mom’s basement forever, upon falling for the belief that I was destined to be a loser? Absolutely not!

Sure, there’s a chance that I’ll end up destitute, alone, and broke after all this. I know many such people, some of whom are/were my very own family members. But, so long as I continue to press on through university and work hard towards my goals and dreams, no matter how distant and unattainable they seem to be, there’s a chance that I won’t end up destitute, alone, and broke in the end. In fact, if I continue to chase every lead I get and graduate with a degree, the chances that I’ll succeed will outweigh the chances that I’ll fail. 

Therefore, I must keep going. 

I must endure.