fireflies and it reminds me of home, of sitting on our farm and watching them flicker and dance through the evening. Venus appears above and the weight of my broken body lifts from me. I feel safe as I float across the bay, like I’m tucked into the pew at Grace Church next to my daddy.
It’s my first time in Central America. I’m not alone here. There are other bodies sloshing around beside me in the blue glitter. I’m here to help promote a beautiful surfing village, to style photos and write about it on Instagram. I can’t surf, but nobody seems to mind. I fall in love with the people here quickly. It seems totally wild to me, but since my story started spreading on the internet, I get to go on adventures like these often. Companies send me clothes to wear and lend me cars to drive on road trips. I’m kind of in marketing, kind of a writer (if long-winded Instagram posts count), kind of a stylist, kind of a lot of things. I feel like I’m tricking people. I don’t really know what I’m doing, but they seem to like me and it still feels good to be loved that way.
The little algae hang on to my body as I let the water carry me around like I’m a favorite rag doll. The sound of sea-foam creeping onto the powdery white beach brings me peace and I close my eyes. Everything becomes still.
I have to brace myself for the stillness. My body is suffering and I don’t take much time to converse with it. The things it has to say are not always easy to hear. It cries to me.
I’m hurting.
I’m so tired.
Please listen.
Most days, it’s easier to keep it moving, keep myself distracted, than it is to stop and listen.
“Ruthie!” somebody howls out from the shore.
I need rest.
“Ruuuuuthieeeeeee!”
The giggles are sloppy and lager soaked, filled with the promise of a good time.
We need to talk.
But I can’t. Not right now.
I let the jungle drown the quiet voice inside me with its bugs and frogs and howler monkeys, who are as small as cats but sound like dinosaurs. I drag my arms through the water toward the beautiful people waiting for me in this beautiful place. My world has gotten bigger and louder. It’s been easy to lose myself in it.
My story keeps traveling and I travel along with it, to Canada and Belgium and Mexico and France. I go as far from home as my story will take me, and I get filled up by the new places and faces and skylines. I keep staying true to the choice I made. Instead of staying in my bed and hurting, I serve and hurt, live and hurt, learn and hurt. I meet amazing people and lots of new friends, many of whom don’t speak my language, look like me, or live like me, and it feels like the greatest gift. I say yes over and over, to opportunities that thrill, scare, and move me. I learn the importance of community, of surrounding myself with people who inspire me and act as my teachers here in earth school, people who tell the truth and push me closer toward mine. One of them is called Jed.
There is nobody else like Jedidiah Jenkins. We met through Instagram while he was biking from Oregon to Patagonia, and one day, after his journey was over, he just showed up at my door in Nashville. It felt like a missing piece of my heart showed up and jumped back into my chest. Jed is a writer and an adventurer. He knows all the plants and birds and sees things in intricate detail that I don’t even notice. He wants to watch people from a distance, and I want to scoop them up in my arms. He shares earnestly with his following, stripping layer after layer away from himself; I clamor around for extra scraps of protection. We’re different, staggeringly so.
In 2015, companies begin hiring us to speak and travel together. We make silly videos and sing. We laugh when the internet ignores the fact that Jed is gay and asks when we’ll have babies. We road-trip across the country from event to event and I try to do it all with a smile on my face. Jed doesn’t smile unless he wants to. We’re together all the time and he really sees me, the masks I need to wear to get through