Writing Prompt # 104: Getting Unstuck
What if the thing you believe isn't really true? A writing exercise: December 2023
Hi Friends,
I’ve just returned home from a 10-day van trip, and one of the things I love about traveling is considering the possibility of a different life. A few nights ago, my husband and I camped just outside of Lone Pine in the Alabama Hills. We have camped there before, and in recent years, the Alabama Hills have become overcrowded, so there are fewer spots to camp, but the road there had washed out recently, and the detour meant that no one was there, so we had the place to ourselves. Also, it was mid-week in December, just a few days before Christmas.
The Alabama Hills feature surreal rock formations in the high desert with views of the towering eastern Sierra, including Mt. Whitney, the tallest mountain in the lower 48 states. When we arrived, I felt a swell in my chest, as I usually do when I’m in this landscape. The eastern Sierra is one of the most beautiful places in the world, a place I fell in love with more than 30 years ago (I wrote about my own first summer in the Sierra in my memoir Almost Somewhere).
My husband and I started talking about what it would look like to leave our life in Tahoe and move to Lone Pine, the tiny, quiet high desert town near Alabama Hills, just off California’s highway 395. Of course, we have also talked about what it would look like to move to Spain, Scotland, Baja California, Borrego Springs, Taos, and Lake Superior. But every time we get serious about making a move, I think about everything that could go wrong: I won’t make any friends, and I’ll be lonely. I’ll regret it, and then we will never be able to return to Tahoe because it’s too expensive now (I have been here 25 years, and home prices are five times higher than when I moved here).
All this worry means we’re stuck—not that Tahoe is such a terrible place to be stuck, but then we miss the adventure of moving on. And wouldn’t it be lovely to live in Spain? Or Lone Pine?
Years ago, when I wanted to leave my first marriage, I told my therapist I was worried I would lose the life I had so carefully created, that I would regret the decision, that I would lose all the friends my husband and I had in common. What if I never find anyone else? What if I never get married again? My therapist asked me, “What if that isn’t true?”
When I asked her what she meant, she said, “What if the things you believe aren’t true? What would that look like?”
I sat there dumbfounded. What if the things I told myself weren’t true? That answer would mean I could leave my husband. I wouldn’t lose the life I had created. I wouldn’t regret it. My friends would still like me. I would eventually find someone else.
This gave me the courage to move on, to get unstuck. Of course some of the things I worried about would come to pass, meaning they really were true. Some of our mutual friends did stop talking to me. My ex got the house. I had to share my dog with him for years. But you know what?