peak performance

what goes up,

I’m flighty, I’m excitable. S tells me about her poetry MFA and I search the database that night — is it presumptuous to hope that a lesser school would pay me to write self-indulgent autofiction? I survey my collection of short-winded fancies — teaching art to human rights victims (too white savior), becoming a Hawaiian Airlines flight attendant (surprisingly bad for your health), charging nice but inexperienced men for “feedback dates” (disadvantageous for my non-transactional dating prospects) — and add “grad school for writing” to the stack (the archetypal sign of poor mental health).

On the plane home, I listen to an 80,000 Hours podcast on how to not lose my job to AI, and the host advises verbatim, “Something like providing bespoke tea tasting events in SF would be both hard for AI to do and would see increasing demand.” I gasp at the specificity — if that’s not a sign to throw my hands up and pursue an entrepreneurial, bohemian life, what is?

A different S asks how I’ve managed to stay on such good terms with my exes. I share my best guesses — for starters, I’m affectionate. I tell people I like them, outright, and then I keep telling them, earnestly, and then I tell other people about how awesome they are, exuberantly. It is very easy for me to like people, even if they don’t like me — this is awful, and also the only way to be.

For finishers, I’ve never been one to close a door. However many conversations someone wants to have, however many times we need to renegotiate, however long it takes to feel resolved, it’s a gift to be invited into someone’s life, whether to create something or end it.

In Guatemala with 20 friends, I spend the evenings cackling, spitting out water as the group discusses such classics as losing your virginity to Arnold Schwarzenegger and the market rate for my butthole. We play other games, too, my favorites — Contact and Person Do Thing — and sing songs and cook dinner and solve riddles. One night, we write poetry, and everyone’s work is so effortlessly good that I have no choice but to believe that we’re geniuses. I’ve never been interested in traditional markers of intelligence; the only measure I care about is expressiveness.

Very few people here are employed, which agitates me more than it should. (Okay, maybe half of us have jobs, and maybe half of those are “real jobs”.) I’m envious of free agents, so I engage in Negative Self-Talk™. Look at all these people: braver than me, wiser than me, freer than me. I’m behind on my career and I’m behind on my career break — fuck!

Thursday goes awfully. I dissociate. From the corner of the ceiling that I’ve clustered my consciousness into, I observe myself, reckless and amateur, fucking up in slow motion. I’m definitely not supposed to say that on calls. I’m definitely not inspiring trust in my competence. I’m definitely not handling things well. I crack a joke at dinner: “I keep shooting myself in the foot. But it’s okay, I don’t like that foot that much.”

Someone describes me as a “free spirit,” which makes me laugh, because I am the only person here who can’t name a single Buddhist teacher. In a weird way, I am proud of my ignorance — I could find the path, but I’d rather brute-force my way to bliss.

When I fight with L, I’m unreasonably triggered by his insistence that I’ve been needy, and that my neediness is “coercive.” When he edits his language to “you’ve been making threats,” I’m able to accept the premise and offer an honest apology. (Asking for things? I would never! Taking them away? Maybe…) We make up before Atitlan, the big lake where expats burn sage and practice yoga and compare diets. It is the perfect backdrop against which to contemplate how mean I’ve gotten. Every now and again, L and I grow quiet and just look at each other, and I wonder if he is also grieving the other universe, the one where I managed to be normal.

I refuse to cliff jump from the 12m platform, even though that’s basically the whole draw of the village, but work up the courage to fling myself off the 6m one. When I look over the edge into the cerulean blue, a voice in my head reminds me: “Feel the fear and do it anyway.” Before we leave, I jump off a second time for good measure.

On Friday, we wake up at five in the morning to hike Acatenango. The gear rental spot is chaotic and portends difficulty. Oh, will it really be cold enough for thermals? So we actually need poles? Wait, do the headlamps mean we’ll be hiking in the dark?

On the way up, heads pounding from the elevation, R shares something vulnerable, and it makes me feel special that he chose to tell me. When he starts his sentence, he’s looking down, but by its end, he’s looking me in the eyes. The mountain makes us humble, but it also makes us proud.

The next day, at four in the morning, at least three phone alarms sound simultaneously. It’s time to summit. O is a saint, so he lingers near the back to support stragglers despite his obvious ability to climb faster. When he sees me struggling, he offers to carry my hiking poles and my water bottle, then yells affirmations at me through the wind. Seven-eighths of the way there, I shout that I’m good here, and he responds, fatherly and firm, Nonsense, you’re going to the top.

When we summit, it’s so cold that we have to announce it over and over: Holy fuck, it’s cold. Why is it so cold? Jesus Christ, it’s freezing. My hands are literally going numb. Dude, there’s ice in your beard. It’s so fucking cold, oh my god. At 13,000 feet, I am eye level with the sun, which is big and orange and bad at its job of providing warmth. I cry and announce that I am so happy. D gives me a big hug. I tell the group that I feel a lot of love for them. If I could go back, I’d say it outright — I love you guys.

We can’t stay very long, on account of the cold and the thin air and the breakfast burritos waiting for us back at camp. In my treadless running shoes, I slip the whole way down the mountain.

By the time I reach the bottom, I am coated in a layer of dirt. My knee is bleeding again. I am dirty and spent. I am weary and pleased. And I am very alive.