I Went All The Way To Colorado To Dissociate From Dealing With Life and All I Got Was the Consequences of My Actions
"Getting What You Deserve Isn't Fair!" --Julia Roberts, My Best Friend's Wedding
LOL bitch I’m in Grand Junction, Colorado, which no offense? Is not cute! There are Lauren Boebert posters fucking EVERYWHERE. And given the events of this week and this slack-jawed drooling goon’s love of firearms I would really like to go on a rant here but instead I’m just going to say Jesus Christ that bitch is stupid!
But lemme tell you: you never quite grasp HOW stupid until you see her beaming like Grand Junction’s dumbest, sluttiest realtor from a campaign sign outside the local Harbor Freight!
Like for real, Lauren Boebert is THAT girl we all knew in high school who was dumb as a box of ¼-inch bolts and popular because she was blandly pretty in a way that would never pull focus in a city larger than like Lincoln, Nebraska but passes for a smoke-show in your dumb little town simply because she’s thin and also a weapons-grade hhhwhure (not that there’s anything wrong with that I had no gag reflex from the ages of 28 to 35!), and she only graduated because the principal was in some social club with her dad (the KKK) and took pity on her so he was like “meh fine here’s a diploma” and after a stint selling Jamberry nail polish stickers and that Christian handbag MLM on Facebook she’s now somehow a super successful realtor pulling down six figures selling tract homes in the subdivision people call “the high rent district” solely because all the houses have those two-story turret foyers and literally no other features?
You know the one? Her. Well that’s Lauren Boebert except she didn’t graduate high school at all (no shade on GEDs! GEDs are great except for when Lauren Boebert gets one then they are sad and embarrassing this is canon) and instead of being a realtor she is LITERALLY RUNNING AMERICA. Cool!
Anyway, I hope she dies. What does this have to do with anything and why am I in Grand Junction, Colorado, you ask? Those are both great questions to which I have no answer whatsoever. Isn’t that fun?!
Don’t you just love it when you drive halfway across the country when gas is $5/gallon and you have no idea why you’re doing it and every 90 minutes or so you snap out of the reverie into which the freeway lines have lulled you and yell out loud to just yourself and the embarrassing Glennon Doyle podcast blaring out of the dashboard, “Jesus fucking Christ why am I fucking doing this like what the fuck bro are you serious like what is going on like fucking hell no offense but!!!” Now that’s what I call an adventure!!!
Here’s a major detail I have left out–I did this already, last year. From June through August I wandered all over this big beautiful mess of a country, all by myself, from campground to friends’ couch to astonishingly shitty hotel room (the Red Roof Inn in Van Horn, Texas? ZERO STARS. Days Inn Hurricane, Utah? UNSUBSCRIBE) because—forgive me for this, but it’s the truth–I felt pulled to.
Okay let me stop fucking around and use the word I actually want to use and which prompted me to ask your forgiveness—I felt called to. It’s a long story, and that’s why I’m writing a book, but here’s the abridged version—and here, you’ll have to forgive me again, because, oh god (winces, gulps, sweats): Out here in this wilderness last summer, I met myself for the first time. (Projectile vomits.)
A thing no one tells you about trauma is it makes you forget—or in my case, never learn in the first place—who you are. If you find yourself in that place, I cannot recommend enough putting yourself in a situation where you have no cell service or internet or access to human interaction beyond the nods you exchange with your campground neighbors en route to the “composting toilet,” whatever the absolute pungent fuck that is! Because when you have nothing to keep you company but your own thoughts and memories, you WILL come out of it having learned some shit. Which is to say I can’t recommend it enough if exhilaratingly painful catharsis is your goal. If you want to, like, actually have fun or whatever lol DO LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE IT IS ASS!
But as hard as it was, once it was time to turn the car around and head East, the ending felt really abrupt. So I decided I’d go back West in 2022 and pick up where I left off.
Does that sound insane? Because it sounds insane to me. It didn’t for all nine months between returning east and heading west again, but it did by the time I got in the car 10 days ago and it still does today in this hotel room in Grand Junction, Colorado where I am realizing that what I’m doing is a lot like Elizabeth Gilbert doing Eat, Pray, Love a second time. Like, bitch that is just a vacation! You’re not going on a ~*quest*~ you just like eating pizza and fucking dudes in Bali fuck you!!!
I can’t tell if it’s because I’ve already learned everything I needed to learn, or if I’m just too afraid to put it all into action so I’m stalling by living in campgrounds again while waiting for some grand psyche-shattering “ah-ha” story arc to blow my skull open when in reality it’s the actual putting-what-I-learned-into-action shit I’m too scared to do that will actually bring about that “ah ha” isn’t it? Oh shit… Damn, I just hit on something there didn’t I? You guys be real am I Oprah???
In any case, Grand Junction, Colorado was never the plan. Utah, California and points in between was, after a stop in Kansas to see my dear friend Jenny along the way. But I was so wildly anxious when I embarked on this little adventure that I thought, “well Colorado is only ONE STATE past Kansas and only HALFWAY across the country so the God I don’t even believe in anymore surely won’t be so cruel as to punish me for only going HALFWAY instead of ALL THE WAY to Utah and California, right?!”
What’s that you say? Utah BORDERS Colorado so what the fuck difference does it make even if he would?
Okay sure, but counterpoint: Eat shit!
Insisting irrational decisions are rational is my ~*cultural heritage*~ okay, I was raised an Evangelical Christian! And what’s fun about having been an Evangelical Christian for a large chunk of your life during which everything that ever happened to you was chalked up to cosmic retribution for your Satanic insistence on, like, being your own person, is that you’re never fully rid of the reflexive waiting for God’s other shoe to drop directly onto your dirty, naughty testicles any time you have the audacity to, you know, ~*do a thing you want to do*~ And so from time to time you will fall over yourself to do THEE stupidest shit if it makes you feel even tangentially less likely to end up on the business end of Daddy God’s holy wrath!
Even after decades, the knock-on effects of religious abuse never leave you and I think that’s beautiful😌Siri play “Our God Is An Awesome God.”
The point is I booked this jaunt through Colorado because I thought it was somehow more responsible (??? LOL based on what) and would keep Sky Daddy from getting mad at me or whatever, and sure, obviously none of that is real except oops yes it is because LOL bitch, this trip has been a disaster!
Lemme give you a rundown of how this trip has gone:
-Get in car
-Sob for the first 90 mins because you know what’s really going on here is a dissociative avoidance of the work you feel ill-equipped and too broken to do but know you must do anyway even though you know you will fail at it because you are broken and stupid and everyone is laughing at you all of the time and also you are ugly and smelly probably
-Stop at Costco for gas and also two slices of pizza and one of those weird Hershey’s syrup sundaes they have so you can eat your feelings instead of jumping out of your skin and astral projecting yourself into the middle of the road so you can run yourself over with your 2009 Honda CR-V LX.
-Stop at a hotel in St. Louis and have a midnight panic attack so bad you almost call 911. Do 54321 breathing exercises you learned from a fucking Elizabeth Gilbert Instagram Live (ugh her again) and finally fall asleep wondering how you became a person who does breathing exercises you learned from a fucking Elizabeth Gilbert Instagram Live and also why you are so stupid and ugly and smelly
-Drive to your friend Jenny’s house in Manhattan, Kansas. When she says, “So what about you, tell me everything!” you burst into tears so hard her cat runs out of the room
-Go to Colorado because, as mentioned, Jesus won’t punish you for only going to Colorado especially if you promise to turn the car around after and go back to where you came from with your tail between your legs for the horrible sin you have committed by *checks notes* going on a camping trip
-Time for bed but oops, your air pump has died so now you must drive 90 mins round-trip to somewhere called Glenwood Springs that has a Walmart and as you drive back out to the highway you realize you are the only person in this entire campground camping in a tent do they all know something you don’t????
-LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL THEY ALL KNOW SOMETHING YOU DON’T AND THAT SOMETHING IS THAT IT IS GOING TO SNOW THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW AND YOU ARE LIVING IN A TENT CALLED A “SUNDOME” THAT IS SPECIALLY BUILT FOR SUMMERTIME STARGAZING AND HAS FOUR PANELS OF SCREEN FOR A ROOF
-Spend the day before the snowstorm, which speaking of The Day After Tomorrow is 87 degrees, agonizing over whether to flee said snowstorm or just sleep on it and hope for the best because maybe it’ll be fine and just rain a little! Right? Right! Except this is absolutely Jesus of Nazareth punishing you for *checks notes* ah yes, here it is, the sin of “doing a thing you wanted to do that hurts nobody and ultimately means absolutely nothing” so it will probably snow four feet and you will die. Camping!
-Counterpoint all that by sitting on a park bench in the town to which you’ve gone to access wifi and spend 90 full minutes thinking to yourself, “If you’d just gone to Utah like you planned instead of going to Colorado to avoid pissing off Yahweh like an absolute fucking lunatic none of this would be happening”
- IT DOESN’T MATTER BECAUSE JESUS HATES YOU WHETHER YOU’RE IN UTAH COLORADO OR THE FUCKING FREE STATE OF JONES AND MUCH LIKE HOW THAT MOVIE HAS A 47% ON ROTTEN TOMATOES YOU ALSO HAVE A FAILING GRADE IN THE OPINION OF EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER KNOWN YOU AND THAT IS WHY YOU ARE HAVING TO DECIDE WHETHER TO FLEE AN ONCOMING FREAK SNOWSTORM OR STAY PUT AND HOPE IT JUST RAINS ALSO THOSE HIKING BOOTS MAKE YOU LOOK LIKE A FUCKING LESBIAN DICKFACE
-Decide you are being insane pessimistic and you are going to sleep on it and LOL oh ok it’s a wind storm now! Apparently in Colorado there’s an amuse-bouche before the snow comes how thoughtful! You sleep inside a piece of actual fabric in an actual wind storm in the actual Rocky Mountains with your rain fly flapping in the wind so hard you think a wildebeest has just pounced upon you every 15 minutes and it is only a matter of time before your reflexively grabbing your bear spray every 6 seconds makes it deploys in error into your face Jesus fucking Christ fuck this
-You wake up colder than you have ever been in your life. When you unzip your tent door, snow blows inside. In the distance, sirens.
-You make coffee and brush your teeth while you continue debating whether or not to leave because now it feels like giving into the weather is giving into the fallacious idea that Jesus King of the Jews is punishing you specifically and personally for going on a roadtrip and that is absurd and you will NOT give into it even though literally any remotely sane person would have already left YESTERDAY! You won’t give in! You won’t! You will’n’t! And so now you’ve crossed over into a person who is ACTIVELY INSANE ENOUGH TO CONSIDER IT AN OPTION TO JUST WAIT OUT A ****BLIZZARD**** IN THE ****ROCKY MOUNTAINS**** IN A ****ROOFLESS TENT MADE FOR STARGAZING**** SIMPLY ON PRINCIPLE and then the campground manager comes by and looks you dead straight in your eyes and is like, “Was thinking about you and that tent last night, you gonna head out?” which is kindly old grizzled mountain man for “You are extremely stupid and are going to die please leave at once”
-You finally, for the first time since you got in the car days ago, listen to reason and leave at once
And then.
Then you call an old outdoorsy friend who now lives in Colorado to ask if she knows of any good (DRY AND WARM AND NOT IN IMMINENT THREAT OF A BLIZZARD IN LATE MAY) places to camp for a few days and she’s like fuck it just come to my boyfriend’s house in this valley full of enormous rock formations that is so beautiful you can’t believe it exists and so you do.
And she takes you to a canyon and hands you a joint and says, “Okay, spill” because she knows, this friend, she just knows, and so you spill–about how anxious you are, about how afraid you are, about how you know this is all about learning to trust yourself but you just can’t seem to get there no matter how hard you try, and she tells you to close your eyes and leave it all in the canyon, every little bit of it just leave it all down by the creek running through the rocks, so you do.
And then you go to her boyfriend’s house and finally sleep for the first time since you got in the car and then the weekend’s over and it’s time to move on and you’re like you know what? I’m gonna keep going.
And so you end up in a hotel in Grand Junction, Colorado on your way to Utah. Like you planned all along. You just took the long way to get there.
So okay, in the end, it worked out alright.
At least until I arrive in Utah and it is inevitably on fire or something.
But for now, I’m gonna get in the car and keep going.
So there you have it, friends–now you know why I haven’t posted here in a few weeks. There’s been A LOT going on. Thank you for bearing with me as I muddle through it vis-a-vis this Substack. You’re gems.
We’ll get back to dumb recaps and other stupid brain-smoothing shit in the future but as you might have sussed out, I’m going to be off-grid for a while! So I’ll regale you with tales of my travels or whatever instead. It might get a little… sincere. Is that okay? I hope that’s okay.
But also everyone alive is fucking stupid so I guarantee I will have some dumb shit to tell you about from one of these horror shows we call “National Parks.” Like last summer when I was in Arches some kid threw his Dasani bottle through Delicate Arch and it was all I could do to not immediately push him off the cliff. I wonder what he’s up to nowadays. Dead, hopefully!
Just kidding! He’s just a child! And his Dad made him hike all the way back down and pick up the water bottle which I thought was pretty good Dad-ing and also hilarious because Jesus Christ having kids is a nightmare–imagine you’ve just driven all the way across the country in a fkng Honda Odyssey to hike 90 minutes in July Utah heat to see the most famous rock formation in America and your child celebrates by THROWING GARBAGE AT IT.
And it’s a Dasani bottle, no less! Nothing is funnier than that. Nothing! I don’t know why but Dasani is funny I don’t make the rules. Crystal Geyser? Not funny. Life Water? Not funny. Dasani? I’m sorry fuck you hilarious. Get a Smart Water you fucking dork! Who is out here drinking Dasani on purpose?! Nobody, other than that kid throwing shit through Delicate Arch. What an icon.
Anyway, Siri book me a vasectomy.
See you next week!