Magpie

Memoir | Tia Wray
cw: self harm, light suicidal ideation

I never should have taken the job, that was for damn sure. 

Everybody was wearing masks, the pandemic, you know, but I could still smell the coffee all day long. Nauseating. 

I say all day, and it was! It was all day—for two days, and then half a day more before I had my mental breakdown. 

It wasn’t that the job was horrible, and I feel so anxious that nobody should think it was because it was horrible. That’s why I lied. A family emergency. “It’s sensitive,” I said. The most fabulous excuse to get out of things. 

I didn’t even send the resignation email. I asked my partner to do it, and he did, fully willingly, if it would make me stop sobbing on the bathroom floor, begging him to let me dig my fingernails into my arms until they bled. Or more dramatic things that would make me not exist anymore. I just needed to be swallowed up in safety, and that place with the responsibility and the tasks and the emails wasn’t. It wasn’t safe for me. 

So I pulled a Thoreau and I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. Sort of. I didn’t camp out there all night or anything, because it wasn’t like I wanted to become an expert in outdoor living or birdwatching or tree identification. I wasn’t in a place to learn anything new except for what it feels like to be safe. 

But god. Like. Have you ever been out in the forest? It’s not like it’s a revolutionary thing. But. God. Have you ever been out in the forest?

Even on the bathroom floor, I knew that it was what I needed. I knew I needed it even before I’d quit the job, when I accidentally locked myself in the sterile clean bathroom (actually a plus, bathrooms should be these things). But I needed messy. I needed pinecones and twigs and other naturey things that make up the forest floor. 

Listen, I’m not a nature writer. I don’t know any of the names of things in the natural world. But. God. Have you ever been out in the forest? It’s making me want to do things like add “nature writer” to my bucket list, which is a delightful thing to have, after I wanted to not exist so recently. 

For now, I just wander like a child—Trees! Rocks! Birds! Moss! Which isn’t descriptively convincing you this place is a haven, but god. Have you ever been out in the forest? I find the tallest rocks to climb up on and then reach my hands into the air like I’m riding nature’s roller coaster. It’s certainly a different aesthetic than an amusement park, but god, it’s thrilling. 

I am no bug lover. I make my partner kill the spiders in our house, but when I’m out there in the forest with all sorts of creepy crawlies, I'm plagued with guilt about even using a gentle shoo, because this is their home, you know? I can’t be killing them here when I'm the one invading their space. But, god, I long for it to be my home too. I want to belong in the forest. And discover that it is my destiny to lie down on a deliciously soft bed of moss and sink so deep into it that I disappear, like crawling back into my mother’s womb.

The first time I went out, I sat on a hard rock with sharp edges, and I felt the discomfort bulldoze symbolically into how life's hardness robbed me of love in so many ways that I deserved. The first time, I cried in the forest. And then earth's softness below my feet, like a mother, whispered “I will love you.” When I eventually walked away, it was like the earth kissed me goodbye with every step. And I knew that I had to come back to this place.

I’ve become obsessed with listening to birdsong. I didn’t know that you could actually tell the difference between bird sounds so easily, high pitched shrieks and lilting melodies, and lower, guttural sounds. I hear rhythms in their songs and it pulls feelings out of me. Sometimes I relax in recognizing beauty for beauty’s sake, while other times I find clarity in the unrelenting noise of someone lost and desperate to be found. 

I watch the birds too. I remember identifying bird-watching as the most boring pastime when a grandparent pursued it as a hobby, but now, when I see one take flight, spread wings taking lift off so close to me I can almost count individual feathers—it’s incredible! I go out there in the forest and I remember that flight is a miracle. 

I sit next to flowing water and see myself in the stones underneath, shaped and smoothed from the constant rolling water. And I wonder how I could be if I weren't the stones, but instead the water—and the way I flow through life could make all that I touch softer and smoother than before.

Every day I'm letting go of myself and finding myself at the same time, and I think if I just hold still long enough in this sanctuary, I'll be able to grasp at the matter that exists beyond space and time, the matter that makes up those I've lost and those I haven't yet found, and maybe a part of my soul will seep out into the stillness, a place for my soul to linger, long after my body has gone to rest. 

Maybe I really am becoming a nature writer because I did actually learn the name of one type of bird (it’s absurd how proud I am of that). It’s this black and white thing, striking in contrast, except for the tail, which looks like someone has spilled colored glitter all over it. It glistens with blues and greens like a jewel-toned tie dye. It’s called a magpie.