The Ex
Not a previous partner but a former friend. Kat was my walking buddy in Boulder. I found her at a group meet-up in early 2017 when things were seriously array in my personal life.
Ronald was in Antarctica, I was in Boulder on my own, my parents’ health was in the early stages of a downward spiral which would lead to their deaths barely two years hence, and my beautiful Julia was also diagnosed with terminal cancer. Our marriage was also in a very bad way in no small part because of me. The litany of sh*t that went down in those years was and still does make me cross-eyed. Kat was a tonic in a world that was slowly falling apart.
She had a loud laugh and a tendency to speak her mind. She was almost but not quite the cliche Boulder woman; into yoga, hiking, dogs, and happy to sprout the occasional woo-woo sentiment while I provided the cynical side-eye. I found her exotic because I was an outsider. I can’t say she would’ve been a first choice of friend had I been in Australia. Hindsight now whispers that she possibly picked up on my slight ambiguity from the get go but I genuinely liked and wanted her company at the time. I was needy as all heck and she was happy to go hiking with me so I glommed onto her with barely disguised relief.
A photo from a multi-day Fjallraven trip in the Rocky Mountains.
We would pile into her Toyota 4-runner in the early hours of the day and drive miles on I70 to hike in the Rocky Mountains or we’d schlep up the trails around Chautauqua and nearby Mt Sanitas. And always there would be Reggie, her Rhodesian Ridgeback cross. We were not your average strollers. Our hikes were long and steep (hello - it was Colorado) and in Kat I found someone who could keep up with my dogged pace (no shade on Reggie). Match made in heaven.
A hiking buddy is a priceless thing and not to be squandered. Spending long hours with someone on a trail is a finely calibrated exercise. Both of you have must intuite the unspoken; to chat/or not to chat, how far vs too far, are we going for a 14,000-er today or is it a quick sprint more locally, do we want to camp overnight but what about the bear situation? Can we beat that lightning storm headed our way with no tree cover in sight? How do we split the gas and transport considering only one of us has a proper off-road vehicle? Not only have you found someone who’s willing to explore rugged terrain with you but you must also pick up on all the unspoken cues that accompany treks in the wilderness.
For about two and a half years, Kat and I were a team. And then we weren’t.
At least in this situation there was no second guessing the split. I wasn’t ghosted, no slow dawning of ‘is something amiss here?’ Instead it was brutally executed. One minute I was a good friend, and the next I was summarily out. Perhaps I should thank her for the heads up but I still have so many questions about the rupture. The act itself happened when we’d moved to Austin and I’d returned to Boulder for a few weeks to see Sam (he was studying in Boulder at the time) and, as a birthday treat, an opportunity to hike those mountains again. With Kat. I’d dropped in the night before we were due to hike to say hello after a long-ish stretch of not seeing one another. The drop-in was unexpected for her and I’d caught the family finishing dinner.
After the shuffle around the table to seat me, I’d refused anything to eat because I didn’t want to impose - possibly I was imposing already but did not realise it. I left after a short while with the two of us agreeing on the time and date to meet at Chautauqua the next day. This is where the story gets slightly hazy because two things happened that shook me up: a close friend’s wife had died in a biking accident and a very old friend from my Chakola days had been found guilty of child molestation. I received this news either on the day we were to meet or the day I dropped in.
These two events are not insubstantial and I won’t go into them here but I do know that I was in a state of shock and I can’t recall if I’d postponed our catch up on the basis of the terrible news. Either way, Kat did not show for the hike.
The next day I drove to Denver where I had a final night in an AirBnB before dropping the car off at the airport and flying back to Austin. It was here I got her email.
I’m not sure what purpose this is serving other than attempting to write this into some kind of logic because to this day I grapple with this severing. And I have no idea why I keep circling back to it. Does it even deserve my focus?
“Once when you were watching Reggie, I landed at DIA, called to say I could come pick her up and you said OK be quick I’m drawing a bath. I don’t need to be in a relationship where I’m so low on your priority list I come behind having a bath. ”
I think about Julia’s life and death and how this occupies my mind in very different ways but without the angst I have with Kat. How can that be?!
The email I received at the AirBnB quickly put me in my place. There was no second guessing her intent and I read it with a mixture of incredulity, confusion and a resentment that is still on slow release today. I sometimes wonder if other people were in her ear about our friendship or if it was something that had been brewing with her for a long time and my move away to Austin heralded the end. Much of her email centres on perceived slights that were made by me. The incident with Reggie and my ‘refusal’ to let her pick up her dog is cock-eyed. Where’s the mention of me doing the favour here? I find it utterly baffling. And for the record, Kat landed late at night and I was probably already in bed. Whatever, as the kids say. The email lists my many faults and my self-centredness. Sure. I am guilty of all of it but not in the broad, damning terms that she paints.
I can hear the whine in my beseeching and it’s really of no interest to anyone; not even me. I suppose the reason why these events are my particular chew toy is its unfair judgement; there is no formal avenue to state my case and have the Ex cross-examined for the flaws in her logic so I’m settling for this post. I’m publishing my grievance into the infinite and indifferent digital world, thinking it will at least assuage the injustice I have.
I’ll let Kat have the last word:
“You asked if something happened to me, yes a lot has happened to me. The most important thing that has happened is I woke up, decided to honor myself and respect myself. I know my value, I know I show up for my friends and I honor the ones that show up for me. I’m not interested in being in a relationship with someone that makes me feel so insignificant.”