Back in the mid oughts. Zeros? Early century? How the fuck to you generally describe 2006 or 2007 so people know what timeframe you’re talking about? 2019 is easy. We’ll someday refer back to it as something like, “The late twenty-teens.”

OK. Let’s start over.

In 2006 or 2007 I was living with my boyfriend in a little valley in the Missouri Ozarks and wandering around in my life describing it as shit like:

• My little slice of heaven on earth
• My peaceful place
• My happy zone
• (Yes, ‘My happy zone’ sounded like I was discussing my nether regions. And anyone with the same sense of humor as a pubescent 14-year-old boy ((which includes me, by the way)) would laugh because it sounds dirty)
• Maybe I should have just called it “Happy Nether Regions Ranch”?
• Now I’ve lost my train of thought.

So I was living with my boyfriend in a little valley in the Missouri Ozarks and, except for him, it was and still is the most peaceful place I’ve ever lived. One thing I had no clue about back then was my level of constant heightened alert. In general, it meant paying attention to everything and everyone around me. Therapy helps identify that shit. But none of it was identified back then. According to me, everyone had a hustle, game, plan to serve their own needs at the peril of anyone around them and needed to be watched. Assessed. Not trusted.

This heightened alertness also included paying attention to everything nature had to offer. So that meant I personalized every single thing that little Missouri Ozarks valley offered. And that was a good thing. Because it meant I noticed things like the fact that a spring fed pond sitting in the middle of that little valley literally changed the weather. Not by much. But when it’s 100º and 90% humidity in the summer, 7º cooler means a lot. So does 7º warmer in the winter. Especially when there was an ice storm that had crippled everything around the valley, and 13 people were living in our house. Because the ice storm had downed power lines, their houses had no power. Except there was this one guy that kept showing up at dinner time. His house had power. When I figured out he was lying about having no power at his house and just showing up for the food, I decided to stand up in the middle of dinner, carving knife in hand, and slowly lean forward and sink that fuckin’ thing into his neck. Not really. He actually stopped coming over at all after I told him the only way he could come over was if he did all of the dishes after every meal. Little prick never came back. I thought it was a good offer. Especially compared to that carving knife in the neck thing that I’ve never told anyone about until just now.

To get to the little Missouri Ozarks valley where I lived you go 6.6 miles down a country highway, then turn right. (Yes, I realize that means nothing. But I really don’t want anyone to know where it is.) Just after you turn right, there is a small cabin built in the 1950’s. Oddly shaped, two story. So strangely architecturally organized on the inside that literally any furniture arrangement creates a traffic jam wherever you go – to the bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, tiny loft upstairs. Odd additions on the inside were obviously added by some poor fuck in the 1970’s with no taste and a particular flair for all things country: hideous linoleum with a tiny baby blue ribbon pattern on the kitchen floor, tiny wooden scroll decorations glued around the edges of each room, cheap brown plastic-made-to-look-like-rustic-wood chair rails around the tiny dining room. It’s hideous. But it’s there.

Past that, you immediately go down .25 miles of gravel road that, unless you’re used to it, goes downhill at such a steep grade that most people have at least one vision of their first roller coaster ride come to mind. Or being a baby and getting tossed in the air by their slightly drunk Uncle while all the adults laughed because of what they thought were ‘happy’ screams. You get the picture.

About the time it seems the downward grade will never end, everything flattens out, you go around a slight corner, cross the small culvert where the weather changing spring fed pond releases its water, and enter what I call the envelope.

The envelope is where the valley opens up, and the giant oak and sycamore trees seem to lean a bit forward to gather a person into their protective gase. All is well. All is grand. All is beautiful and forthright and clear. All is cooler and warmer, and quieter and teeming with the sounds that Mother Nature whispers and groans and chirps and prattles into ears that are willing to hear. In the envelope the grass really is greener. And the trees are not only taller, but more majestic and kind. The owls are unafraid to announce themselves in the envelope, hooting day and night, to each other or a stranger, to a friend or to no one at all. The gray heron is unafraid of spending hours in the spring fed pond, eating her way through the day. She is also unafraid of letting her brood fledge in the envelope every Spring; often flying in front of them back and forth across the blue sky of the envelope as they follow and learn that someday they will be just like her – huge and fragile and fierce and patient and able to maintain their mental composure even in isolated of life as a heron.

Remind me to tell you some day about the gray heron being attacked by a Red Tail Hawk. She beat some serious hawk ass.

By 2007 my boyfriend’s dad decided to rent the hideous cabin at the top of the road. He was fresh out of his (3rd? 5th?) last divorce. Hurting. Not hurting. Insane. Not insane. Dude was a fuckin’ enigma. Full of information, and equally full of shit. His modus operandi was to slap up as many profiles as possible on as many dating websites as possible and then fuckity fuck fuck his way thorough any thought or feeling he may have been having at the time about being alone again. I am not unfamiliar with this behavior. He eventually found a little lady that was more than happy to move in. She had a sketchy back story and an even sketchier mental landscape. To this day I still don’t quite believe she was using her legal name, or was from Canada as she purported.

Instead of facing the reality that they shouldn’t be living together, those two put all of their energy into throwing endless food fests. Come over for breakfast! We just made a huge lunch, come on up! And the holidays? I can barely discuss it. The amount of food prepared for only five or seven family members spoke to a gluttonous part of me that is akin to some sort of passive suicide by way of carbohydrates. Vats and tubs and barrels of things. Hot, greasy, buttery, gut busting amounts. The worst meal was the time someone added Liquid Smoke to the gravy for biscuits and gravy. The best meal. Well. Wait. There wasn’t a best meal. One way or the other, it wasn’t all so bad. No one cared if you unbuttoned your pants or farted or complained about being gluttonous. No one cared if your mood was dour, joyous or quiet. It was an easy atmosphere as long as everyone stayed in the middle of the “Nothing Odd is Happening Here” boat.

Who knows if it was in 2006 or 2007. I don’t. But I do know the open house food fest they decided to throw for friends was an extraordinary attempt on their part to avoid the reality of their own household. Menus. Decorations. Invitations in the form of a computer generated, black and white flier that was handed out and passed around all over. Thank god, baby gbus, the donkey, and every single person named Mary that Facebook wasn’t the norm at the time, or I would have sold out and moved to another country based entirely upon my fear of how many people could have shown up. It was bizarre. Outlandish. When they discussed it, their faces gleamed with redness and a sheen of perspiration I suspected appeared due to a combination of adrenaline and the mental gymnastics needed to avoid the reality of their situation. It was alarming to see two people so furiously attempting to ignore that they’d met online, screwed within seconds of laying eyes upon one another, moved in together just a few weeks later. Even more alarming was the fact that the physical location of their avoidance was a tiny 1950’s cabin in which one could not avoid tripping over oneself even when in it alone.

I offered to assist a few times. Feebly. Fingers crossed behind my back that no one would say yes. But, of course, another human being entering the fervor of planning would have shattered the shroud of protection afforded by being obsessed by planning. So my offers were thwarted.

Party night was party night. I walked the .25 miles up the road, out of the envelope, up the roller coaster hill, and onto the porch of the cabin. Through the sliding glass doors, though they were already foggy with human existence, I could see the faces and shoulders and hair and sweaters of people. So many people. Standing face in face. Shoulder against shoulder. Some sitting, with others sitting on their laps. From the farthest depth of the tiny galley kitchen, through the tiny dining room and into the back corner of the tiny living room. People. Breathing, loud, sweating, thronging people. I opened the door, my tiny green purse clutched under my armpit. My name was called out by red faces. I smiled. I breathed, with some dim thought at the edge of my mind that it was probably virtually impossible for there to be enough oxygen in that place to keep anyone alive for long.

My boyfriend’s dad stood at the edge of the kitchen, red faced and a smile plastered on his face that reminded me of the photos I’ve seen of people right after they’ve thrown themselves from a small plane on their first skydive. You know, the kind of smile that wreaks of the fear of shitting one’s pants at any moment. His little woman was further into the cabin, her back pressed against the wall at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the tiny loft. I pushed my way over to her, the entire time pretending to be thrilled by way of laughing, yelling out, potentially even screaming? It’s hard to remember. But I do remember getting to her, being pressed titty to titty, looking her in the eye and yelling, “Are you ok?”

“Yes,” she said, out of a blank stare.

“You sure?” I yelled.

“Yes,” she said, and looked away.

I turned around, made my way back to the sliding doors to the porch, repeating my fake smiling, laughing, yelling out, possibly screaming party behavior the whole way. I opened the sliding door, stepped through into the cold December night, and slid the door closed behind me. I turned to look back through the doors, amazed that no one had moved even an inch from where they’d been when I arrived. No one.

Quickly, I turned, walked off the porch and down the drive onto the road that would take me back to the envelope. Down the roller coaster slope I went. Quickly. Almost running. Clutching my tiny green purse under my arm still. I thought about how much I hated that little purse. It was a green that could not be described – not Kelly green or Hunter green or dark green or light green. It disturbed me. And then I remembered how often I held it in my lap, or had laid it on a check out counter at a store and admired the way it looked exactly like an oversized envelope. How safe it seemed. How it snapped closed over things I didn’t want to lose – money, credit and, most important, my identity.

When I rounded the corner and was just steps away from crossing the culvert that is the point at which I considered myself to be entering the envelope of the little valley in the Missouri Ozarks, I grabbed that stupid little green purse, lifted it over my head the way a heavyweight boxer raises his winner’s belt over his head, and began to run. I pumped that little purse in the air, ran into the envelope and, possibly out loud, breathed something akin to, “Thank you mother fuckin’ everybody and everything and all of it everything forever for this place. This place. Right here. For me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

I ran to the house, through the front door, up the stairs, and into the bedroom where I threw myself onto the bed, and lay spread eagle until my breathing calmed, holding my stupid green purse all the while. And I only barely awoke when my boyfriend came home.

“I feel asleep with my stupid green purse in my hand,” I said.

“Do you want me to put it on the dresser?” he asked.

“No,” I whispered.

He crawled into bed and turned out the light.

“I love my stupid green purse,” I whispered.

He laughed.

“And I love envelopes,” I whispered.

“Go to sleep,” he said.

And I lay there in the dark. In the envelope. I let it consume me, and it has never let go.