Burning Man

Is It Harder to Stay, or Is It Harder to Go?

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I’m sitting in a hotel room in Reno.

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Outside my window is a billboard that reads:

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Life rewarded. You do life. We’ll handle the reward.

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I keep thinking about that.

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And I keep asking myself the same question:

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Is it harder to stay, or is it harder to go?

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Somewhere between three and four o’clock Friday morning, I dropped the sleeping bag I had been desperately trying to wrap around my entire body, ran past the boxes containing all of my things, and out toward the road.

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A car was coming.

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“Excuse me! Excuse me!”

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The window rolled down.

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It was my husband.

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He looked at me with awe and joy and sadness in his eyes.

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He still won’t stop talking about that moment.

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“I never want you to be in that position ever again.”

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I know where that comes from in him. His own trauma. His own survival story. The part of him that says, That’s why I never want to be poor.

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But all I could think was:

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I can’t believe he got in.

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I can’t believe he made it.

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I can’t believe he found me.

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Of all the cars that could have come down that road, my husband was the car that answered my prayer.

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And yet, sitting here in this hotel room, I feel a strange guilt.

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Because I left.

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I left people I had begun to form beautiful bonds with. Robert and Kim and Bobby and Juan and Jay and Dominique and Ilia. Duffy. Jed and Sarah. All of these beautiful people still back at camp.

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And I think about the people who had already left before me. Optimistic Terri. Dana. Jorge. Lou and all of his friends. People whose paths crossed mine for a moment in this strange little city in the desert and somehow became part of the story.

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And the Canadians. Thank you to the Canadians for their continuous support, their presence, and the feeling that someone was always there.

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We were hosting a camp centered around peer support, and I had spent those days alongside a tremendous team holding space for beautiful spirits passing through. People arrived carrying stories, pain, joy, exhaustion, curiosity, grief, and everything in between.

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We held space for them.

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And somewhere along the way, they held space for me too.

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Maybe that is part of what made Burning Man the perfect container for all of this.

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The playa asks you to get comfortable in the uncomfortable.

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The heat.

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The cold.

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The dust.

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The exhaustion.

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The lack of the conveniences that make ordinary life feel predictable.

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And then, right in the middle of all that discomfort, someone builds something beautiful.

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Art rises out of the dust that makes you stop in your tracks. Some of it makes you laugh. Some of it makes you cry. Some of it reaches into a place inside you that you didn’t even know needed touching.

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You can find yourself contemplating grief, love, death, and the meaning of your entire life.

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And five minutes later, you’re laughing at a squirrel on a trampoline.

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Maybe that is the point.

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All of it belongs.

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The sacred and the ridiculous.

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The grief and the laughter.

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The beauty and the discomfort.

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Burning Man asks for radical self-reliance. Bring what you need. Take responsibility for yourself. There is no money changing hands on the playa, no easy transaction to solve every problem.

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And yet there is this phrase you hear over and over:

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The playa provides.

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At first, that almost seems contradictory.

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Radical self-reliance.

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And the playa provides.

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But maybe they aren’t opposites at all.

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Maybe being able to care for yourself doesn’t mean you have to do everything alone.

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Maybe you arrive prepared to survive and discover that you are surrounded by people willing to help you live.

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So now I find myself asking:

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Was it harder to leave them, or was it harder to stay?

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I think about the Barriga family and the enormous impact they made on me.

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They picked me up like the hitchhiker I was and rode with me all the way to Burning Man.

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I watched their family.

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I watched how bonded they were. How real they were with each other. How they could simply be themselves together.

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And my heart recognized something it has been yearning for.

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Sweet Eden sat next to me.

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She reminded me of Greta.

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And that is where everything started to unravel.

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Eden came to find me at Aya the Tiger, my camp. I was sitting there writing my letter for the Temple when she appeared at almost the exact moment I was finishing.

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She asked if I would go to the Temple with her.

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Of course.

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How could the timing have been more perfect?

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I had been writing a letter to addiction.

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Writing about how tired I am of addiction affecting my life.

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Writing about the grief.

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The loss.

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The pain.

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So much pain that sometimes it feels almost intolerable to look directly at it.

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And then here comes Eden, one of my daughter’s best friends.

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Creative like her.

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Rebellious like her.

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Strong in the way she holds her own.

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We walked to the Temple together.

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Once inside, we went our separate ways to find places for our letters.

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When we were both finished, somehow we found each other again.

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We hugged.

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And we cried.

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So many tears.

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Then we wandered back out onto the playa just as a massive dust storm rolled in.

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The dust.

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Oh my God, the dust.

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It was everywhere.

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Inside my tent. On everything I owned. I wiped the counters over and over and over again. The dishes never seemed completely clean. My lungs felt full of it.

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Get comfortable in the uncomfortable.

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Eventually, we made our way back to Eden’s camp.

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And once again, I sat with her family and watched something my heart desperately wanted.

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Family.

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Connection.

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Belonging.

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You see, Greta is moving out.

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Emmett already moved out.

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Somewhere underneath all of that is a grief so deep that I am only beginning to understand it.

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Emmett and Greta were the first people I ever felt unconditionally loved by.

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And now, as Greta prepares to leave, I can feel that loss deep inside my body.

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My mind starts popcorning through memories.

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When I died at four months old, it was as though my tiny body made its best attempt to leave.

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But I was forced to stay.

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Years later, when I became pregnant with Greta, some part of me already knew my marriage to their dad wasn’t okay.

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Again, I stayed.

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And now I realize something else.

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Over these past several months, as I have experienced immense pain, I have repeatedly put myself into situations where I am alone again.

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Because that is what I knew in my family of origin.

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Somewhere inside me, there is still a question:

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Can I survive?

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And maybe underneath that one is an even more painful question:

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Am I lovable?

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I had forgotten about a moment with Jed and Sarah at Aya the Tiger.

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Jed looked at me and said:

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“Obviously, you’re lovable.”

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Sarah agreed.

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Obviously.

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Such a simple word.

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But I keep putting myself into these incredible, difficult situations with groups of people I don’t know.

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Again and again.

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Can I survive this?

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Will these people love me?

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Am I lovable?

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And again, my survival strategy begins.

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Over and over and over.

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And underneath all of it is pain.

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Running from the pain.

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That night, lying in my tent, I finally felt it.

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The immense pain.

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It felt almost like death.

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And then came the tears.

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So many tears.

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I could suddenly see what I had been doing.

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I was recreating the situation.

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Putting myself somewhere unfamiliar, surrounded by people I didn’t know, where eventually I would have to face the feeling of being alone.

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Reenacting the survival strategy I have known for most of my life.

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Because underneath everything was the unbearable reality that Greta is leaving.

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And then something changed.

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I made a phone call.

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Less than twelve hours later, my sweet Mau was driving down that road to pick me up.

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Maybe the lesson this time wasn’t whether I could survive being alone.

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I already know I can survive.

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Maybe the lesson was whether I could finally allow myself to discover what happens when I ask someone to come get me.

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And they do.

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Radical self-reliance.

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And yet…

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the playa provides.

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Maybe now I understand that differently.

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The playa didn’t provide by making things easy.

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It didn’t take away the dust or the cold or the exhaustion or the grief.

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It didn’t prevent me from reaching the place where I wondered whether I could stay another night.

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It gave me a container where I could meet those things.

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It gave me art that evoked emotion I didn’t always have words for.

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It gave me discomfort I couldn’t escape.

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It gave me people I didn’t know who became people I cared about.

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It gave me the Temple.

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It gave me Eden at exactly the right moment.

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It gave me tears.

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It gave me a squirrel on a trampoline.

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It gave me a tremendous team with whom I could hold space for beautiful spirits passing through.

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It gave me people who held space for me.

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And ultimately, it gave me a road.

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A car.

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And my husband inside it.

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I’m still trying to register the message.

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Trying to let it all the way in.

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I am lovable.

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Aya the Tiger said goodbye to me with love.

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Optimistic Terri, Dana, Jorge, Lou and his friends had already left pieces of themselves with me.

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The Canadians offered continuous support.

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My sweet Lindsey from Colombia and home checked on me.

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My best friend from Raising Babies is taking care of my dog.

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My son keeps texting me.

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My husband found me on the side of a road in the middle of the night, brought me to safety, and now snuggles me harder than he ever has.

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Maybe I don’t need to keep proving that I can survive being alone.

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Maybe survival isn’t the assignment anymore.

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Maybe the work now is learning to stay long enough to receive the love that has been trying to reach me.

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And maybe that is why I keep thinking about the billboard outside this hotel room:

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Life rewarded.

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You do life.

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We’ll handle the reward.

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I don’t know yet whether it is harder to stay or harder to go.

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Maybe I’ve spent a lifetime practicing both.

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Leaving when staying hurt too much.

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Staying when leaving felt impossible.

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But perhaps there is a third possibility I am only now beginning to understand:

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I can stay.

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I can go.

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I can rely on myself.

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And I can ask for help.

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Maybe those things were never opposites.

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Maybe radical self-reliance isn’t about proving that I don’t need anyone.

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Maybe it is knowing that I can take care of myself while still allowing myself to belong.

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To need.

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To receive.

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To trust.

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And sometimes, when I run toward the road and call out into the darkness, someone who loves me will roll down the window.

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The playa provides.

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I just hope Greta knows the same thing.

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I hope she knows that she can leave.

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That she can stay.

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That she can find her own way.

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That she can rely on herself without believing she has to do life alone.

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And that none of those things change how deeply she is loved.

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I hope she never has to prove that she can survive alone in order to know she is lovable.

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And wherever she goes, I hope she knows that when she calls out into the darkness, there will always be someone listening.

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There will always be someone who wants to come get her.

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I hope she knows how loved she is.

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