The Role of the Squire

When it comes to slaying the monsters within, no one can fight for you. It would be great if you could get someone else to fight your monsters for you - so much easier! But the moment someone else tries to be your Champion and slay one of your monsters, you will become defensive and actively fight against their efforts.

Why?

Because they're your monsters. Part of their function is to convince you that they are you, an integral part of you without which you cannot function. The only person who can discern them and slay them is you.

That doesn't mean that you can't get help when you set off to slay those oh-so-personal monsters. In fact, I highly recommend having support when you intend to monster slay. But the support is external. Like, someone to carry your gear, and help you put on your armor for battle. A squire, if you will.

The role of the squire can be pivotal. While not everyone needs or has a squire, when you have one, you can take more leaps, because you have that support to rely on. You just need to remember that the squire is not there to fight the monsters, let alone slay them. The squire is there for you, yes, to support you in your slaying journey, but you are the slayer.

A squire should be able to provide support, care and love. An example of support is discussing tactics and reminding the slayer when they’re starting to stray into a downward spiral. Care and love are pretty self explanatory; when we know that someone cares about what we are doing, and that someone loves us no matter what, then we can be more confident about slaying those monsters. Because your squire won’t let you stop being who you are. 

The squire provides grounding. A link between the self that you are and the self that you wish to be. 

A squire is a cheerleader, and always on your side. 

But they cannot do the work. 

Squiring someone through monster slaying is like helping a friend study for a test. You can drill them, study with them, recommend various tips, tricks and techniques. But when it comes time to actually take the test, you cannot help. You can’t even watch.

The reward is in the results.

In the slaying of monsters that will allow slayer and squire to have a deeper relationship, without monsters getting in the way. 

Health Update

Warning: frank talk about poop to follow. 

I've pretty much been in pain every day for the past couple years. Maybe not the whole time, and mostly at a level that I can bear, but still. So I decided to try and push the gastro doc to actually do something to treat me instead of, like the last one, brushing me off with vague instructions never to eat fiber again. 

The first such attempt turned out awful. The pill pretty much destroyed my weekend and my butt. Instead of a cessation of pain, I got diarrhea and vomiting on day one, which faded to diarrhea only the next few days. I stopped that one, but it still hasn't fully left my system. 

And now I have to decide whether I try the next one or just give up on Western medicine entirely and try something different. My husband and I recently watched a convincing video on the importance of the microbiome on gut health, but when I brought that up with the doc he said that there wasn't enough robust evidence for them to do that kind of testing at his practice. 

To which I wonder exactly what kind of rigorous studies the medication he did give me has gone through. And I really can't help but wonder how much money the pharmaceutical companies are paying to convince doctors that their drugs are good. Sure, the drugs need to pass FDA approval, but they are not infallible or proof against lobbyist dollars. 

Writing that makes me feel like a conspiracy theorist. But I am finding very little trust in the American health care system within myself. The systems seem to be run purely by financial interests, mostly focused on the insurance companies' abilities to avoid paying for services. Heck, the doc even mentioned that if he went with this one drug, the insurance company would tend to fight him on it, and without insurance it costs like $300 for a month's supply. 

And, because I know how much some drugs cost without insurance, $300 per month doesn't actually sound that horrible, though I certainly don't want to pay that. 

It was also interesting for me to consider that even though the microbiome doesn't have robust enough research, something that has been essentially proven only to help some people, avoiding FODMAPs, was something that the doc recommended, bringing it up when I mentioned making my own applesauce because apples are high in FODMAPs (FODMAPs are a type of carbohydrate that have a "strong link" to digestive issues). Of course, fruits that are low in FODMAPs are high in fiber, such as citrus and green bananas. And while I have some doubts about the IBS diagnosis, the delayed gastric emptying thing feels correct. I've felt how my body no longer likes dealing with eating things like pineapple. So fibrous. So delicious :(

I had been eating bananas as my fiber for a while, but I switched when I read that those can cause constipation. And I rarely ate green ones. But I did try the low FODMAP diet, way back when this whole rollercoaster started. It had absolutely no efficacy for me. Low fiber did help for a time, but I have not found what it is that will bring me back to pain free equilibrium in my gut. 

There's a part of me that really wants to find an answer without resorting to prescription drugs. But the larger part of me just wants an answer. 

So I'm still looking. 

Holding On

I hate talking on the phone. It is just not my favorite thing to do. Especially with cell phones, because there's the added paranoia of whether my face will sweat so much that it damages the computer I'm jamming against my ear or I will accidentally hang up on someone because of said sweaty ear.

While I have found that using a headset mitigates some of the anxiety for me, especially when it comes to the part of my anxiety that struggles to get people to repeat themselves when I don't hear them clearly, it doesn't impact the part of me that just doesn't like talking on the phone. I mean, I can raise the volume on the headset and make it work, but only to a point. 

And, of course, being on hold is no one's favorite activity. But recently, I found a new low in being on hold when I was trying to make a health care appointment. 

First off, there's the pre-recorded message. I called the main line, and had to listen to their Covid spiel. And then, when I pressed the number for scheduling, the whole message repeated. That was special. 

The music that they played on the hold line was fine. Not great, not terrible. No, the terrible part was that every 30 seconds, there's a click. It sounds like, just maybe, someone is going to pick up. For my particular phone anxiety, the moment the other person picks up creates a great deal of tension in me. It's time, I have to speak to a human being and try to make myself understood and understand the other person. Scary! 

But that click just heralds the arrival of yet another automated recording, thanking me for being on hold and suggesting that I might want to press 1 for voicemail. 

And if you stick it out for a mere 5 minutes, it just sends you to voicemail anyway. 10 interruptions to the music that sound like the phone is being picked up, and they just send you to voicemail anyway. 

Of course, before you leave your voicemail, you must listen to ANOTHER automated message with instructions on how to voicemail. 

Overall, the stress of making that appointment (that I didn't really want to make, I've got issues here), was exacerbated by their horrible hold, and I hope that my stressed voicemail wherein I said their hold procedure sucked will cause them to rethink the torture they are putting potential patients through. 

Songing Along

Last weekend, I went on a backpacking trip to do trail work with the Idaho Trails Association. During that trip, I came up with two little song-y things. One of them was inspired by another of the women on the trip, and the other just came into my head as we were working. And on the last night, I did share my bear song, though my voice totally cracked on it. I need to practice it a lot more so I can be performance ready. 

So the first one came about from the words "lopping and chopping" swimming through my head. They made such a nice rhythm and fit right into an old song, 'Wishin' and Hopin'' by Dusty Springfield. Now, I didn't remember exactly how that song went, but I fit a few things into the shape that I remembered and ended up with: 

We're loppin' and choppin' and brushin' and treadin' 

And sawin' and after we're through

The trail is clear

You know you've got to saw with technique

Let the blade do most of the work

You know there's just no need to use much force

You will get through

Working in a rhythm

Drawin' and a pullin'

Because we're diggin' and gradin' and cuttin' and drainin' 

And limbin' and after we're through

The trail is clear

I might work that one into fitting more of the actual lyrics and song, rather than just what I remembered out there. Especially if I can come up with some more tool/task specific things like with the saw. After I shared that little snippet, one of the other women said I should come up with something matching the 7 dwarves song, "Heigh Ho". After a little noodling and hiking, I came up with just a snip: 

Heigh ho heigh ho

WOW ITA we go

To clear some trails

And take no males

Heigh ho heigh ho heigh ho heigh ho

That one I may or may not return to. I might not have even shared it on the trail, but that little bit made me laugh so hard I had to share. (Note: WOW ITA is sung "wow eye-tee-ay" for this song, and stands for Women's Only Weekend, Idaho Trails Association.)

This Year's Books

Although I haven't settled in to the serious business of actually writing up my trips (or reading Ambrose's or Bill's trip reports), I have decided what I'm going to call each of my Hike with Me books this year. 

For the fly-in trip, I'm going with Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Frank Church Finale. I thought about doing Part 3 instead of Finale, but I wanted to emphasize that I was finally finished with the Frank. It took me a long time to get through it, and there are definitely choices that I made that I might not make if I do the trail a second time. (Sorry Dry Saddle, you are gorgeous, but the trails from Sheep Hill Lookout to the Salmon and Burnt Knob down to Poet just aren't there anymore.)

The title for the other book was harder to come by. Although I'm heading to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, technically, the trails I hiked were not in a Wilderness area. Not quite. I straddled the edge of the Selway when I hiked along the ridge from Burnt Knob, but once I turned off downhill towards Poet Creek, I was no longer in any Wilderness, just the Nez Perce National Forest. So this isn't really the 1st Selway hike. 

But it was a challenge. I took nearly ten hours to complete ten mostly downhill miles. I took long enough that Ambrose started to get worried about me. A large section of trail simply wasn't there anymore, and if I hadn't had GPS and a huge stubborn streak, I would have turned around. Or maybe my streak was a combination of stubbornness and optimism; I really did hope that the trail would become trail again at any moment. 

So even though that was only two day hikes on the Idaho Centennial Trail, with the planned third day cancelled due to fire at Warm Springs Bar, I'm going to call it: Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Challenge. That's going to be the main angle that I'm approaching that one from; the challenge of getting through the first day, and the challenge of actually getting up the next day and hiking again with my destroyed body. 

Next, I've got to start setting aside some time for writing, hopefully each day in September. Once I stop going on backpacking trips on weekends, I'll set a word count, maybe 500 words a day. That will be enough of a reminder to get my butt in the chair and start typing without being an impossible goal on days when I'm tired and/or in pain.