A few short weeks after finding out that my Dad had terminal cancer, I left for summer camp. My parents had already paid the six grand (even though I'm sure they could have gotten a dying-parent-refund), and I actually was looking forward to a therapeutic summer before life started to get real. My camp was in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, about 4 hours from my family's home, just south of Boston. My worst fear was that my father was going to lie on his deathbed and I would not be able to get to him in time. Despite these fears, I was encouraged to go away for the summer, to gather my head and deal with my thoughts. My best efforts notwithstanding, I was a basket case from the beginning of the summer. I lost focus, alienated myself from friends, and burst into tears at the drop of a hat. People were supportive, as much as they could be. After a while, I started to hear my fellow campers say things like "Ugh, she's crying again?" or question my authenticity. This only pushed me further into isolation. I discovered that the mountains will be the death of you if you are a thinker, and I did a lot of thinking that summer.
I connected with my lead camp counselor almost immediately, and we struck up a friendship that was a blessing when all I ever felt was alone. She was protective of me, and came running when I had a moment of panic or grief. She made me feel safe in her presence and she told me that she would always be there. I needed more than her, though, and I imagine that I was too much for her. She started to pull away, to the point of completely avoiding me without any explanation. She avoided eye contact with me, and walked away when I walked toward her. I was devastated. Shattered and betrayed, but in my mind it was my fault entirely. I was too screwed up, going through something that no one else could understand and certainly dealing with a reality that no one else came to summer camp for. I was a distraction, a downer, a burden. I could feel it.
My counselor, the one who started avoiding me, suddenly announced that there was a family emergency back home in Canada, where she was from. She had to leave camp almost immediately, and as she was packing, I asked her if I could come with her when she was driven to the airport. I don't know why I wanted to go or why I thought she would let me, but the tiny, yet brave voice inside me thought that I could perhaps get some answers from her, or perhaps some explanation for why I stopped being good enough. She paused, and took in a breath of air while she bought time to answer. - She said "yes". She told me that I could accompany her and the assigned driver to the airport in the late morning. She said nothing else, and I felt uncertain, but all I was looking for were answers, or at least some reassurance that I hadn't done something incredibly, unforgivably wrong.
The night before she was set to depart, I wrote her a long letter. I described how hurt I was at the way she turned away from me. I told her how alone I was, unable to enjoy the simple things that made others smile because my mind was wrapped around the impending death of my father. I told her how I was certain that we would not speak again, and that I was sorry for that, but that all I wanted was an answer.
I woke up before dawn, in the time between the dark of the middle of the night and the chilly blue of early morning. My hand was still wrapped around my letter, under the pillow as I had left it the night before. It was too important to forget about. As my sense adjusted to being awake, I could hear rustling, things moving around, and wheels scraping the floor. She was leaving, now, and it was clear that I wasn't invited. I winced with that realization and squeezed the folded paper in my hand. I knew that she had lied to me, in the hopes of being gone long before I woke up. As she wheeled her luggage towards the cabin door I leaped from my bed, catching her as she was turning around towards me in surprise. I didn't say anything about being lied to or left behind or about my own feelings. I just handed her the note and told her I hoped to hear from her again. It was all that could be said in that moment, and we both knew it.
...When the day began and the camp started bustling like the self-sufficient little village it was, life moved on without Keri. Yeah, that was her name. I heard it again from a fellow camper telling me that Keri had said that I "stuck to her like glue". It was embarrassing that she had spoken that way about me to another camper. It felt like another one of those betrayals I was becoming so accustomed to...
Just after lunch ended, I heard her name again. The head counselor was having a quiet discussion with one of the camp directors and a few campers. I couldn't hear much, but I heard Keri's name a lot. As it turned out, upon cleaning Keri's bunk and living area, several pieces of mail addressed to counselors and campers (including me) we found in her garbage. Received, undelivered, and opened. I don't know how they do things in Canada, but in the United States, tampering with the mail is a Federal offense. Not to sound all high and mighty about it or anything, but it felt good to know that I was not the only screwed up member of the pair that was Keri and I. She even opened MY mail!
I could never feel "good" about the way things turned out with Keri and I, and finally with Keri. Regardless of what she did wrong, trying to pretend that it made my situation any better was a deluded way of thinking. If anything, she made it easier for me to admit that I had issues of my own, and that my relationship with Keri was formed out of those issues, and of that dysfunction. It makes sense to me now why I got along with her so strongly at first. We were both young women searching for something to belong to, and some kind of validation. We were both too wrapped up in our own self-centered craziness to do a damn thing for each other...
It has been over a decade since that summer. It was a disappointing comparison to summers prior, when my father wasn't dying and I was a leader rather than a jaded lone wolf. In summers prior, no one stole from me, either from my heart or my mail. I went home at the end of that season relieved that I had made it through, and that I could see my father alive for however long I would be permitted.
That was my last summer in the Berkshires, and the last time I heard from Keri. A few years later, the entire camp was destroyed in an arson fire. The cabins with the metal bunks and the writing on the wall and the secrets whispered between their walls are gone, and that tragic reality is really more of a cleansing for me; a wiping away of all the hurt and judgment I brought home with me.
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