Out of the Woods

Welcome to another day in the life of Alex: Inspired by a Taylor Swift song. To what do we owe the pleasure? The credit goes to my drive home last night, the gods of my iphone’s shuffle setting, and the brilliant “Out of the Woods.”

It’s not a new idea that music can help us navigate through difficult situations, lift our moods, express our feelings, or celebrate special moments. Everyone can think of at least one song that takes them back to a particular moment in time. What’s interesting about how I felt this morning when “Out of the Woods” came on was that while it did bring me back to a very specific moment in time, it actually put a new lens on some things that’s I’m going through in real time.

First, to note, the song as she wrote it is about a romantic relationship (rumored to be her relationship with Harry Styles). Before her live piano performance at the Grammy Museum - truly her best performance of this song - she explains that the song is about a relationship where “the number one feeling she felt was anxiety … it felt very fragile, tentative … what’s the next roadblock?”

So yes, the song from it’s conception is about a romantic relationship, a particularly delicate one, but I don’t think that’s the only way we can relate to it.

I’m going to go backwards to go forwards here for a bit. Hold on.

I read a book last year called “The Cold Vanish” about people who go missing in national parks. A common thread throughout the stories is amazement at how people (more often than not very experienced hikers) can just disappear. Without a trace. In parks with well known and marked trails. Logically it’s very hard to understand how this can happen. How can a simple day hike turn into a missing persons case? Many of the people featured in the book are never heard from or seen again. What must they have been feeling in those first moments of realization that they were truly lost? How quickly did their beloved, familiar mountains or forests turn menacing? What a dramatic shift that must have been - pleasure to panic - a desperate wish to be out of the woods.

The main memory I have tied to the song is a pretty painful one, and has nothing to do with a romantic relationship. Even today I vividly remember looking out a plane window into the darkness as the song came on, feeling more alone then I ever have and wondering how in the world my life had taken this sharp turn. The fog had rolled in unannounced and unapologetic, with anything comforting or familiar blocked from my view. Days before everything in my life had made perfect sense. I had it all figured out. Within a matter of hours, that was no longer the case. How could the life I’d been living for 24 years just disappear? What a dramatic shift it was - from pleasure to panic - a desperate wish to be out of the woods. Despite it being a somewhat upbeat pop song, I deeply felt the words. “Are we in the clear yet?” How did my well-marked trail disappear? And would I ever find it again?

In fact I so strongly related to that song in the moment, I posted the Instagram photo on October 19th, 2014 captioned with the lyrics “Are we out the woods / Are we in the clear yet.” (Feel free to take a scroll, but I promised it’s true). Looking at it with no context, you would have no idea what I was going through. But when I look at it, I remember. I remember wondering if I was ever going to get out of those woods, and if I did, what would remain of the life I knew?

Reader - I did make it out of the woods. And while my life was forever shifted, the new path that I forged turned out to be much needed and ultimately the direction I needed to be going.

Coming back to the present, my experience isn’t quite that heavy. However, both professionally and personally I am feeling that feeling of … fragility. I would say anxiety is too strong of a word at the moment, but certainly I have things on my mind that I consider delicate. For someone who likes to be in control and sure, it’s easy to feel a level fear. Fear of failure. Fear of vulnerability. Fear of loss, tangible or not. And when fear creeps in, sometimes we make some knee-jerk reactions. “Remember when we hit the breaks too soon / Twenty stitches in the hospital room” are the lyrics I really responded to. It’s a good reminder that when we left fear drive, sometimes we act too soon - hitting the brakes - in order to protect ourselves from whatever it is that we’re uncertain of. But, we end up getting the stitches anyway.

What am I trying to say? I guess my thoughts are this: there will be times where you find yourself in the woods - uncertain, fearful, anxious. It may be a relationship - romantic or not, a specific circumstance, or in a professional capacity. It may be more than one of these at a time. If you’re in those woods, you may feel panic - an urge to get out at whatever cost. You may feel s sense of looming from the towering trees that block out your sky, choked and disorientated by the thick, rolling fog.

In these moments, try to pause. Try to sit with those feelings. Let yourself be fragile. Forgive yourself if things shatter. Try to remember that what you learn in those woods could be setting you up for a better path - that you’re strong enough to forge a new path. I can’t guarantee that of course, but I can say that in my experience the view that comes when you finally make it to the clearing is much better than the bruises and stitches that come from the slamming of the breaks, the hardened heart, or the desperate search for the familiar path you’re used to.

Are we in the clear yet? Good.