Stay on Trail

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• April 27, 2016

“Stay on Trail,” those signs were put up for me.  Or people like me.  People who look at something dangerous, and are automatically drawn to it.  People who are easily bored, overly adventurous, or just plain stupid.  Those are my people.

“Fuck the trail.” -Me

The trail is safe.  The trail is fine.  The trail is fun.  But there’s something off the trail I need to see.  Follow this path made by an animal.  What kind of animal?  Who cares.  It leads to a dead end.  Most side trails off the path lead to dead ends.  This is a dead end, go back to the trail.

“Don’t go off the trail and pop my tire again!” My dad once yelled at me, as I pedaled away on his bike, having previously popped the tire on my bike, my sisters bike, and a bike our neighbor had thrown out.  “Sure thing!” I’d yell back, but I was lying, and he knew it.  I’m shit at lying.  But on Long Island, in the little parks I’d cycle around, I knew all the side trails, because I made some of them.  The trail was mundane.  I’d rather be muddy, and bleeding from falling into a bush of thorns.

Waning signs are something to be considered, then ignored, which is how I put both my life and my sister’s life in danger on a hike/climb in Hawaii, when I was bent on finding secret oceanic pools.  We climbed for a couple miles, over rocks, along Maui’s stunning coast.  Looking up, I knew, if a rock fell, even a small one, it would kill us.  At least it would be a quick death, I thought.    Then, when climbing the steep volcanic mountain, rocks crumbled in our hands, as we desperately tried to stable ourselves on a steep cliff.  I looked down, and I peed my board shorts.  Just a little.  But I did indeed piss myself.  I think that’s the only time in my life I was so scared, I peed.  I realized just how ludicrous this climb was, and how I put not only my life in danger, but my sisters.  If either of us slipped, we’d be dead.  We didn’t have any proper climbing equipment.  I killed us, I thought.  Then, I felt the warm drizzle on my leg.

“We’re not going back down,” my sister said, and then she grabbed the branches of a shrubbery and lifted herself up.  Then, she lifted me up like a total badass, and we made it to the top.  I never respected my sister more.

“Don’t Climb Rocks,” means, “don’t get caught climbing rocks,” and I’ll look around, and proceed with caution.  Those signs are there for people like me.  People who can’t stay on the trail for some reason.

In recent weeks, I’ve come out of what was the perfect storm for a malignant depression, and while my head is finally free of the months long hail storm on my psyche, I’ve emerged perhaps not with growth or change, but rather awareness.  I spoke with a friend of mine, a comic, and I asked him about whether or not I was foolish.  His response was perfect.  He said, doing comedy is kind of foolish to begin with.  It’s an off trail path.  It’s one that will likely be a dead end.  But what choice do we have?  Those of us who loathe the path, just because it is the path.  There’s nothing wrong with sticking to the trail, there’s plenty payoff, and going another way is dangerous, and you’ll likely have to retrace your steps and get back to the trail, only to jump off of it as soon as you can.

And people will tell you, just as the signs do, stay on trail.  Parents, friends, family… because they care.  The trail has companionship, and safety.  It’s predictable, which is why I hate it.  Because at any point, if I feel like veering off the trail isn’t an option, there’s a part of my brain that wants to jump off the mountain, and that’s just who I am: one of the fools who cannot and will not stay on the trail.