Month: March 2023

My first memory was when I was three years old in the middle of a weekend night urgently needing to pee. I crawled out of my lifted twin-sized bed and wandered over to my mom’s big redwood door, feeling a knot in the pit of my stomach that I can still feel today. I knocked lightly on her door “Momma, I need to go potty,” I whispered, crossing my legs. 

When I creaked open the big door, what I saw shocked me beyond belief.  My mom and dad’s bed was empty and most of their things were packed in brown boxes stacked on top of each other. I made my way over to the window. I saw their car was gone from the driveway. I sat in their bed and cried myself into exhaustion from fear, wondering what was going on.

The next morning the police showed up at our door. Before then, the police had only come when my dad was being what I called at the time “really mean.” The police talked for a while with my cousin, who lived with us. He looked at me and my siblings and told us to pack a bag.

I was naïve. I thought we were going on a weekend adventure. So, I went to my room and stuffed my favorite pink bunny, a blankie, and some clothes in my sparkly pink bag and walked to the front door with a smile on my face.

Leaving my house felt weird. Not kissing my mom and dad goodbye felt even weirder, but that Saturday morning before was the last time I saw my parents for a long time. My trip with the police was far from an adventure. 

It was one of the darkest moments of my life. I saw how cruel the world could be in a matter of 24 hours. 

After that trip with the police, I found myself in many different homes, bouncing back and forth with my brother. It was OK during the week, but the common theme in my life was that the weekends sucked. I was stuck in a constant cycle of worry and abuse – wondering if I would get to eat, leave my room, or if I would be moved again. School was the only safe and stable thing I had in my life as there were no unpredictable events that would occur. Every Friday night I sat and wished for the predictability that Monday would bring. 

It would take almost two decades for me to understand that the weekend isn’t the monster I thought it was when I was three. Sometimes weekends bring unexpected gifts, not all of which bring resolutions. 

When I was five years old I was briefly living with my grandparents between homes and they informed me that my dad had moved to the trailer park down the gravel road from them. I was so happy. I hadn’t heard from my dad in two years. I had so many things I wanted to tell him and ask him. They said I could spend the weekend with him if I wanted to and of course, I wanted to. My grandpa drove me to the trailer park Friday evening and dropped me off. 

I don’t remember much of what we did that weekend, but what I do remember was going off-roading in his pick-up truck to go rock-picking. I found the biggest and heaviest rock and my dad it picked up for me. We took it back home with us where we wrote “Allys-Rock” and the date with a sharpie on it and super glued a felt piece to the bottom of it, so it wouldn’t scratch my dresser top. I still have that rock today it sits in a memory box under my bed.

The weekend came to an end and my grandpa was coming to pick me up so I sat on the wire steps in front of the trailer waiting for him. My dad was starting his own car and he said to me, 

“I’m sorry for what I did and I know I’m not the best, but I love you.” 

“It’s OK dad, I love you too.” 

He hopped in his car and said “Please, forgive me” and drove away. 

That was the last time I saw my Dad. 

Since then,  reclaiming weekends for me has been a struggle. I started burying the pain and loss I felt in work. 

At age 14, I walked to Mcdonald’s and filled out my first job application. I was soon hired as a drive-thru cashier, which was a lot of fun.  I’ve been through many jobs, but one thing I did was work every single weekend. It was safe and stable with the plus side of making money while doing it. It kept me busy.

Now I’m an adult, living on my own and in college. I have autonomy over my whole life now. The decision to move to the big city of Minneapolis was scary.  It was unexplored territory for me. In my first year in school, I worked every weekend at my job as a waitress. The thought of making friends and enjoying a weekend out – as most college students do – never occurred to me. As time went on I made a few friends and they would invite me out on the weekends. But it seemed like my response was always “I would love to, but I have to work.” Eventually, they stopped inviting me. This upset me because I wanted to lead a ‘normal’ life.

So in my second year of college, I made the decision to not work on the weekends, maybe an occasional Saturday, but only on my terms. It was the best decision ever. Learning to navigate this newfound freedom of the weekend has been amazing. I am in a place in my life where I feel secure and happy.  I’m not wishing for Monday on a Friday anymore, I’m wishing for Friday on a Monday now. 

My friends have overwhelming anxiety about the weekend every week. They have to know what we are doing and what we are planning. But weekend anxiety is different for me. It’s about tearing down defenses I’ve built for protection because I’ve spent my life afraid of what might be waiting for me behind the closed door. Now that I’ve opened that door,  I have come to enjoy the last three days of the week and everything they entail. I can finally see the thrill of Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

How going to the theater over the years has brought us closer.

I have been going to the theater on an occasional weekend with my dad since I was 10 years old. It’s “our thing.” We get all dressed up, go to a fancy restaurant for dinner, and then go see a play or a musical. It happens two or three times a year, at least one time during the holidays. 

I can’t even remember all the shows we’ve seen. We’ve covered most of the major theaters in the Twin Cities area. We’ve seen shows at the Children’s Theater, the Orpheum, the Guthrie, the Pantages, the State Theater, the Ordway and some other smaller venues too. 

My favorite part isn’t the dressing up, the good food, or the entertainment –although those are all major pluses. It’s the car ride home, when my dad and I debrief the evening. We always end up with a bunch of new inside jokes from the night and repeat the funniest lines from the show to each other, never tiring of it. 

We don’t really care if the show is good or bad. To be honest, we prefer the bad ones. We saw a production of “West Side Story” at the Ordway in 2017, which we still regard as our all-time favorite. Not because of the huge musical dance numbers, impressive costume and set design, or the classic “Romeo and Juliet” style love story, but because the Jets could not snap in time with each other for the life of them. 

Every time the supposedly badass gang would do their classic synchronized snapping, it sounded like someone was making popcorn on stage. My dad and I could not keep it together. We were stifling our laughter from our seats in the balcony while the actors tried, and failed, to snap in sync. We still joke about it today. 

In 2021 our holiday musical of choice was a December production of Fiddler on the Roof, also at the Ordway. While we were flipping through the program before the show started, we noticed an interesting detail in the lead actor’s bio. He only stars in plays that he also directs. 

For some reason we clung to this and created an elaborate backstory about how he is such a difficult actor to work with that only he can handle himself, therefore he must direct his own productions. We imagined him combing through the script, throwing himself extra lines and making sure that he only ever has to stand with his good side facing the audience. We really cracked ourselves up with that one. 

When I asked my dad if he had a particularly funny memory from our outings, he reminded me of a play we saw a couple years ago. Neither one of us can remember what it was called or even the basic plot or premise. All we remember is that we thought we were going to see a fun, fluffy musical, but instead it was two hours of dialogue from three actors who never left the stage. Very serious. And quite depressing, honestly. 

At the end of the show, all the actors left the stage but the lights never went down. Confused, the audience didn’t know whether to clap or wait for some big finale. After about a minute of silence, a janitor with a mop walked past the doorway of the set. 

In the chatter of everyone exiting the theater, we could hear people trying to dissect the deeper meaning of the play. Everyone else seemed quite impressed, but we had never been more confused in our lives. All we were trying to figure out was if that person at the end was an actual janitor or an actor. Our seats were high in the balcony, so we couldn’t see their face.

We left the play deciding that it was basically about nothing, and that a random janitor at the theater just jumped the gun trying to clean up. We had a good laugh about that too. 

Looking back, I now see that going to the theater is a wonderful way for anyone to spend their weekend. There’s something that feels inherently classy about the theater, especially older ones. The velvet cushioned seats, ornate ceilings, and live orchestra accompaniment give the whole experience an air of elegance. 

Some people, like me, like to get dressed up. But you are welcome to wear whatever you’re comfortable in.  

There really is something exciting about seeing a live performance. When the house lights in the theater go down you can feel the buzz of excitement as everyone goes silent and anticipates the first notes of an opening number. When you go see a movie you know that you’re seeing a polished, edited version of a story. In theater, it’s all unraveling in real time. Anything can happen, giving the whole experience a touch of exhilaration. 

It’s also one of the best ways in 2023 to spend up to three hours completely unplugged. Using your phone during a show is not only a major faux pas, but it could get you kicked out. 

But when I look back on 12 years of regular outings with my dad to the theater, it isn’t really about the performances at all. It’s about making memories and laughing with my dad.

This simple exercise has completely transformed my mental health.

As a child, the importance of exercise was engraved in my mind like a laser into a metal charm – the kind I will always keep secret in the pocket of my jean shorts, stuffed in the bottom of my drawer only to occasionally find when spring cleaning. Some of my first memories are bouncing up and down in a stroller as I hear my mom’s footsteps pushing me around Lake Bde Maka Ska. I never questioned why exercise was deemed this “thing” I had to do, because it usually never felt so forced. ​​I ran around outside with my best friend building forts out of the fallen sticks in the woods pretending not to know what electricity was or playing rec soccer as my dad coached and my mom cheered, despite patronizing looks from the other team, due to her loud voice that carried across the field. 

This all began to change as I got older. I began to compare my mirror reflection with others. Toxic thought patterns about appearance kept me up at night. Moving my body, outside of high school sports, became a chore that had an even higher reward: to be skinnier. But even with that prize, nothing seemed to fulfill that want of a perfect body. 

        As my mental health declined, I discovered walks. I began going for long walks in a park, on a trail, by the lake, or even trekking through snow. This is all not to say that I think mental illnesses can be cured or fixed just by some simple exercise, as I wholeheartedly believe in medication, therapy, and/or alternative treatments – but none of which I wanted to do. As trivial as they seemed, walks had the most profound impact on me. 

This effect became most clear during the Covid pandemic. Gyms were closed and I was beyond tired of the feeling that my mom was watching me as I tried to do “Chloe Ting ab workout” in my basement, which realistically just made me feel worse about how I looked. Ultimately, I decided I should probably get off TikTok and go outside. This led me to going for a simple, innocent walk around my neighborhood, which turned into four miles with the mindset that I didn’t ever want to walk back home. As my melodramatic attitude wore off and my feet got tired, I realized that I had felt better than I ever had in the past year. 

This was not the first walk I had ever gone on. But it was the first one with a different intention. I wasn’t exercising to the point of pure exhaustion or with the mindset that I will get skinnier by doing so. I just put my headphones on and aimlessly moved my legs, following wherever the route took me. 

This isn’t just my own experience with exercise, but actual chemical reactions taking place. Exercise induces blood circulation to the brain and affects the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. The HPA axis controls the reaction to stress, anxiety, motivation, and mood. Exercise also increases endorphin levels, body temperature, neurotransmitter production that have psychological effects such as managing fear, pleasure and happiness. And if you don’t believe in science, believe me. 

When I walk, the solitude grounds my thinking and allows me to focus on what I am truly feeling in that moment. This helps grasp what emotions I can work through, without it affecting outer vessels in my life. I can feel the sun curing my soul as it warms my skin. The leaves falling, birds chirping, and snow melting is proof that no matter what my troubles are, the Earth keeps turning and life goes on. 

My weekends now consist of time set aside so I can go for a walk. Sometimes my friends come along, and we rant about our current superficial issues that set the real problems into perspective. We grow closer and I learn the importance of preserving my peace with the people around me. Everyone has their days, and my mental health is not perfect, especially during the cooler months that seem to lag on in Minnesota. But with each step, I have a better understanding of what I can do to take care of myself. 

Trails to visit in Minnesota during your weekend!:

• Lake Bde Maka Ska 
• Lake of the Isles 
• Lake Harriet 
• Lone Lake Park 
• Stone Arch Bridge 
• Superior Hiking Trail 
• Minnesota Landscape Arboretum Trail 
• St. Croix River Crossing Loop Trail