Feeling Like You Belong
On friendship, community, and contribution.
2,000 miles away from Jackson, Wyoming, I drove through Vermont’s backroads feeling very, very far away from the only community that’s ever actually felt like home to me.
There’s no good way to get bad news, and the loss of a friend got me thinking about the kinds of people who can make a place feel like that.
On my way to nowhere in particular, I was wrestling with what it means to show up; about how I interact with the people in my life and the kinds of things I see them do for each other. I thought about how I spend my time and what I focus on.
Am I really showing up in this life the way I want to?
All I could do was gaze at the road ahead.
Last weekend, I’d been staring at my phone, completely dumbfounded, while getting ready for bed. At the top of my feed I’d seen a photo of my friends out skiing. They were standing still, cheesing for the camera. “Cute, I remember that photo” I’d thought to myself before almost clicking away entirely.
I’d been focused on doing one last thing before calling it a night, but then I got stuck trying to understand the words in the caption. Immediately, I’d noticed the tone was off. It didn’t match the photo at all, and I’d started searching for why.
That’s V and there’s Max.
Right, ok. And V posted this?
When, today?
“I thought I’d share these memories to help us all feel close to Max during this tough day” she’d written in the caption.
Fuck.
Oh no, something happened...
I’d started to register that the words were describing something bad, but I couldn’t understand. Did someone get hurt? Was there an avalanche? I kept reading, possibilities running through my brain. Then the next line really scared the shit out of me.
“We love you Max ❤️ you were one of the first friends I made in Jackson 10 years ago”
Were??
What do you m—
No... no way. C’mon, WHAT?
Mouth hanging open, I put my phone down and just sat there completely stunned. I went searching online for more info, trying to prove myself wrong.
Surely I’m misunderstanding something.
By morning, headlines appeared beyond the social media sphere, like this one from POWDER: RIP Max Martin: Jackson Hole Community Mourns Beloved Skier.
And so, without really thinking about it, I’d gone driving, hoping to make more sense of my thoughts.
“You seem quiet today.”
That’s what my therapist had said earlier that morning.
Fair point.
Light shining through the frosted windows, I’d let out a sigh and clutched my coffee mug a little tighter than usual. Sitting at the kitchen table, I’d glanced away from my laptop and my therapist’s face on its screen. Across from me, they’d let the moment linger.
It’d felt harder than normal to organize my thoughts. Usually I can at least do that, even if I’m not saying much out loud. As someone who grew up in more than one chaotic household, I’d learned to think and not speak by trying to blend in with the wallpaper and go unnoticed. For years, I thought I was being polite only to learn later that it’d made me come across as uninterested.
By mid-afternoon it was warm, and the sun even came out while I drove. I’d flipped between podcasts and music before eventually settling on silence. Thoughts about showing up still swirled through my brain incessantly. Thinking of Max, Jackson, and a whole bunch of people who’d helped the place feel so damned loving made me… sad.
I realized what I was feeling was guilt, and it brought back visions of the contemplative grin my therapist had worn during our morning session. So I found myself replaying bits of our conversation. I’d told them about my jumbled mess of thoughts best I could—about questioning my interactions with the people in my life. That’s when their smile had widened, especially so, when they’d said “Can you see how keeping your thoughts to yourself could feel like disinterest, and look like not showing up?”
Yes—yes I definitely could.
I kept driving. Looking out the window at the snowy foothills, I was shocked at how far I’d gone. Exhaling and leaning into my elbow on the door, I tried to gauge how I’m actually showing up these days... Because, truth be told, I didn’t know how to show up back then at all. Not fully. I’m not even sure I do now. That’s the part that really sucks, because I’ve spent years working to organize my life so that I can be present with myself and the people in it.
Results have... varied.
Eventually, I started smiling when a memory of Max popped up.
It was from back when we’d run in similar circles, but didn’t know each other all that well yet. I’d been in a bit of a pickle: the night before a snowboard competition, I’d realized the rules had changed and athletes were now required to wear back protectors or they couldn’t compete. It’d been optional before, and I didn’t have one. So I started texting friends, frantically looking to see if anyone would lend me theirs.
At that point, Max and I had recently started training together at the same gym, along with some mutual friends, but it was still kind of a long shot to ask. When I did, he responded immediately.
“Sure, no problem. Come by whenever!”
I actually don’t recall much about the comp itself, but I still remember Max smiling big and asking me about it when I’d gone to return his back protector. Later, I’d realize it’d been the same smile he’d flash to friends around the mountain, wanting to know what they’d skied. He’d stare directly at them as if nothing and no one else mattered. “So how was it??” he’d want to know, with wide eyes and a smile that radiated belonging.
When he did that, it was impossible not to smile back.
Still driving through Vermont’s backroads and feeling far away from a community where snowy smiles were currency, I felt my head shaking as I realized that I was grinning. And I think it’s pretty cool that being friends with Max still means smiling unexpectedly and feeling like you belong.
onward.
P.S. Read the beautiful tribute to Max that Izzy Lidsky wrote. If you’re able, there’s a fundraiser to help bring Max home from Japan and support his wife, Eliza.
If you enjoy reading my writing, I publish short reflections like this each day as part of my daily column, Kickturn.
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No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.
Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic , but it is quite true.Just live the moments ,follow your heart and intuition.Everything else is secondary.