Working with Michelle

My time at SuBAMUH this week was very interesting and I think very insightful. I got to work with Michelle one-on-one, something I haven't gotten the opporunity to do until this week. She had been sick on Sunday when I came out and was still a little bit under the weather, so I felt bad but was still happy I was going to get to know her and learn her story. We chatted with Crissa a bit when I first arrived, and got to see the little bunny Crissa found when mowing the lawn. They both thought it was probably sick with tapeworms since it wasn't very active...sad because the thing was so darn cute! Michelle and I loaded up some old bed frames and a mattress and got in her truck to drive the stuff out to the local thrift store to drop off. It was actually quite a nice day out and a nice drive. Things are getting greener and more beautiful every week that I travel out to SuBAMUH. It is always such good heart-therapy to get out of Athens and away from the stress of school...as the weeks wind down though, it gets harder to forget everything I am running away from at school when I go out there.
Anyway, I always seem to go into "interview mode" while talking to people I don't know these days and I ask about a thousand questions. I was most interested in hearing Michelle's story, about why she moved out to SuBAMUH and how she decided that rural, intentional living was right for her. The abbreviated story was that she got fed up with the way things were, sold all her things, got a VW bus and started driving around the country staying at women's communities. Luckily she had the skills of a carpenter that helped her find work anywhere, but it was still so refreshing to hear that you don't have to follow the traditional "graduate from college, find a job, get married, have kids, work for the restofyourlife" pattern - you can be happy and live a fulfilling life outside of the grid and away from the patriarchy. I would say that Michelle is one of the more radical women I have talked to at SuBAMUH, or at least she is the first to really talk about her views on men with me, as she told me all about how she thinks men have a defective gene - sometime I have to agree with her, I think there is something wrong with the male species! When she came to SuBAMUH she was sick of men, sick of living around them and dealing with them and sick of the patriarchial society...so you can see how SuBAMUH and other intentional living communities for women appealed to her! I just loved hearing her story and seeing how she seems so happy and content with her life now that she has found her niche.
After dropping the stuff off at Re-Use Industry, Michelle and I went and picked up an apple tree for her neighbor's birthday. Michelle has a cabin on SuBAMUH that is halfway complete, but she is also building a house (from scratch I should add) off the land with her partner, who has a son. She does not want to give up SuBAMUH or her place there, so she is working on one place and then will tackle the other. After we got the tree we came back and I helped her weed a plot of land in her garden...talk about hard work. I have three giant, pulsing blisters on my hands! I used a hand-tiller (I think that is what it is called) and worked after Michelle left.
At one point, as I stood alone in the garden and readjusted my grip, I stoped and looked around and had almost a panic attack. What the fuck was I doing? I had about a million and a half things to do, and there I was standing in someone else's garden pulling weeds. What the fuck am I going to do with my life? I have a year left at college and instead of looking for a job or working to earn money, I am donating time at a women's only community...not a place I see myself living in the next few years. It was scary and all the sudden overwhelming, but I had to just take a deep breath and remember to live in the moment. Appreciate that I was doing more than typing, that I was outside working with the land and getting some physical exercise. I was breathing clean air and getting a moment to myself -rare when you live in a small apartment in a small college communtiy...then of course, it started to rain and I started to laugh....it was just one of those days I guess.