I Am the Maple

By Tracie Shibley

Julia is stuck in a place of desperation, instigated by mistakes that have hurt the people she loves most in the world. Even though her husband and their children have seemingly forgiven her, she cannot forgive herself. As she sits on a stone wall eighty feet above a concrete walking trail on a cold winter day, Julia is prepared to jump—until fate steps in and changes everything.

J. P. is a marathon runner who is suffering catastrophic injuries from a car accident. After he is told he cannot run again, he must rely on Julia, his physical therapist, to not only guide him through his physical challenges, but also his emotional obstacles. When she hands J. P. an inspiring note at the end of his therapy, will it change how he views himself and his life? Through struggles of illness, abandonment, poverty, loss, and failure, the lives of Julia, J. P., and five others intersect as each are shown a glimmer of light in their darkest days and then use that light to ignite the flame in others.

I Am the Maple is the inspiring tale of friendship, love, and the strength of the human spirit as destiny leads seven people to cross paths and help rescue each other from the darkness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jun 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781982273101

Tracie Shibley

Tracie Shibley resides in Ohio with her husband, three children, and pooch. She is a poet at heart, and a voracious daydreamer. Her favorite things to do include spending as much time in nature as possible, laughing often, and frolicking around inside her own imagination more than she is willing to admit. She works as a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist because she loves food and nutrition as well as spending time in the kitchen. In her day to day life, she looks for opportunities to connect with those around her in a positive way. Tracie writes from her heart with a deep sense of empathy. Her intention is to spread joy and love because life is too short for anything else.

Book preview

Julia

CHAPTER 1

I GREW UP IN BALMY southern Florida, where the trees and flowers breathe and have a pulse all year long. We moved to the Midwest over thirty years ago, and I still resent Old Man Winter for the way he saunters in with a smirk and a paintbrush to splash his matte-gray dreariness across nature’s colorful canvas. I’ve fought against this change of season every single year, and every single year it serves me up a snotty sinus infection with a side of bronchitis. There’s a diagnosis for those of us who grieve sunshine—it’s called seasonal affective disorder, or SAD. I can honestly say that I appreciate the awful perfection in the acronym. Mother Nature is a deliciously brilliant lady.

I used to have this awful recurring nightmare that I was stranded outdoors during a snowstorm. The only shelter available was a cabin in the distance, visible only by a dim yellow light shining through a window. I would push through heavy drifts with all my strength as snow soaked my cheeks and gusty winds tore through me. Eventually, exhaustion would lead to frustration, and frustration would lead to defeat when the light from inside went out and the cabin disappeared into the darkness. The moment the light went out, I gave up hope, and that’s what ultimately led to my demise. I died, alone in the cold, because I couldn’t find my way through the dark, and it turns out that has become quite a metaphor for my life.

41882.png

As I sat on top of a bridge’s stone wall, eighty feet above a concrete walking trail on the coldest day of the year, irony sat beside me. What I’d feared for so many years, it turned out, would become my fate. I wasn’t going to pretend like I wasn’t terrified because I was paralyzed with fear. My chest felt heavy, and my stomach felt like it was doing backflips. I looked down at my snow boots and nervously swung my legs to and fro, as I tried to focus on anything that might stop me from throwing up.

I’d thought I’d mentally prepared myself. I’d played it out so many times in my head, down to every detail and every possible outcome. I had known exactly how high the stone wall was before I’d arrived; I’d looked up to the top many times from the walking trail below. The problem was, I’d never looked down to the bottom from the top before this moment.

I couldn’t stop my hands from trembling, so I took a few deep breaths in and out, to try and help me relax and focus. I wiped the tears from my cheeks and started second-guessing everything. I told myself that I needed to get it together because I couldn’t let fear win again. The longer I waited, the harder it would be to follow through with it. If I allowed myself to worry about the pain, I’d chicken out. I’d done my research: it would be over quickly, and if there was any pain, it wouldn’t last long. I had my phone in my pocket just in case something went wrong. I couldn’t imagine how awful it would be to lie out there injured and suffering for hours in the cold. No one ever came this deep into the woods in the winter because the trails and walkways were covered with snow and ice. My family wouldn’t miss me until dinnertime.

41879.png

Today is the day—it’s now or never, I told myself. Two inches of fresh snow had fallen the night before, and three inches had fallen the night before that. It was perfectly slippery, so no one would question that it was an accident. My husband would be able to use the life insurance money to put a new roof on the house, pay off debts, and put money away for college. When people asked what had happened to me, the story would go something like this: I went for a walk in the woods like I always did and slipped on a patch of ice. I lost my balance and stumbled into and over the brick wall to an eighty-foot drop. It all happened so fast that I didn’t even have time to realize what was going on. I died instantly and painlessly. I’d spent hours thinking up every possible scenario that might cause the least amount of trauma for my family.

I’d often wondered if I was crazy, or at least not altogether sane. I used to believe that anyone capable of taking their own life had to be completely out of their mind or caught up in a state of frenzied hysteria, but I didn’t feel out of my mind or frenzied and hysterical. I was fully aware of the magnitude of what I was about to do and the unfortunate ripple effect it would cause.

No one would ever believe that I’d killed myself, if for some reason my manner of death was called into question. I had done a pretty good job of pretending to be okay. I had never wanted to burden anyone with my dark and unhappy thoughts, so I smiled often and laughed a lot to mask my suffering. I had been diagnosed with anxiety and depression soon after my father died. The medications had helped at first, but a few pills were no match for the circumstances of my life, so I’d decided to stop taking them. Life could be difficult at times, and for me, it had become unbearable. I felt lonely and invisible. I felt disconnected. I felt worthless in ways that mattered, and I couldn’t handle the pain of any of that anymore.

I used to wish that I could turn my feelings off or at least dial them down, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that very well, at least not in a healthy way. I’d always been a sensitive person as well as an empath; I felt my own emotions intensely as well as the emotions of others. Most everyone has some degree of empathy, but having empathy and being an empath are not the same. I’d never claimed that my sensitivity or empathy made me special in any way; in fact, I thought they had a lot to do with why I was on top of that stone wall.

I felt the emotions of others who were physically near me as specific sensations in my body. Sometimes I could avoid it, but most often, I couldn’t. When I was a kid, my parents used to tell me that I was overly sensitive and emotional, as if those traits were flaws. They loved me, but they didn’t understand me. I had been a genuinely happy kid growing up, but when I felt sad, I could become extremely dark. As a teen, I had discovered alcohol’s numbing effects on my emotions, so it had become my medicine of choice. Problem was, just like anything else that’s addictive would have, it lost its efficacy until I upped the ante. It took bouncing against rock bottom for me to finally get the help that I needed. I finally got sober, and that was something I’d never imagined possible.

One of the things I learned is that most of us hide who we really are from the world because we’re afraid we’ll be ridiculed or rejected. It takes courage to be real and authentic. Life would be amazing if we all had that kind of courage.

I discovered my love of daydreaming when I was a young child. I often imagined myself sailing across a sea of diamonds as the sun reflected its light on millions of caps of moving water, and this brought me joy. When I was anxious, I imagined the warmth of the sun on my face as the salty winds blew through my hair, and it brought me peace. When I felt small and insignificant, I stood on mountaintops with outstretched arms, and I was as big as the universe. When I felt lonely, I imagined flying among a flock of starlings as the sun and moon shone together in the same sky, and I wasn’t alone anymore.

When I was in high school, I used to imagine what my future would be like. I dreamed about becoming an author who wrote stories that inspired people. I wanted to use my voice for good. I imagined living in a charming little beachfront house with blue shutters. Every morning, I’d wake to the sound of waves crashing on the shore. Every afternoon, I’d swim in the sea with dolphins and write underneath the shade of a palm tree. My life would be filled with passion, laughter, adventure, dogs, and ice cream. I carried that beautiful daydream in my heart most of my life, until one day I could no longer find it because it was worlds away with a rusty padlock on it.

41877.png

This morning I had dropped the kids off at school and driven to the woods, as I often did. I’d been coming to these woods for years. I typically came to run or walk on the paths or trails, but sometimes I came just to write or sit and reflect. There was nothing wrong with this specific day. I mean, I hadn’t chosen this date for any reason; it was just that it had taken me a long time to get my nerve up. I needed to shake off the fear and remind myself why I was there and what had brought me to this place of desperation.

The truth was, I had fucked up in the worst way. I had flipped my ordinary, everyday life upside down when I made mistakes that hurt the people I loved most in this world, and I hated myself for it. I had begged my family for forgiveness many times, and though they’d given it to me every time I asked, I couldn’t seem to forgive myself.

I had damaged my relationships with my husband and my kids and lost many friendships. Brian and I had stayed married, but I couldn’t imagine that he’d ever be able to love me the way he once had. My kids had refused to speak to me for almost six months, and once they’d finally started interacting with me again, they’d remained distant and cold. We’d come far, but I was so full of shame that I was afraid to be a wife to my husband or a parent to my children, and that was a helpless feeling. I wasn’t sure they’d ever respect me again, and that ripped my heart out. I’d lost all the friends we’d raised our children together with.

Once word got out about what I’d done, the people I’d thought were my friends had pushed me right out of their circle for good. It hurt me deeply that not one of them had cared enough to reach out or be there for me when I needed them most, but I understood how much I’d let them down. There weren’t enough apologies to fix what I’d done. I was a villain in everyone’s eyes, and I feared that would never change.

I had started drinking a lot when the kids were little. I couldn’t wait for Friday night to open a bottle of wine or crack open a few beers. Every social occasion or girls’ night out was another excuse to get boozy. I sat at baseball games sipping vodka tonics and at the country club pool and bar every weekend in the summer with a drink in my hand. It was a regular routine for my husband to have to come pick us up and take us home because I’d overindulged. He used to make passive-aggressive comments about my having a drinking problem, and I could tell that he was genuinely concerned. Eventually, his concern had led to anger and resentment.

I didn’t think there was anything wrong with my social drinking. I deserved to relax and unwind after a long week of work and taking care of the kids. I hated when Brian made jokes about it. But once I started to hide my drinking and use it as a crutch to help me get through tough or uncomfortable situations, or sometimes just to get through the day, I knew he was right. I was taking shots in the afternoon and pouring straight vodka into water bottles to carry with me throughout the day. I stopped at the bar every day after work for a few drinks, and I was getting blackout drunk on the weekends.

41873.png

I was one of the eight volunteers who worked on the school’s annual fall fundraiser committee. Our fall festival was one of the biggest events of the year for both our school and our community in terms of revenue, and it was always a great time for the entire family. I became good friends with my daughter’s music teacher, Rick, who was one of the committee members; we hit it off right away. Rick was sweet and easy to talk to. We shared a passion for music and writing as well as the same dark sense of humor. The group of us often went out for drinks or dinner after meetings, and sometimes it ended up being just the two of us.

Over the years, my friendship with Rick developed into something much deeper. There was a lot of sexual tension between the two of us, but we didn’t act on it. We both tried to pull back at times, and we discussed breaking things off since we knew it couldn’t go anywhere, but we were too invested in one another and couldn’t say goodbye.

Two years ago, the Friday night of the festival was a huge success. We brought in a lot more money than we’d expected, and the weather was perfect. By Saturday, we were ready to celebrate and have a little fun. I was drinking wine in the afternoon and mixing vodka and soda by the evening.

Later, I wouldn’t remember many things from that evening before it all fell apart, except for the look on my daughter’s face when I stumbled and fell on my way to the restroom. She was humiliated, and because I was smashed, I thought it was funny. Her friends were laughing, but she had tears in her eyes. After I heard someone say, Your mom is really drunk, I apologized to her. She pulled away from me and yelled at me for embarrassing her. I also told my husband to get away from me when he tried to convince me to leave and go home with him. He was so angry with me when he left. He texted me to call him when I was finished, so that he could come back to get me, but I didn’t text him back.

Rick offered to drive me home as we carried the last four cash boxes into the school to lock them in the safe in the main office. Inside, I followed him around the building as he checked to make sure the back and side doors were locked. I was doing my best to keep up with him as he moved quickly through the hallways barely lit by exit signs. He told me he needed to make one last stop to grab something out of his office, so I followed him into the room and plopped down on the soft cushioned chair in the corner. He laughed at the way I sat down and asked me if I was okay as he bent over to reach for something on the bottom shelf of his bookcase. I chuckled and told him I was just admiring the view.

As soon as I realized what I had said out loud, I felt my face flush and began to laugh hysterically. I told him that I was sorry and explained that I was feeling a little tipsy.

He stood and looked at me with a flirtatious expression and asked, You sure you didn’t mean that?

I smiled and answered, Oh, I meant it. I’m just embarrassed that I said it out loud.

We both laughed, and as I stood up to leave, he moved in closer toward me. I started to stumble a little, and he put his arm around my back and leaned into me. His face was so close to mine that I could smell his breath. He looked at me with a grin and then kissed me. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t want him to; I had imagined what it would be like to kiss him for a very long time. The passion between us was so intense that we allowed it to take over, and the next thing I knew, we were having sex.

After we were finished, I started feeling around in the dark for my clothes. I pulled my jeans on quickly and threw my sweater over my head. My bra and panties were against the opposite wall, so I shoved them into my purse. I couldn’t find my shoes, and I was headed toward the door to turn on the light switch when I stumbled into the desk and knocked something on the floor. Rick turned on his desk lamp, and we both started laughing as I pointed out that his underwear was on backwards. We were giggling when Rick suddenly got quiet. He shushed me and moved over to the window behind his desk to look out. He told me he’d heard someone laughing outside, and he thought maybe we were being watched. I giggled and told him that he was paranoid and that it was good that he’d turned the light off before we got naked.

The drive home was a little bit awkward; neither one of us knew what to say to one another. He turned the music up a little louder and said nothing until he pulled into my driveway. He looked at me with a somber expression and quietly said, Julia, I, uh, I care about you a lot, and I don’t want you to feel regret for what just happened. I was, um, I enjoyed that, with you—it was great. Thank you.

I smiled at him and said, It really was great. I care about you too. No worries. Thanks for the ride home. Talk soon. I kissed my finger and held it to his lips and then stepped out