The One Relationship That Never Leaves

I have struggled with relationships for most of my adult life.

Borderline personality disorder. Anxiety. Depression. Those words explain some of it, but they do not fully capture what it feels like to live inside my own head. I feel everything deeply. Connection can feel like oxygen. Rejection can feel like suffocation.

I have loved hard. I have overextended. I have tried to fix, prove, hold on. I have also walked away when staying would have meant abandoning myself. Growth has not meant I stopped feeling intensely. It has meant I finally learned how to feel without blowing up my own life in the process.

What took me years to understand is this:

The most stable relationship in my life has not been with another person.

It has been with nature.

When my mind spirals, the trail does not spiral with it. When I feel abandoned, the trees do not withdraw. When I feel like I am too much, the mountains do not shrink back. The outdoors does not require me to perform or regulate anyone else’s emotions. It just asks me to show up.

There is something honest about stepping onto a trail. The rules are simple. Walk. Breathe. Pay attention. The forest does not care about my attachment style. The river does not judge my past. The sunrise does not need reassurance.

Nature does not leave.

I have had nights where anxiety wrapped around my chest so tightly I could barely think straight. And then I would go outside. Sometimes just a short walk. Slowly my breathing would match my steps. My thoughts would stretch out instead of pile on top of each other. The noise would soften.

When depression hits, everything feels heavy and gray. But standing under an open sky reminds me that my sadness is not the entire horizon. The wind still moves. The sun still rises. The world keeps going, and somehow that steadiness steadies me.

Being outdoors makes me small in the best possible way. My emotions are intense, yes. But they are not the universe. They are weather. And weather passes.

I have struggled in love. I have been hurt. I have hurt others. I have tried to build forever with people who were not meant to stay. I have felt the familiar tension between wanting closeness and wanting to protect myself. Out on a trail, that tension quiets. I am not negotiating, proving, or bracing for impact. I am just moving forward, one step at a time.

Training for Everest has mirrored this part of my life. Slow progress. Heavy breathing. Some days strong. Some days exhausted. But always forward. Every incline session, every long hike, every drop of sweat has reminded me that I can carry weight and still keep going.

Nature has taught me regulation in a way therapy alone never could. You cannot rush a mountain. You cannot force a river. You cannot demand a sunrise. You adapt. You endure. You let things unfold in their own time.

The forest has seen me angry, grieving, confused. The trail has absorbed tears no one else saw. It has never once told me I was too intense or too sensitive. It has never threatened to leave.

That consistency matters when your nervous system has been wired for chaos.

I used to believe healing meant finding the right person. That if I could just secure the perfect relationship, everything inside me would finally settle.

Now I know healing has looked different.

It has looked like early mornings and sore legs. Quiet lakes. Dirt under my fingernails. Driving my Jeep toward a trailhead instead of toward drama. Choosing movement over rumination.

Nature does not complete me. It reminds me that I am already whole.

I may continue to learn hard lessons about attachment, boundaries, and love. That part of me is still evolving.

But the mountains are not going anywhere. The trails will still be there tomorrow. The sun will rise whether my heart feels heavy or light.

And the relationship I have with the earth beneath my feet is the one that has never failed me.

It is the one I will always have.