The Next Chapter

Hel­lo, 2017.
Hard to believe you’re here.
Not going to lie, I am more wary of what you have to offer than I have ever been in my entire life.
And yet…here we are.

I have been try­ing to write out my thoughts for weeks now — months real­ly, but it has felt like the most intense game of “whack-a-mole,” throw­ing a sen­tence at the page here and there in hopes of them all mag­i­cal­ly com­ing togeth­er. As if I was play­ing the most epic game of Mad Libs.

Recent­ly, I final­ly found time to sit down and real­ly write…only because I was side­lined with the flu and miss­ing a much antic­i­pat­ed life-plan­ning workshop.

The irony is not lost on me.

The end of 2016 took a turn for the chaot­ic, but the break in writ­ing is big­ger than that. Some­thing broke last year. Not a bone that needs time to mend or a wound that can be fixed with stitch­es. There was­n’t one sud­den acci­dent or moment of klutzy behav­ior that turned into a med­ical bill. This break was a slow, grad­ual splin­ter­ing. So snail-like, in fact, that it took me quite some time to fig­ure out it was bro­ken in the first place. Like frag­ile petals of a com­plex rose, the pieces fell off one by one, until all of a sud­den, it was no longer a rose.

As I draw clos­er to the 7 year anniver­sary of my dri­ven, ener­getic self tak­ing an unex­pect­ed turn from the race course to the couch, I think my petals may have all but fall­en off.

And I feel bare, con­fused, and unex­pect­ed­ly fragile.

As the years have sol­diered on, it has become hard­er and hard­er to tread water. After a while, my legs just can’t egg-beat­er kick in the same place much longer — they are tired of spin­ning in cir­cles, all while nev­er mov­ing an inch, and look­ing at the same thing day after day after day after day.

For what­ev­er rea­son, be it age, or the state of the coun­try, or the cir­cling of the cos­mos (cough cough, prob­a­bly the state of the coun­try), 2016 was a year of thought. Deep, hon­est, at times soul-crush­ing intro­spec­tion, that brought my typ­i­cal­ly even-keeled self to tears.

I’m not a crier, so this was more than a lit­tle bewil­der­ing to me, but I’m learn­ing that these weird rivulets of water that spo­rad­i­cal­ly appear on my cheeks can be cathar­tic, and even revealing.

Turns out my tears are not for what I have lost, rather they are because I AM lost. Some­where in the midst of being a med­ical and genet­ic anom­aly, my iden­ti­ty drift­ed fur­ther and fur­ther away from my des­per­ate­ly kick­ing legs.

And friends, after much cog­i­ta­tion, and yes, per­haps a few tears, I think it’s time to stop tread­ing water and get out of the damn pool.

Like a shat­tered mug, you can only glue it togeth­er so many times before it changes into a pen hold­er on your desk. The pieces are the same, but it serves a new pur­pose. It start­ed as one thing, but sur­pris­ing­ly changed to some­thing else.

I am not the same per­son I was 7 years ago.
I’ve changed.
I’ve changed in ways I nev­er could have imag­ined or expected.
The ele­ments of life that were my defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics have spent years on the hold list, and I think it’s time to move them into the archives and check out some­thing new.

Some­one recent­ly asked me what I liked to do for fun. I froze. As I stam­mered out some­thing prob­a­bly incom­pre­hen­si­ble, my mind was spin­ning with the fact that I have NO idea how to answer that question.

Uhh­hh, cook food that I don’t eat? Attend my hus­band and friends’ races and events? Add items to the gro­cery list while wear­ing athlesiure??

This nar­ra­tive is mine. I did­n’t choose it, but I get to write it, and tread­ing water with the same stag­nant hopes and dreams is a pret­ty bor­ing story.

Sev­er­al years ago, dur­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing time med­ical­ly, a friend gave me a bracelet that reads “Be Brave.” While deeply appre­ci­at­ed and thought­ful, the truth is that get­ting through med­ical times does­n’t seem brave to me. If I have to have surgery, I do it and fol­low the nec­es­sary steps to recov­er. If I end up side­lined by a new mal­func­tion­ing body part, I take time to adapt and heal the best I can. It’s not brave, it’s just doing what needs to be done, even when it’s not easy. I can fol­low a do and don’t list like my life depends on it…because it does.

But get­ting out of the pool and fac­ing the fact that I am nev­er going back to the life I left, in any way, shape, or form? Stand­ing up for what I believe in for myself and for my coun­try? Look­ing at the world through tired lens­es, and real­iz­ing that if I want change, it has to come from me?

That, my friends, is hard. I need a whole lot of brave there.

My fur­ry side­kick recent­ly hurt his toe, so much so that he could­n’t put any weight on it for a while. He nev­er cried or sulked, he mere­ly switched from run­ning around on 4 paws to run­ning around on 3. He did­n’t give a sec­ond thought to resum­ing his life with­out the use of one of his toes, he just got up and kept on liv­ing (all while his par­ents fran­ti­cal­ly tried to keep him “qui­et.”) Who knew a 7‑month-old pup­py could be so wise?

I don’t know what comes next, for me or for my coun­try, but I know that it’s up to me to find out. The choice is, and always has been, mine. It’s time to stop wait­ing and time to start doing. If I want to find a new pas­sion, I must be pas­sion­ate in my pur­suit to find it.

(Though let’s be clear that under­wa­ter bas­ketweav­ing bet­ter be done in warm water or I’m out of there.)

I know that if I want my world to be light, I have to be the light, and bring the light, and share the light. I can­not expect it to come to me. Even when it’s hard.

Espe­cial­ly when it’s hard.

It’s time to get out of the pool, friends.
I’ve got anoth­er chap­ter to write.

Be the light.
Be brave.