Pat calls it hanging like a bat. He’d call me bat-girl, but he knows I’d probably kick his ass if he did. Not that he’d be against that. He’s been wanting me to kick his ass for the last four years. But he also respects me, and he knows that the inversion table is not an exercise in frivolity. I hurt.
I hurt all the time now. It’s a culmination really, years of abuse combined with extreme trauma and a decade of general neglect. Car accidents? Check. Motorcycle accident? Check. Competition kickboxing? Check. A decade of training horses? Check. Two decades of construction? Check. Assorted accidents in between? Check, check. and check. I have a running tally of the number of times I’ve lost consciousness. It’s over 10.
I’m 38 and I should be in my prime. This is when most women peak. And I’m on the decline. Hard. It’s been practically free fall for the last year and while I know why, I don’t know how to stop the plunge. What I do know is that everything hurts. Physically sure, but also psychically and emotionally and spiritually. I’m not sure how I got here. I mean, I know what happened, but still, here? This? How did I come to this? Eight years ago I was a bonna-fide badass. And now? It takes me 6 or 7 seconds to just stand up. Think about that. That is a long time. A very long time.
I don’t even know where to start. So I’ll start with now. I have osteo-arthritis. Severe osteo-arthritis. It lives in my right hip and my lower back mostly. But sometimes, when I push it, I realize it exists elsewhere – my left knee, my right shoulder, my right wrist. That doesn’t stop me from pushing it. I feel the pain, and I incorporate it. It becomes part of who I am. I am a being made of pain and tenacity and fierceness and determination and pure hell. I am your worst nightmare and your best dream at the same time. Which is to say that I am my worst nightmare and my best dream, at the same time.
You don’t hurt this much without honestly earning it. I have earned it. Four notable car accidents. A very notable motorcycle accident. At least a dozen hard falls from various horses. And the kick-boxing… I was good at the kick-boxing. I was angry. I was determined. I was terrified. It made for an amazing primordial soup of emotion and motivation. Never downplay the motivation. Even now, when I know that it would hurt like hell to throw a serious round-house or a solid side-kick, I would not hesitate. You physically threaten me? I physically respond. It took nearly 6 years of training to get rid of the passive door mat. She got beat to oblivion. And it hurt. Not like this hurts now, it hurt less – it hurt temporarily. But it prepared me. This hurt now? This constant burning in my joints? This feeling like my bone will set the ligaments and tendons and muscles on fire and burn then until all I am is a silly holloween figure – a distorted skeleton taped to the front door, this feeling that makes every initial movement questionable? This is a feeling I can endure. Because I’ve endured worse. Much much worse.
The anger, I thought for a long time that it was gone. I couldn’t feel it anymore – it didn’t wake me up, it stopped motivating me to do what I was supposed to do… I couldn’t find it when I needed it. I thought I had burned it all up.
I hadn’t. There is still anger left.
It is more sophisticated anger. It resides in places of my psyche that I was sure were traumatized beyond use. Love? I was sure it was gone – that it was something I was no longer capable of. Yet here I am, ready to forgive someone who betrayed me to the very core in the name of love. And I don’t know if real love can survive that kind of betrayal. Does it just assimilate all the hurt and despair and sadness and turn it into some sort of latent positivity? Or is love really the positive reaction to a continuation of negative circumstances?
Maybe that sounds like a strange question, but then I bet you haven’t seen what I’ve seen. This is not ego talking, it is true despair. I’ve watched people choose to be homeless over giving up their pets, and I’ve despaired that they’ve been put in that situation. I’ve been forced to watch as people fall out of the social safety net $35 and $50 at a time, as though that amount is the difference between being able to afford safe and healthy shelter or being homeless. Have you ever counseled anyone in the nuance of couch surfing? Because I have. And I can because I know.
So I’m hanging like bat on my inversion table, my ankles throbbing dully in the distance, and all up-side-down in my line of sight is my senior high school yearbook. I’m swinging upside down to pull it from the shelf, and suddenly it is in my hands. I open to the first page, and it comes back to me, I did not pay for this yearbook. This is not a memory I curated for myself. This is a memory that someone curated for me.
My brother bought this book for me. It is difficult to think of now. I haven’t had a real discussion with either of my brothers in at least a decade. Neither of them approve of my current lifestyle – not that I care. I cannot afford to care. But still, I remember a childhood and an adolescence with people who have no idea who I am now. And it makes me sad. But the yearbook, the yearbook was a gift. One of a very few, but incredibly valuable. I worked on the year book all three years of high school. Yet I could never afford to buy one. My parents did not view a yearbook as a valid educational expense, and I never even thought to ask if this was something they would sponsor. In my sophomore and junior years I stole a book from the surplus pile. The advantage of being an integral part of the staff is that you got to know where they stashed the surplus. But my senior year… the timing didn’t work. By the time a book hit the surplus pile, graduation would have been over and nobody would be around to sign my book.
I didn’t know that my brother had bought a book for me until he presented it to me, complete with a dozen signatures. At the time I did not recognize the difficulty and the effort he made in getting this book and having it signed for me. Now I see something that has ghosted me all my life. A pattern of comments about my character and observations about my personality that, while youthful and a bit naive, are still chillingly accurate. I am who I was then, only with more self-confidence and more self-esteem, and more self-worth. I am who I wished I was then.
It is an amazing feeling to realize that you’ve become the person you fantasized about. It is a disturbing feeling to realize that you were that person two years ago and now you are an aging ghost of yourself.
I may be a ghost, but I am the stubbornest, most determined, most tenacious ghost you’ve ever seen.
The person that received that senior yearbook from her brother – signed by a combination of her and his friends, some of whom never met his sister in person, but who knew her from reputation well enough to sign her high-school yearbook – that person never even dreamed that she would be who she is.
I fear little. Chickens, and other barnyard fowl – for good reason – and emotional intimacy. I don’t trust easily. I fall in love rarely – only a couple of times in my 38 years. I used to be loose. Now it is too much effort. Nearly everything is too much effort. But this book…
I read it now and I realize what and asshole I was. I see what people actually thought of me – not just what I thought of myself. I see that I was desired, by more than one person, though I never knew it at the time. I see that I changed people’s lives for the better, though I probably did it for a selfish reason at the time. I see that I was the foundation of the person I would become.
Who am I? I am a person who can command the respect of executives and presidents and politicians and experts, and at the same time make these executives and presidents and politicians and experts feel so comfortable, so valued in my presence that they trust me. They trust me with more than I deserve.
I am someone who can tell an amazing story. I can make your heart ache. And I can do it while mine turns to stone. I can feel everything and nothing at exactly the same time. I am your worst enemy and your best friend. I’m an enigma that is splayed open like a dissected rodent – all my tendons and ligaments exposed, yet still shrouded in mystery. And if you think I’m being a little too generous with myself, ask those around me. Because generosity is not one of my faults, it is on of my strengths. And my description of myself is lacking… sorely lacking.
My hips are burning. My right more than my left, though I can feel both of them. I firmly believe no-one should ever feel their skeleton. It means something is truly wrong. But if you ask me now, I can tell you every detail of every pain, with a precision that would make a physician swoon. That doesn’t mean it will ever be right.
There are a hundred or more mistakes that I need to apologize for. A hundred more that require my thanks, or my forgiveness. I will not be that person that gauges the present by the past… except that I am, and I don’t yet know how to change. Change is not what frightens me now. Not much frightens me now. Except a petition for emotional valuation. Can I still feel? I ask myself every day.
Ryan, thank you. I never said it when it mattered. But I realize what you did. And I appreciate it. You are my brother, blood to blood. And despite everything and anything that comes between, I thank you. And I love you. As a brother. Because you are.
It is the first step of a long line of gratitude. We are naught but the culmination of those that have helped us. Who do you need to thank?
urbanhistori 