People like me aren’t supposed to make it in this sport.
A single alarm rang out in that hallway as I put my kit on. It had been sounding for over a month, but I had to keep moving.
This is what I do. This is who I am. This is where I want to be.
Mile 3. The sun at high noon was punching down again. I was punching through the gears on a bike that didn’t really want to stay in any of them. The ghost in my shifter was pushing back worse that day, but I just shook my head. My legs were heavy, my mind was heavier, and the expectation of what more it was going to take to reach stability was becoming a team lift.
Suddenly, I heard more alarms. The control room decided to turn right and head back home when we would normally proceed left. I exited the trail at a traffic light and sought to power down at only mile 9 at a coffee shop.
I never have everything I need, but I can’t quit. I have to move forward.
The lights in the control room turned red. I started to flip switches and seek outside support.
I have help. This isn’t as out-of-control as it seems.
Three miles to get home, and then I could just try to breathe. But as I slowed down, the output was still climbing. I dragged myself up a sustained but shallow paved climb and begged myself not to stop in the middle of it. I got home, had a quick chat with a veteran in this field (whom we call “Coach”), and pulled out all of the control rods to bring myself back to baseline.
This too shall pass.
And then I melted down. All of the variables that had been wobbling for months came to blows and the control room abandoned ship.
The alarms all screamed in an ominous choir as the hallway filled with shouting I’ve heard before.
Pathetic. You’re kidding yourself. This was always going to happen. You’re too flawed. You’re not safe.
I made my way out and watched the walls of the powerful yet supremely fragile system I had built yell back,
I warned you.
I was unable to focus on anything else for the rest of the day. All I could hear were the echos of those alarms reminding me, again- you do not have enough.
_____
I am standing here staring at the graphite all over my roof.
As much as the bike gives me power in this life, I keep trying to leave all of the external factors that don’t suit the mission at the door when I swing a leg over. The internals are meticulously maintained and observed with a critical eye, so I’m still the one in control, right?
It doesn’t really work that way. It hasn’t yet mattered how finely tuned my interoception becomes; the world I inhabit does not reflect it.
And that defies the very ethos of ‘I will the machine.‘ It takes the sacredness of my autonomy and hands it back broken, with a card that says “Get well soon,” with not even a signature.
The shrapnel I’m feeling didn’t lodge itself in my flesh just from an acutely difficult summer, though. It’s sourced from when the reactor was built, left under-resourced, unsupported, its faults neglected- a life with parents that sought compliance even when they were wrong, a societal system that gaslights the unfortunate by preaching they can just work their way out, and a social structure that absolutely cannot sit comfortably with a truth-teller.
People like me aren’t supposed to make it in this sport; we’re supposed to be realistic. Keep our heads down and sacrifice ourselves for the optics. Spit-shine shoes. Don’t cause a scene because you’ll do anything if you want something badly enough.
Because if we don’t, we have to push ourselves beyond our physical and psychological limits, alone, in ways that are detrimental even to those without complex trauma.
And perhaps the most impossible mechanic of it all is
I just wasn’t built to be contained.
I will the machine. 