I will the machine.

Tag: life

  • I Bought Myself Flowers

    And then, I let them wilt. I walked into the house one day, having forgotten to top the vase off with water, and saw them drooped on my desk. That was enough for me to come apart again.

    I filled up the vase, and half of them came back by the next morning. I’ve been staring at the cuttings half standing, half collapsed, for days.

    Dear reader, this is a heavier post than usual. I haven’t written it yet but the fact that I’ve hesitated to do so foreshadows it. If you aren’t ready, just take the metaphor my hydrangeas left for us and come back later (or don’t, it’s okay). But if you want to come closer, keep reading (I need that).

    _____

    I want to bring you a success story one day. You might argue that I already am one, but to let that be enough, isn’t. One of my strengths is that I won’t wait until I’ve arrived to show you the path. That means I’m opening myself up to being labelled as “negative,” or “stuck in the past,” but I have a feeling those of you who keep returning to this blog aren’t that type of people. I also have a sense that when titles like My Power Grows garner the most reads, you’re hoping that opening those posts will finally lead to a theme of “onward, and upward.”

    And then you read the opening lines and realize the dichotomy I live inside of- the more I lose, the more I realize how I’ve even gotten here against all odds.

    My body is screaming at me to stop all of it.

    The bike accomplishments do not show it, but I have been just barely making it since I was about 13. That was when I started to subconsciously track the deterioration of both my physical environment, and my psychological one. Not long after, I started to step into the fray in a futile attempt to stop it. I was vocal, proactive, and far too aware. And as the physical and emotional violence in my house intensified, I rose with it.

    “It’s hard to believe it was that bad. You’re not screwed up enough.” That is one of the hardest-hitting statements anyone has ever said to me.

    And because I walk into rooms noticeably wired differently, but coherent and exacting with my language, I get dismissed.

    “You’re strong. Brilliant. You can do anything. You’ve got this.”

    You’re excusing yourself to leave me to my own devices, again, when you say that to me.

    I don’t want to hear how strong I am anymore. I know that. I need you to hear what it costs to be that way.

    I lost the job I loved this past week because I couldn’t keep up anymore and they expected me to just pretend the best I could. It’s another ding in my visibly jumpy resume that will make finding stable work a difficult task, again.

    I fought like hell to stay reliable for them, and for me. I couldn’t drive without risking getting stranded with an impossibly expensive vehicle to tow. I rode 80-damn-miles every day when I could and risked the drive when I couldn’t. After only three weeks I couldn’t hold the pace and my van’s wheel couldn’t hold air. The last day I rode, I couldn’t even crawl the last ten miles home.

    I’ve been so depleted I’ve had to hide to avoid snapping at people. I try to be on my bike still because that has been my means of survival in so many ways. The bike is my liberty, my conduit. And I’m not talking about gentle rides to coffee or jaunts down the trail. I need to start dismantling myself at 5:00 a.m. and be reconstructed by 5:00 p.m. at least a few times a summer. The only other habit in my life that has been around for eleven years is my ability to tell you how sacred that is to my processing.

    But my body and mind can’t meet me there like this. I’m terrified. I’m stuck. I’ve been here before, but it’s worse.

    I have exceeded the threshold of what one person can hold. I’ve been shot down when I try to go beyond it. Over and over.

    Innumerable times since my years in that hell of a house.

    I’m stalled not just because of this recent chain of events, but from the mass collective of ones that I’ve had to carry because to resolve them means being able to rest in safety I cannot find.

    And on top of it all, people still don’t fully believe me.

    And because they don’t believe me,

    “You’re strong. You can do this.”

    I bought myself flowers because I wanted to set them on my desk as a gesture of grace for what I’ve had to endure.

    And then I thought about if the first time I’ll ever be fully met is over the flowers at my funeral.

    _____

    I don’t mean to sound ungrateful for the supporters that I have had over the years. I hope you understand this isn’t about you.

    It’s just that people like me need more than short-term intervention. We need structural security on ground that does not move beneath us. My resolve does not make me better at carrying this.

    It just makes the consequence less visible. Even when I can so easily tell you- I am not okay.

    I wonder what I could be if I wasn’t spending so much energy just trying to keep myself alive. What I have to lose now are my pursuits on the bike, and myself. The floors beneath those are making noise now, too.

    A couple of my readers have sponsored me to ride to a race next weekend. If I can’t recover, I’m going to let them down.

    I’m going to let me down.

    I’ve fought so hard and didn’t stop for water.

    And so, I wilt.

  • Projection, Your Honor (Pt. II)

    If you don’t like the image of yourself in the mirror, then you aren’t going to like me going to like you.

    “Blind Justice”. Photo © Ben Creasy

    The court will recall that this trial is ongoing.

    _____

    Statement of Record– Disrepair Service

    I was racing with an organized amateur cycling team in Kentucky when the head mechanic of our shop sponsor suggested getting me a job there. They said a female presence would be great for business.

    They insisted.

    They were exuberant, supportive, and witty at races and practices. They were the first point-of-contact when any of us needed parts, advice, or a fix. They remembered my name was spelled with a ‘G.’ They recognized my potential, and thought I’d be a good fit.

    Once I was hired, they rarely ever said my name correctly again.

    They nicknamed me “Gina” (hard ‘I’), and regularly addressed me as “Snatch.”

    No can do, mate.

    I quickly requested that they just call me Genna, or ‘G.’ They flinched a little.

    “I was just playing with you,” they said, but obliged anyway. Our rapport seemed to return to normal.

    One day, I went into work with a finely-striped, red, white, and blue shirt. They said “You’re patriotic today.” They would regularly comment on my clothing choices and accessories in a way that was… specific.

    They are paying a lot of attention to me.

    I still have that shirt, and never wear it without remembering this minor interaction.

    Inevitably, their jokes continued. I started to vocalize this pattern to everyone else in the shop. Most of them said “Yeah, they’re like that.”

    Another said “Yeah… they’re like that.” This person and I soon learned that we could communicate through eye-contact alone. I noticed the head mechanic’s behavior would escalate when this person was gone. After this mirror, I asked the owner to meet in confidence, and explained my discomfort with the head mechanic’s behavior. “I’ve already told them myself that I don’t like this kind of “humor,” I said.

    “I’ll talk to them,” they assured me.

    The behavior continued over the days to follow, so I went to the office again.

    “I don’t know what happened to you in your past, but you need to work on not being so sensitive,” the owner said.

    Irrelevant.

    One day, the head mechanic walked from the repair area to the retail store, where I was, with a box labelled with the ‘Spank’ brand-name. They wrote “dat ass” underneath it, and presented it in front of me… and a customer.

    Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, take a moment to chuckle, gag, or whatever else that incites.

    That’s funny on it’s surface, but not in its purpose.

    I immediately walked back into the owner’s office with no more reservation.

    “If there are not going to be consequences for their behavior, then I need to leave,” I announced.

    “Okay,” they said, staring blankly at me.

    That’s… it?

    And so, the evening after I walked out, I made a Facebook post outlining the experience I had behind the scenes while the world went on expressing appreciation for “friendly support and good deals” out the front. The owner called me and left a voicemail telling me to take the post down,

    and the head mechanic sent me a long, incoherent text threatening to kill themselves.

    I call a witness to the stand.

    For weeks, at least, another person in the local bike community sent me various posts through Instagram DM. They trended either thought-provoking, or funny. But, they were only posts, not actual messages, and there were no recurrent themes or patterns between them that I could determine. I ignored them.

    You’re going to have to tell me why you’re here.

    It continued. Sporadically, and quietly. It didn’t increase, nor taper.

    One evening, I finally replied out of sheer lonliness. And without much ado, they began to explain that they had heard about my falling out with that shop. They also told me that this head mechanic had called other shops in the area in the aftermath, warning them all not to hire me. I caused drama.

    And this person just… didn’t buy it.

    They sent me a document they had found. A record.

    A criminal record. One count of domestic assault, another of impersonating a peace officer. They were on parole.

    I got word that this mechanic incurred a divorce, lost custody of their young child, and moved to Alaska in the years to follow.

    The individual who believed me is now one of the most important people in my life.

    Final observation: Combustible material incorrectly labelled as irritant. Please avoid the area.

    _____

    Final Statement of Record: A Quandary

    Previously submitted documentation- If You Can’t Say Something Honest

    For those members of the jury who were not present for prior testimony:

    This individual reached out to me about this blog as a resonant reader. We developed a rapid connection, but through admission delayed until after I began to ask questions, I came to learn this person was perusing divorce but still living with their spouse. Throughout my life I had learned to anticipate “the catch” when finding a job opportunity, love interest, or means of assistance that seemed too good to be true. I noticed a subtle side-stepping of boundaries, omission where words should have provided clarity, and an enthusiasm that did not match the realism of the situation.

    I told them I was no longer willing to participate, and wished them well.

    The silence to follow didn’t sit the way it usually does.

    As I’ve demonstrated, I will walk away. I don’t fight, I don’t defend, and I don’t refute. I let people show me who they are, and collect my evidence over time. If something doesn’t sit right, I don’t respond right away- I just start watching.

    The body knows it first. I trust it, so when I felt it start to shut this person out, I didn’t interrogate it any further.

    But oh, how I interrogated me.

    In these circumstances, the stages of detaching are grief, but also…

    satisfaction. I’ve stood up for myself even at a cost.

    I didn’t get either this time. Actually, I received this soft- featherlike tap on my shoulder that suggested that the cost here might not be just temporary discomfort.

    They didn’t intend to hurt me.

    Stay with me. This isn’t enough.

    But I asked if they would be open to a phone call. They said yes. I asked when. They said as soon as possible.

    During that call, any emphasis on “intent” I made certain to steer back to “impact.” And while we were examining that together, they told me they felt “burned at the stake,” by what I wrote about them, but also,

    “You’re right.”

    Not submissively. Not to please me. It was a realization of effect.

    They proceeded to open up to me, sincerely rather than performatively (the difference here can be heard), about everything they were trying to manage all at once while feeling trapped. Decisions cause ripples. Honesty is not a sterile procedure no matter how hard I have tried to make it one.

    They said “You’re intense, so intense,” but also

    I still want to be close to this.

    Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, most people run from me. They fight, tell me I’m the problem, or disappear, all for using my words to narrate their behavior back to them. They rarely stay long enough to understand that on the other side of the scale is a quieter humanity that just wants to not be lied to anymore.

    But here on the phone was not another person who was trying to hide themselves, but was weighing the cost of exposure in a period of major overwhelm and overlooking the impact of omission entirely.

    I want to allow people to be different from those I have known.

    And so, I walked back. Not with erasure of the problem, but with agency over what I was willing to accept circumstantially. I rendered verdict because I was uncomfortable with things that were absolute red flags, but then I asked me “why?”

    And I asked them, “why?”

    And the fog lifted.

    Protection, Your Honor.

    Final observation: Ongoing.

    But, there’s one more thing.

    There’s someone in the jury who knows something.

    Is it you?

    Will you take the stand?

    Will you look yourself in the eyes?

    And will you lower your shield?

    Or will you raise your sword?

    _____

    I rest my case.

  • My Power Grows

    I can’t keep up.

    I am presently living rent-free in a house that I will have to leave next month. I am waiting for new wheels for my van that are on backorder, and currently have to air up a brand-new tire with my bike pump every morning if I want to drive. I did this all last week because I rely on my bike and body to solve problems pretty often, and after three weeks of that, it said stop. So, ten minutes of pushing air into that tire it was.

    Yesterday, I had my 90-day review at work. It shook me that it was already here for two reasons; one, I love this place and time roared by.

    And two, it marked three months since I had to get out of another abusive environment where I at least had a little bit of logistical stability, and traded it for freedom that meant everything else was going to be very, very hard again.

    I expected some critique from this review. I got it.

    I also got an effective-immediately cut to part-time hours only. Despite consistent praise from my coworkers and the woman I was a direct assistant to, for not only catching on fast but also riding 80-mile days to work to keep showing up reliably (Strava for proof), I wasn’t measuring up.

    It had nothing at all to do with the consistent conversations in the hall that major account holders had paused orders and that we had become “unusually slow.” I’d never consider that this place would blind-side me with some performance deficit on my part to conceal a cost-cutting maneuver. Maybe one of the many other places I had worked that operated under a deceptive status-quo would handle it that way, but certainly not this place that I was looking forward to staying loyal to, finally.

    I cried in the conference room, while I drove home, late into last night, as I slithered out of bed, and pumped up that tire to get coffee this morning.

    I’m back to writing this afternoon. I am coming back here more often as the pressure builds, and pausing bigger pieces to “we interrupt this program,” again. The three pillars of support, housing security, gas-guzzling vintage metal toaster vehicle, and now my already meager income, are all broken. I’m leaning heavily on the scaffolding now.

    I have a brand-new Patreon to work in tandem with this blog, so subscribers who want to support my stability while I swing this sword at multiple problems at once can support me monetarily. Don’t worry- my blog posts will ALWAYS be free to read, regardless of whether or not you choose to subscribe. I can’t in good faith put writing that people have told me helps them behind a pay wall, but supporters can help me stay upright enough to keep spending time on it. My Venmo is also linked in the Support tab above this post, if you’d prefer a one-time donation. If you want to help, I am finally letting you. As Aaro puts it, “I shouldn’t take that option away from people.”

    _____

    I want to get back to riding for ambition. Summer just started, and it’s already slipping through my fingers. I have to ride for utility even more now that I’ll still have to be at work five days a week (while I look for other, closer opportunities; I won’t be defeated) for significantly less money (I am dramatically more fuel-efficient).

    I am not a “look at the bright side” person. I am a “look at the reality of this situation, even if it’s through tears” person. The reality right now is… the shit sandwich has just been served with a side of fries. My history of “if I am not enough, I am not safe,” means blows like this amplify this terrible hiss in the back of my mind that says I am not allowed to succeed. I was at my limit weeks ago; it just got deeper. I have the resourcefulness to solve it all, but time is not on my side and money is even less so. It’s a downward spiral on a staircase of crumbling sandstone steps.

    Meanwhile, the sound of clanging metal ascends.

  • If You Can’t Say Something Honest

    I will know.

    I will cut off the elephant’s head

    and mount it to my wall

    there is no tension, or unspoken truth

    left standing in this hall

    The greatest devastation in my life actually isn’t not having parents. It isn’t that I’m rootless and uncertain of my immediate future, consistently. It’s not the constant coming and going of people that is a fairly universal experience, but perhaps a more detrimental one when you don’t meet them with a protective mask.

    It’s that those people are in and out because they expect me to step through a door they won’t walk out of themselves, and won’t tell me. Most would prefer to wrap themselves in their dissonance so securely that they aren’t fully conscious that its harm still comes from what they won’t say. It’s cold outside, and it’s uncomfortable.

    And I find myself a loner in every space because I can’t live that way.

    “Your blog is definitely resonating with me. I appreciate your honesty and transparency as we need more of that these days. Makes me not feel alone.”

    I receive a message like this once or twice per post. I answer these with a full willingness to connect rather than a passive “thank you,” because it matters to me.

    This time, that reply led to a connection with someone that, upon first impression, seemed as willing to let me know them as I am. I’ve experienced it before- you put two people like that in the same arena and the show moves at warp speed. He drove two hours to visit me, and the energy was just as I had hoped it would be.

    All of the week to follow was ceaseless banter and vulnerability. I was wary of that because I had seen this used by a manipulator in my past as a way to get me attached so that I’d be more likely to tolerate the toxic behaviors to come later. But I allow people to be different than those I have known, and leaned in with my eyes open.

    During the course of our conversations, I was clear that my life was messy, and unpredictable. I had a habit of just… having enough and leaving relationships, jobs, states even. And he told me he was in the middle of some legal matters to which I collected enough context and asked- were you married?

    He was. It wasn’t until later that it clicked that he still is. But the context mattered, and I stayed present because part of valuing transparency is allowing for the mess it always reveals. What I didn’t do was lose my discernment.

    Fairly impulsively, he decided to come visit again the next weekend. I was on the phone with him on my drive home from work that Friday when he talked indirectly about how he really needs his own space at home, and so I was forced to ask- wait, do you still live together? The pause on the other side had already answered for him, but he admitted that to me too.

    But only after I had asked. He explained it away and we hung up the phone. I chewed on that for a little while but the softness I had was already dishonored. The lightness in my step was gone, just like that.

    I called him again after he had begun the drive my direction. I said, “Before you get too far from home, I think you should turn around. I’m not comfortable with this.”

    He explained it away again, and kept driving. And in the freeze of wanting to be gracious, but not walked all over, I let him show up. Because don’t I know the complication of being stuck somewhere toxic, fully checked out in all ways except physical. I understood the deep need for somebody safe, and it’s a privilege that because of my writing, people feel safe with me.

    But I was never on board with being someone’s escape when I wanted something sustainable. I am not an emotional crash pad just because I am open. And despite another awesome weekend with a person that matched my emotional fluency, I still found the incongruence between action and word. He spoke respect, but still drove to me despite my asking him to turn around. He didn’t disclose major information about himself despite his admiration for my honesty. He still danced past a couple other boundaries and wrote it off as play. He opted out of uploading a ride we did together on Strava despite saying it was “silly to worry about” being seen with me. Even a joke about “are you going to write about me too?” was a subtle tell.

    And none of that is actually, truly honest. And so, I do the thing I’m so painfully well-practiced at now- I walked away.

    That was yesterday. I’m writing about it because people either need to understand this, or feel understood. It takes me so little time to decide that a potential relationship isn’t built on anything stable even when my emotions haven’t accepted it, and I went from “let’s talk more about this,” to “this isn’t going to work,” inside 45-minutes. It’s that sword-brandishing, automatic pilot that keeps me safe when I haven’t fully digested what’s happening in front of me.

    Today is the sad and angry part. The part where I’m showing my teeth again because another person came to me, and still didn’t come fully as themselves because they thought I might walk away.

    But the kindest thing you can do for someone you feel something for is give them their freedom to make that choice. A mask is still deceptive even if it only frames the eyes. I stand a chance of standing next to you in the middle of your storm if you show me exactly where you are.

    But I can’t, if you won’t.

    Let me.

    _____

    My next post, ‘Projection, Your Honor: Learning to Trust the Part of You that Knows,’ deconstructs the subliminal messaging I learned to read in toxic dynamics in my past. The intuition that something is off in any given situation is a primordial trait we all have- learning to decipher it and respond in real-time is something that gets talked about less. Let’s get into that.

  • The Edge

    This is a follow-up post to A Foundation of Sand from May 24th.

    “I haven’t made a plan. I don’t know how I’m even getting to work, 40-minutes away, on Tuesday, let alone the days after that.”

    In the hours after I was crumbling on the patio of the coffee shop I wrote that from, remembering how many times I had been there…

    I remembered how many times I had been there, and how I had handled it. I looked over at my bike and felt something ease.

    I rode 40 miles to the lab, worked my nine-hour shift, and then 40-miles home that Tuesday. I was out the door at 4:30 in the morning, and back to the house after 7:00 in the evening. I ordered pizza, took a shower while I waited, and was in bed again just after 8:00. The schedule on Wednesday was the same. On Thursday I borrowed a car to stay out of the thunderstorms, and on Friday I was back on the bike. The van was delivered to me at work with a new pump, and I drove home. Reluctantly.

    That week was rough on me, but it felt good. So after I realized that another of the van’s tires was leaking from a bad rim (the spare was already on from the last time), I just kept going. A brand-new set of wheels for the van is on backorder but will be here in two weeks. I’m riding 80-mile days when it’s reasonable and babying the leak on the days I need to drive. It’s a little pathetic, but satisfying that I can sustainably handle this in a way that is absolutely unreasonable to many; my willingness to take the unfathomable path is my edge.

    I don’t know that I can ever translate the intensity of the emotion, the inadequacy, that I feel when I struggle like this often and have few people I can call even just to talk about it. People tend to minimize it, unintentionally, because each instance is small in isolation, and because my methods of independence lead me to solutions like 2.5- hour bike commutes twice a day and living in a van from 1985. The acceptance of extremes like that make me look so capable. But for me, a person who has teetered on the edge of not being enough for over a decade, it feels like I am somehow destined by some divine joke to lose anyway. To be cosmically, comically, torn open and kicked every time I take a step. It feels like I’m supposed to give up and to stop kidding myself. All of that is heavy even on a spirit that is just trying to survive, let alone chase something great.

    _____

    In June of last year, I moved in with a partner that eventually told me “You live your life by the edge of a sword.” The comment had multiple layers to it. It was observational, and I agreed with it, but it also held a nuanced implication that I was “too” something again. To him it meant I didn’t trust.

    To me it meant I didn’t trust sooner than it was earned.

    That relationship became dysfunctional over the course of ten months. Twice he told me to get out of the house and go to my van like I was a dog that had been caught chewing the furniture. His own family members told him how damaging that behavior was, and it transformed into just kicking me out of the bedroom because he needed his space. A space he had said was equally mine in words, but obviously not in practice. I had only had my new job for days when I picked up that sword, held it across my chest and said “enough.” In the couple of hours it took me to pack up everything I could take with me in the van, I watched him devolve from antagonizing to stupefied as I held up that standard I had warned him about. “If you think you’re going to relegate me somewhere else out of punishment because I’m my own person in your space, that’s where I am going to stay.” I flipped the choice he kept making, in an act of control he thought he had, and I cut the line.

    I have already lived that life once, and survived. I wasn’t going back.

    That was all at the end of March. I cried once- not because it didn’t matter to me, but because I have my wits so about me about what can and cannot stand that my own self-trust rocks me to sleep. I’ve been here so many times before. Although that snake still lifts its head and rattles “this is all your fault,” one side of the blade whispers back “you aren’t meant to stay here.”

    I listen faster each time. I am not faultless, but I am also not tactless. Over the years, through the thicket of so many friendships and romantic connections based on half-truths, or devoid of truth entirely, my eyesight and steel have both been sharpened. I’ve paid for that in advance by holding grace for longer than was quoted- the quiet part that the snake tends to ignore.

    I am back in this instability because I listen to the quieter voice. I am dealing with nearly incessant setbacks because that is the consequence of choosing to walk away from harm that comes from people. My parents, unhealthy partnerships, friends that aren’t really. Many can’t afford to leave toxic dynamics because of this very consequence- it doesn’t suddenly get sunnier when you leave.

    The vines often get thicker.

    And so, I draw my sword.

    _____

    For once, I am letting the unpredictability of the near future be. I have reached the limit of what I can control, evidenced by a wave of burnout in recent weeks, and using the bike as a tool of survival again. The fitness I’ll gain from riding to work for the summer (it isn’t a bad way to live even when the van is back to 100%) will be a hefty deposit in the bank for the future I have promised myself, even if I don’t know when it will come.

    Once I get there, I’ll get the added gratification of these posts to remember where I came from.~

    I have two longer posts in the works. ‘Projection, Your Honor: Learning to Trust the Part of You That Knows’ is scheduled for Sunday, June 22nd.

    And ‘The Microcosm’, my full monty of my five-year run of living in my van (that may or may not be over yet) is still in progress. This one is a hard write, but it deserves the time it takes.

    As always, thank you for being here.

  • A Foundation of Sand

    This post is edited for errors, but not for anything else. I’m writing straight through this night, no stops.

    This past Wednesday I gave a condensed version of everything I post here to a room of about 30 people to promote a small tour I am doing at summer’s end. I’m garnering looks with the extremes of my experiences on a bike to draw interest to the rural communities I’ll be visiting and staying in and telling their stories like I do mine. I wrote my script exactly how I write these posts- a little messy, but very honest. At the end, one man said “have you considered being a motivational speaker? Because you had this whole room glued to you.” One woman came up to me in the parking lot before I left to tell me how alone I was not, and she gave me a tearful hug. Twice. One represented a tangible reward for my reflectivity; the other gave me a spiritual one.

    The critics in mine own mind are sourced from the people who moved through their lives with harshness. Endless criticism for what I wasn’t doing right, and relative silence for what I was. They shouted “I can’t help you, do it yourself.” Over time I realized that not only was that spray unfair and venomous to a teenager who was blockaded from normal development, but was also just not a characteristic of a family system that could stand on anything even distantly resembling love. None of them could exemplify anything that I wanted, so I never listened, but the scribe was still behind his pen. As I’ve said in past writing, I learned gentleness from its absence, but the sharp ridicule of generational abuses persists while I try to separate its fiery breath from my own. I heard so much automatic vocal feedback while I delivered my presentation that I intentionally paused after the heaviest lines to see if those moments singed them to any degree that they had me, because those past voices still gaslight me even though their owners are no longer in my orbit. They did. And so my speech was not just the retelling of a story- it was an active soldier in my internal defense. I learned that my experiences are unfortunately common, but still abnormal. And that paradox is what I’m currently chewing on while I go even deeper into my inner world because expressing its contents outwardly is not only what I feel purpose in doing, but is an act of combat when so many people haven’t yet felt capable of fronting theirs. Though, they will apparently come inside my fight with me without even flinching.

    And so, I draw my sword again.

    The power steering pump in my van sprung a heavy leak a little over two weeks ago. I kept the fluid topped off and was assured it would get me by in the meantime while I worked on the complicated logistics of getting a vehicle you live out of worked on with little time, little money, and few fail safes. I’ve had access to a vacant house to allow me some reprieve from all of the other complications of vanlife, but have been doing an excessive amount of driving between it and a new job. I’ve been moving so fast despite a breakup and residual move-out, and a PTSD attack during a huge race that resulted in bailing out, that the next part invites those voices to call back and say, “these are the consequences of your poor choices. This is what you deserve.”

    Yesterday, I took the van to a garage to address the leak and form a plan. Four minutes after I pulled in, the return line on my power steering pump broke at a connection by just the touch of a finger. It had at some point, before I ever owned the vehicle, been sealed with JB Weld instead of being repaired properly. It held for six years at least, and I never knew. So here I am, now grounded in front of a bay, with no replacement pumps available locally until the middle of next week. I’m 20 minutes from work, and an hour from the house.

    This saint of a mechanic, Jeremy, engineers a temporary hose connection with industrial-strength glue and a dream. He sends me on my way with a cautious optimism that it would get me through until a new pump arrived, and sent me on my way.

    20-minutes later, my steering bricks up as I’m turning into the next town. I muscle it to the gas station down the road and again to my job just down the street (thanks for that at least, universe), but that location unfortunately leaves me no access to a shower at the very minimum. So I call for a ride back to the house, despite the cobra in my throat hissing that I am an inconvenience, a disaster, and that I need to get my act together. For the second time in a few weeks I go almost deadpan as my friend Aaro picks up, but the siege, and that cobra, descend on the base of the castle that has already been cracking and tumbling since time immemorial.

    The ground keeps moving. The snake moves beneath black dunes and I am immobile with my blade across my chest. I bring you to ground zero as it plays out because I can’t afford one more bad step after all of these recent hits. I haven’t made a plan. I don’t know how I’m even getting to work, 40-minutes away, on Tuesday, let alone the days after that. All of my silver has been spent on the sword, and I’m so profoundly tired of holding it.

    And the cobra is well fed today.

    ~

    This is another interrupter. Trying to accomplish more than the basics when I keep bottoming out creates this dichotomy- an intense and automatic drive juxtaposed with the smell of smoke of another impending fight. If I’m going to have to keep doing that (I will), then I’m also going to continue weaponizing my awareness before I ever even reach the end. And I won’t reach the end, until I can no longer speak.

    Part two of this post, ‘The Edge,’ is on the way. But I have to let its contents happen first, I fear.

  • Depths Too Dark

    One of the universal languages in endurance sports is that of “the dark place.” It’s where the human mind goes when you’ve experienced so much depletion that the governors of pretense retire, and you’re left with just the raw material of the self again. You meet you.

    I feel like I lived in that space before I ever picked up a bike. My childhood was destructive (if you’re new here, see My Mother’s Shadow Sister) and I was powerless over it, despite having the gift of so much inherent awareness that allowed me to resist it. I turned inward to keep myself safe because, I’ve said it before, I trusted me. I saw through it then, and that vision cuts sharply now still. This past weekend, I saw something so acutely in myself that I’m afraid of the potential limitations it places on my future efforts in ultra-cycling. I already have so many barriers that I’m chipping away at- learned hyper-independence, a very fragmented support network, housing insecurity, frequent and unpredictable mechanical problems with the old van I have lived in off-and-on for almost six years, and most recently, exiting an unhealthy relationship that struck all of my old wounds like a drum.

    I sorta kinda knew better than to throw myself at the 340-mile Central Missouri Circuit last minute. It was a race that I was ecstatic to see appear for the first time but when crunch time came around, I just didn’t think I had it together enough to take it on. I had been fairly isolated living in a rural town reliant on someone else for my security, and moved back into the van and started a new job only six weeks before race day. I was very disorganized. My phone was destroyed by water and I got locked out of all of my vital accounts and couldn’t contact anyone for a few days, I got a police knock at a campground for no discernable reason, my van started to threaten a mechanical days before the race, I’d already been struggling with some other interpersonal stuff, and I just… I knew how much weight all of it was even though I was practiced at carrying it.

    Oh, but to be passionate about something. To love it severely. You let the dream take the wheel instead of reason. And let me clear, I don’t regret that. My heart won’t let me sit things out and my best friend, Gerrod, reminded me of that to wake me up, and so I registered three days before the deadline. Multiple climbing-heavy and rugged 200’s, point-to-point solo rides with 100+miler-per-day averages for days on end, and a hyper-fixation for covering ground that deepens as the fatigue builds; I thought this was a fair step up.

    On event morning, I found myself in the middle of a lively group of women with some hardcore histories. In a sport where I’ve found myself a general outsider with a tendency to hang on the fringes, this was a serious marker for how much I had evolved in a short period of time. It set me up well as the anticipation of the start bubbled up, and made the grand depart taste sweet.

    As a rider with road power, I found myself at the front of the women’s field early and briefly rode with Nichole Baker, a newcomer to bikepack racing but no stranger to big efforts. My computer soon spontaneously changed the route map to running in reverse, and I had to stop briefly to reset it. I caught Nichole again and she said, warmly “I have a feeling we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other today.”

    One day she’ll know how much I needed that. The unfortunate part is she disappeared as we hit swampy singletrack early into the race, and I never saw her again. Major congratulations on your win, by the way. It would have been an honor to have chased you further.

    Let’s jump forward because recapping all of the mundane details of a race I didn’t finish isn’t actually why I’m here. At mile 114, I hit the second store stop on the route and made that a long break before I had to face the onset of night. Last summer, I took on another ultra race where the combination of invisible dogs, trespassing, too much hiking, and wrong turns ganged up on my inexperience and had me retiring at 1:00 a.m. Jamie Wilgur, eventual third-place finisher, had come up behind about 10-minutes later and I asked “would you mind if I sat back and rode with you for a while? I don’t handle the dark that well.” She obliged and let me know she likely wouldn’t talk that much.

    We ended up sharing quite a lot of back-and-forth that night, and that’s what kept me afloat. At that store stop, I realized my power bank was not charging my computer. It was at 45% with only 47-miles to go to the next stop where I’d have access to more solutions, so I rolled on. Not too long after we got a good rhythm going, I hit a pothole hard and the stitches on my feed bag straps broke in two places. I had to stop and haphazardly tie it up to my seat bag where it rubbed my tire with every pedal stroke. Obnoxious, but hardly a problem. As the last of the light left us, we entered the creek bottoms where I began to feel a chill. I knew the temperature was to drop overnight, so I had packed a thermal base-layer, neoprene gloves, and thick wool socks. Jamie stopped to pull on her jacket and I made my swap while she graciously waited for me. It was there that I observed the charge on my headlight, only on for about an hour, was already low. I didn’t know what the life on my headlamp was if I had to rely on it exclusively. My computer battery was also struggling now that both my navigation and backlight were running. I had to turn both off and became extra dependent on Jamie to lead me to St. James. I also realized that my bottle cage bolts were backing out for the second time that day, and one had already jumped ship. Nothing was melting down, but in my mind I was already running a bunch of programs on how I would handle it if any of those things failed and I were to end up alone.

    Dear reader, I have historically been a manic problem-solver. I grew up in a household where I was frequently left to fend for myself, shamed for needing help, and if I did accept help, the result was under someone else’s control. To minimize the consequences, I had to start predicting the result of hangups before they ever happened. My imagination for being stuck was and still is vivid, because if I can imagine it, I can survive it.

    And so now, cold, necessary devices low on power, my feet wet and frigid from a deep creek crossing mere minutes after changing into warm, dry socks, and my bottles threatening to abort the mission, I’m moving forward but trying to stave off the stress that is a permanent resident for me regardless of how minor the problems may seem on the surface. That stress doesn’t keep me from showing up, but it does keep me from enjoying the adventure the way others do on things this epic. Adventure means unpredictability, and unpredictability to the survivor of long-term trauma means I am not safe.

    Nine miles to St. James. Everything is hanging on and I realize I’m in the clear, but I am cold. That combination meant I would not be pushing on through the dark with Jamie after another stop. I trialed a new charging cable for my power bank which solved that problem, and then asked a hotel if I could sit in their lobby for just a few hours to let my devices charge and to warm up. I pulled out a foil blanket to knock off the clammy chill, and fought off the drowsiness that quickly set in after I sat down.

    It was too long to sit with my thoughts. At 4:00 a.m. I was in a bitter arguement with myself about just getting back out there and hitting the road hard until the sun came up. I was frozen in that state until dawn touched the trees at 5:30. I was losing a lot of ground to others who had gotten to sleep and started early again, and those who hadn’t stopped yet at all. I was even more wide-eyed and indecisive as the compounding feelings of vulnerability, being underequipped, sleep-deprived, and inadequate had a row with each other like it was an open bar. I was losing. I was failing. I was not safe.

    Adversity is the expectation at events like this, not just a possibility. Calling for help from the outside means disqualification, and calling for help hasn’t even been an option for me at significant points in my story. I have incorrectly thought twice now that I would be well-adapted to that since it had been the theme of my entire life and I’ve always just sloppily bulldozed through it even with the stress and the pressure always quietly (or sometimes not so quietly) gnawing at the inside of my throat.

    But it catches you, an incredible, ghostly rider in its own right. It does not bargain with you. It does not compromise. If you don’t respect it, if you fight back, you lose. You fail. You are not safe.

    Crying, I sent a text to my emergency contact to let him know that I was planning to push on but that the possibility was high that I would need to be extracted. I left town at Mach 5 to warm the engine back up, but also to try to foolishly use force again to bypass the alarms that had already been tripped. What I didn’t realize until after I started writing this passage is that, even though I had gotten through my hangup successfully and there was nothing but the chill to ride out now, I had already been shaken. I had already imagined losing, failure, and not being safe. I had not, and I was not, but my body was already signing off without my permission.

    I have experienced this on the bike a number of times prior in various contexts- the high-heartrate crying and hyperventilation that comes when I no longer have control. I am not a person that cries easily. I move with composure and vocalize emotion in a clinical way most of the time, which is why I have such a propensity for writing about it. Something about the bike takes that away from me. I process so much in that space, but when the wound gets struck, I am absolutely, unmanageably, not at the fucking wheel anymore.

    I so wanted to break through it this time so I stopped to recover at three different points. I missed a turn which set me back again. I slid my back wheel out correcting the mistake and it hit me once more. I shivered my way up a minor climb as my body entered full shut down, where despite having so much physical ability to give yet, everything just said “no.”

    Now at mile 177, I hadn’t yet made the call to stop when my emergency line texted me back saying he was headed to my location. I didn’t argue. I knelt over my bars and collapsed completely, knowing that force, now, would only extenuate the damage. It would no longer get me safely home.

    ~

    I don’t know how to solve this. I can’t write, or ride, my way out. Time has done a lot of heavy lifting since that first experience back in 2016 on a cyclocross course, but it still feels like a gargoyle barring me out of what I could accomplish if everything just went right. That reality doesn’t exist.

    But I also have to remember, that of course I experience that stress and its consequential overload. You don’t survive a volatile, unpredictable, and unsafe childhood without maladaptive protective mechanisms, and they don’t disappear or rewrite themselves just because you no longer need them. That’s the capital message that I want more people to understand about those of us with severe trauma, whose responses to life aren’t always congruent with what might be happening on the ground. I am lucky that mine still allow me to take on extreme trials like ultra races even if they fairly consistently break my heart. Some can never reach outside their invisible iron prisons.

    For now, I am stepping out of racing temporarily to pick this apart. I can’t keep allowing my goals to be short-changed by it and a repeated cycle to continue to crash my confidence. Trans-Am is a mega-version of what I just tried and lost, and it’s probably a blessing in disguise that I am now seeing the deeper impact from the past that I wasn’t fully aware of. For so long I just thought I lacked a little bit of mental grit, but no.

    It’s just dark down here.

  • Fog on the Harbor

    In May of last year I went down to Arkansas for an experimental new ultra race. The massively popular Rule of Three, established in arguably the most bike-centric city in the United States, introduced a 200-mile category and I wanted in. It had been a spring of seriously unsteady income but the organizers got me a sponsored entry and a host of friends helped me put the rest of the pieces together.

    I took on the challenge with two objectives- add another ultra-distance merit badge to my proverbial sash and create a mini documentary of the experience with my phone. I found a handful of people also entered in the 200-mile event to ask one question, on camera- what are you in it for? Some seemed a little caught off guard by the question, and others delivered answers so nonchalant that I knew they were right at home on this horizon.

    The race started at 4:00 p.m. the day before the standard 100 and 50-mile distances and we had a 30-hour cutoff to beat. At mile 70, around 1:00 a.m. after hiking my bike up a steep powerline cut that spit me out to a dead-end road, I called for a ride back to town. I was aware this race was going to be a little rowdier than anything I had ridden before, but I went into it knowing that I was ready to take that step up. My limit turned out to be the building unsafety I felt from the combo of loose dogs in the dark, no-trespassing signs my navigation insisted I disregard, 20-miles straight of mostly unrideable (for me) singletrack immediately followed by mud pits and criminally steep powerline cuts that all slowed me to a drag. My body was in great shape but my mind already wasn’t, and I accepted that this was just not my style of race and not a reflection of some deficiency of mine before a support car even got to me. I missed out on getting the video content and the full-circle story I was hoping for, and so I had to settle for a 90-second Instagram reel that I am fond of but am equally haunted by.

    I still ache a little over abandoning the spirit of toughing that race out, but I had to call back that one question I had asked so many people before the race that I hadn’t taken the time to answer myself in entirety- what was I in it for?

    To briefly touch on themes from my past posts, I’ve labelled myself (or maybe my imposter syndrome has) as a major underdog whose drive to excel in the sport of gravel and ultra-cycling is mismatched with the reality of my life. My circumstances pretty consistently tell me that welfare kids from hoarding houses that feel safe absolutely nowhere can’t access, let alone succeed in, big-time athletic environments that eat resources by the shovel and demand consistent social connections. Despite those voices I persist, much to the discontent of my easily broken heart.

    And so I recognized easily that my answer to the big question was that I was in it in spite of everything- for the long haul and that one unsalvageable event wasn’t a threat to that. After a decade of chipping away at the confining factors that left me feeling so less than, I was rebelling again. I’ve experienced enough truly epic rides at this point that I didn’t allow one defeat to unravel that ideal for me, but it did remind me how fragile the pursuit of doing anything exceptional is.

    I talk about it so often because as if that saga wouldn’t be trying for anyone, I’ve inadvertently associated my efforts on the bike with the vindication of my broken adolescence. And for better or for worse, I don’t really want to untie them.

    I’m not sure I’ll ever write enough about the past to alleviate the weight of it, but ultimately it is time to direct these posts toward where I am now and where I hope to go, in spite of everything.

    I’ve been living in a town of 1,600 people for six months and in that time have had the most difficult time finding a stable new job (there are plenty of unstable ones). My boyfriend, Jeremy, has been propping me up and insisting that I not fold for something that doesn’t truly work for me, but I couldn’t have predicted it would be this difficult to even get a call back, and so I’m starting to sweat that my financial hiatus from racing might have to be extended into yet another spring. In the midst of that mess, I’ve been mitigating my job-board doom-scrolling and obsessive “apply” button-smashing by writing more, painting more, and reaching out to individuals I know in fitness and media for advice on potential longer-term ventures that complement life on a bike. The van has been parked on the curb, driven only every couple of weeks, I got my ass kicked by covid for two weeks, and I’ve gone through the motions of indoor training, riding outside when I can, running a 5k or two a week around the entire town, and will begin strength training again soon. I have some local target races I’m clutching to keep my goal-oriented capital-type-A personality engaged, and rejecting the expectations that come with turning 30 next month. Trans-Am is still the long game we’re playing even if it kills me.

    I have to remind myself daily that even though I’m deeply discouraged about how much I can’t do, I’m not allowed to let the mission slip away by not being ready when I finally can again. And as much as I am hellbent, maybe to my detriment, of creating this big story for myself, I am even more committed now to talking about it despite the massive political elephant in the room that might have me sounding a little tone-deaf. The loudness of all of those cogs turning literally keeps me up at night while I quantify the burden that passion has been on me, and I’m just going to let this life make whatever example out of me that it wants to.

    With a ridiculous fight, of course.

  • If You’d Known Me When I Was Older

    Here lately, I’ve been going to bed at night and wandering Grandma and Papa’s house while the worries of my adult life wait outside. I wake up in the Blue Room; it’s 9:00 a.m. and Papa insists I’ve slept long enough. I walk down the hallway, past the laminated world map with the USSR still labelled on it, through the living room with the tan carpet and the slightly purple, maroon curtains, past the basement door where I threw up once, and into the warm kitchen. The morning sun touches that one corner of the linoleum floor again while the subtle smoke of breakfast dances above it. The woods through the window are glittering over the grass that was sometimes charred after Papa, by mistake or purposefully, let the flame in the burn pile get carried away. I open up the glass cabinets and remember the bowls with the stars on them, the mugs for coffee I hadn’t acquired the taste for yet, the tall, clear, angled glasses I would pour Diet Coke into for Grandma, slowly so that it didn’t fizz too much and go flat. I take the plate of eggs and bacon and grits and walk into the sunroom, where they both sit, and eat with them while Fox News blares on TV.

    I ask Papa if I can play on the computer and then go swap between countless CD-ROMs. I run with Spirit the Stallion, giggle at the characters with Reader Rabbit, shiver as Mathra flies overhead on The Cluefinders, and run from a t-rex on Dinosaur Adventure 3-D. Inevitably, I can’t sit still anymore and head outside to run the trails Papa cut in the field with the bush hog and look for rat snakes under sheet metal. When I come back in he scolds me for eating directly out of the peanut butter jar, but forgets about it when I tell him I caught a catfish in the net he had made longer by duct taping a 2×4 to it. The fish had a hook stuck in its mouth and I still don’t know if he ever figured out I had stolen one of his poles, couldn’t get the fish off, and cut the line in panic.

    In the evening, without fail, Papa calls that supper is ready, and I join them for another meal. Tonight it’s “shit-on-a-shingle,” ground beef and gravy over toast. I clean my plate and put it in the washer, and as the light outside fades, just before bedtime comes and I hear Papa push in the foot of his recliner from another room, something shrieks at me- “you’re so ungrateful.”

    Through the ether my peace is dispelled by the wrath of How Dare You, an invisible cobra that spits venom anytime I remember what I had and through it recognize what was stolen. It’s like she feels personally betrayed by the fact that I knew what love is, and is not, and the girl she flexes her brutish dominion over can’t find that in her heavy shadow. From light into dark, we both grow angrier, but surely I can’t understand her plight because I am so small and clueless and ungrateful and a spoiled brat toward everything she has provided for me too, right?

    But dear reader I met Gratitude so early I lost memory of her first lessons, and her and Submission were never at the pulpit together. Gratitude was quiet, simple, and naked. She would often be in rooms and recognized only as the heat coming through the vents on a winter morning or that single streak of sun on the linoleum floor. She needn’t announce herself because those who knew her well could trust her to stay where she belonged, and understood the breathless language of her ever exiting the room. She didn’t leave when Suffering would scream, and merely tipped her hat when Grief walked in.

    Gratitude answered to no one, and she was not to carry the burdens of service.

    Nor was she a debt to be paid.

    ~

    It’s been a year and a half since Papa died and almost 20 since I last lived with him and Grandma. A few nights ago I experienced the most vivid dream that he had come back to visit with everyone. I didn’t get many words with him before he said he had to go, but as he slipped away again I held his hands and said “thank you for being my dad.”

    When I moved back in with my parents, Gratitude waited for me. She planted her feet and stared blankly despite my parents demands. She was stoic, feral, and indomitable. She wouldn’t come when announced on stage and said nothing each time the knife was held to her throat. She’d side-step every request, politely decline every invitation, and retreat into the cosmos somewhere between that moment and the next time Memory brought me back there and only on her perfect timing, came back to me in golden light.

    And so now I leave the door unlocked for her to come in when she pleases, keep a mug just for her in the cabinet, and talk with her about how the smell of breakfast makes me shed tears more frequently than anything else. I tell her how on the day Papa left I had made the coffee I had acquired the taste for and left some of it as a toast to what we might have talked about over it, and then I thank them both.