I will the machine.

Tag: ptsd

  • And Thanatos Said, “You Shall Not Pass.”

    I pressed through Nyx’s dominion with the moon floating centered with the break in the trees. The glitter of thousands of spider eyes caught by my headlight traced the edge of the trail for eighty miles or more. I found that deep rhythm I had been seeking, and it carried me further into the dark than Hypnos had allowed so comfortably before.

    But I was hemorrhaging stars more severely than I had thought, my fuel still leaking through cracks faster than I could fill them. I reached the river as the moon set behind me, and every breath felt like another ghost of the westbound wind would enter. I tried to shake them out as I dragged myself to my next stop. Hypnos had grabbed both of my crew in Rocheport, but I resisted his sudden claim to me.

    I left with Eos’s golden gate within sight. I pressed right up against it with a respect and composure I hadn’t before, but it still would not open.

    This was the place. I should have been home free with the sun’s grace. But instead, I heard that burried voice again, and Thanatos said,

    “You shall not pass.”

    _____

    I had to retire at mile 163 of 320 on the morning of October 5th. That closure to an epic mirrors the end of the race described in Depths Too Dark, where a series of overnight errors, a temperature drop, and sleeplessness led to what all signs point to as parasympathetic (dorsal-vagal) collapse at sunrise. What I’ve learned since that episode is that the central nervous system of a person who has experienced long-term trauma often has a narrowed window of tolerance for stress. I’ve lived in a chronic state of stress for most of my life, as evidenced by my storytelling and beginning to go grey at just 19-years-old. I’m so used to living in hyper-vigilance and heightened sensitivity that it’s simply my baseline. I never get to start a day or an ultra truly “safe.” So, although my conscious mind understood I was not in any real danger out there, all of the compounding “threats” and adrenaline in the overnight hours brought me too close to my ceiling.

    And my body simply wouldn’t fight anymore. No amount of willpower or stubbornness was going to override it.

    I kept all of that in mind as I began this trip, thinking the trail wouldn’t produce the same trigger points because I trusted it. I ate even more frequently than I usually would, rotated headlights to eliminate worry about battery life, saved caffeine only for when I really needed it. I kept my effort level low and slow in the headwind, let the wrong turns on the road sections roll off, and told the wildlife that it was their problem to move out of my way if I came too close instead of playing midnight Mario Kart (they did).

    As I drew near the halfway stop, I grew cold, lethargic, could not get my heart rate above about 120bpm; I could only pedal for a minute or two at a time before having to coast and stand up off of my saddle. I couldn’t take deep breaths, but staved off the hyperventilation that occurred during the failed race in the spring. I was travelling at 11mph on a stretch I could normally hold 16mph under the same effort, and felt desperate for the support car that was only a few miles away. This set of symptoms can also mark “bonking,” or running out of glycogen stored in the muscles, but I was incredibly careful to eat and hydrate properly. I knew how to handle myself and press on through discomfort, but my body just wouldn’t let me.

    What I didn’t know, though, was the reality around the body’s hormonal and metabolic shifts in the overnight itself. The pre-dawn hours are physiologically the most vulnerable, and where I chose to just take a longer break rather than try to get any sleep. Daylight wasn’t far away- I didn’t have to ride with tunnel vision or cold for much longer, so why get complacent here? After about an hour sitting in the truck, I got back out for the next leg. I spent another eight miles just begging myself to come back online. After about 30 miles total in an absolute pit, I sent a text to my crew to come get me, ironically at the closest trailhead to home.

    Whereas dawn approach tends to lift or relieve most people of delirium, my body interpreted the “safety” of first light as a cue to shut down rather than to recover. It mimics how I used to shut off and isolate in the wake of disputes in my household as a kid, and therein lies the lesson. For a subconscious that never truly reaches a state of true calm, the body will eventually be forced to manufacture it.

    And then I’ll still foolishly beat down on myself for just not being gritty enough.

    _____

    My initial conclusion was that the steady uphill, speed-drain of the Rock Island portion of the route took all my power away. Now that I can think a little more clearly and have had time to analyze the experience, the pattern doesn’t suit that explanation. Just as before, this premature ending was again, tragically, the fault of something on an autonomic layer.

    Right now, it’s difficult for me to not to view this as a sort of psychological handicap. I have to consciously bring myself down from the frustration that I am wired in a way that places limitations on athletic pursuits that I am otherwise physically capable of.

    The pre-recorded voices, that aren’t my own, tell me I continue to bite off more than I can chew. That I’m too broken. That I screwed up by showing up. I consistently live under this assumption that I’m looked down on for daring to try so publicly because for more than half of my life thus far, I was.

    It’s only recently become obvious that this isn’t the norm, even though I always knew the behavior that caused it wasn’t right.

    A pattern of thinking I’m also trying to bring back to ground level is that 163-miles isn’t short even if it’s substantially less than my target… Doing that and being recovered by Wednesday is no fluke.

    _____

    I went out there to have more conversations with myself. I got them. I came back with data on a weak spot I’ll have to learn to work with, rather than through, to prevent this kind of ending from transpiring in my future ultra pursuits.

    I said in a Facebook post a few days ago, in my heartbreak, that I probably would not reattempt because I thought I’d been beaten fairly.

    But I wasn’t. I was being protected. Again.

    So I think I will try again, now understanding that force of will only works up until you become your own enemy and the daemon of nonviolent death forces you down into your seat.

    When we meet again, I’ll shake his hand, and wait my turn.

  • 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.

  • 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.