You never like to define a year by it’s hardships, but my thirties have rolled out so far like the title of Friends episodes.
30: the one where I was depressed.
31: the one where I was heartbroken.
32: the one where I was recovering from a concussion.
The fall happened so quickly I barely remember what happened. One moment I was on the wall, the next, something slipped–did I miss the handhold when reaching to top out, or had my foot slipped first?–and then I was falling, half of my body landing in the artificial woodchips, the other half on top of the safety pad, my head hitting the hardest, bouncing of the pad like a basketball.
I laid there, staring up at the rock wall, at the cloudless, bright blue sky. The fall itself was a blur, but I’ll always remember that sky, laying there in the mid-October shade, such a perfect day for climbing. I didn’t black out. I didn’t feel disoriented or dizzy, just shaken. Knowing I’d just hit my head really hard. Slowly, I sat up, I moved to the fence and sat there for awhile, waiting. No one else at the gym was climbing outside, so the fall had gone unseen. Maybe I should have said something to the staff, but I was embarrassed, so I didn’t. Instead, once I felt sure I was “okay”, I just drove home. But the headache set in as the night dragged on and so I went to prompt care in the morning and got diagnosed with a mild concussion, was told to rest for a few days and assured I’d be okay in a few weeks.
I could write a whole woe-is-me post about my fucked-up head, but I’ll leave those thoughts for therapy and the chronic pain support groups I will attend at some point I promise I promise.
The point is, my head hurt a lot this year and that sucked ass and I had a choice between deciding to lie in my dark apartment all year or continuing to pursue a life worth living and I really, really most days chose the latter.
I got on airplanes even thought I was anxious about how turbulence might affect my neck, I laid my eyes on all four pandas in the United States in the span of a month, cheered on my friends’ half marathon race while she and her husband pushed their corgi in a stroller. I fell head-over-heels in love with San Diego, California and found god in the guacamole at tacoparty in Grand Junction, Colorado. I went on the most amazing two-week road trip with one of my best and oldest friends. We camped and made our first campfire and saw a grizzly bear and ten moose and the most beautiful gorgeous amazing bighorn sheep ewes ever and touched dinosaur bones and still really, really loved each other enough by the end of the trip to start planning the next one.
I sat seats away from my favorite author and listened to her talk about a series I’ve been following for twelve years, and got to tell her in my faithfully-awkward way in the signing line how much I love her books. Needing something to work toward, still, knowing it wouldn’t be anything physical for awhile, I finally started guitar lessons.
What was the lesson of thirty-two? What’s there to take from a year full of starts and stops and progress and setbacks?
You just gotta keep living.
life imitates heart 