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‘how to deal’

Posted by 19 Dec 2010

have a friend come over.  one who gets it, preferably one in the DMC or maybe DDC.  do something physically painful, say, like getting a tattoo.  focus on the pain the needle brings instead of the pain aching in your chest.  do something fun, something that makes you think of her, something that brings happy memories instead of the pain of her loss.  have some drinks – maybe three to enjoy, not enough to get weepy.  do something silly that makes you laugh out loud.

then at night, home alone in bed, let the tears out.  allow yourself to remember the things you will never forget.

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‘yuck’

Posted by 26 Nov 2010

mopefest.  blah.  part of it is the holidays, i know.  in fairfax at my dad’s* and feeling displaced.  missing a real feeling of family and in the bigger picture, of belonging.  i feel very desperate for something or someone to cling on to, whether it’s right or not.  i hate this feeling.

*  i had originally typed “home.”

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‘played out by the band’

Posted by 25 Sep 2010

stomach in knots, but for which reasons?  i have no idea what it is that i want, and it changes every few hours.  my integrity is questionable.  the things that i crave and pursue no longer interest me when they are too available.

frustrated with my endless ability to undermine myself.

my birthday is tomorrow and it’s making me sad.  miss my mom.  big surprise, right?  story of my life.  but it’s a day i should share with her.  it’s a day i did share with her – it’s in the definition of the day itself, no?

and everything ties together, no matter how much i wish it didn’t.

where are you?

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‘mad world’

Posted by 11 Sep 2010

september 11 still hurts.  soooo badly.  and this morning as i watch slideshows and videos and read words of people who are hurting and healing and missing and crying my heart feels as though it’s been cleaved.  i feel as though i have a strange attachment to this day because it is a day of Loss and i know Loss.  i don’t want to cheapen the events of this day by making them about myself, but my feelings of what happened nine years ago springboard into an intense and consuming pain, that hole in my being that still cries out for my mother.

kanye west sings “last night, i saw you in my dreams / now i can’t wait to go to sleep.”  i feel as though my dreaming world allows me to be with her.  last friday night she was in my dreams, but it was different.  i realized i was asleep, and in the dream i told her so.  she said she knew too, but it was okay.  we told each other “i love you” and it was truly amazing.  i woke up because my phone beeped, and was so angry.  i sobbed and was so angry.  but i feel almost as though a door has been opened.  i really felt like she was there, like we were talking.

the hurt of loss like this – like my own with my mother and like so many people feel because of september 11- is nothing that can be imagined.  i feel as though a tangible piece of myself is gone and the ache is physical, and i don’t know if it will ever change.

remember everything, forget nothing.

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‘go ahead as you waste your days with thinking’

Posted by 11 Jul 2010

my post-surgery schedule is mind-numbing.  wake, eat, read, computer, tv, nap, repeat.  through the percoset haze, this all works very well.  then by the end of the day when i recognize that i have spent 70% of my day asleep and 20% of it watching “the hills” marathon on mtv.  it’s kind of like eating only junk food for a week.

tomorrow i go back for my post-op and get this gross drain out.  i’m relieved to have that element of this experience taken care of.  it’s weird that i could handle drains and ports and all that gross stuff when i helped take care of my mom, but that i freak out when i see it on myself.

my sister hasn’t called, or emailed, or seemingly remembered that i had surgery last week.  she has some really serious shit going on in her life, but the fact that she didn’t even look through all that for a second hurts.  i know that i am probably making a lot more of this surgery than i should, but it was -especially beforehand- really scary and stirred up a whole lot of emotions in me.  i definitely became aware of people in my life who truly give a shit and were there for me and those who just went through the motions.  that’s involved some major disappointment in some of those i thought i was close to, but i guess it’s better to have my eyes opened to it.

i’m ready to move on from this.

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‘a watch is always too fast or too slow’

Posted by 6 Jul 2010

this will continue.  this writing, this movement, this rebirth.  i will write again and with frequency and i’ll allow myself to do it even if i feel like i have nothing insightful or funny or cathartic to tip-tip-type into black and white.  i will write when i am pissed and happy and bored and when i am (spoiler alert!) on painkillers.  remind me when i start slacking off, okay?  it would even be okay if you yelled at me a little.

the heat is atrocious.  truly.  45 minutes on the elliptical inside in the AC, okay.  7 minutes outside throwing the ball around for the dogs and i look like i’ve been in a downpour.  gross.

speaking of gross – thursday i will have surgery to extract a lipoma from my upper back.  a lipoma is, in (disgusting) layman’s terms, a fatty hump, not caused by anything, including, cough carrying extra weight cough. my lipoma is unnoticeable to me for the most part because it, like the tramp stamp i still maintain was a cool idea in theory, is on my back.  i’ve had it for quite a few years, since i lived in nyc, but in the part year or so it’s grown larger and is a smidge uncomfortable if i lean a certain way.  and from what i have read, this fucker is pretty damn big.  so, at doctor and surgeon’s recommendation, out it goes, and the promise of this undertaking has got me kind of a-tizzy.  not like it takes much.

i’m vacillating between fascination and total pit-in-stomach anxiety about this surgery, because i’ll be fully anesthetized.  the whole procedure only takes an hour or so, but i’m interested in and petrified about being in this in-between world that someone puts me into by putting stuff into an IV.   it reminds me of the little nervous excitement bubble i used to get before taking some new drug back in the days of my ill-spent youth.  am i gonna freak out? what’s gonna happen? is it going to be cool?

as stupid and insignificant as this little outpatient procedure is, it has also gotten me all lump-in-the-throaty, at points, too.  during our phone consultation today, when the nurse told me that two family members would be allowed to go back with me at one point, i found myself just nodding as the tears streamed down my face.  i don’t have family going with me on thursday.  i have friends, dear and wonderful and amazing friends, but not people related to me by blood or a piece of paper.

i doubt my sister, far off in colorado and suffocating in her own concerns at the moment, will remember that this is happening.  and although my sweet, well-intentioned papa did initially offer to come down for this, i don’t know that he’ll even recall that the procedure is happening this week unless i remind him.  it boils down, as it consistently and inevitably does for me, that this is something my mom would be here for.  should be here for.  and it sucks all over again, and still.

for every day that passes, things are different, and for every tick of the clock they also stay the same.  plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. french people are so smart.

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Triathlon: go time

Posted by 27 Jun 2010

From parking lot to starting line went about as smoothly as you could expect. Got drawn on with the cool sharpies. Got my timing chip. Set up my transition in my super cool optimal pre-planned way that I’d done dozens of times in my head but, sadly, had never practiced nor timed in actuality.

We’ll come back to that later.

After that, I got changed into my super shitty tri shorts. This may have been a blessing in disguise. After a near sleepless night, only my hatred and loathing of these shorts was there to fuel me. After changing, I stood in line for about 40 minutes to take a piss (AWESOME right before a race that’s going to take a metric shit ton of leg strength). Then off down the hill to the lake for a little warm up.

This was my first time swimming in a lake. The water was warm, still, and tasted a little sweet. It was also murky as all get out. Fortunately, I was either too tired or too nervous to think about DinoCroc or any other bad movie off the sci fi channel.

After splashing around in the water and getting a little used to there being no touchable bottom, no easily-followable black line, no wall and no lane lines, I paddled my big fat ass back to the shore and listened to the pre-race. I was in the first wave so figured “What the heck.” and instead of lining up at the back said screw it and got up near the front. I figured it’d be easier on me if people had to work around me from behind rather than me having to deal with getting kicked in the face. I’m an ass like that.

After some technical issue with the clock that made us line up a second time, the gun went off and we all start running to the water and diving in. The first 50 meters were a blur of splashing around, fighting for position and sensing hands, feet and elbows all around.

Fortunately, I was able to get on the horsepower a little bit and find some clear water. Unfortunately, I apparently can’t swim in a straight line. Seems I pull to the right. This course turns to the left.

Awesome.

For a while I swim right next to another guy that I see is popping up and spotting on every fourth stroke. So I just swim right next to him, breathing easily out to the side and let him do the steering. I’m BRILLIANT!

This went fantastically until we had to make the first turn and I lost him. No matter, right? I just started plowing for it and finding my rhythm.

Oh. Did I mention that I hadn’t yet figured out that I don’t swim in a straight line? Yeah…

I realized this as I swam headlong into one of the safety kayaks. BONK!

I am like 15 different shades of awesome at this triathlon thing.

Anyhoo, after trying to get my bearings, I make the turn and head–somewhat circuitously–to the exit of the swim. Here’s the nasty little thing they never tell you about the swim: getting out in the water is the easy, quick part. Getting to the shore takes FOR.

EVER.

Right before the finish I swim through some diesel–yum!–and then try to start running. Alas. I can’t touch bottom yet. Doh! Soon enough, I’m through the chute and trying to gingerly run up the hill … because I neglected to do the breast stroke the last few yards to unkink the calves like I’d so carefully planned.

With my heart about to leap from my chest, I stumble into transition, drop my swim gear, wipe off my feet, don shoes, glasses, helmet and gloves, unrack the bike and start jogging to the bike mount. Not a bad transition … I thought. (<—That’s ‘foreshadowing,’ y’all!)

The first miles of the bike are like repeated punches to the face. With heart rates still through the roof from the swim, you have to climb short but steep hills. Over and over and over again.

I down a gel and finally get out to the flatter part of the course and am happy to see that I feel like I’m dragging a dump truck behind me, my speed is actually pretty good.

About halfway through the bike, I catch a big, 22-year-old rider (ages are written on calves) and figure he’s a clydesdale like yours truly. So I carry some extra speed through a corner and make the pass, pretty as you please.

Only, I forgot how stubborn a person can be at 22. A minute or so later, he comes back around me. Then on a downhill, I move past him. This goes on for the remainder of the bike leg, all the time I’m thinking I might have a tough time beating a guy 15 years my junior. On the last hill, I spin furiously up the hill and go ahead, then hit the downhill hard. I pull into transition ahead of him, but he catches me as we exit for the run.

Oh joy.

“You dropped me on the last climb.”

“Oh? What class are you?”

“Clydesdale.”

“I was afraid of that.”

We run the first half mile shoulder to shoulder. Here’s where my brain finally wakes up and starts shouting out some strategy. The first mile is flat, the second hilly and windy, the third has one big climb and is then downhill to the finish. The run is where I should be the strongest.

I’ve got to go.

And so I up the pace. He follows. I up it again and he falls off. I build a gap in the first mile, protect it in the second, then haul ass the last mile.

As I ran down the finish chute with my family cheering from the sideline, I hear them call my name, my division, and announce second place.

Epilogue:
In my division, I had the fastest swim time, the fastest bike time, and was second fastest on the run (+20 seconds). But somehow, I burned through nearly 5 minutes in the first transition (maybe I blacked out?). I lost two minutes to the first place guy in T1 and another 40 seconds in T2. Overall, I missed first by one minute, twenty seconds.

I know I should be thrilled to take second in my first triathlon, and I am. I just can’t help but to feel just a little disappointed, like I left something on the table.

But after some time to get my head out of my own ass, I realize that I got the benefit of my wife and my kids got to see me doing something like this. And that’s something I treasure far more than any medal.

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