I was recently asked, “What’s the most difficult decision you’ve ever had to make?” I think it’s safe to say I know the answer to that question, but am not willing to elaborate on it. Maybe not ever.
 

So instead, I’ll talk about A difficult decision, rather than THE difficult decision. I promise, it pales in comparison.
 

I made a choice when I was a senior in high school that might be the only thing I’ve ever regretted. I try not to live a life of regrets. There’s nothing I can do to change the past, so there’s little point in dwelling on it. But this one tends to haunt me from time to time. And it’s really not even that big of a deal.
 

I chose to sing in a band rather than be a cheerleader my senior year. I desperately wish I wouldn’t have made that choice. Yes, I loved singing with that band and I learned a lot, musically and personally, by being with those people, but cheerleading? That was, by definition, who I was. I fought long and hard to get to that point and I was told by my coach that there’d be no voting, no nothing…her decision to have me as captain was final and certain.
 

Having to tell her that I wouldn’t be part of the squad was one of the hardest conversations I’ve ever had. I wrote a formal letter and sat down to talk with her. Even at 17 years old, I knew it was going to be difficult and I tried to go about it the best way I knew how. It was incredibly painful.
 

Watching some of my closest friends cheer at every football and basketball game sometimes became too much and I’d leave games early (sometimes in tears). I missed out on a lot that year. A LOT. I tried to make it up to myself by coaching a junior high squad for two years after high school and that, in and of itself, was incredibly rewarding. I still get to see and talk to some of those girls and it’s fun to hear their stories and versions of stories from when we worked together. But even working with them made it hard not to be a part of “my” squad.
 

Yes, it’s probably a very silly thing to have a regret over, but I do. I don’t think about it often, but when I see my box of high school memorabilia (which contains a pair of contraband poms), I get a bit wistful. Not the way I’m wistful when I see another box in my storage shed, but wistful, nonetheless.

For the last several months, I’ve had to learn what it means to be alone. I’ve spent a significant amount of time alone recently. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes it’s bad. For a long time, I’ve thought that “being alone” was kind of a bad thing, like something was wrong if I was alone (or if anyone was, for that matter), but what I’m coming to realize is that being alone is kind of refreshing. Almost necessary.

I’m not prone to spending time alone. I like being around people. I like noise. I like distractions. So in the last few months, this being alone thing has taken it’s toll on me. I don’t have people calling me up very frequently to hang out with me or just to talk. So I find myself spending a lot of time working out and watching TV…and more recently, I’ve been going to the local brewery and reading for hours on end. I was never one to really go out by myself…seeing movies alone or going to dinner by myself or taking me out for a drink just seemed awkward. Now I relish in it. About a month ago, I took myself to see a movie because a) I could and b) I wanted to see if I could really do it. Turns out, it was actually a lot of fun! I spend a ton of time with my dogs…we wrestle and go for walks to the park and play outside. They are guaranteed happiness.

So while I’ve found ways to enjoy being alone, I also miss NOT being alone. It’s nice to have someone around to talk to or hang out with or have adventures with. It’s nice to having someone to go to the movies with and make dinner reservations for.

I think there’s an interesting cyclical balance that’s struck between solitude and companionship. Being alone teaches me that I need to be around people, while being around people shows me that alone-time is good and sometimes necessary.

In the grand scheme of things, I’m pretty lucky when it comes to injuries. I’ve never broken a bone (that I know of…I might have broken a toe before, but it didn’t hurt enough to go have it checked out) despite cheerleading and skiing basically my entire life. But there are two injuries I have had that make me cringe just to think about. Because they HURT.

The first was when I was in grade 8 and got into a pretty nasty car accident at church. My friend was pulling her parents van around to the front door, something the regularly let her do. It was a small church with an even smaller parking lot, so this wasn’t a big deal. Until that day. She slammed on the gas thinking it was the brake and rammed us head on into a light pole. I bashed my head into the dash board and my glasses shattered. I ended up in the ER with probably a reasonably-sized concussion. I don’t think I’ve had a headache that bad ever since and that includes the time I had to get a CT because my doc thought I might have a tumor and/or  aneurysm (I didn’t). The worst of it all was that the accident happened the day before end-of-year finals at school and I forgot almost everything I’d studied in the previous weeks. It was horrible. I barely passed most of my finals that year despite being granted a significant amount of mercy from my teachers.

Then when I was probably in grade 10 or something, I was horsing around on our trampoline with my brother and damn near snapped my femur. Now, I realize it takes quite a bit to do that, but I came very close that summer. He and I used to play this game where one of us would sit in the center of the trampoline while the other would run around and the sitter would try to grab the runner’s ankles and trip them. It was actually quite a lot of fun! Except for this one day when we failed to put the mats around the edges. I dodged my brother and in the process, my right leg fell through a set of bars and springs and I tumbled over the edge, leg still stuck in the bars. By the time I was able to right myself (with a little help from my brother), I had already developed a black, green, and purple bruise the size of a volleyball on my thigh. My mom, not knowing what had just happened and reacting solely to my banshee screams, told me to “walk it off.” Then she saw that I couldn’t exactly walk. That one…well that hurt for a while. Which made cheerleading practice that summer quite challenging.

I’m telling you, both of those injuries hurt way worse than either of the times I stepped on rusty nails.

Running has quickly become something I love. I left my office the other day and walked out into a beautiful day with a slight breeze and actually whined to myself…”UhhhhhhhUH! It would be PERFECT to run tonight!” but I didn’t get to (because I was taking a gun class which was equally as fun and empowering as any run I’ve done recently). I love the feeling I get when I complete a run, knowing that I frickin’ did it. It’s been a long time coming, this running thing. And each day, I get closer and closer to being okay with calling myself “a runner”…I think I’ll do that when I finally hit 5 miles.

When I go for runs outside, I start and end at my house. I run through a great park in my neighborhood and sometimes wander through the neighborhoods themselves. There are gorgeous trees and a pretty creek to run next to…being in nature feels good! There’s a more ghetto side of the trail I run and I only really do that with a friend because the one time I ran it alone, it was a bit sketchy. And by “a bit” I mean “almost entirely riddled with sketch characters.”

It’s interesting to me, the metaphor of running away from and toward my house. I feel like that’s something I’m kind of experiencing right now. I’m in a state of heightened emotions and running has given me the opportunity to get some of that out of me. It also allows me an hour or so to just be with my thoughts (and my music) and really evaluate and take stock of things. I guess I’m not entirely sure what I’m running away from, or even toward. At a base level, I’m running toward 13.1 miles. I want to hit that goal so badly I can taste it. Running is allowing me the chance to see how capable I really am. I’ve given up on dreams of running several times in the past and now? Now I just go for it. I want to be the person that puts her mind to something and does it…and does it well.

Sometimes, running away from and toward things can be terrifying. What’s behind me is comfortable and easy; what’s in front of me is somewhat unknown and will probably be at least a little challenging. What’s an adventure without a little challenge though, right? It means letting go of what I’ve known for so long and being brave enough to trust myself in the future.

Admittedly, I’ve been watching Grey’s Anatomy in excess lately. Despite that, and despite the fact that I said I’d probably never watch the show (let alone LIKE IT), there’s some damn good writing that goes on. And there have been a lot of things one or more of the characters have said that resonate with me. The statement above? One of the biggest.

I think it’s because my pain feels unbearable and lonely more often than not. I have few friends that can understand what I’m feeling on a personal level. I don’t even need one full hand to count them. Yes, I have friends that have watched friends and parents go through what I’m going through. It’s awful and painful, but as with so many things, you can’t truly understand until you’ve been there yourself. Frankly, it’s a crappy club to be in, but I’m grateful I’m not in the club alone.

I don’t know if everyone feels the same way I do about these clubs. I have a friend who sustained a pretty grim injury last year that left her more than a little debilitated for a long time. I’ve been fortunate enough to never have broken anything more than a fingernail so there was really no way for me to understand what she was going through. Not the pain, not the inability to do the easiest things, none of it. All any of us could do was make an effort to empathize and try to be there as much as we could (and I’ll be the first to admit, I did a pretty crappy job of “being there”…I could have done a lot better, frankly).

It’s hard being on one side or the other. Because I’ve never had a major injury, it’s hard for me to understand how, or even why, it takes so long to recover. But I assure you, the last thing anyone wants to be told is to “get over it.” I’ve had people say that to me and I want to punch them in the face repeatedly. There’s no hard and fast rule for “getting over” an injury, be it physical or emotional. We can read books or go to therapy or talk to our friends, but at the end of the day, once you’re in the Club, you’re in it and I just think people should be a little more understanding, especially if they’re not in the Club.

So if you’re in the Club of Whatever, welcome…and I’m sorry you’re here. But there are lots of us and there are lots of Clubs. So do what you gotta do. And if you’re not in the Club, please just be there. The Club members could use a drink or some company or even just a friendly text reminding us that we’re not forgotten and we’re not societal lepers.

Inhibitions are funny things, aren’t they? I think for all of us, we have and lose them with a great deal of regularity. The frequency of that change is debatable and probably changes quite a bit, but they come and go nonetheless.

Ten years ago, I was 22 years old. Lord knows, I was markedly less inhibited. I was nigh on crazy, if I’m being totally honest. I made stupid choices (resulting in often-painful consequences) and generally lived life as if every day were my last day on earth. I was silly, reckless, out of control, and more often than not, a pretty horrible person. That said, I was also pretty reserved, as far as my emotions were concerned. I did just about everything I could to keep people from getting in. I had things happen to me in my early 20s that kept me from letting people access who I really was. So while I was outwardly a complete headcase, everything the mattered remained hidden. You don’t go through those kinds of things and not wind up a little hardened.

Ten years later, I’m discovering that everything has sort of flipped. I maintain a considerable amount of control over my person (and my wallet, thank God)…well, most of the time. I still have my moments of crazy, but they are just that: moments. It’s not a lifestyle anymore. And when it comes to emotions, hard as it may be, I’m a little more apt to let people see all of it…the good, the bad, and (unfortunately) the ugly. I don’t know how I could have gotten through the last several months without experiencing some semblance of emotion. I think I probably still have a hardened exterior. It’s a select few that get to see the “real” me. I still have a compulsion to maintain a front. I’m working through that and trying to remind myself that perfection, while a nice idea, is unattainable and nobody really likes it anyway. It’s the communism of emotions.

Fully experiencing emotion is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I also think that, at some point, it will be one of the most rewarding. Feeling how I feel right now isn’t easy. Loneliness, abandonment, and fear are horrible places to be. But I know that the flip side of all of that has to be on the horizon, however far away it might be.

And every morning, I get to look east toward what is, can, and probably will be a beautiful horizon…I just have to move toward it.  

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Generally speaking, I avoid dressing how I feel. This is due, in large part, to the fact that I feel exhausted much of the time. If I dressed how I felt, you’d see me bra-less, in a crappy t-shirt, sweatpants, and athletic socks to my knees. It would be ugly. I’d whip my hair up in a sloppy French twist and maybe muster the energy to put on deodorant and mascara. But that would be pushing it.

There’s something to be said for dressing the way you WANT to feel. I’ll admit it: I’ve had some really rough days in the past few months. And nothing can start turning that feeling around faster that putting on a great dress and killer heels. That’s only the beginning, though. I can’t even begin to tell you how great I feel when I buck up and pop contacts in and put on a full face of makeup…we’re talking four shades of eye shadow, liquid liner, curled lashes, the works!

I won’t ever discount the validity of wallowing in a crappy feeling for a while. Sometimes, it just feels good to be in crappy clothes and not give a rip about how you look or who’s judging you for looking that way. Screw ’em. We all deserve to have that day (or those days, because sometimes feeling crappy is a persistent bitch).

But at some point, enough is just enough and it’s time to pull myself up and just pretend that I feel better than I actually do, because more often than not, I end up feeling better just by doing that.

So here’s to party dresses, fancy heels, make-up, and anything else that makes me feel like a million bucks!

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If someone asked you, “What’s the one thing you need, really NEED, right now?” how would you answer? I think most people would quickly answer with either sleep or money. And really, who doesn’t need either or both of those pretty much every day? Sleep is a huge one for me, especially now, given that I’m running on about five hours, and even that wasn’t uninterrupted. And money? Well, yeah, I definitely would have liked to win that Mega Millions jackpot…didn’t we all? Oh, the places I’d go and things I’d do. If only.

But if we think a little deeper than just the surface of our physical lives, what is it that we really need? For each person, it’s going to be a very different answer. Some need determination. Some might need some rest…not sleep, but rest. Some need to be understood while others need understanding. There are plenty of things we all need.

So what do I need right now? The easy answer is “a vacation.” I can’t even begin to describe how badly I want to get away for a week. Sadly, that just isn’t in the cards this year. But what I think I really need is some peace and some understanding….of myself and of others. I have been feeling very lonely the last few days. Generally speaking, I’ve felt pretty good and mostly normal, but I have moments when the loneliness sets in more heavily than I could have ever expected. It’s often so overwhelming that I’m not sure what to do about it. Do I cry? Do I exercise? Do I call my friends? Which friends do I call? Needing something makes me feel needy, which is not the way I ever want to appear, be, or feel. Sometimes my dogs even seem like they don’t want to hang out with me. I know it’s not true…they just like laying on their bed, which is in the bedroom and not in the living room where I usually hang out alone.

Maybe what I really need is a sense of accomplishment. To know that I started and completed something. Cleaning my house would be a good start. It’s not trashed, it’s just that there are things that could be cleaner. Like the floors. I should polish those…