For Me.

Oh, hey. 

I’ve been thinking for months about how I wanted to start this post. It’s been almost two years since I last wrote to you guys- and since I last wrote more much of anything at all. Should I start out with a knock-knock joke? A goofy, awkward line about how much I know you missed me, even though most of you have probably talked to me on the phone this week? Should I tell you that my laptop got eaten by a bear while I was on the Appalachian Trail last year, and I finally tracked down the bear and made him buy me a new one? Or that I got roped into joining a cult that doesn’t believe in wireless internet, and have been living in the Appalachian woods using only dial-up ever since? But finally, after exhausting every other option, I decided that I’m just going to tell you all the truth- the past year and a half has been really, really hard, and I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t. But sitting here on New Year’s Eve, with a life that couldn’t be more different from how I imagined it would be the last time you heard from me, and a whopping flu that’s kept me in bed for the past 3 days (maybe more of the latter than the former), it felt somehow necessary to dust off the old keyboard. So without much of a plan, or really any direction for what I’m about write, all I know is that I’m going to spare you the knock-knock jokes (sorry to disappoint). I’m going to leave out the crappy puns. I’m going to avoid every attempt to try to stupidly mask the hurt or the pain or the struggle that has been the last year and a half- and just tell the story. I know it isn’t what you expected. It probably isn’t what you want to read, and I don’t blame you if you stop here. In fact, it’s completely ok if you do. It’s not a funny, lighthearted story. In fact, I almost decided never to tell it. But something in me is telling me I have to write it. Not because I want everyone to know, or everyone to feel sorry for me- that is that last thing I could ever want. I would prefer to forget this past couple years altogether. Erase them. But I can’t- for the same reason that it doesn’t matter if you keep reading. Because even though I’m writing this to you, I’m, not writing it for you. I’m writing it for me. So here it goes. 

Like it does so often for all of us, life hasn’t always gone my way. I’ve had physical challenges, mental challenges, financial challenges- maybe if you’re truly lucky I’ll entertain you with those light-hearted stories another time. But the one thing I’ve always prided myself on is that I had the mental strength to will myself through any of these challenges. No matter what came my way, I could handle it. I could push through, and come out stronger on the other side. Uppercut to the jaw, face down on the mat, get back up, repeat. But then I hiked the Appalachian Trail. 

The trail itself was great. I was in my element. 20-to-30-mile days, almost nothing in my pack, dirt everywhere, living on ramen noodles and peanut butter (usually mixed together), just grinding it out. I loved it. But somewhere in Virginia, I made a critical mistake. One morning, while stopping to get water, I saw a tick on my hand, between my pointer and middle fingers. I pulled it off, threw it away… and thought nothing of it. I kept hiking, until one day, somewhere in Pennsylvania, I stopped. Not quit, or got off the trail- I just stopped hiking. I sat down in the dirt, dropped my poles, and started to cry. Cooper, my boyfriend who had flown out to hike with me for a couple weeks, asked what was wrong. But I couldn’t answer, because I didn’t know. I just knew something was. After a minute or two, I got up, shook it off, and we kept hiking. But as the days went on, every day got harder. Not just emotionally, but physically. Every step started to feel like I was walking through mud. Every hill started to look like mount Everest, and I was standing at base camp with flip flops on. Some days, getting out of my tent felt impossible. But I couldn’t stop yet. I dragged myself out of my damp, smelly tent and kept moving. 

Without a better explanation, I just assumed that I was weak. I assumed the tiredness and the pain in my whole body and the new waves of emotion that came with it were because I was exhausted- because I couldn’t “hang.” I assumed it meant I was losing my mojo. So every day I got angrier- at myself, at my body- and instead of stopping, I gritted my teeth and pushed harder. Slowly, I hobbled and limped and dragged myself all the way to Maine. Then one day, as I was climbing a relatively smooth trail in the southern part of the state, something that should have been easy after the rugged miles I had just recently left behind, I got passed by a man who must have been in his late 80’s at the youngest. Not to say that he wasn’t a strong hiker, but as he passed me, I could tell he was moving slowly. A flash of anger hit me- what the hell was wrong with me?!? Was I that weak? Was I that pathetic? Was everything I always thought about myself about to be proven true? I adjusted my hands on my trekking poles- my left hand had been hurting the past few days, so badly that I couldn’t even bend the joint in my thumb, pointer and middle fingers. They were red and swollen, and I had to hold my trekking pole with those fingers out straight. So I adjusted, took a deep breath, and kept climbing. As I climbed, angry and frustrated and probably crying, all of the weird, random pieces from the past two months started to click together in my mind. No energy. Emotional as hell. Joints that both couldn’t move, and felt like they were on fire. Swollen hand. Between my pointer and middle fingers. Oh. My. God. I called Cooper, who was in Alaska pack-rafting with a friend. He answered, and between gasps, I said “I think- I have- Lyme disease.” 

After I hung up with Cooper, I called my mom. I grew up in Maine, and she was living only an hour from the nearest trailhead. Without even letting me finish my teary explanation, she said “I’ll be there in an hour.” She picked me up, after a harrowing drive on a one-mile dirt road and a grueling 5-foot hike in to the trail that left her simultaneously swearing about her hatred for nature and joking about her epic hike in the woods. We went straight to the ER, and my suspicions were confirmed- it was Lyme. “Great,” I said, “I’ll take antibiotics and I’ll be set.” And it did work like that for a bit- sort of. I took a couple days off at my mom’s, then went back and finished the trail. Cooper met me for the end, and after summiting Kathadin and spending a week or so with my family, we went home to Arizona. Everything was going to be fine.

But then I got home. The first couple months were ok, but I was still inexplicably emotional sometimes. My knees still hurt. But I assumed this was because of my recent 2200-mile walk. I told myself the lyme was gone- I took the drugs, I did what I was supposed to do, and that was that. I was starting a new life- I moved into Cooper’s house, and Sheila lived in the driveway. I started coaching the mountain bike team that Cooper coached- something I knew nothing about, but that turned out to be a lot of fun. I decided to delay going back to shipping for a few more months, and to make up the difference, got a part time job at a running store, and then another at a bagel shop. But the work made me tired (actually, everything made me tired), Cooper and I fought more and more frequently, and I was sad or angry or exhausted all the time. As the months went on, I got so tired and my body hurt so badly that I couldn’t run anymore. Then I couldn’t hike. Before I knew it, I was spending all my time inside the house. Soon after, I started spending all my non-working hours in bed, while Cooper went on adventures alone. The only thing that had ever worked as therapy for me, the only thing that made everything better- being outside- was something I suddenly couldn’t get do. It was right there, but I couldn’t get to it. Over just a couple short months, the biggest part of who I was- my ability to move through the outdoors- had been taken away from me. While my life was devolving into a directionless disaster, Lyme was taking away the only way I knew how to cope. 

Eventually, the question came up about whether it was a part of the lyme. I started doing research, and it made sense, but I didn’t have health insurance any more, and I certainly didn’t have the money for a specialist. The only job I knew was shipping, but how was I going to go out on a ship for two or three months now, like this? I could barely even leave the house. The answer was that I couldn’t. I was stuck. 

In December of last year, I had the first anxiety attack I’ve ever had in my life while driving Sheila around town. I had just quit both my jobs. I was thinking about money and my career and my future- and suddenly I couldn’t breath. I just started sobbing and yelling and hitting things. The steering wheel, the dashboard- whatever I could reach. Then the light turned green. I took a shaky breath, white-knuckled the steering wheel and kept driving. 

Some time that month, a friend of Cooper’s suggested that I try substitute teaching. Assuming it couldn’t be any worse than the bagel shop, and that at least it probably paid better, I gave it a shot. My first job was supposed to be 1-2 weeks, filling in for a teacher that was on short term leave. The class had a high special needs population, and so it had a co-teacher. I went in to observe the class the day before I started, and it was absolute chaos. But watching the kids made me smile, and they seemed funny. Plus, in that moment I understood chaos better than they would ever know. Everything in my life was chaotic, inside my head and out. Living in some chaos I hadn’t caused might be kind of nice. 

Within the first week, I saw exactly what I was in for. But much to my surprise, I liked it. The kids were crazy, and sometimes acted out, and sometimes pushed back when they were pushed. But the more I learned about them, and the more I got to know them, the more I understood where much of it came from, and the more the chaos of my classes brought me joy. I looked forward to going to school every day. It was a distraction from the pain in my body, and the sense of loss that was starting to fill my chest. This loss didn’t come from anywhere external- another person, a thing, a place- I felt a deep sense of loss for myself, and who I used to be. But still things got worse. Eventually, I spent all the time I wasn’t at school in bed, unless I was spending it laying on the cold tile floor of Cooper’s house, sobbing until I almost threw up. 

The teacher I was filling in for stayed on leave for the rest of the year, and I ended up teaching the class- English, 9th grade. My co-teacher was amazing, and when the year ended, he lobbied for them to ask me to stay. And I agreed. 

Eventually we found a doctor who would see me, even without insurance. She was incredible. She told me all about chronic Lyme, and how for so many people, it doesn’t just go away after one try. She started me on antibiotics, and they helped a little, but not much. It wasn’t until this past summer, just 6 months ago, after about 5 months straight of trying different combinations of pills, that we finally found the antibiotic that worked. I knew immediately it was going to help. Soon after, I started running again. I even started smiling sometimes, and laughing for real. 

I’m teaching full-time now, same class. In October, I ran a 50k trail race. And I’m training for a 50 miler. It might seem ambitious, but I need to prove to myself that I can do it. That I’m still strong. That I’m still me. But even with the treatment, and getting my legs and my freedom and my life back, I’m still struggling. Because even though I have my life back, I don’t recognize it. I don’t know if I even recognize myself. The lyme is gone, but it took a part of me with it. I’ve lost some confidence, and spending all those months alone in the house means I’m anxious now, and afraid a lot, and sometimes I cling too hard to Cooper because I feel like he is all I have. I’ve never been one for friends, and I didn’t know what to say to the few I did have, so I said nothing, and I’m sure you can guess how they feel about me now. My family means well, but they make me feel worse sometimes, not better. All they want is for me to come “home.” But this is my home now. That I know. What I don’t know is if this life, teaching, living in the city, in a house, driving a car instead of Sheila- is this even close to what I want? Every day, I try to push through. And some days I do a better job than others. But despite all of the seemingly “harder” things I’ve been through, this past two years have been the hardest of my life, because the only thing I have ever used to push through struggle is the one thing that I couldn’t use, no matter how hard I tried- the strength, and stubbornness, and willpower that existed in my own head. That’s what lyme took away from me. But sometimes I can feel it still. That’s how I know it isn’t gone completely. Even though I still cry a lot, and I still get scared by things that used to excite me, and I still hurt- sometimes I can feel the strength that used to build up like a fire in my chest when I needed it most, starting to build up again, trying to push away the loss and sadness that took its place for a while. And I know that eventually it will win. It’s just going to take time. A fire needs to be stoked before it can burn. And until it does, all I can do is keep moving. Uppercut to the jaw, face down on the mat, get up, repeat. 

Do I know where I’m going? Absolutely not. Do I know where I want to go? Nope. If I did, I’d be there already. I don’t know what the future has in store for me. All I know is that I have to keep going until I find out. Keep getting up. Keep fighting back. Keep stoking the fire in my chest. Because if nothing else, that fire is something I can believe in. Someone recently told me this quote: “You don’t become confident by shouting affirmations in the mirror, but by having a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are.” I don’t know who said it, so I’m sorry whoever you are, but thanks for these words, because even though I might not know much else, I know that I have a stack of proof that tells me I can get through this challenge too. A stack of times that I’ve been knocked down to the mat and gotten back up, that are there to tell me I can do it again. 

If I have learned anything from this past two years, it’s that there is a distinct difference between being knocked down, and being weak. Weakness and facing adversity are not the same thing. But it is easy to feel weak when you’re looking up at the world from your position face-down on the mat. It’s easy to confuse feeling weak, or being in a vulnerable position, with being weak. I can’t even begin to count the times I’ve told myself “Come on. Don’t be weak. You can do better than this.” But you aren’t weak. Weakness, or strength, isn’t a measure of how hard you fall, or how long you’re down. Weak is what you prove you aren’t on your way back up. Right now, I’m on the mat. But I’m biding my time, planning my comeback, stoking the fire, and I’ll be getting up soon. I’ve got to- there’s too much screwing up to do, and too many names to take. I can’t let you guys have all the fun. 

I know this story is long, but it needed to be written. Believe it or not, this is the short version. I know it isn’t happy, or funny, but that’s ok. I didn’t write it to entertain you. I wrote it because this story is everything I’ve needed to say for two years, that I haven’t known how to start. I wrote it because I’m not perfect. And neither are you. But I have learned how easy it is to feel like you are the only one who is struggling. And I need you, whoever you are, to know that you are not the only one. We all struggle. We all get knocked face down on the mat. It’s what we do next that counts. It might take a while. It might not be easy. You might have to do it over and over again. But regardless of how many times you keep falling down, keep getting back up. I know you can. 

And finally, I wrote this story for me. I write for me. I keep going for me. I keep getting up for me. I keep living for me. But don’t worry, I’ll keep screwing up too- and I’ll tell you all about it. 

Yours truly.