Blinders On

I made this picture my desktop background a few months ago because I really liked it, but for all the wrong reasons. I like it now because it has helped me realize why liking what I thought it represented wasn't the best thing for me.

When I first saw this picture after Barbells for Boobs this year, I thought "this is what CrossFit is all about." The last person struggling to finish the workout and everyone from the community cheering them on. Supporting every athlete equally until the last rep hits the floor. This is what I had come to expect out of CrossFit - in my moments of struggle I would have the full support of the community around me to keep me going. It's what kept me going in my first few months of CrossFit - that feeling that I wasn't alone and no one was going to let me quit.

The first time this happened to me was the first time I did Nancy. I had to row instead of run and was overhead squatting an empty bar and was still at least a full round behind everyone else in the class. I figured when everyone else finished they would catch their breath, gather their stuff and start getting ready to go home. I would either be told to stop or would just finish my last round at the back of the room and go home too. In the beginning I worked out with blinders on - head down or gaze focused straight ahead - only worried about what I was doing. That day I became aware that I had gathered a crowd. The people that finished didn't just leave, they came over to cheer me on so I didn't have to finish alone. They counted every rep out loud, encouraged me to pick the bar back up when I took breaks, and didn't stop until the barbell settled on the ground for the last time. It was weird. And unexpected. And quite honestly it made me really self-conscious and uncomfortable. I didn't like having everyone stare at me while I lumbered around at 350 pounds struggling to exercise. I wanted to tell them, "you know it's nice of you, but you really don't have to bother. I'm fine." Strangely though, the more I thought about what had just happened, the more warm and fuzzy I felt inside.

I can't remember very many instances in the last two years where I wasn't the last one to finish a WOD, so this scenario played itself out over and over again to the point where, for me, it became normal to work out with a crowd around me, especially at the end. In addition, I started to get feedback outside of the gym about what a great job I was doing, and how inspiring I was, and the more I heard the more I wanted to hear. I started to enjoy the attention and the accolades. I started to feel like I needed it to succeed.  I felt that I needed to keep working hard so that others would continue to support me and I wanted to make my coaches proud of me.

I still worked out in a tunnel for the most part, eyes focused straight ahead, but I could always hear the clapping, or someone shouting my name from across the room. When it got really tough, I relied on having someone show up beside me to ask, "how many more do you have?" because it usually always happened. Eventually, especially when I moved back, it got to a point where I no longer had blinders on. I started to look around and see just how far behind I was and how much more everyone else was lifting, and I was really hard on myself. I started to feel bad for having to scale everything and wasn't satisfied that my best was good enough for me. I kept trying to push past what I knew was my limit, to my own detriment, because I wanted to be as good as I felt everyone else was.

The more I struggled the more I felt like I was letting everyone down. I wanted to keep up my role as an "inspiration." I knew that I had been giving up on myself, but for some reason I was upset that it seemed like everyone else had given up on me too. As it became more and more about what everyone else thought and said I began to lose my reason for the journey and I didn't really realize that it was happening.

My first workout back in Roanoke was when I hurt myself. When I was lying on the ground in pain, explaining that I had been snatching too heavy, my coach asked "who were you trying to impress?" I didn't have an answer until a few weeks ago when I finally realized that in truth I had been trying to impress him and the other athletes in the class. I had been away for a year and wanted to show everyone that I was strong and could keep up and that I was good at snatching. I'm not proud of letting my ego and my need for attention get the better of me, and I've spent the last 8 months paying for it, and learning that lesson the hard way.

Over the last several months while I've been injured, I haven't been in group classes. I haven't been in a competitive environment. I haven't had that external support that had been my life force during the first year of my journey. Without it I've felt lost and alone. Even though in the beginning I had no expectation that anyone would cheer me on through my workouts and I didn't really even want anyone to take notice of me, I had let that become my sole motivation. It took me a long time to realize that no one was going to support me if I wasn't going to try.

Five weeks ago I started an individualized rehab program. In the first meeting with my coach, she told me that she needed me to put my blinders on. I needed to focus on the work she was giving me, and not what everyone else was doing. She told me that I was in charge of my health - not her, not the other coaches, not my doctors. Me. I've thought a lot about that and it has helped me to realize that I have to change the way that I've been looking at my workouts.

Right now, and for the unforeseeable future, I can't be a competitive athlete. I can't expect or even try to think about hitting PRs or increasing weight on all my lifts. I can't measure my success on how fast my times are or how heavy my loads are. I can't gauge my effort on being told that I'm doing a good job. I'm working out alone and I can't ever expect that anyone will be there to push me through it - I need to be able to do it alone. I need to know that what I can do, now, is my normal and is good enough - even if no one tells me so. I know that people still care about me and want me to succeed, even if they aren't cheering me on through every workout. I need to get to a place where I don't need anyone else's approval to feel good about my effort. I need to focus on me and what I think of myself and on making myself proud. I need to get healthy and back on track and heal.

Joining CrossFit was never supposed to be about being the center of attention and being an inspiration and working to make anyone else proud of me. I started CrossFit to get healthy and lose weight because I was afraid I was going to die in my 30s. That solitary fear was my driving force. It was never about how much I could snatch or if my workout times compared at all to anyone else, and it shouldn't be about that now because I'm still not at the place where I can shift focus away from my primary goal. Until then, it's blinders back on, head down, moving toward my goals and taking control of my health. Closing my eyes and knowing that the crowd is still around me - even if I don't see or hear them - but not needing it to be there anymore.

The Box

The other day I took a small black box out of my closet. I've had the box, and it's contents, for 10 years now. It has accompanied me on 5 moves.  I used to open the box much more, but I haven't looked inside for several years. I figured the 10 year anniversary of when I started adding to the box might be a good time to take a long, reflective, (maybe last) look at everything the box holds. 

The box contains love, care, and worry. It holds prayer, hope, and faith - much more than I have ever held inside myself. It encompasses the sadness of a community. The box is the resting place for the fragmented pieces of lives broken, some forever. The box holds mementos representative of pain, struggle, and frustration.

The box is my accident box. Inside are all the cards I received when I was in the hospital, rehab center, and when I was recovering at home. A few ziplock bags of dried flowers - a small sampling of the hundreds I received from friends, family, co-workers, and strangers. Newspaper clippings, obituaries, memorial programs. A video of the news reports from that night and first week. Stacks of medical forms, disability leave balance forms, correspondence between my lawyers and insurance companies. Hospital bracelets, the screws that were removed from my knee, my wheelchair gloves, my handicapped parking placard. My personalized "BARIGAL" license plates, once clearly mangled, now pounded back to their original flat license plate shape. A few pieces of the clothes I was wearing that night - my "favorite" outfit at the time - the clothes that the EMTs cut off me at the scene. The empty case for my Maroon 5 - Songs About Jane CD, the one that was left stuck in the player when my Jeep was taken to be crushed. And even a satisfaction survey from Jeep dated March 8th, 2004, thanking me for my purchase, and letting me know they hoped I was enjoying my certified pre-owned vehicle.

A pack rat from an early age, I kept all these things out of habit. I've always kept birthday cards, movie tickets, sugar packets - mementos of important events in my life. Tokens of significant things that have happened. I like pulling out my little boxes of things and recalling the associated memories as I turn each item over in my hands. I didn't keep all these things in the hopes that I would pull them out on a random day 10 years down the road and remember the associated moments with fondness. It's not like I need my hospital bracelet to remind me of the month I spent at Roanoke Memorial. Some people might find it weird to have kept all this stuff for so long, but I think I kept everything because it just felt wrong to throw it away. 

The most important thing I realized about what was in the box when I took my last look through everything, was actually what was missing from the box. All the things that were not in the box. 

The box doesn't hold all the memories of the good things that have happened in my life over the last 10 years. There aren't trinkets associated with my triumph over the things that caused me to struggle. My wheelchair gloves are in the box - my first unassisted steps are not. The license plates from the Jeep I got when I started driving again are on the Jeep, not in the box. 

The life that I live now, though impacted by the day associated with everything that's in the box, doesn't exist in the box. Of all the things that are in the box, the thing that matters most, isn't there. I am not stuck in that box. I think that part of the reason I kept those things, and kept them in that box, was not to be constantly reminded of that day but so that I wouldn't completely forget about it either - not that I ever could. 

For the last ten years time has existed in segments - things that happened before the accident and things that happened after. At first I counted the days since the accident. Then weeks. Then months. It's hard not to remember something that happened on the first of the month. Every time the calendar flipped I knew, it's been a month since the accident, it's been 6 months, 9 months, 11 months. Then I started to reflect yearly on the accident. Every year on March 1st I would think back to that day, how excited I was to get my Jeep, how I spent the rest of the day at work stealing glances out the windows at the bookstore to look at it. I couldn't wait to drive it home. I would think about the moments I can remember surrounding the accident, and the smell in the helicopter, and crying outside the OR with my Mom before I went into surgery. I think about the kids that died and I always get really sad, basically for the entire month. Taking my last look through the box, I think I'm finally ready to stop living with my sense of time constantly focused on that day that changed my life.

Ten years later I am able to move on with my life because of what's in the box, and because it's in the box. Because the box is something that I can put in a closet and not carry around with me every day. I think the parts of that day that I do carry with me, those I can't put in a box, are important to the person I have become a decade later. My scars, the rods in my legs, the memories I'll always have of that day, the roadside memorial I have passed thousands of times - those things are easier to handle, because I have the box.