One of Those People

I’ve been having a bit of a rough time lately.  I was on a chemo regiment that made me feel normal.  I was back to my cheery self and had energy and a desire to actually go out and do stuff, but then I noticed that things weren’t feeling right and that most likely this treatment was failing me.  Unfortunately, I was right.  This meant on to treatment plan number 7.  This new chemo has been pretty rough on me.  The first two weeks I was on it, I was in some serious pain.  My entire body hurt and nothing was helping, then my heart started racing and I ended up in the ER.  The second two weeks of this chemo depleted my immune system.  I had a fever and vomiting and felt awful.  I was hospitalized for five days and on day five, my hair started to come out in clumps.  It was not fun.

It has been hard to be happy and cheery and back to myself.  Sometimes a chemo messes with your brain chemistry making it hard to just be “you.” I’ve been asked if I am giving up.  The answer is no.  I am nowhere near giving up even though I am fed up.  I am tired of endless chemo and side effects and rules and not feeling like myself.  I hate cancer and I wish it would give up on me.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I can get back to feeling like myself and how I can get stronger physically and mentally.  What do I need to do? How can I achieve this? How do I push through the discomfort and the mental fog? I started to think about those who have overcome.  How did they do it? Where did they find the drive?  How do I become one of those people? And then I realized, each and every one of us has been that person who has overcome great obstacles. We are all “one of those people.” We just forget.

All of us were once babies; born to this world unable to speak our needs, too weak to hold up our own heads.  And yet, each one of us had the drive to try and to persevere from the second we were born. Each day we worked on strengthening our muscles until we could hold our heads and then roll over and sit up.  We tried to get up and stand day after day.  We pushed ourselves.  We fell down and we got back up.  It took months and yet we never gave up.  We believed if we kept trying we could do it, and we did.  We learned to stand and to walk and to run and to talk.  We are born to overcome.  We are born to be “one of those people.” I wish we could remember what we were thinking in those moments. I wish we could easily harness that drive we all have as babies.

So when do we lose this drive? When do we start to give up on ourselves?  I suppose it is different for all of us.  Does it happen in a moment when someone tells you that you can’t do something? Does it happen slowly over time? Does life just get you down?

I’ve been trying to figure out when mine failed me.  I thought maybe high school. Then I remembered I was a (terrible) gymnast in high school and for years I worked on doing a back handspring.  I never gave up.  I took the (literal) leap of faith and threw myself into the air backwards day after day trying to get it.  I must have had drive to do that.

Okay, so college/graduate school.  It must have been gone by then. And then I realized, it took mental strength to pick up and move to a city hours from home and where I knew no one.  I got an apartment and a map and enrolled in graduate school.  That graduate program was more challenging than any other educational program I have ever been in.  I wanted to quit, I wanted to give up and move back to my home state.  But I didn’t.  I pushed through it and I finished and I got my graduate degree.

After graduate school I had a few years in there where things didn’t go quite as I had planned and it was upsetting. I didn’t feel like my life was what I had wanted it to be.  I felt a little lost. So then, that’s when I must have lost it.

But no, one day I laced up a pair of roller skates and I skated onto a roller derby rink.  I was petrified.  I was so scared of falling.  It took the first few minutes of every practice for me to relax enough to really skate.  It didn’t come easy to me.  I practiced after practice.  I went to trainings in different states.  I really pushed myself to learn the sport and to become a better skater.  But I was still scared.  I was scared to get hurt, to break a bone.  One day I decided that I would put my fear aside and just go for it.  And you know what happened?  I broke my ankle. Yup. My fear. Realized. The thing was, though, I didn’t give up.  I watched practices; I learned the rules inside and out.  I studied the game.  When I was healed, I put my skates on and went back out there. I went out there without the fear. I pushed myself. I dug deep and pulled out that drive we have as babies.  I wasn’t giving up.  My ankle hurt, my god did it hurt.  I learned that yoga the day before practice eased the pain so I started to do yoga.  An hour and a half of yoga the day before practice, several times a week.  I got stronger.  Every day I got stronger until I was the strongest I have ever been.  I was rostered again for our bouts and I played fearlessly.  I got knocked down and I got back up.

So I realized that no, I never lost it.  I am still “one of those people.”  I just have to find that drive, that determination. Maybe sometimes we just lose it temporarily.  Maybe it’s for a year or two or even more, but it is still there, deep inside of you, just waiting for you to dig deep and pull it out.  Sometimes it is really buried deep and we need a catalyst to help push it up to the surface. Whatever it takes, just know that it is inside of you and inside of me.  It IS there.  I promise you.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some digging to do.