On A New Path Forward

It’s been a while everyone! I’m glad to be back. Honestly, it took me the last 1-2 months to scrape up the courage to re-start/kickstart/reengage this blog. For some reason in late 2020/early 2021, I had thought it wasn’t necessary anymore. Kind of the trap where you lose all the weight, and then start eating junk food again…? Turns out that can happen with mental health too. And my oh my its an addictive little trap. Anyways, more on that later, but I’m glad to be back and conversing with you all again. It turns out I needed this more than I thought, and that it helped me – and helped others – more than I thought. All reasons that I decided to re-start and offer my writings off to the world.

So, what’s been going on? Lots. I got a new job, moved from Colorado Springs to Flagstaff, moved again within Flagstaff, started dating a new girl along the way who also moved with me, realized we didn’t like Flagstaff and were isolated, got a new job back with USA Triathlon, moved BACK to Colorado Springs in January of 2022, bought a house, all within a pandemic that won’t seem to go away. Woof. That felt good to say. Ive been giving myself a hard time that I hadn’t really “done much” the last 1.5 years, which, I guess when you’re going through it you can’t see out of it? It’s weird. But as I come down from the fervor that was 2021, I realize more and more that a slow down and recalculation is needed. Some of that is happening naturally, but some of it is happening intentionally, or needs to happen intentionally.

On the mental health front, I was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in mid-2021, so have been working through accepting that and trying to manage it the best that I can. It’s been a never ending battle it seems up to this point, and I have to admit, its very defeating right now. This is one of those diagnoses that seems to hit you at your very core – something that shakes the foundation of yourself. Anxiety and Depression seem, more basic? That’s not respectful to say, even as someone who has both, but there’s something that feels more shameful about it. I don’t exactly know why. It begs the question – oh you can’t tolerate uncertainty? Well, the whole world is uncertain. Better get better at tolerating it. I wish it was that simple – but it’s not. Your body and mind are hi-jacked. Along for the ride. And that has been one of the most helpless and traumatic feelings I’ve ever encountered – on a daily basis no less.

In addition to that, I’ve also been working through a lot of pain and trauma from the last 1-2 years consisting of a lay off from the Olympic/Paralympic world, and how that has affected my identify and life moving forward. In short, I think its affected me in more ways than I’d care to admit, but I’ve been reluctant to admit it until now. I still thought I could “muscle” through it and just “be ok,” but it turns out its not that simple with trauma or heavy loss. Speaking of loss…

The biggest thing that comes to mind over the past 1-2 years for me is loss – not the tangible loss, like losing a family member or a job, but the ambiguous loss of what was, what could have been, what still is, but isn’t still really? What could have been. What was supposed to be. What was THERE. In front of us all. But like a cold knife – not even a knife – aaa…..god what was it. A sword. A big fucking cut. More like an unstoppable force with no immovable object in its way – it just came right through like a bull dozer comes through. A total helplessness to it – but partially taking solace in the fact that you couldn’t do anything about it whatsoever, but also being so angry at the world that it shouldn’t have been this way – could have been different. SHOULD have been different…it seemed more intangible or unnecessary than say a World War, or a Depression…those seemed more…likely? Natural? Necessary due to a world gone mad? Something like that. I can’t really put my finger on it exactly. Maybe that’s why its ambiguous…but a pandemic? And not a cut and dry one like you see in the movies where people are actively turning into zombies, monsters, or maniacal humans – it was very grey. Was COVID bad? Was it not? Was it kind of bad? Was it killing people, or was it killing people that were already dying? Could people have been healthier? Did the masks helps? Did it all happen exactly as it was supposed to? Or did it not? All these questions leading to a boiling point of anxiety, fear, depression, apathy, rage, excitement, and pure I-want-to-throw-everything-in-my-sight-against-a-wall. And we talk about the dead. The death tolls. The gone. The people that are no longer here. And rightly so – that’s ungodly sad. But, on the flip side of all this, what about the people that are still here? That are forced to live in this world and move on with the notion that we don’t quite know what happened? Or if it changed our lives? How it changed our lives? Did it change our trajectory in such a drastic way that all we want to do is throw away the past life and start anew? Do we just not want to talk about it at all? It’s been hard to figure out exactly what has happened. How to articulate it all. And that is part of the toughness of it – just how we talk about it is even pressure-induced. All the podcasts, headlines, and conversations are around the dead and what that has meant. My hope is that we can also talk about the living – the living with grief, loss, anxiety, fear, dread, loss, change, never ending uncertainty.

There’s a perception out there that the tough part is over. The last two years – were out of it! Its done! (kind of, still TBD, could change in an hour). Its time to be happy and move on. And that’s partially true – we’ve been through a lot and there is reason to celebrate and be joyful again. But fuck. Not to sound purely fatalistic, but that seems impossible right now. The tough part is also now – now we have to figure out what just happened, the scale of it, how we’ve changed, what we do with ourselves now that we can actually do something. Now we sit and wonder what position we hold now that the dust is starting to settle and we see where the pieces have fallen.

I’m excited to be back with you all and share more thoughts moving forward. As always, let me know if you ever have any questions, feedback, or thoughts :).